by Megan Crane
“So on edge they can’t identify a raider at a glance?” Tyr shook his head. “Do I look like a scavenger to you, Helena?”
“Ferranti wasn’t protecting anything,” Helena said, trying not to sound as urgent as she felt, but she had never been so aware that she was prey before. Not even when she’d been sunk deep in the mud beneath that bridge with Melyssa, waiting for Krajic to discover them, this breath or the next. Tyr moved from the table, prowling across the floor toward her with that mesmerizing, brutal grace of his that she wished she could ignore. Or at least cordon off somewhere inside her where she wouldn’t have to feel it like this, as if he was bludgeoning her with it. “He has some guns and he’s mean and a little bit crafty. That’s how he ruled that place. It’s amazing who people will listen to when they’re scared of winter and have no other options.”
Maybe that wasn’t fair, she acknowledged internally, as Tyr kept coming toward her. Maybe Helena was exactly the cynical, selfish creature Melyssa had accused her of being when Helena had balked at staying put that first winter. It had been late July last summer and time to move on if they were going to find a better spot before the September equinox. No one liked it when unattached women turned up after the winter marriages had been settled. In the smaller compounds—which were the best places to hide, their parents had always taught them, far beneath the notice of anyone with any real power who might take too eager an interest in what they were doing—a few unmarried women over the course of a winter could throw the whole community out of whack.
But Melyssa had been spending time with Ferranti. She’d insisted they had a connection. Helena had been reasonably certain that her sister had simply wanted to play queen to the short man’s king. And maybe that was a perfectly decent thing to want. What did Helena know? She’d never felt a connection with anything but the family mission.
Until now, that obnoxious voice inside of her whispered. When the truth was, what she felt was wildly off balance after having sex and more certain by the moment that this big, scary raider was toying with her.
Tyr threw himself down on the pile of pillows next to her, sprawling out on his side like the very sort of mighty, untouchable king men like Ferranti only dreamed of becoming. And maybe more than a little part wolf as well. He didn’t touch her. He lounged there beside her, propping his head on one tough hand to gaze up at her where she sat. A lesser man might have bristled in that position. Ferranti had certainly preferred to look down on people to consolidate and emphasize his power over them.
Tyr didn’t seem to be the least bit bothered. Down, up. It was no doubt all the same to him. Probably because they both knew he could kill her with a single toe if he felt like it.
“Small people always confuse volume with power,” he said, in that low rumble of a voice that sounded like thunder to her and crashed through her like a whole storm. “That’s why small men are so damned loud. Tell me, Helena. Are you confused what kind of man I am?”
* * *
Up close, he could see her pulse leap in her throat, and Tyr liked that he was getting to her. It was a step in the right direction. He didn’t know when he’d decided interrogating her wasn’t enough. He wanted to own her, inside and out.
He’d jolted awake to find her curled up next to him and his own body wrapped around hers. Again. He didn’t know which part of that was more disturbing. He didn’t usually sleep with the women he had sex with, first of all. Passing out on a beach after a raid and a bonfire was one thing, he’d assured himself after it had happened. That was a party situation while camped out. Shit happened.
What he couldn’t get his head around was why he had found himself wrapped all over her. She wasn’t just a surprisingly addictive piece of ass. She was a problem.
None of the things he’d found himself doing with this woman made any sense. And if she turned out to be a danger to the clan the way she very well might be, Tyr would not only have to give the order to end that threat—he would have to carry out the inevitable sentence himself. She was his problem to solve, something that had never been an issue for him before. Ever. No matter who it was. No matter what.
He’d crippled Wulf’s father with a blade to the lower spine, one swift thrust, and he hadn’t hesitated.
He wouldn’t hesitate now, he snarled at himself, and no matter if it was this mysterious creature who kept punching those strange holes in his chest. Because hesitation was unacceptable. Clan first. Clan forever. He’d never had a single issue with that in his life.
He’d rolled out of bed and gone for a brutal run straight up the side of the mountain and then back down. Almost a week at sea meant he was restless and ready to get back into his training—and he told himself the enforced time off was the only reason he was something like … itchy. He’d performed his daily thousand cuts against one of the tall, thick trees down near the water with the heaviest steel rod he had in place of one of his blades, to keep his blade craft honed and fierce. Then he’d beat the shit out of his own training bag, to take the rest of that edge off.
And none of that had made any difference when Helena had appeared, her gray eyes sleepy and a little dreamy, which killed him, and her dark hair the kind of mess that made his cock ache like it hadn’t gotten wet in a month.
Now she sat like a little princess on one of his pillows, her head high and her back straight as if she were sitting on a throne, and that didn’t help. It was better when she’d been a soaked rat, muddy, dirty, salty, and weathered. That had muted the force of her a little bit.
Because now she was a straight up problem, of an entirely different sort.
Dry and clean and cared for, her dark hair was glossy and straight, falling over one smooth shoulder in a thick braid that she likely didn’t know made him want to use it to guide that hot mouth of hers straight back to his cock. And she was dressed like a raider woman, which did funny things to him. He’d told the girls to get rid of those mainland jeans she’d worn, the most pointless garments around. Always too wet, too cold, the heavy denim dragging in everything. Now she wore the kind of trousers they all did here, made of fabric that actually kept the wet and the chill out. And a tight shirt that hugged her chest beneath another that drew his attention to her collarbone, where he could see the marks his teeth had left, and that hollow in her throat where he’d like to leave a few more.
She was a serious problem. And when his brothers saw her like this, they were going to start looking to get a piece of her themselves.
And there wasn’t a single reason Tyr could think of why that should bother him at all. Not one. He told himself it was only that he wanted to figure her out before she lost herself in the mad sex and the endless orgasms the way the new girls always did. Some of them didn’t come up for air until the following spring.
“Why are you staring at me like that?” she asked. He hadn’t realized he had been. Yet one more thing that was a huge red flag, like everything else with this woman who could still be Krajic’s little puppet, for all he knew. Why couldn’t he keep that in mind? Her mouth moved, as if she was gnawing on that plump lower lip of hers from the inside. “I’m not confused at all. You’re very big and powerful. You don’t need to shout.”
Tyr amused himself by reaching over and running his finger down the seam of her trousers. Down her calf, then up. Then again.
“What’s on that tablet, Helena?”
She flinched, then caught herself in the next instant, but he felt it jolt through her. That predatory thing in him sharpened, then focused.
“What? The usual things. Some old books. Some pictures. Like most people.”
He didn’t have to look to that wild glitter in her dark eyes to confirm that she was lying, but he did anyway. Because she was. Of course she was.
“Most people don’t carry old tablets around,” he said after a moment. “They keep them in their homes, near a power source to boost the battery if they can, and then use them to entertain themselves for a few hours when the winter knocks the ge
nerator out. This is if they have power sources and generators. Otherwise they use them as plates.” He kept his finger moving, only on the seam of those trousers, as aware of the faint quivering deep inside of her that made her muscles tighten and shift as if he was still buried within her himself. His cock ached as if that might make it happen. “But you had yours shoved in your pocket, in the rain, in the middle of summer. Why?”
“You seem a little overly interested in an archaic tablet computer.”
“That and how nervous you get when I mention it.” He leaned back, and dropped his hand. “So what happened with you and your sister?”
Helena briefly looked confused at the subject change. Good. But she was tougher than she looked, his little liar. She blinked, clearly rallied, and then glared at him.
“Nothing happened. Melyssa and I aren’t the best of friends, maybe, but what sisters are? We’re very different.”
“That sounds like the kind of bullshit people say to convince themselves of something.” He shook his head. “My brother wasn’t the same as me. We almost never agreed on a damned thing. That didn’t make him any less my brother.”
Or Tyr any less committed to cutting down the scumbag who’d killed him.
Her glare edged over into a frown. “We never had much in common. My parents raised us the same, a little outside the box maybe. But when push came to shove, Melyssa really wanted the box.”
“Most people want the box.” He jerked his chin toward the window. “This whole world is sinking and people still want their damned box.”
She looked so fierce and earnest at once and it was like another hole punched through his ribs, raw and intense, damn it. “They think they want it because they don’t know anything else. But they don’t. Not really.”
It almost hurt him—almost physically hurt him—to contradict her, which was one more thing he didn’t like at all.
“Look around, baby,” he said, and his voice was so grim, then. He did nothing to alter it. “Mainlanders call us the monsters, but raiders don’t do boxes. You could all walk out of yours any time. Overthrow your little kings, live however you want.” His gaze was intent on hers. “This is the world we built when the old one sank. This is the world we chose. People live like that because they want to live like that. Don’t let any of them tell you different, priest or king or your own damned sister.”
A kind of anguish moved over her face and he thought it might break her down at last, but it didn’t. And he couldn’t tell if that annoyed him or worse, if he admired it. This is about Krajic, he reminded himself, and he shouldn’t have needed the reminder. You can’t admire her if she’s part of his game.
“After our parents died, Melyssa and I were all we had,” Helena said after a moment, much too carefully. She glanced at him, then down at her lap. “Melyssa and I are full blood sisters and there are no others. It’s only the two of us.”
Tyr didn’t comment on how strange that was. He could see the way she braced herself for that and he knew better. He and Zyron had been the same kind of strange. And he imagined on the mainland people lined up to share their thoughts on couples who didn’t share their genes all around as liberally as possible like everyone else did. Because they were told they were supposed to do it and worse, they were told it was the only thing that mattered. He only waited, and when he didn’t respond, Helena frowned at her lap as if it was fascinating and went on.
“While my parents were alive we lived mostly in the western highlands and a little bit in the farmlands,” she told him. “But after their deaths we crossed the Mississippi Sea and ended up following a trading group back to Ferranti’s compound. He and Melyssa hit it off and we stayed through the winter. She got pregnant almost immediately, everyone rejoiced, and then you showed up.” She lifted her gaze to his, a gleaming gray lie he could feel inside his chest. “That’s what happened between me and my sister. I left her. In labor. In the pouring rain.”
“My father was a brother who died in a raid before I was born,” Tyr told her, keeping his voice lazy this time, his own kind of lie. “My mother was a camp girl. My blood brother died in battle five years ago.” There was no flicker of acknowledgment on her face at that. No hint she might know who Zyron was or what Krajic had done to him. Which could as easily mean she was innocent as it could mean she was a whole lot better at this game than she appeared. “I don’t have the family ties you’re pretending to have, I have the brotherhood. So maybe I’m missing something, because it was obvious to me that you didn’t want to stay with your sister, no matter if she was having a litter.”
Helena swallowed, her gray eyes like smoke. “It would be more accurate to say that I would have loved to stay with my sister if she’d been anywhere but there.”
Tyr moved closer to her then, and her quick intake of breath sent a blaze of fire roaring through him when he wasn’t even touching her, because his body didn’t care if she was a spy or a trap. He slid his hand up her leg to grip her thigh and looked up at her.
She was so pretty. It was going to be the end of him, he knew it, but he didn’t care about the inevitability of his own doom just then. He cared about the elegant way she sat and her delicate features, his mark red and obvious in the crook of her neck and that braid of hers, that made him want to roll her over and hold her still while he did dirty, dirty things to her.
But first things first. A man had to tend to his duty before he could cater to his dick. A sad truth of life, but there it was.
“Helena,” he said quietly. “I’ll ask you one more time. And before you lie to me again, you should probably know I saw you messing around with my screen while you were alone in here.” She jerked where she sat, her eyes flying wide. Tyr smiled. “Not a very smart move. So tell me. What’s on that tablet that was worth throwing yourself on the mercies of a raider?”
10
And this was her chance.
Right here, cross-legged on a raider’s floor, with his heavy warrior’s hand weighting down her leg and her body still soft and hot from before. Helena could tell him everything. The family mission, Krajic’s murder of her parents and his pursuit of her ever since, all the things she’d already lost to give people something most of them didn’t even know they were missing. She could share the burden she’d carried more or less alone since her parents had died. She could let herself believe in the strength he and his raider brothers exhibited so nonchalantly and let all those wide, strong warriors help her shoulder the weight of all this.
Helena had never been so tempted.
She had a single second to think about what to do, how to respond. Less, maybe, while the raider war chief lounged there so close to her in all his bare-chested, offhanded, wolfish might—lulling her into that sweet sense of security while his dark eyes seemed to see too deeply inside of her. Making her think she really was safe¸ after all this time.
That, or he was leading her straight into his trap. Maybe she should have kept her head down and her mouth shut in that courtyard. Maybe she should have stayed with the devil she knew. Maybe trusting this man with anything more than her body was the very height of folly.
And there was something about the fact that Tyr could have killed her as easily as Krajic would, should he get the chance, but hadn’t. She was convinced there was something to that kind of mercy. It wrapped around all the secrets she’d had no choice but to keep all her life and felt a little bit like trust. Or close enough that Helena thought she could throw out part of it, just to see what he’d do. How he’d react.
“I’m going to reconnect the Internet,” she said, and it was amazing how hard it was to sound nonchalant when she was risking everything here and the panic beat at her like a club to the head. “Right from that tablet.”
“The Internet.”
“They must tell those stories here, no matter how far away you are from everything.” Helena opted to ignore the clear danger she could see written all over him. “All the information you could ever want about anything and ev
erything, available in your hands wherever you are, like magic right there on your screen or your tablet or whatever.” She nodded toward the window, though she kept her eyes on him. “Because not all the stars are stars, you know. Some are satellites. We could use them again if we could reach them.”
“I know what the Internet was, asshole.”
She shrugged at that narrow look he aimed at her with an ease she certainly did not feel. “Some people don’t.”
“Our tech heads have always said it was a myth and even if it wasn’t, it was lost forever,” Tyr said after a moment, and there was still that predatory look in his eyes. “But somehow, you have access to it on a tablet you carry around in your back pocket. You. Some bedraggled girl in a forgotten bunker on the ass end of the mainland.”
Again, the easy voice he used was at complete odds with that tension moving through his big, hard body and the intense way he was watching her. As if he were taking her apart already, piece by piece, the way he’d probably tear her body to shreds, too, if she defied him. A prospect that probably should have worried her a good deal more than it did.
He could have done that from the first, and he didn’t, she reminded herself. That didn’t make her safe or him tame. But it meant something, either way.
Helena needed to believe it meant something.
Because everything she’d told him so far was true, of course. Reconnecting to the satellites that still circled the planet, remotely activating what server farms remained, and using them to not only locate any remaining power plants to determine how much, if any, of the world was left above water—that had been part of her family’s mission since her ancestors had survived the Storms. That was the Internet, certainly. It just wasn’t what most people thought of when they heard the stories of how the ancient people communicated with each other with such ease.
