Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Vrogul
I remember my father had spoken of the Mating Heat; half-reverence, half-jocular lewdness.
He’d said that it had lasted four days with my mother, before his Kteer could allow him to think of aught but pleasuring her, and that they would’ve starved to death had their neighbors not brought food and water to keep up their strength.
Not exactly the kind of thing a young male needs to hear about his parents.
But I’d been forewarned, and since I’d hoped for exactly this outcome, I’d packed food and ale and even some dried meat.
And ‘twas a good thing.
Because I lost count of the number of times I made love to Rowena after allowing her to rest from that first time.
I spread her out on my plaid and worshipped her body, making her scream my name again and again.
I lapped my own spend from her swollen cunny, the spicy-sweet scent mixing with her desire, driving me mad.
I fooked her from beneath, from the top, from behind. We both loved it when she braced her palms against the rock and I thrust into her weeping cunny from behind, her breasts hanging down, allowing me to tug and tease them.
Gods below, my Mate was so responsive to me, and I could ask for naught more.
We fell asleep that night wrapped around each other, the spare plaid keeping us warm, and I woke her thrice in the darkness with another climax.
The next day, we barely left our little haven there on the edge of forever, the sea stretching out before us.
I made her come again and again on my cock, loving the unabashed way she screamed my name to the wind.
She didn’t call me Mate…but she didn’t have to.
Just the fact that she’d accepted my claiming was enough for my Kteer.
Still, as the sun set on our second day, I could feel myself becoming…anxious. As if something was missing. ‘Twas as if, while my Kteer and cock were becoming more sated, my heart and mind were not.
Something was missing.
Not physically; we were both sore from the claiming. But there was more, I was certain of it.
That night, she fell asleep in my arms, exhausted.
“I love ye,” I whispered against the top of her head, and she did naught but snuggle sleepily closer.
She was mine.
But was I hers?
I woke her before dawn with my tongue between her legs, and as she screamed her climax, I moved up to plunge my cock into her weeping cunny. The second orgasm overtook the first, and she bucked wildly beneath me when I spilled into her for the last time.
‘Twas everything I’d ever prayed for, but now I had to leave her. Leave my people, leave Islay…for our future.
We kissed often on our way to the hot springs where I washed her gently as the sunrise lightened the eastern sky. I wish I could have allowed her to rest there, but I needed to be on my way. Maardok would be loading the ore onto our birlinns today, and we would go to meet Callor.
And break our oath to him.
So, I bundled up my Mate, drying her and her hair. I helped her fashion a long braid and pull on her rumpled, sex-scented gown once more, and told myself she could sleep after I was gone.
But the closer we got to the village, the more certain I was that something was wrong.
In fact, by the time we reached the rise overlooking the village, I was half-running, pulling Rowena—who had to hold her sword over her back to keep it from rattling—along. Sounds of metal meeting metal drifted in the wind, as did cries which set my Kteer on edge.
I ran faster.
We crested the hill, and I skidded to a stop, my worst fears confirmed.
I didn’t need to go to Callor.
He’d come to me.
Below, spread out around our loch, our people were being attacked by males wearing Battleborn plaid. Males who were supposed to be our allies, who had decided to punish us instead.
As intended, most of the females and kitlings had retreated to the island and had already set the wooden bridges ablaze. I prayed Issa and Matthias were among them. The attackers had not yet begun to ford the loch, but were instead focused on my warriors who met them fearlessly.
My men were strong, but there were more mainlanders than we’d expected.
I needed to find Callor. If I could threaten him, I could force him to surrender. ‘Twas likely our only chance. When I earlier imagined confronting him, I didn’t think our families and bairns would also be at risk.
My Kteer was howling for blood and I fought to swallow down my panic. I yanked Rowena—who looked as shocked as I did—to my side and slammed my mouth down for one last kiss.
She met me, strength for strength, because she was my Mate.
When I pulled back, I was panting.
“Get to the island, if ye can,” I commanded. “Lead our people, please.”
Another kiss, knowing ‘twould be my last.
“Always remember that I love ye, Rowena.”
Then, praying that the gods would keep her safe, I unsheathed my sword and threw myself into the battle.
Rowena
I made it three steps toward the cottage before I stopped.
From here I could see the shape of the battle—the Battleborn warriors being pressed back toward the loch, the enemy spreading through the village like spilled ink, the smoke already rising from somewhere near the grain stores.
If that burned, we’d starve this winter, and our hopes for planting in the spring would die too.
I could see Issa’s cottage. I could see the walkway to the island where the kitlings and elders would have run, and I knew that if the enemy reached it—
How could I take refuge there when I knew I could do more here?
These were my people, now, the same as they were Vrogul’s.
My clan. My family.
And just as my Mate’s kiss had tasted of finality, I knew I could face my fate just as bravely. I would stand beside him, risking it all for our clan.
But before I could do more than stumble toward the fight, I caught myself. These skirts would kill me as easily as any of Callor’s men. I was used to fighting in trews but had no time to change now.
Oh well, needs must…
I pulled my dagger and made two quick slashes, one up each side to mid-thigh, and felt the fabric fall away. I would apologize to Issa for ruining the gown if I survived.
Better. I rolled my neck, drew my father’s sword, and ran toward the fighting.
Guide me, Da. Keep me alive until I reach Vrogul.
I could die beside my Mate and die well.
The mainland Battleborn warriors were everywhere, swarming over our people. ‘Twas strange that they wore the same colors, and vaguely, as if from a distance, I reminded myself to suggest we alter our plaids somehow—a distinctive line of red, mayhap, to mark the blood spilled this day.
If I hadn’t spent the last weeks here on Islay, I might not have been able to pick out which warriors were ours and which were the enemy. But I’d sparred with some of them, dined with others. They’d welcomed me…
And I owed them.
I kept to the edges at first, using the buildings for cover, working my way toward where I’d last seen Vrogul, my sword in my hand. I was mayhap twenty yards in when one of Callor’s warriors spotted me.
He didn’t raise his sword.
He laughed instead and said something over his shoulder to the male beside him—something I didn’t catch and didn’t need to. I’d seen that laugh before. I knew exactly what it meant.
Too many males had dismissed my threat over the years.
I let him come. Let him close the distance between us, let him reach for me like I was something to be grabbed rather than fought. And then I stepped into him—inside his reach, where his size stopped mattering—and drove my dagger up under his arm, into the gap where his armor didn’t meet.
I didn’t watch him fall. I was already moving.
This one had seen what happened to his companion. He came at me properly, sword up, and I felt the difference immediately—the weight of his intention, the steadiness of his guard.
He wasn’t going to laugh at me.
Good.
What he was going to do was overpower me if I let him. I could feel it in the first parry, the shock of it rattling up both my arms. Trading blows with him would be a short conversation with a predictable ending. So, I stopped trying to block him and started trying to use him instead.
A haze settled around my vision, the world narrowing to just the pair of us, the only sounds the harsh pants of our breaths. I had heard warriors speak of this, this battle haze, when their blood pumped fiercely, but had never experienced it before.
I would make use of it.
When my enemy drove down hard—putting his whole body behind his strike the way large males always did, as though force alone was a strategy—I stepped left and let the blade scrape past my shoulder.
I felt it catch the fabric of my sleeve, and I didn’t care—the gown would be soaked with blood soon enough, and the move had worked.
My elbow connected with the back of his sword arm as it passed, and his momentum did the rest, carrying him stumbling past me.
I put my blade through the back of his knee before he could recover.
He went down howling.
I left him there, hoping he’d stay down.
The sounds of the battle were strongest near the burning bridge, so I headed in that direction, knowing Vrogul and his men would make a stand there, protecting the vulnerable of the clan. I wasn’t thinking, just knew that I had to reach him.
Had to ensure he still breathed.
So, aye, I was moving too fast. This I knew, even as I rounded the corner of the smithy and ran directly into the chest of a warrior who hadn’t been expecting me any more than I’d been expecting him.
We collided hard enough to knock the breath from me and my sword skittered across the dirt somewhere to my left before I’d even registered falling. For one horrible moment ‘twas just me and my dagger and a male twice my size, and I made a rapid and unflattering assessment of my odds.
But Da had taught me well, and I’d learned much from sparring with the Battleborn warriors these last weeks.
Since fighting honorably wouldn’t work, I went dirty.
I stomped down hard on the male’s instep. When he grabbed for me, I raked the dagger across his forearm—not deep, but enough to make him flinch—and when his grip tightened anyway and he bent down toward me with a snarl, I drove my forehead into his face with every bit of strength I had.
He staggered back.
I scooped my sword from the dirt and carried both blades from that point forward.
Somewhere in the stumbling and the cursing and the blood on my hands, something shifted in my chest. I was not running. I was not hiding. I was not waiting for someone else to protect what mattered.
This was my home.
I could hear Vrogul now—that distinctive bellow, the sound I’d come to know—somewhere ahead and to my left. I was close.
Years ago, my father’s lieutenant had lectured me on not losing focus during the battle. I should have remembered that today, because in my race to reach my Mate, I missed the enemy stepping from the side, his hand out…
I didn’t see him until that hand closed around my braid.
I screamed in frustration and pain as the yank snapped my head back and took me off my feet in the same motion. I went up on my toes with my neck wrenched at an angle that sent white sparks across my vision. Both blades were useless—any swing I made would open my own throat.
The male behind me laughed cruelly and reached his free hand for my breast.
“I’ve been waiting for a prize worth fighting for, and ye’re it!”
I felt my stomach churn with fury rather than fear, and I stopped pulling against him. Instead, I stepped back—into him, stealing his leverage and knocking his hand away from my breast—and drove the pommel of my sword back into his midsection with everything I had. His grip loosened.
One breath was all I needed.
I brought the dagger up to the nape of my neck and sawed through the braid. Two hard strokes, and I’d cut off the rope that tied me to my past—to my enemy.
I dropped, spun, and killed him before he had the chance to understand what had happened. On the way down, he clutched at me, at my hair…and I grimly pulled it from his hold, knowing I’d sacrificed it to stay alive.
For one moment I stood there with the braid in my free hand—all those years of all that length, the weight I’d carried and the judgment I’d swallowed to keep it. The thing I’d hidden behind.
I dropped it in the dirt and didn’t look back.
My Mate needed me.
I found him by sound before I found him by sight, and when I finally broke through the press of bodies and reached him, the first thing Vrogul saw was not my face.
‘Twas my hair.
I watched his eyes drop to the ragged, jaw-length ends, and something moved through his expression so fast I couldn’t name it—there and gone, swallowed by the battle still raging around us.
Then his gaze met mine, and there was no time for aught else, because one of Callor’s men was coming at his unguarded side and I stepped into it without thinking, turning the blow aside with my sword.
His back found mine.
We didn’t speak. We didn’t need to. I had sparred with this male, slept in his arms, felt the way he moved—I knew his rhythms the way I knew my own breathing.
When he stepped left, I moved with him. When I ducked under a swing, I felt him step over me and drive the attacker back before I straightened.
I took the ones who came in fast and close, where my speed and size became advantages instead of liabilities. He took the ones who tried to push through by force alone. Between us, there was no gap, no blind side, no opening.
We moved like we had always done this together.
Mates.
Destined to fight together in defense of our people.
But the enemy kept coming. And I could feel the inevitable truth of it, even without counting—the way each wave was slower to break, the way the space around us kept shrinking as the groaning bodies of our enemies piled up.
Vrogul knew it too; I could feel it in the set of his shoulders against mine, the slight change in his breathing.
We were prepared to die together.
I pressed my back harder against his and held my ground.