by Megan Crane
Wulf inclined his head. “Are you coming back through that window? I’ll have to stop sleeping naked.”
Indy grinned. “Maybe I’ll just walk in the front door. These aristocratic fucks are always too busy talking shit to do anything about an actual threat when they see one. If they see one.”
Wulf had experienced that himself when he’d strolled right in and was treated to a few words in the great hall and a hearty dinner afterward instead of the hard edge of a blade. He shook his head as Indy took off, melting away into the shadows as if he’d grown up in this palace himself. Hell, maybe he had. All Wulf really knew about the guy was that he liked to shove metal into various parts of his body, had treated the camp girls well when they’d gone in to feel him out a little, and he really, really hated Athenian, which made him an ally.
Wulf found his way back through the servant’s halls to the women’s courtyard, checking the glass ceiling to see that it was still dark. Dark, yes, but coming up on morning fast. It was a risk to visit Kathlyn this close to dawn and he knew it.
It’s only a risk if you decide to hang around and get your dick wet, he growled at himself. There’s no risk whatsoever in asking her a fucking question.
He was such an asshole. The world was hanging in the balance, all his men had hauled ass around the western mainland to do their jobs, and here he was letting his head get spun by a princess. What the hell was the matter with him?
Clearly, he didn’t function so well on so little pussy.
But Wulf didn’t like needing anything. Not Kathlyn. Not even sex. Not anything.
He gritted his teeth and made his way into the courtyard the way he always did, though there was an edge to the military precision he used tonight. He landed inside a room, heard its occupant start to turn over in her bed, and was out the door and halfway down the interior hallway before she finished.
Get in, get out, he ordered himself harshly. There will be time for pussy when this shit is finished.
But it wasn’t the sheer joy that was Kathlyn’s tight, creamy little cunt that was getting to him, he was all too aware. Fucking her on that sterile white stage, while not an unpleasant memory by any means, wasn’t what was haunting him. It was the way she’d stopped and talked to every single one of her father’s subjects who’d come up to her. No matter how long it took, as if she was their friend. As if she genuinely cared.
Like a queen, an unwelcome voice chimed in.
And he was a manipulative bastard. He always had been. If everything went as planned and Athenian was no longer a factor, the people would look for an enemy to blame, and the barbarian they’d let in the gate was a good place to focus all that fear and anger. But not if he was tied to their favorite.
Even if he’d had no idea how good it felt to slide himself deep inside her, it would have made sense to consider marrying her in mainlander style just to maintain the link between this kingdom and his going forward. It made things simple. It made the politics of the eastern mainland settlements a family matter, not a war zone.
And the only reason he wasn’t all over the idea was because there was some part of him—he kept telling himself it was his dick, but he wasn’t sure he believed his own bullshit—that was a little too into it. A political marriage was one thing. What did he care?
But that was the problem. What if he did care?
Wulf kept going back to that stupid dance.
He’d watched Kathlyn move before then. He’d had sex with her twice. Wulf knew she was graceful. Ridiculously beautiful. Poised and elegant without even seeming to try. But when she danced, it was like she floated.
It had been like holding air. She was light on her feet. She’d tipped her head back so she could look at him, obviously trusting him to perform steps to a dance he hadn’t practiced in some twenty-five years, and maybe it was that trust that had undone him. Given the ways he’d already touched her and had her and made her come, he shouldn’t have paid much attention to a dumb dance.
But her fingers had been in his. He’d held her lithe form with one arm around her back, so he could feel her breathe. Quicker than she should have been, like she was getting off on the contact. Her other hand had rested as high on his arm as she could get it, and he’d been lost somewhere in the dark gold of her eyes, how supple she was as they moved, melting into him as if she was a part of him.
That was the part that had been hounding him ever since. That was the part that he knew—he knew—was going to haunt him no matter what happened.
He hadn’t even realized what was happening until the dance was over and the people applauded, because everything in this palace was staged for the spectators. And then she’d stepped away from him, making them two again.
And he’d fucking hated it.
He could forgive her for being a distraction, because he’d needed one and she’d helped him pass his time here as he tried not to get killed and waited for the brothers to show up. But he couldn’t forgive her that.
Wulf was a solitary creature. Part of it was his nature. Part of it was the throne. Kings were by definition set apart and he’d never minded that. He’d never been the slightest bit lonely in his life.
Kathlyn had introduced him to that crap. She’d given him something he hadn’t known he wanted, then stepped away. And it was more than one thing. It was her innocence. Her virginity. That smile of hers and that brightness that was all and only her and the way she moved so lightly and gracefully through this sewer of a kingdom, even dressed like a courtesan.
“Fuck that,” he muttered as he made it to her door.
And then went still, because something wasn’t right.
Wulf went on alert immediately, but there was nothing in the shadows. No one was watching and no one lurked, waiting for him. He stood there until he was sure of it, and then he opened Kathlyn’s unlocked door, soundlessly melting into the dark living room and then pausing as he closed it behind him.
It was the dark, he realized instantly. There was no fire going. He hadn’t seen its telltale flicker through her windows from outside. In all the time he’d been in this palace, he’d never encountered a single mainlander who didn’t leave their fire burning, all night and all day. Kathlyn included.
He waited for his eyes to adjust, then moved swiftly to her bedroom, aware that his heart was pounding at him, a low, jarring kick each time. He thought of a faraway beach, cold in late summer, and the wheeling waterbirds overhead, screaming when he couldn’t. When he wouldn’t. When he knew he didn’t deserve to make a sound.
He hadn’t thought about that shit in years.
There was a form huddled on the bed, but she didn’t move. Not when he came closer, and not when he deliberately made noise while he did it. He stood by the side of her bed and looked at her, curled up into a tight ball, barely beneath her furs.
That old screaming in him got louder. It pricked at him, and he reached out to turn on the light.
It was a bedside lamp, buttery and cheerful, and it annoyed the shit out of him.
But that was when he saw the blood, just a little, in the corner of her swollen lips. And the raised, puffy line that looked a lot like Kathlyn had been hit with something, hard, across her throat.
He thought he said her name, but he couldn’t tell, because there was too much happening inside of him and all of it was loud, drowning out any ghosts of his past. Blood and retribution. Battle and revenge. A holy fucking war of epic proportions, and fifty assholes outside a door no longer seemed like a challenge. The spike in his adrenaline made it sound like fun.
But her eyelashes fluttered slightly, and then she opened her eyes. And started to scrunch up her face before she stopped, breathing out hard.
Like it hurt her to move.
“I can’t roll over,” she whispered, and Wulf heard that just fine. As if everything inside him had gone utterly silent. “He mostly hit me on that side. And my back.”
“Why, exactly, did he hit you?” Wulf asked, sounding remarkably calm
for someone who had turned to ice inside. So filled with frigid rage he thought he might turn into his own blizzard where he stood.
She let out a puff of sound that was too pained to be a laugh. It dug between Wulf’s ribs like a dagger.
“Because I was there,” she said in that same thick, distorted voice. “And because he can.”
“It was the mounting ceremony that set him off.”
“If it wasn’t the mounting ceremony it would be because it was March. Or because there’s a raider in the palace who makes him feel inadequate. Or because his toast was cold.” She didn’t shrug, but she managed to convey one all the same. “There’s no point looking for a reason. There isn’t one. There never has been.”
Killing people was easy. Wulf could stand there and come up with a hundred satisfying ways to crush Athenian like a bug and then kill him very, very slowly, but that would wait.
What was harder was that he had promised Kathlyn that no one would hurt her, and then he’d failed to protect her from harm. Once again, he’d let a woman linked to him suffer because of him, while he was stuck in a cell like an adolescent bitch worrying about whether or not she’d made him feel lonely. He’d wear that shame. He could feel it even now, eating into his gut like acid.
But he shoved that away, because she was bleeding. Real blood, this time. Her vicious, piece-of-shit father had left visible marks all over her, and Wulf couldn’t stand it.
“This is my fault,” he growled. “I should have seen this coming.”
Kathlyn moved then. She rocked over, grimacing, and then pushed herself up so she could sit. And aim that frown of hers right at him.
“I know him better than you do. If anyone should have seen it coming, it was me.” She shook her head. “And I’m fine.”
“You are not fucking fine.” His voice was too loud. Too rough. He knew it, but he couldn’t seem to find his cool. He had the strangest suspicion that he’d left it by her door, and his heart was still kicking at him, making all that noise inside of him threaten to spill right over. “You’re fragile and I should have protected you. This is on me.”
“Thank you,” she said, very formally and politely, still frowning at him. “But it is not on you and I’m not that fragile. Cuts and bruises heal. Believe me, I know.”
“Stop acting like this asshole putting his hands on you is acceptable,” he gritted out, his fingers twitching of their own accord, whether because he wanted to hit something or touch her to make sure she was as okay as she sounded, he didn’t know. He did neither, and hated it. “It’s not.”
“I know it’s not,” Kathlyn retorted, and he could hardly process the fact that she was sitting there bleeding and still perfectly happy to get in his face, like she was some kind of raider after all. “Believe me, as the person he likes to hit, I know it better than you.”
“Princess,” he began, but she astonished him once again by cutting it off.
“I’m not your daughter or her mother, Wulf,” she told him, very distinctly. And he thought she might have pulled his blade from his own harness and plunged it into him, a kill shot straight through his sigil and into his heart. He moved a hand to his chest automatically, to check. But she hadn’t. It appeared she could do it with words. “You’re not responsible for them or for me.”
And possibly for the first time in years, maybe in all his life, Wulf was . . . undone. He stared back at her, aware she’d cut him in two and that he’d handed her the weapon to do it himself.
He’d always imagined that when he was finally killed it would happen on the battlefield. And that he’d actually die.
“Who made you that fake blood?” he asked her gruffly, because he couldn’t deal with this. With anything that was happening to him or any of the shit he could see on her face.
She didn’t want to answer him. He thought she probably wanted to return to the previous subject, but she seemed to take a good look at him and decide against pursuing that.
“Biyu,” she said. Reluctantly. “She’s the—”
“I know who Biyu is.”
That made her blink. “Oh. Of course you do.”
“I didn’t fuck her.” He was appalled that he’d said that. What the hell was happening to him? But then he kept going. “I don’t pay for pussy.”
And then that sat there on the bed between them. Wulf, skewered by a story he should never have told her. Wulf, explaining himself, which he couldn’t recall ever doing before in his life.
Wulf, a fucking stranger to himself.
His head spun as if someone had kicked it. He wished someone had. It would be much easier to deal with than this.
“If she’s good with herbs, she should be able to help you with this,” he said with a quiet ferocity. “Heal you.”
“I don’t think I can afford her.” Her gaze was warm on his then, but that only made him . . . edgier. “Last time she took a favor, to be decided upon by her at some unknown time in the future. This time I think she’d raise her prices a whole lot higher.”
And Wulf was a king. A real one, unlike the coward who had done this to her. Wulf was the most powerful man in this drowned, ruined heap of a world, feared and respected and loved in turn, and he’d earned every bit of that. There wasn’t a sacrifice he wouldn’t make for his clan, his brothers, his people. Even that bitch of a sea hadn’t killed him yet.
How did this one, small, pretty female make him feel so weak? Helpless?
And at the same time, fucking furious that she could get to him like that. That anyone could, when he’d always considered himself invulnerable. Because he always had been.
To everyone except her.
“Wulf . . .” she whispered, as if she saw. As if she knew.
“I can afford her,” he told her curtly. “Whatever the fuck she charges.”
And then he headed for the stews before he did something he’d really regret.
Like stay.
15.
Kathlyn had never really thought too much about the actual wedding that would kick off her permanent marriage, so far off in the dim and distant future had it always seemed to her when she couldn’t manage to get out of the golds. But if she had, she knew it would have involved a far less appealing groom than the grim-mouthed raider who stood beside her in the brisk March wind as the sun set on the equinox, heralding the end of another winter.
And she was sure she wouldn’t have expected that she’d still be a little beat up from that other morning with her father. Though she wouldn’t necessarily have ruled it out, either.
But that was her life, she thought briskly. Forever doomed to be something other than planned, because it wasn’t hers to plan. And possibly also doomed to end tonight.
King Athenian had taken his traditional place out on the wide steps at the front of the palace that overlooked the great, flat plaza that sat at the very top of the higher villages along the gorge. He’d made his usual pat and self-congratulatory equinox remarks as the sun began to set and every light in the palace and all along the gorge suddenly burst to life and shined their very brightest as if he was, in fact, the coming summer.
And he made Kathlyn and Wulf stand there with him while he did it.
Wulf had speared her straight through with a hard, searchingly blue glance when they’d met in the great hall, surrounded on all sides by the guards and the highest ranked nobles. The gates had opened a few days back and people kept flooding in to celebrate the end of another long, dark winter. The crowds outside had been chanting about the sun for days.
They’d been chanting then, as Kathlyn had come before Wulf for the first time since she’d found him standing by her bedside with that frozen, furious look on his face. Since he’d walked off and sent her the palace’s finest healer, who also happened to be its foremost courtesan, but hadn’t returned himself.
She’d decided to add that to the list of things it turned out she was livid about. Bright, hot, and angry, all the way through, the way decent, compliant girls never, ever
were.
I wish I could just fast forward through my fertility window, she’d told Biyu as the other woman had applied her remarkably foul-smelling paste to Kathlyn’s various cuts and bruises and swellings. Biyu had applied her concoction the way it appeared she did everything—matter-of-factly and with a little smile in the corner of her mouth. Even when her patient succumbed to bouts of peevish self-pity. I could be done with all of this stupidity. I could go and live perfectly happily in that women’s commune on the Saskatchewan Sea.
Biyu had snorted. You? Not likely.
I can live in harsh conditions, she’d retorted. I’ve lived here all my life, haven’t I?
You know the women who live up there aren’t just good pals, right? Biyu had sighed at Kathlyn’s blank look. Yes, I’m talking about sex. And no, girl, you don’t need a man to have it.
Kathlyn had tried to process that extraordinary bit of information. But two women can’t make babies.
You might be surprised to learn that compliance isn’t actually of great concern to those who choose to leave society behind and carve out their existence on the shores of a bitter northern sea. Biyu had been working on Kathlyn’s throat then, packing her soothing, stinky salve into the raised welt that first strike had left there, her nimble, clever fingers as cool as the concoction she smoothed into Kathlyn’s skin. And before you get any wild ideas, they’re not all that welcoming to strangers. Some of them ran away from compliance. Some aged out. But none of them want to go back, which means they don’t need the kind of trouble King Athenian’s daughter would bring.
How do you know all this?
Biyu had smirked. I know a lot of things, girl.
Are you . . . ? Kathlyn hadn’t even known what she was asking. Especially because, as with every new and interesting fact she learned about sex, the new information made certain things she’d seen all her life slot into place and make more sense. Like two of her father’s permanent wives who had given up their separate quarters years ago and lived together. But you have to . . . ? Here? With men?
