Master of Storms: Dragon Shifter Romance (Legends of the Storm Book 5)

by Bec McMaster

  “I know.” He pressed one knee between hers, forcing them wider. “Which means I need to convince you to take this risk.”

  Solveig looked up at him as he knelt on the chair, one knee thrust between hers.

  And he kissed her.

  Gently. Softly.

  Pouring his heart and soul into the caress until she was barely breathing.

  Her heart started to skip a beat, and she leaned into the kiss, desperately hungry for more.

  Marduk captured her wrists—her fists were snarled in his shirt—and broke the kiss with a sigh. “Later.”

  “Where are you going?”

  He unhooked her fist from his shirt and kissed her knuckles with a wicked smile. “To run you a bath. You’re still injured, and while I would love to start convincing you to keep me around right now, it can wait until you’re clean and warm.”

  “A bath?”

  “Yes.” He threw a wink over his shoulder as he headed for the bathing chambers. “And if you’re a good girl, I might spend the rest of the night eating your sweet, pretty wet pussy. But that decision’s yours, of course.”

  “You hate the mating bond, don’t you?” Marduk mused as Solveig floated in the bath. “You once said there was nothing so despicable as being forced to surrender to a male, but you know that’s not true. If it’s surrender, then it goes both ways.”

  She snorted. “Of course it does.”

  He flicked a splash of water at her. “Strangely, I seem to be the one doing most of the surrendering here. I’m fairly certain I just bared my soul to you. The least you can do is return the favor.”

  Solveig rolled her eyes. “You’re so dramatic.”

  “Who?” he asked simply.

  “Who what?”

  “Who did you know that was trapped in such a bond?”

  She fanned her arms through the water and looked away. Image resurrected itself in her head. Her mother’s desperate face. Siv screaming. And Fornax’s hot blood splashing over her knuckles as Solveig drove her knife through his chest.

  Goddess forgive me, I had no choice.

  “The gift of kataru libbu is not always a blessing,” she whispered.

  “You’ve spent days watching my sister and her husband moon over each other. It makes me nauseous to watch at times, but even I have to admit there’s something special about the glow in Árdís’s eyes when she sees Haakon. It can be a blessing.” He shrugged. “Cynic that I am.”

  She forced herself to meet his gaze. “It can also be a curse. What happens when you’re already mated, with three daughters, when the other half of your soul stalks into your court? What happens then, Marduk?”

  “Your… mother.” His lips pressed together. “You don’t speak of her very often, though I heard tell of her tragic death and how it shattered the king.”

  “My father loved her,” she whispered. “And she loved him.”

  And I killed her.

  Suddenly, it was difficult to breathe.

  A hand caught her fingers. “Don’t. Don’t shut yourself off. Talk to me.”

  Lips brushed against her shoulder. Not so much a seduction, but… intimate in a way. Solveig looked at him helplessly. Sex was easy to negotiate. They kissed. They fucked. They did it all over again. But she had no defense against this.

  “You’re affectionate,” she accused.

  “You like it. You’re the one who keeps sneaking onto my side of the bed and snuggling in my arms.”

  Every time she expected him to deny something or push her away, he surprised her yet again. Solveig leaned her head back against his shoulder. “A… little.”

  “It’s confusing for me too,” he whispered, and she stilled. “I’ve never been the one to chase, but with you, I have to be the one to submit first.” He kissed the back of her shoulder, a wet caress filled with teeth, as if to hint that he struggled at the concept of submitting. “Do you know the surprising thing? I like it. I used to think surrender was a weakness, but now I think… it’s strangely freeing. Tell me about your mother,” he whispered. “Please.”

  Solveig closed her eyes. “My mother was an amazing warrior. She was dangerous and powerful, and she trained me to be a queen. There were whispers at court that she’d failed my father in presenting him with three daughters and no sons, and it infuriated her. ‘Fuck the court,’ she would tell me as she taught me to defend myself. ‘If these bastards want to bend knee before a prince, then I will teach them to prostrate themselves before a queen.’”

  “You.” A smoky laugh echoed through him. “I think I’m starting to see where you get it from.”

  “Yes, me.” Solveig blinked her eyes open, finding the shock of the roof above her, instead of her mother’s face. “It wasn’t in her nature to yield, but my father… my father was a wise man. He won her through patience and steadiness. Even as a little girl, I would see the love in the smiles they shared and… I wanted that for myself. It seemed a dream to love someone as much as they loved each other.”

  She fell silent.

  “And then…?”

  “He arrived.” She could see it all over again. The throne room doors slamming open, a towering dreki warrior appearing between them, clad in the black of the Zilittu court. “The Zilittu sent an ambassador. A third son of the royal family by the name of Fornax. And the second he laid eyes on my mother the bond between them ignited on his end. They were two souls promised to each other by the goddess. I watched as the world around them faded. Fornax’s eyes filled only with my mother, but it was her expression that will stay chiseled in my heart. She was horrified. She could sense it too, but she had already pledged to my father. And she raged against the push of fate, determined to make her own choice in the matter.

  “The entire ordeal was a catastrophe. My father tried to be diplomatic. It was a great disaster, but he and my mother were happily mated. Fornax, however, wouldn’t have it. He challenged Father to a duel, and my mother threatened to gut him.” Solveig bit her lip. “My father is not a typical dreki king. He rules through cleverness, not strength. I’d never even heard of him fighting a duel, but that day… he grimly pushed to his feet and accepted Fornax’s challenge.

  “My mother was terrified. I think I knew then that she was scared for him. Fornax was half a head taller. A warrior from the deadly Zilittu. He trained for battle daily, and it showed. He was laughing at my mother as my father slowly stripped his cloak off.” Solveig smiled. “But I knew my father would win. There was a look in his eyes. He wasn’t merely fighting for the right to keep his wife. He was fighting for love. For his daughters. And his clan. He was fighting to protect everyone that he loved.

  “And he beat him. Fornax was furious when he realized my father would not yield. You could see the shock on his face when my father met every blow he rained down upon him. ‘I expected a challenge,’ my father sneered. Fornax screamed in rage and ran at him, and my father skewered him.

  “They cast him from the court, and my mother ran into my father’s arms.” Her voice softened. “We thought that was to be the end of it. But Fornax would not take no for an answer.” Solveig pushed upright, water sloshing over her. “My mother was his promise from the goddess, and Fornax didn’t care whether taking her would set off a war between clans. He didn’t care if she had three young daughters who loved her or a husband who adored her. He didn’t even care for my mother’s intentions.

  “The Zilittu were not entirely comfortable with the situation either. The previous king did not wish for war, even as his son clamored for them to steal my mother.”

  “No dreki male has the right to take a female,” Marduk said. “It is always her choice to accept the bond. I can understand why the Zilittu king was uncomfortable. Such a demand goes against all our traditions.”

  Solveig swallowed. It was easy to speak of the story to this point.

  “Fornax couldn’t get to my mother. My father had her locked away so tightly that barely anyone could enter the court.” Taking a deep breath, sh
e closed her eyes. “But it had been months since the duel. Months of being locked away. And Father hadn’t counted on anyone else leaving the court. Two stupid, foolish girls who were weary of being confined. Siv wanted to see the polar bears on the ice for her birthday, and so I promised I would take her.”

  The room fell into silence.

  Marduk kissed her shoulder. “He took you.”

  “Fornax shot Siv out of the sky,” she admitted. “She was twelve, and he used a ballista to shred her wings.”

  “And you?” Anger roughened Marduk’s voice. “How old were you?”

  Solveig glanced over her shoulder at him. “Old enough to know better.”

  “How old?”

  “Fourteen.”

  He didn’t tell her she was wrong—that fourteen was a child’s age. She’d heard it all before. Thought flickered through those amber eyes, as if he wanted to. But he nodded. “What happened?”

  “I had to save my sister. And I was my mother’s protégé. I thought I could kill him. I was such a fool. I landed and shifted into mortal form and drew my knife.” She shuddered. “By then, our parents had discovered that we’d slipped away. The entire warband was in the sky, but it was too late. And Mother…. Mother didn’t bother searching for sign of us. She used the connection between them to find him. She knew. She knew he would have lain in wait. She knew he would try to hurt her daughters. And I gave him the opportunity to get to her.”

  “You couldn’t have known, Solveig.” Marduk rested his chin on her shoulder, his arms around her. “A male like that…. It’s incomprehensible. To hurt a kit goes against everything we believe in. Kits are so rare that every single one of them is a gift.”

  “He didn’t care. She was his, and it didn’t matter who stood in the way.”

  “What happened?”

  Solveig closed her eyes, seeing her mother scrambling over the rocks toward her as she lay gutted and broken on the ground. “He’d cut me open. Badly. And then kicked me off a cliff. I landed on a ledge ten feet below him as my mother landed.”

  Her mother’s eyes had dropped to the knife in Solveig’s hand. Knowing she’d never reach it in time. “Please,” she had said, meeting Solveig’s eyes. “Throw me the knife.”

  “It hurts,” she’d whimpered.

  “I know, sweetheart. I know.” And then her mother’s eyes had hardened. “Throw. Me. The. Knife. You are a queen, Solveig. You can do this.”

  And somehow, she’d managed to push herself to her knees and thrown the knife toward her mother.

  It hadn’t been enough.

  Her sister was up there.

  Her mother.

  And her mother was right. She was a queen. Broken, and bleeding, and terrified, she’d managed to haul herself up that cliff just in time for Fornax to drag Siv to her knees, where he put his own blade against her throat.

  “My mother had cut him to shreds,” she whispered. “She would have killed him and he knew it, so he used my sister’s broken body as a bargaining point. He had a knife at her throat, and he told my mother he would kill her daughter if she didn’t put her own blade down and surrender.” A half-sob caught in her throat. “She looked at me then, as I managed to haul myself over the edge of the cliff. And she told me that she loved me, and I knew…. I knew he was going to take her away from me.

  “Because my mother would not surrender. Queens do not surrender,” she said, repeating the words that had been drilled into them. “They fight until their last breath. They fight when every last dreki in their warband has been cut down. And when they are losing, they fight to make their death count.

  “But he didn’t know that. She looked him in the eye and she agreed. If he let Siv go, then she would accept the mating bond.” The delight on his face…. Even now, it made her skin crawl. “And so she accepted the bond.”

  Marduk’s fingers stroked her arms, though he didn’t dare speak.

  “It was everything he’d wanted, except there were three things holding him back. ‘You will never truly belong to me while your heart is with them,’ he said, and then he lifted the knife and drove it down, intending to kill my sister.”

  Tears streamed down her face, and she turned in the bath, seeking comfort in Marduk’s arms. “I was closer to him. I lunged forward and somehow threw him off-balance enough for his knife to miss Siv’s heart. My mother was screaming, but he had a fist tangled in my hair and… I saw the look she gave me and Siv. She couldn’t get to us in time. She couldn’t stop him. And there was just this… expression that flashed over her face as if she knew he would not stop until he’d killed the three of us and claimed her for his own. ‘Be brave, Solveig,’ she said, and then she lifted the knife and looked at him. ‘A bond that can only be broken by death,’ she told him as she set my knife to her chest and drove it through her heart.”

  “No!” Fornax had bellowed, seeing his treasure slip through his fingers. But the death of one’s true mate was a massive blow. He’d reeled, falling to his knees.

  “No!” Solveig had screamed, finding the strength to crawl toward her mother. “No!”

  Her mother had been gasping on the ground, staring up at the sky. “Do it…,” she’d whispered. “Twist… the… knife. End this.”

  She’d barely been able to see for her tears. “No, no. Please, no.”

  “I’m… dying….” Her mother’s fingers caught her own. “Do this. Kill… him. Kill him for me….”

  And she—who had spent so many years obeying that voice—twisted the knife.

  “Be brave, Solveig,” she whispered now to Marduk. “I knew what those words meant. I pushed myself to my feet and dragged myself toward where he lay screaming. The loss of a true mate is a crippling blow, but death is slow and languishing. Sometimes, it can take many years. And I didn’t want it to take many years. I wanted it to hurt.”

  And so she had made it hurt.

  The memories of Fornax’s screams were the only things that stayed the nightmares.

  And then she’d crawled to her sister and wrapped both arms around her, hauling the sobbing Siv against her chest. “Don’t look.” Somehow the words escaped her raw throat. “Don’t look. He’s gone. He’s gone. We’re safe.”

  “Sweet goddess,” Marduk whispered, stroking the air off her forehead. “Solveig, I’m so sorry.”

  Solveig blinked back into the present, stiffening at the sensation of a warm hand splayed across the small of her back. She released a shuddering breath. She could never forget it. And maybe that was for the best, for there was a lesson there. One that remained vital.

  Turning, she locked eyes with Marduk, trying to make him understand. “I will never be owned by anyone. Not like that.” Shaking off his hand, she pushed herself to her feet in the bath, water sluicing down her body. “Maybe there is some small part of me that yearns to be whole. But even if I were to find such a bond, I could never accept it. I swore on her body that I would never let a male own me like that.”

  Marduk offered her a towel, his eyes filled with sympathy. Wrapping the soft fabric around her, he gently lifted her out of the bath. “What he did was a corruption of the mating bond—”

  “I don’t care.”

  And Marduk said nothing, though she saw the rebellion in his eyes.

  25

  “You seem… content,” Árdís murmured as she fluffed Solveig’s pillows.

  Solveig shot her a look. “Content?”

  A little smile danced over the princess’s lips. “You and my brother are no longer fighting.”

  “Oh, believe me, we’re still fighting.”

  Though she wasn’t certain if “fighting” was the right word.

  Marduk hadn’t said a damned thing in response to her insistence that she’d never accept a mating bond.

  He’d been avoiding her this morning too, she suspected.

  The whole thing made her skin itch on the inside. She should have been pleased he’d accepted her choice.

  But a part of her wanted the
fight. She wanted him to return volley.

  She wanted him to… what? Demand that she accept him? Force the issue? Insist?

  It made no sense, and she’d spent all night tossing and turning, listening to him breathe quietly and knowing he wasn’t getting any sleep either.

  “True.” There was a devilish look in the other princess’s eyes. “But I think the difference lies in the way you reconcile, does it not?”

  “It’s a temporary alliance. Nothing more. You don’t have to do this.”

  Árdís laughed under her breath as she helped Solveig to sit up. “Yes, I do. I’m the only one allowed in here. Marduk won’t let anyone else broach these chambers. It’s almost… territorial.”

  Solveig glared at the wall.

  The problem was that he wasn’t acting territorial at all.

  And maybe that was the problem? She wanted him to fight for her. Even as she didn’t want to surrender. It was so damned confusing.

  “And I think you’re lying to yourself,” Árdís continued.

  “How so?”

  “If it was a temporary alliance,” Árdís replied, “then you wouldn’t be struggling so much with the concept of it.”

  The princess had her brother’s gift for seeing straight to the heart of a problem.

  Solveig pushed her way out of bed. There was a bone-deep weariness in her body, but she was sick and tired of being confined here. Events transpired without her, and she needed to be in the heart of matters.

  Not weakened and relying upon others.

  “Careful now,” Árdís warned, slipping an arm under her shoulder.

  “I’m fine.”

  The princess laughed under her breath. “I’m not Marduk. I actually know what those two words mean from a female perspective.”

  Solveig’s shoulders slumped. “He’s confusing. I hate him. I don’t hate him.” She breathed out a sigh as truth compelled her to admit, “I don’t hate him at all.”

  And it was that one little fact that bothered her the most.

  “You don’t hate him at all,” Árdís repeated, as if she’d known the truth all along. “Here. Let me brush your hair.”