28. Helene
Helene
Ipress my hand to Forest’s waiting palm.
His callouses graze my skin. Silence. One heartbeat, then two.
Tendrils of cold lift from the floor and suddenly there’s motion. We stand at the center of a tornado, the room dimming. I catch a flash of Nicholas, his cool concern, Wren’s devil-may-care curiosity.
Then the apartment vanishes, along with the rest of the air in my lungs.
My heart lurches into my throat, and the pit of my stomach goes to the pit of the earth.
I’m torn in two directions, away from the whole of what I know and into the universe of Forest’s mind.
Lights dance and I squeeze my eyes shut.
Everything is going to be all right, little shieldmaiden. Trust me.
His voice is everywhere, but I can’t breathe. I can’t exist in this nothingness.
Memory: Norway, 1050 CE.
There’s no crash. No boom of arrival. Only the roar of my pulse subsiding and relief coming on the first twitter of birdsong. My eyes refuse to open. Not yet. Not until the writhing in my gut subsides.
But Forest is not holding my hand anymore.
One deep breath follows another. When I rise from a crouch, gaze watchful, I’m standing by myself. Chirps and tweets, the tickle of a breeze and the softness of cushiony green underfoot. That’s it.
Where the hell are my shoes?
Moss covered stones like giant’s teeth cut up from a rushing river. Hazel and elm line its banks, grass and hardy conifer. Beech and aspen sway and scatter sunlight.
Water churns, white against a dark stone riverbed.
“Don’t panic, Helene. Do. Not. Panic.”
Too late. I’m full-on panicking because I’m not alone. I’m also standing in the brook.
Me.
I know it’s me.
On a logical level, this is impossible and distant, hard to comprehend. I kneel in a shallow curve of the mountain stream with long golden hair wrapped in braids down my spine.
But I haven’t moved.
I’m me, and I’m her. The person in the river and the woman, both pieces of the same whole. Aspects of one picture.
Nope. One hundred percent, no.
I balk, body refusing to cooperate. Watching myself scrub clean brings chaos and disorder in my head. Something in my heart, though—
It smoothes out. The gaps filled.
This might be Forest’s memory, but a piece of me...
There’s familiarity in the cool rush of water on my overheated skin. The brush of lush grass and moss over the riverbank.
It’s there. It’s all inside of me.
Shadows and sunlight part, tree limbs dancing softly overhead, and through the dappled shade, Wren is the first to arrive. The cocky set of his gait and the low slung hem of his pants are the same. His eyes, though.
His eyes are younger. His hair is longer in the past than it is now, and the crest of his pointed ears are bare of any adornment.
I don’t see him, but awareness ripples over my spine. I know he’s there but keep scrubbing coarse sand over my skin to clear it of the cracked and caked blood.
This is my place. When the European aspen goes molten, and the sky fills with big-bellied clouds, I come here.
To be unseen.
To be unhindered by responsibilities.
This audience is different, though. I scrub in slow, languid movements under Wren’s attention, attention sharpening to the intruder.
All three will come.
My heart turns over, and I push a hand to my throat.
Nicholas disguises his arrival in silence, but there is no way to ignore the clink of his armor. The scars of battle are written across his face and the wear and tear of his breastplate.
Forest is next, his face dirtier, black raven feathers blending seamlessly into skin and lines of runic tattoos along his spine. Light hair drapes, nearly translucent, down to his chest.
They’ve come to me, for me, different but identical to their current selves. Younger and more tired, filthy and hungry and exhausted, all brought to this place for the same, singular reason.
Me. Her.
There is no break in their collective attention.
Crowding closer, the three watch, content in their awareness of each other. And Hellevi bathes, removing the last of the cuisses across her thighs, a holster of rune-etched leather wide as a tree trunk.
None of them say a word.
Nicholas pulls the straps of his armor free and lets the pieces drop. They clatter to the forest floor, forgotten. The bracers strapped to his arms follow the chest plate, followed by rigid metal and boiled leather plates.
“Well, well.” My voice carries through the clearing. “Look at you.”
Some part of me wants to connect with this piece of real, lived history while the other searches for an exit.
There are none.
My eyes burn.
Maybe this scene is too powerful to look away from, and maybe I want to because it’s easier to go back to the hole I’m used to, to crawl inside and wish for freedom.
I back away slowly, drinking my fill of the past and make it halfway to the trees. Reaching behind, I scratch nails against a trunk and stop.
“You’re not a quitter.” My voice trembles as I speak out loud to ground myself. “You came to see this. Now look.”
With a whispered curse and a deep breath filling me to the bottom of my stomach, I face the scene.
My gaze collides with Forest’s.
Tension strings through my vertebrae but he doesn’t wink. He doesn’t acknowledge me before he turns to the river and reaches for Hellevi. He’s the first to touch her.
Scars line his forearms, some still bleeding.
I let myself be held, caught, hauled to his chest and breathed in. My head falls against Forest’s shoulder as his hands span my waist and hold.
Nicholas strides forward, the man, not the monster. Human, his sun-bronzed skin battle-hardened and stretched over sharp cheekbones.
Already he has the hard ridges of a man who’s survived too much. Marks stretch down from his collarbones.
His face is unfairly beautiful, long dark hair draped across his brow and eyes burning like storm clouds.
His black pants contour the contours of his hips and ass, his expression closing my throat. Desire grips me in a vise.
There is something hot about the way he watches me. Her.
Fuck, I don’t know anymore.
Wren doesn’t watch. He arrives. When his attention settles on the woman I used to be, my heart twists and I tense.
I’m chosen. And condemned in the same breath.
They are the kind of men legends warn women about. A warrior, a prince exiled from a ruined empire, a shifter who kneels for no kings and prays to no gods.
But somehow they all chose to ruin themselves for one woman.
The air tightens around me, rich with pine and smoke and moss.
They aren’t the heroes of my story.
They’re the fucking tragedies.
Nicholas’s lips move in familiar words I can’t make out. But I’ve been here before. I know it; I just can’t remember it, and the combination sends me into combustion.
I hate this as much as I crave it.
My scream, Helene’s scream, disappears somewhere beneath the rawness. The wrongness of the situation hits hard in the chest and catapults my heartbeat into an uneven rhythm.
Forest is the first to strip. His long hair falls in a single braid along his spine, several smaller braids framing his face.
Wren dips in for a kiss while my gaze tracks the line of Forest’s throat and his fingers untying the leather straps of his shirt.
Touch him. The need to remind myself of the taste of his skin dulls everything. I want to be part of the scene. Again.
I stare at the rise and fall of scarred chests, past a necklace of talons and teeth.
My chest rises in rapid breaths down to the jutting tent in his trousers and the world narrows.
Wren’s shadows lift his tunic off his shoulders to expose a stretch of upper body. Smooth, fair with a dusk-glow. He is moonlight tinted shadows.
He’s scheming even now, eyes glinting with mischievous manipulation. He drags his fingers through my hair to muss the strands, the way he does when he’s aware of every inch of lost control.
A sudden flicker of motion captures my attention as Nicholas unfolds himself, standing taller. Those lips of his, the fucking wicked grin he sporadically releases...
Black eyes mirror an intensity they share. Old wounds cut stories through his tawny muscles.
“As far as men go, you’ve hit the lottery, girl,” I tell Hellevi. “You have no idea. Or hell, I think you might. I'm sure you understand what you've got, but not how rare it is to find and maintain."
She’s unbothered. Her world centers on this activity. She knows exactly what she’s doing and moves with an unhurried confidence.
A worthiness I’ve always hoped to match and always fell short of.
Nicholas stops on the slight crest of the beach, leaving an impression in the sand.
His cock juts out proudly when he drops his trousers and kicks them away. Holy fucking shit. I clear my throat, but the sight of his erection pulls me. A tremor shudders down through my abdomen and lands at the juncture between my legs, nipples taut.
I slap my chest to get my heart beating again.
No one says a word as the men strip. As they wade closer to claim her. Hellevi turns to kiss Forest and Nicholas bends to capture her breast.
It was not uncommon to share bedmates.
Forest’s voice cuts through the fog of lust in my head, lacing through the memory.
It would have even been acceptable for us to be with each other. Not us. But we were not there for ourselves. We were, are, there for you. Only you.
I shiver with his truth, potent and undeniable.
They focus solely on me, on her, ready for her to come apart beneath their touch.
Desire burns a trail down my throat as Nicholas wraps a hand around the base of her neck. My neck.
I lose my breath when he draws her to him. Water cascades across her front, plating her breasts in silk. He crushes his lips to hers, and a moan pries itself free from my core.
That kiss...
My lungs decide to stop working. The way he moves, the way they flow together seamlessly, is everything.
His tongue invades her mouth, mine watering.
Do you see what you do to us? What is natural between us? Forest adds.