Chapter 40
F or once, Buck was regretting not being naked.
The sauna was fucking hot, and not in the good way. It was pitch black inside too, so that even his freakshow vision couldn’t make anything out. Though this was possibly a mercy, as Ragvald had stripped off.
“Pretty sure this isn’t listed as an optional activity on the schedule,” Buck muttered, trying to find a way to sit on the scorching earth floor without toasting his own ass. “Since when did this camp have a damn sauna?”
“Since I arrived.” There were slight scraping noises, as Ragvald did something with the stone-covered firepit in the middle of the small, round hut.
“Building it was the first thing I did on your shores. Though I could not believe there was not one here already. The sauna is the heart of any steading. How else could arguments be settled?”
Buck took shallow breaths, lungs burning. He’d been in cooler firestorms. The familiar acrid taste of wood smoke stung his throat, stirring up decades of memories. If this was meant to be relaxing, it was failing miserably.
“So, what now?” His shirt was already sticking to his back, and they’d barely been in this hellhole for five minutes. “We just sit here and sweat?”
“We sit.” More rustling sounds, followed by the long, sharp hiss of water hitting heated rocks. A fresh wave of steam slapped Buck in the face. “We sweat. And we talk.”
“About what?”
“About our feelings.” He felt rather than saw Ragvald settle back, a wide, bulky presence in the darkness. “Like men.”
“Are you fucking with me?”
“We do not do that in the sauna. And in any event, you are mated.” Ragvald’s rumbling voice took on a disapproving edge. “Or should be.”
“Don’t even start.” The combination of heat, steam, and smoke was starting to make him feel lightheaded.
“And knock off the oblivious barbarian act, you know that’s not what I meant.
Are you seriously telling me you punched me in the face and threw me in a homemade oven for a motherloving therapy session? ”
“Yes. That is how men settle arguments. At least in my land.”
“Remind me never to go to Worm Island.”
“Ormholm. You could not, in any event. Outlanders do not set foot on our shores.”
Buck suspected this was not a great loss to the tourism industry. “And what happens if I don’t want to talk?”
“Then I add more logs to the fire,” Ragvald said calmly. “Until you do.”
The sauna was already hotter than Satan’s ballsack. Buck briefly contemplated attempting to fight his way out, but Ragvald had positioned himself in front of the tiny door. It would probably be easier to chew his way through the thick wood-and-earth wall.
“Don’t suppose we could settle this like women instead?” he asked without much hope.
Ragvald poured more water on the stones. “No.”
“Well, you can make me sweat out all the moisture in my body, but I’m damn well not spilling my motherloving guts.” Buck folded his arms, glaring defiantly in Ragvald’s general direction. “So I guess we both just sit here until we pass out.”
Ragvald’s only response to this was another wave of super-heated steam.
“I was a firefighter, you know. And a Marine before that. If you think you can take more heat than me, you’re in for a world of disappointment.”
Ragvald’s breathing stayed deep and even. In the close darkness, Buck could even make out the slight, steady sound of the man’s heartbeat. It sounded like the motherlover was on the verge of taking a damn nap.
“Look, why did you challenge me in the first place?” he said, trying to ignore the unpleasant feeling of sweat trickling down his motherloving abs and into his underwear. “You barely know me. Why do you care about my personal life?”
Ragvald made a rumbling sound. “The prince requested my aid. I am honor bound to answer his call.”
“Prince? What does Finley have to do with anything?” Buck groaned as realization hit. “This is another one of the kids’ damn idiot schemes, isn’t it.”
“It is not my place to question the prince’s motives.” Ragvald added yet more steam to the thick air before adding, “Though I would have challenged you anyway.”
“Why, because I somehow ‘offended your honor?’” Buck made air quotes, though he suspected the wyrm shifter was as blind as himself in here.
“No,” Ragvald said quietly. “Because I know what it is like to be rejected. And I would not wish that pain on my worst enemy, let alone a shield-sister.”
“What?” Buck looked at him in surprise, not that it did any good. “You mean you —”
“My past is my own,” Ragvald interrupted, voice hardening. “And you are trying to change the subject. Stop seeking to escape, for there is none. I will not allow you to leave until this rift is repaired.”
“Might as well chuck the rest of those logs on the fire and settle in for the long haul, then. I’m not discussing my private life. Especially not with a man who’s trying to stew me in my own sweat.”
“No,” Ragvald said, quite calm. “And that is as it should be. I am not here to listen to your words, nor you here to listen to mine.”
“First he doesn’t want to fight, now he doesn’t want to talk,” Buck said under his breath. “Are all wyrms this maddening, or is it just you?”
“The sauna is where warriors bring grievances, so that they may be resolved.” Ragvald stirred in the dark. “Your quarrel is not with me. So speak to your enemy, Buck of Thunderbird Steading.”
He wants me to talk to the damn beast?
A blind wrestling match with a giant naked Viking was starting to look better and better. Still, he was enough of a realist to know that this was unlikely to improve his situation. Bad enough that he was fully clothed in a smoky sauna without adding a concussion to his problems.
It really was getting damn hot. He’d had enough experience with extreme conditions to know that he had ten, maybe fifteen minutes before he passed out from heat exhaustion. Even then, Ragvald probably wouldn’t take pity and drag him outside.
He grimaced, but there didn’t really seem to be much choice. Reluctantly, he turned his focus inward.
Well? he demanded silently.
Nothing. Not a growl; not a nip.
The taste of smoke was making him jittery. Adrenaline swirled uselessly around his system, searching for an outlet. The motherfucking beast had picked one hell of a moment to sulk, because Buck was absolutely spoiling for a fight.
For the first time, he reached for the animal. It felt like plunging his arm shoulder-deep into icy water to close his hand around a red-hot blade. He dragged it, snarling and scratching, up into his conscious mind.
“Well?” he said out loud, because maybe if he convinced Ragvald he was giving this ridiculous nonsense a fair shot, the man would stop trying to achieve one hundred percent humidity. “You’re the one who got us into this mess. What have you got to say for yourself?”
Blank white eyes glared at him balefully from inside his skull. In the steamy darkness, he could practically see the thing—a gray, feral presence skulking at the edge of his vision.
“I don’t know why you’re looking at me like that. You’re the damn squatter that moved uninvited into my skin. What right have you got to be pissed off?”
You put me in a cage.
Buck started. He knew shifters had whole conversations with their animal halves, but he’d always imagined it would feel like a kind of supernatural schizophrenia—a growling foreign voice in his head.
This wasn’t a voice. It was just… a thought.
Something coming up naturally from the depths of his own brain, like when you suddenly had a hankering for a snack.
It wasn’t even really words, any more than he would actually think, Boy, some chocolate chip cookies sure would hit the spot about now.
That was just how you explained it, if someone asked what was on your mind.
He shook his head, smoke stinging his eyes. “Get the fuck out of my brain.”
The vast canine shape circled, half-seen in the smoke. It was every predator that had ever lurked outside the firelight; the monster in the dark.
You put me in a cage.
Except that wasn’t quite right, because You was also we , and me was us and you and ourselves.
You/we put me/us/yourself in a cage.
“Stop that,” he snarled back. “And damn straight I did. You’re a curse. An infection. Shit, just look at me now. Talking to a motherfucking hallucination.”
Animal eyes, gleaming through the smoke. Are you/we?
It was so damn hot. And dark. Hard to remember that this was just a crude hut, barely more than a pile of logs and earth. Not a vast cave, somewhere in the depths of his soul.
He shook his head stubbornly. “I’m not listening to a damn animal.”
You/we used to.
“Since fucking when?”
Paws padding over hard-packed earth. Was that the brush of fur against his arm?
Before you/we turned away. Before you/we put me/us in a cage, and refused to let us/me out unless we/I tore down the bars. Before you/we changed.
“Are you seriously trying to claim I’ve always been a motherfucking shifter?”
No. But I have always been here.
Memory. The smell of other smoke. Air scorching his lungs. Moving fast, leading the pack. Others at his heels—in khaki fatigues, or beige firefighting gear, carrying guns or chainsaws or hand tools. The crack of trees splintering in the heat; the snap-whine of enemy fire.
War and wildfire are the same, in the heat of the moment; forces too big to comprehend, impossible to control. It doesn’t matter. The only thing he needs to control is himself.
When knowledge and reason fail, sense and instinct are there to take over. That old, primal part of himself, that smells the wind and knows when danger is close. The part that snarls defiance at the world, that will fight tooth and claw to protect his own.
The burn of smoke in his throat. He leads the pack. He gets the job done.
And again, that blurring of meaning, thought translating imperfectly into words: I/you/we have always been us/you/here.
Buck breathed out, smoke on his tongue. Warm dampness curled over the back of his neck. He couldn’t tell if it was another breath, hot and panting, or just steam.
“Maybe,” he admitted.
You/we listened to me/us, then.
“Because I could trust it was me! My own goddamn mind. Not some motherfucking supernatural parasite.”
Was that the warmth of the wall at his back, or the body heat of a vast predator?
I/We am/are you/us. We have always been us. You/we are just more aware of us/yourself.
Buck clenched his fists, as though he could physically cling to identity through sheer cussedness. “I never asked for this.”
The cool, pitiless stare of a predator. That does not matter.
“I don’t want it.”
That does not matter either.
“What does fucking matter, then?”
You know what matters. We know what matters.
He did. It was stamped into every cell of his being, as undeniable as the monster.
“Honey,” he said softly.
Her name echoed through his blood. It was there in the animal’s answering growl; in the rustle of its wings.
Honey.
Still, he held on, unwilling to surrender. “So, what, that’s it? I’m just supposed to roll over and surrender the last shreds of control, because I want her and that’s the only way I can have her?”
No.
He actually twisted round to look over his own shoulder, as though the beast was indeed sitting behind him like a fucking golden retriever. “What?”
There was nothing there, of course. It looked at him anyway.
Stop thinking about what you want. Think about her .
Honey.
Honey naked, coming undone around him. Her teasing smile, her goddamn glorious eyes. Honey catching his eye over the breakfast table, lips pressed tight to hold in laughter at some accidentally ridiculous thing a kid had just said.
Honey in the summer sunlight, splashing through the lake, surrounded by rainbow droplets.
Her head against his shoulder, looking up at the stars.
Her genuine, open delight whenever one of campers finally mastered the climbing wall, or threw a pot just right, or brought her a handful of carefully gathered treasures.
Honey, arms full of unexpected bear, face alight with wonder.
Her gaze tracking Rufus and Beth across the sky, wonder in her face; wonder, and something else, too.
She was good at hiding her feelings, too good, but he knew her now.
With the clarity of memory, he saw the shadow across her eyes; the buried longing.
Honey, her voice shaking as she told him she had to leave. The bleakness behind those words: I love this place too much.
He hadn’t heard what she was really saying. Maybe she hadn’t even known it herself. She’d learned not to ask for what she wanted, after all. To deny she wanted anything at all, even to herself.
Yes, whispered that other part of himself; the part that he’d stopped listening to, out of fear and grief and pride. But we know, even when she does not. So what does she want?
He knew the answer.
And from there, everything else was easy.
“I,” Buck said to the world in general, “have been a motherloving idiot.”
“Yes,” Ragvald agreed placidly.
“I wasn’t talking to you.” Buck paused, going back over the last few minutes. “Oh, for the love of little green apples. Please tell me I didn’t say all that out loud.”
Ragvald made a sound like an amused bear. “I will not, then.”
Buck rubbed a hand across his face, wiping away sweat. All his clothes were plastered to his body. He couldn’t have been wetter if he’d jumped into the lake. He was beginning to feel a deep and heartfelt longing to do exactly that.
“Are you going to let me out of here now?” he asked.
“If you insist.” As if the atmosphere wasn’t already thick enough to choke a goat, Ragvald poured yet another cup of water onto the hot rocks. “Thought it seems a shame to let the heat out so soon. I was just beginning to get comfortable.”
“Get out of the damn way, Ragvald.”
“Hmm.” Ragvald shifted a little, not yet moving aside from the door. “If I do, you give me your word of honor that you will not revert to foolishness the moment you step outside this place?”
Buck had to let out a snort at that. “No promises. I seem to be good at finding new and unexpected ways to fuck up. But I know what I have to do.”
And abruptly, he knew something else too.
“I have to go,” he said, instinct closing tight around his heart. “I have to go right now. Honey’s in danger.”