Finaan
Chapter twenty-two
A Mate Like You
Ishouldn’t be surprised. I know what Wregen is, what Svend lets him do.
Still, my stomach twists when I see my fucking mate drag his fingers across his victim’s open wound, painting the blood as if it’s a portrait.
His satisfaction permeates the air, and maggots crawl through my gut as I watch him take pleasure in an unwilling elf’s pain.
It hurts even more that he’s doing this on the heels of his playfulness in the water.
It felt like something changed—like he’s changing—but I’m a fool for thinking it possible.
He’s the same depraved monster he’s always been.
“He doesn’t want this. You said you’d leave him alone if I traveled with you,” I remind the asshole, my voice as flat as my emotions. He’s wrung every bit of feeling out of me except disgust.
“No, my skjaldmaer, I didn’t,” he responds in a haughty tone that sends a spark of anger to replace the malaise that spilled through me a moment ago. “You tried to get that concession but got distracted by your need to speak with your dragon. I made you no promises.”
I’m confused for a second, my mind replaying our encounter in the cave.
I’d found Svend after Wregen accosted me in the lake, and I wandered into the cavern trying to escape my self-loathing.
Wregen appeared, angry to find Svend and me speaking, and then I felt Panta’s presence.
I forgot everything in my zeal to speak with her.
I forgot all about Svend and his need to be protected.
Fuck me. Wregen has left Svend alone, but not because we agreed. He simply hadn’t bothered to go back to his barbaric penchants until now.
“You’re such a bastard,” I mutter, as frustrated with myself as I am angry with him. “You know this matters to me, that I want you to leave him alone. Do this for me, then.”
Wregen quirks one of his eyebrows, that fucking smirk emerging again.
In this moment, I want nothing more than to slice it off his face, slowly.
Still playing with his dick, he struts forward until he stands a foot away.
And then he pulls his bloody, cum-specked hand from his pants and runs a knuckle across my cheek.
I don’t flinch, much as I want to. I won’t back down from him, ever.
“Go away,” he mutters. He’s holding my glare but Svend and I both know who he’s talking to.
Svend’s gulp is the only sound in the cavern as Wregen and I stare at each other. I hear a rustle as he gathers his clothes and disappears into the nearest tunnel. A mumbled “Thank you” trails behind him.
“You refuse to accept your fate,” Wregen mutters, dark eyes smoldering. “I will say this one last time, and never again,” he tells me. His thumb tugs at my bottom lip, and he tries to shove it into my mouth, but I clench my teeth and snarl, drawing a low chuckle from him.
“You’re mated to an amoral male who delights in his own cruelty,” he declares, rubbing the mix of body fluids across my cheek and painting my lips with it.
“Make no mistake, my skjaldmaer. What you saw—that’s who I am, and what I will do as long as I live.
This bond between us draws me to you. I will claim you …
and soon … but I will never be the male you say you want. ”
“You’re delusional,” I spit out, flecks of my disdain landing on his lips, as his tongue flickers out to catch them. “I won’t give in to this bond. I won’t … I can’t … accept a mate like you.”
“You know how much I love a challenge,” Wregen snarls as the hand that had been gently stroking my cheek snaps to my throat and the other drops to cup my pussy.
My body flares in response to his possessive touch, shivers from the skin his hand caressed billowing out, like an avalanche expanding as it rolls down the mountain.
But no part of me feels cold. Not with his fingers moving over me, finding the spots he somehow knows instinctively, as if he’s played with my body a million times.
Right now, standing in this bright cavern, Yggdrasill’s root so close I can feel its magic, I’m burning alive.
And I desperately want to open my legs wider and take more than his fingers this time.
Reality spills over me like a wave, and I flinch away. He doesn’t let go, though. His fist tightens around my neck, while his other hand finds its place, plundering me again.
“I don’t want to do this,” I rasp, clenching my fists to keep them from digging into his hair. “We have a deal,” I add as a shudder exposes how easily he can take control of my body. “You have to take me to my dragon before anything else.”
“Then stop me,” he murmurs, squeezing my throat as his other hand lets go of my pussy then digs inside my pants, sliding his fingers through the wet mess he finds there.
We groan at the same time. The knowledge that he loves finding me dripping for him sends as much pleasure pulsing through me as his fingers do.
“I knew you’d be sopping and ready for my cock,” he grunts as one finger enters me a bit.
“You like pretending you’re a bad girl, but your body wants to please me.
It wants you to be my good girl.” He slides that finger in further, his thumb finding my clit to tease me with a touch of the pressure I need.
“I am not yours, asshole,” I snarl, furious with both of us.
“Your body tells me the truth, even if you’re a naughty liar,” he responds as that finger goes in a little further and stops.
“You want this as much as me. You’d like nothing more than to be stripped bare and fucked until you can’t walk.
” He pauses, pushing the teeniest bit more and curving into that spot that makes me see stars.
“Do it,” I mumble, craving him as desperately as he thinks, fully disgusted by the need burning through me. “If you want your fingers inside me so badly, stop teasing. Finish what you started and then go the fuck away and leave me alone.”
He smirks and starts to pull out oh … so … slowly, his gaze holding mine the entire time. Dragging his bottom lip between his teeth, he bites down enough to draw blood, then yanks his hand back, wipes the drop from his mouth, and presses his wet digits against my lips.
“Open for me, my skjaldmaer,” he rumbles, adding a hint of pressure as he urges me to let him in. “Taste us, together as the fates intend.”
It’s all I can do to stop myself from doing exactly as he demands, sucking every bit of our combined fluids from his fingers and licking them clean.
The bond is a living, writhing monster inside me, rejoicing at his hands on us, how it feels when part of him joins with me, bringing us closer even as I fight against it.
I want to be the unyielding bitch I am in every other part of my life. I need to push him away. My resistance to this bond is a malleable, weak thing. My insides were screaming for his taste, needing something—anything—from our mate.
But I can’t give in. Flinging my arms up, I break his hold on my neck, stepping away before he can capture me again.
“Thank the gods you’re such an irredeemable dick,” I mutter as I stalk away from him. “That won’t happen again. I won’t let it.”
His snarl, low and warbling with fury, vibrates the cavern around us. But I don’t hear footsteps.
“Get the fuck back here,” he murmurs, throwing his flat voice into my ear. “Don’t you dare walk away from me.”
I lift my hand and then my middle finger, waving good-bye while my steps carry me away.
I don’t hear him following me and wonder if he’s going to give up.
That’s not like him. He’s an obsessive, possessive prick who doesn’t like being denied anything.
After a few seconds, though, I breathe a sigh of relief—more because I dragged my ass out of that shitshow before I made a colossal mistake than because he’s not following me.
The hint of light left from the pool disappears when I turn a corner, and I realize I have no idea where I’m going and no way to see anything along the way.
This is reckless, and I refuse to die before I see my dragon.
I let my feet carry me another hundred steps or so, then sink down to the ground, pulling up my knees and dropping my forehead to rest on them.
Tears fill my eyes and I fight to hold them back.
I don’t cry, gods-dammit. My time in Helheim taught me how dangerous it is to give in to emotion.
Hel delighted in tormenting everyone who deviated from the cruelty and apathy she demanded in her realm.
She punished any elf who showed any signs of weakness.
I never figured out how she knew, but she always did.
Even tears in the dead of night would send us to her castle, where we’d be strung up or trapped in stone or whatever other punishment amused her that month. Usually for days, sometimes weeks.
She’s such a bitch.
But I’m not in Helheim, and I’m too brittle and broken to hold them back.
I won’t be able to resist him forever. The bond is so gods-damned powerful—much stronger than it should be before we’ve even fucked.
I’m supposed to have more choice in this, to be able to resist it.
It only solidifies once elves have joined their bodies together.
Which is why I’m so grateful that I snapped out of that spell.
I’d never be able to forgive myself if I gave in to him and the bond. I don’t know what I was thinking.
“I’ve been looking for you, my skjaldmaer.” Wregen’s cold tone pierces the air around me as I hear his footsteps approach. “I warned you not to leave. I don’t like it when people disobey me.”
“Fuck off.” My voice is ice. I’m well past caring what he thinks.
“You’re mine. How many times do I need to remind you of that? You go nowhere without me. Ever.”
“By the gods, Wregen, give it a rest,” I mutter, too deflated to even look at him. “I’m done. I’ll get Panta on my own, one way or another. I refuse to spend another day in your presence.”
“You have no choice. Neither of us do.”
“And what?” I demand, a spike of fury that shoots up from my gut spewing out with my words.
“Spend the rest of my life in Helheim as your slave, sucking your cock and spreading my legs when you demand? I’ll kill myself first. The pit will take me before you do.
” Now I look up so he can see the disgust in my eyes.
“Do you think I have so little respect for myself?” I scoff.
“That I’ll crave, or even accept, a male who would choose Hel over me? ”
Standing, I lean into him and poke my finger into his chest. He stands firm, dark eyes the only spots of light in this black cavern.
“Even if I ever could find it in my soul to accept you, Wregen, it would be a useless embrace because I won’t be a toy for a male whose loyalty lies elsewhere.
The mating bond is nothing to me. It’s worse than nothing.
It’s shit beneath my shoe that I’ll scrape off and wash away before I take another step.
I’ll never accept a male who will forsake me when another female demands it. ”
Wregen steps into me, wrapping his hands around my throat, because that’s what he does to intimidate the Svends of the world.
But I don’t shrink from him. I’m not afraid.
I’ll grieve for Panta, but she’ll have Ruxi.
We’ve been apart so long, she’ll survive.
And she wouldn’t want to be bound to me if I were stuck with him and trapped in Helheim forever.
“Do it,” I challenge. “End this despicable bond between us. I don’t want it, and I suspect you don’t want it either. You belong to Hel. You can’t divide your loyalties.”
“You know nothing,” he spits. His thumbs lift to caress my jaw, even as his eyes flare. “I return to Hel because she won’t let me go. With Jormungandr at her beck and call, and her hook stuck so deeply inside me, I’d be ripped in half if she ever tried to take it out, I have no choice.”
He takes a deep breath, dropping his hands and stepping back as his eyes grow haunted.
“I looked at the papers Balin hid in his desk—what he thought would be the key to my freedom. It’s a half-assed idea that I wouldn’t survive.
I have no life outside of Hel,” he mutters, a pulse in his neck pounding as his hands clench and unclench.
“We’ll go to Hel because that’s what she demands, and while I live, I must do what she requires of me, when she requires it. ”
“And if she orders you to kill me? What then?”
“She won’t,” he barks. “I’ll make sure of it.”
“But you can’t,” I mutter, stepping to the side and away from him. He drops his hands but follows me to close the distance between us. “You have no power to resist her. If she ordered my death, you’d take my life, mate bond or no.”
“You have my oath, my skjaldmaer. That won’t happen. I wouldn’t allow it.”
I shake my head at him, tears filling my eyes again. “It doesn’t matter, mate.” The last word erupts with half a laugh. Nothing’s funny, except the fates’ fucked up senses of humor. “I don’t want you. I can’t have you in my life. And I won’t go to Helheim with you.”
“No!” Wregen’s shock spills around us, vibrating through our bond to send a tremble down my spine. “We’re not done,” he mutters. “Stay here, but prepare to defend yourself. That bastard found us and he’s brought a fucking cavalry with him.”
“What are you talking about?” I whisper, terrified of whatever could inspire such intense emotions in a male who fears nothing. “Who found us?”
“Ruxi battles Balin and a few dozen of his unicorns. They're outmatched and won’t survive it. I’ll keep our enemies from you.”
“You have to save them, Wregen.” I don’t try to hide the catch in my throat. The thought of Panta losing her draikani sends a chill down my spine, filling every part of me with ice. “Even if you won’t do it for you, do it for me. I’m begging you.”
The anger that flickers across our bond tells me as clear as words could that my plea is a torch tossed into kindling.
He loathes the idea, eyes flashing as he watches me, pulse beating in his throat.
And then he shakes his head as if he’s disappointed in me, kicks off his boots, strips away his clothes, and steps a few feet away.
Before I can say anything else, he’s gone, leaving me to race after him as I pull my knives from my belt and prepare to kill the elves I stole them from.