by Megan Crane
“Welcome, friends,” Wulf drawled, keeping his voice something like sleepy. He jutted his chin toward the remains of his meal, still spread out on the table in front of him. “Had I known I would be receiving so many guests, I might have saved you something to eat.” He smiled slightly, taking care to look lazy as he did it. As if his stomach was so full he could barely function. He waved his hand toward the remains. “But by all means, feel free to feast on my crumbs.”
No one responded to that with much more than a grunt, though the guards’ tactical approach, such as it was, became instantly clear. Meaning, they didn’t fucking have one. They stayed clumped up in the doorway, obviously expecting their numbers to do their work for them. Wulf endeavored to look, if not cowed, because that was a stretch too far, at least something approaching nervous.
But it was clear by the suspicious look one of the guards threw him that he was not entirely successful.
“It’s your lucky day asshole,” the guard at the head of the pathetic phalanx announced, all bristling red hair and the milkiest, whitest skin Wulf had ever seen, interrupted only by clumps of freckles. And toting a MAC-10.
“And yet somehow,” Wulf murmured, “I doubt that.”
If the red-haired guard heard him, he did no more than frown. Wulf suspected he was unused to captives talking back to him while he waved that stupid gun around. “The king wants to see you.”
“I wanted to see your king when I arrived.” Wulf kept a faint thread of amusement in his voice, though he wasn’t particularly amused one way or the other. But it was important not to let all five of these stellar examples of the western highlands’ finest read him. Wulf felt pretty confident he could take all five of them with one hand no matter what they did or didn’t read on his face, but there was no need to show off. Not now, when it could benefit him so little. “And instead I was marched off to these fine, welcoming rooms and left to my own devices. With a set of guards at the far end of the hallway in case I felt the urge to stretch my legs. Tour guides at the ready, I presume. So thoughtful.”
“No one gives a shit what you want,” another one of the guards told him with a sneer. Wulf glanced at him, at a loss as to how this specimen could possibly be considered one of the palace guards. He was short and slight, all dark hair and an aggressive olive-skinned chin, which he appeared to think was the same as a fighting stance.
It was not.
But training up fools was not why Wulf was here.
“I must commend you on your excellent hospitality,” Wulf said after a moment, as if the wee one had said something polite or respectful. “This is not how I would treat a king should he turn up unexpectedly in my territory, but it’s common knowledge that this kingdom is different from the others.”
“There is no other kingdom,” another guard said with a little too much robust patriotic fervor ringing out in his deep voice. “There is only King Athenian. And there is only here. Nothing else matters, certainly not mangy raiders who have nothing of their own and scavenge from honest men, like rats.”
It burned in him, the need to crack a few heads together and spill a little blood. The need to teach this pack of thugs the lesson they richly deserved.
No man called a raider a scavenger to his face and lived to tell the tale in one piece.
But Wulf did nothing. He stood where he was, a faint smile on his lips, and watched this collection of dumbasses. These were the kind of men he would have laughed off his island if they’d dared present themselves as potential options for the select new members the clan allowed in every summer. He wouldn’t have let them till one of his fields, much less pick up a blade in service to the clan.
An opinion he would have greatly enjoyed sharing with them under different circumstances.
And Wulf knew it was more than simply the role he’d agreed to play here that kept him holding his tongue. It was that soft, wide-eyed princess in the other room, whose taste was still pumping through his veins, making him feel as if he’d run miles and miles. He didn’t want these bastards knowing she was here. He didn’t want them anywhere near her.
He also didn’t really want to question why he was concerned with protecting her. He just was.
So instead of striking out the way he wanted to, snatching up one of his blades and taking care of a little good, solid business, when another one of the guards repeated the word rat, Wulf laughed.
He laughed like the fool he’d never been. He laughed until was it perfectly clear that he was making all the guards uncomfortable—an added bonus. Only then did he stop, wiping his eyes exaggeratedly. He reached down to do up his trousers, because he figured it was just about time for some shit to get real. He took his time looking up and when he did, he let the laughter drain from his face.
Slowly. Deliberately.
“I’ve killed many men for fewer insults than you just delivered,” he told the man who’d called him a scavenger first. “Your western sense of humor intrigues me.”
And then he didn’t pay much more attention to the rest of what these assholes said. It was far less important than the way they began to fan out around the room, as if they honestly believed they could surround him and overwhelm him. Or as if they thought maybe he might not notice that they were edging into some kind of lame position to do something any one of them ought to have been able to do alone.
But he let them do it. He let them shift, then sidle around him. He folded his arms over his chest, let a smile flirt with his mouth, and let them come.
It was time for a little math. He let them move into a lopsided sort of ring around him, and he tried to calculate exactly how much force a regular man would be expected to exert in a situation like this. It wouldn’t do to appear to be too accommodating when five armed men showed up to get in his face. King Athenian might be a douche, but he wasn’t a moron or he wouldn’t have lasted this long at the top of his preferred dung heap. If Wulf simply let these men take him away, the king would know something was off. There was no way it wouldn’t arouse his suspicions.
On the other hand, if Wulf did what he would have done in any other situation without blinking and took all five of these assholes out, that would arouse a different set of suspicions. Or it would confirm them.
He had to strike the balance between seeming too trusting—which was definitely not a common raider trait and could only get him in more trouble than he needed to be in during these weeks before the equinox and the arrival of his brothers—or too vicious, which was only likely to get him executed on the spot.
Math was fun.
“You seem to be under the impression that you’re taking me somewhere,” he noted. Wulf let his arms go loose at his sides. He didn’t shift into a fighting stance, necessarily. Not any kind of serious one. But he moved his weight and settled himself solidly in the center of his feet, prepared for whatever came next.
And he was sure to let them see it.
“You can come easy or you can come hard,” the redheaded guard said, smirking through his freckles with obvious relish at the notion of taking Wulf against his will. Something that would never, ever happen under any circumstances. The very idea was laughable. It offended Wulf that he was going to let them think otherwise. “It makes no difference to us. But either way, you’re going before the king. Now, asshole.”
That was the signal, apparently, because they came for him then.
And everything in Wulf yearned for a real fight. He hadn’t gotten a real fuck, after all, and he was a little cranky. A good fight was all he could look forward to tonight. But he couldn’t allow himself to let go and really enjoy himself. He had to let them think they’d taken his measure without actually showing them anything at all.
Which was harder than it sounded.
They came at him all at once, piling five attacks into one—and telling him more about the kind of guards they were and the kind of place this was in that simple unplotted surge than anything he’d seen so far.
Namely, shitty.
Wulf took
the first one who reached him by the neck and threw him, hard, so his head rebounded off the stone wall nearest him and then made a satisfying thudding noise when he hit the ground.
“Try again,” he suggested, and the remaining guards roared.
Wulf let the second one get a hit in, grunting as the douchebag’s fist connected with his gut. That redheaded sucker was waving his gun around, but Wulf ignored him, because it was extremely unlikely that even a fucking idiot would open fire on his own people. Not that he would put anything past these scumbags.
He decided he had to limit himself to two, because that seemed like a decent ratio for the kind of king these assholes clearly believed he was. Ineffectual somehow. A rat, apparently. Even though they’d spent the winter mounting a goddamned war to take him down.
Wulf ducked the tiny guard as he charged and went for the one behind him, punching him with all the fury at their disrespect that swirled around inside of him. And the bitch went down. Fast and silent.
That was the two he’d allowed himself, so he had to let the other three take him. And it was a bitter fucking pill to choke down. Wulf had been undefeated in all battles, from fistfights to a clash of blades on the battlefield, since he was fourteen.
There was not one part of him that wanted to let three pathetic bitches like these live the rest of their likely very short lives imagining they’d bested him. In any sense.
But Wulf’s devotion to his clan wasn’t only about kicking ass, or running glorious fucking raids that kept the clan stores full for the hard winters. It wasn’t the camp girls and the sweet, sweet pussy that they offered so freely—especially to him. Those things were gifts. They were the rewards he earned. They were what made fucked-up scenarios like this one palatable.
Well. Maybe not exactly palatable. But he’d survive it.
And then he’d wreck this bullshit kingdom, stone by cold-ass stone. Guard by pansy guard.
He put up a token fight, but he let them win it. And then, as the injured men staggered to their feet, two of the assholes took him by an arm. The redheaded douchebag with a gun got way up into Wulf’s space, sticking the muzzle of his MAC-10 right into the center of Wulf’s back as if that made up for not knowing what to do with it. And then he jabbed Wulf with it, as if he could move him if Wulf didn’t wish to be moved.
He even grunted with obvious satisfaction when Wulf started for the door, as if he was making Wulf walk.
Whatever made them feel like men.
Wulf suffered these cockroaches and their hands on him, like the fucking martyr he had no choice but to play tonight. They hauled him out into the hallway, kicking the door shut behind them. He thought of his princess, all that creamy brown skin beneath his hands, soft and sweet. Her untried mouth, open beneath his and meeting him stroke for stroke. He wasn’t nearly done with her.
But the last thing he needed was his rowdy dick getting in the way of his negotiation process. He had the feeling that King Athenian was exactly the kind of twisted, bent motherfucker who would take that the wrong way.
The guards took a different route through the palace than the one that had delivered him to his little prison, and it only took Wulf a minute or two to realize that they were putting on another fucking show. They seemed to get off on that shit here. But this time, he understood it better.
They marched him into the airy courtyards with those arched ceilings so far above, where the crowds had gathered again. Mostly men, Wulf noticed, and he had a fleeting thought that maybe this was the plan. To throw him into the mob and see if he could fight his way out. He felt his blood heat in anticipation.
Because there wasn’t much on this piece of crap earth that Wulf liked more than a fight no one thought he could win.
But he quickly realized that it was nothing more than long, slow, arrogant display, not a prelude to blood. The guards were showing off. And trying to humiliate Wulf in the process, clearly. They didn’t say anything to the crowd as they stalked along, but he supposed they didn’t have to.
Look at us! this little perp walk shouted. We’re walking this asshole to the king, barefoot and shirtless and surrounded.
Wulf had spent most of his adult life hiding in plain sight, especially from mainlanders who couldn’t see a man when they looked at a barbarian. Other warriors, even soulless mercenaries like the ones King Athenian and his bishop hired, looked at Wulf and knew instantly that he was dangerous. Very, very dangerous. It was only self-satisfied douchebags like the ones cluttering up this palace who were under the impression that what they saw when they looked at Wulf was what they got.
And he knew what they saw tonight.
He was barefoot and bloody, surrounded by what probably looked like a lot of armed men. If you were a little bitch. Wulf kept his smile to himself and let the guards propel him forward, hoping all the people watching were lulled into a false sense of security. He hoped they all scoffed at him, and assured each other that those silly childhood stories of raiders had been vastly overblown.
It would make the taking of this stronghold—and this kingdom—that much more fun.
The guards skirted around that great entry hall and then took him further into the depths of the palace. If he was drawing a map in his head—and he was, of course, which was why he didn’t let unknown visitors wander around his territory in straight lines that would help them retrace their steps—he’d make a note that they were leading him north. Deeper into the gorge. Exactly where he wanted to go. Not that tonight was the night to see if he could find the access points he was looking for. But he liked knowing where to start looking.
They were taking him to the king, and the palace’s secrets were almost certainly hidden in this same direction. Once again, he thought it was the arrogance of this place. This king. Only a man who truly believed himself invulnerable would treat the safety of his people and the source of his might so cavalierly.
Wulf knew that the guards had taken him into a throne room the minute they hurried him across the threshold. Not because he was overcome with a sense of awe, though he imagined he was meant to be. There was more gold, of course, splashed all over the place so the whole long hall gleamed. More marble everywhere, on the walls as well as the floors, and made into creepy little statues that lined the walls. More boring shit strewn about the place to tart it up. But that wasn’t what gave it away. Because really, it was just a big room in a palace full of theatrical displays just like this one.
It was the overly dramatic throne that took up the whole of the far wall that really gave the game away.
Wulf was a king himself. He liked a little drama when the occasion called for it. Sometimes he liked to have his brothers drag enemies the length of his kingdom before flinging them out before him in the great hall of the Lodge, which was the closest thing the raiders had to a palace. There was a dais where he’d been known to put up a chair and lounge around like everybody’s idea of a brooding monarch. He understood the presentation.
But this was on a different level entirely.
“Damn,” he said in a way he knew would echo throughout the room and make it all the way to the fuckhead sitting there at the far end. “You’re really taking this throne shit to heart.”
Because the glorified chair that loomed over the far side of the room was a chair in only the broadest sense of the term. It was a giant, muscular thing made of winding gold and silver vines that reminded him of the creeping shit in the Pennsylvania swamps. They stretched up and around and tangled all over themselves, then climbed up the wall until they were indistinguishable from it, bulging out here and there. As if they’d been alive once, then covered. It looked like something a swamp had vomited up, then burnished in precious metals.
It was the weirdest fucking thing Wulf had ever seen.
And that wasn’t the funniest part. After all this time, after hauling his ass across most of the known world in the middle of winter and submitting himself to one indignity after the next, Wulf had believed that meeting his adve
rsary would, at the very least, be worth the trip. Or interesting, anyway.
But this bitch? The little troll perched in the middle of his shiny swamp throne? He was about as intimidating as a woodland vole. And as tiny.
Maybe not that tiny, Wulf amended as he moved closer. It was the throne that dwarfed him—the sort of visual Wulf himself would have avoided. As the guards marched him down the length of the room, Wulf kept his eyes on this king who ruled over the entirety of the western mainland. This king who had caused Wulf so much trouble over the years. Whose orders from this creepy, faraway seat had killed his brothers, his friends, and destroyed his settlements. This man who had dared to imagine he could bring his petty war to Wulf’s shores. Who had sent mercenaries after his war chief Tyr’s woman, killed most of her family, then chased her across the Atlantic.
He’d expected some kind of monster. Someone the size of Wulf’s mountainous brother Jurin, at the very least, who loomed over everything and intimidated everyone by simple virtue of being that large.
Instead, King Athenian was . . . normal. He was of unremarkable stature. Not as small as he’d looked from the other side of the room, but not exactly huge, either. He was perfectly pleasant looking, not that Wulf was the best judge of “pleasant.” Especially on the mainland, where he found pretty much everyone and everything fucking pathetic.
The king’s face was round, his skin a pale gold, and he had a full head of black and gray hair. He wasn’t skinny, or little, and he didn’t look weak, necessarily, though Wulf had no doubt that this asshole didn’t know his way around a blade. Yet he sat there with a potbelly that spoke to his excesses as if he had the strength of seventeen men, all four times his size.
The closer Wulf got, the less impressive this king looked.
It wasn’t until he was right there at the foot of the throne, forced to tilt his head up like some sort of supplicant bitch, that Wulf really saw King Athenian’s eyes.
Then he got it.
Because the king’s eyes were black, tilted up in the corners, and pure fucking evil. Little better than a graveyard, filled with dead things, and creepy as shit. Wulf had absolutely no doubt that he was seeing the faces of every life this asshole had taken. And that it was too many to count.
