by Lucy Monroe
He took the ancient sword he always carried, even to this place of other and planted it in the ground between them with one powerful thrust. "So be it. I will not call you to this place again. Can you say the same?"
Then he turned and walked away, leaving his sword an uncrossable barrier between them.
Haakon woke from sleep, his face inexplicably wet, eyes burning in a way they had not since his childhood and his father had trained emotion out of him.
The knowledge he would never have a mate was an icy reality that would chill the edges of his every waking hour. The loneliness he'd learned to live with from the first day after the first dream-walk to the Chrechte place of spirits would always be with him. Children would never be his, no matter how many hundreds of years he lived as asmundr.
That could not be changed.
But he would stop pining for that which would never be. Haakon would stop craving a woman who could not see beyond her own hatred to the gift that could have been theirs.
He looked to where he stored his sword at night and the dawn light glinted off the well-polished, oiled metal.
So, he had not left it in the other place despite walking away from it. Yet, somehow, he sensed that the barrier between him and the intransigent warrior-woman was still there. That she could not go beyond it and he never would.
Never again would he seek her company in his dreams or the other place.
He would live without his mate; he would not live without his pride.
CHAPTER TWO
N eilina woke with a start, her body jerking into alertness and away from the Chrechte land of the spirit.
Haakon, her mate and despised asmundr of the Norse kotrondmenskr had thrown his sword down between them, saying better than the words he spoke that he wanted her no more.
That knowledge should delight her. After nine long years of her denying him, he had finally given up the idea of them being mates. Why did she feel a terrible, hollow regret rather than relief?
It made no sense. No Norsemen could be trusted, particularly the Chrechte among them. They did not value life as he claimed. They were murderers and marauders, destroyers of the innocent.
She had seen firsthand how they treated the people who inhabited the lands they wanted to make new homes in, to plunder for their resources.
She'd spent centuries despising the Norse, particularly kotrondmenskr, for what they had done to her pack, to her Pict village. Newly turned conriocht, she had tried her best to protect her people and the humans that dwelt with them in the small island settlement.
It had not been enough.
Her skills as a warrior were neophyte and the Norse war chief came with an asmundr who had the power of a god and the fighting skills of Thor himself.
Knowing Bjorn was finally dead should give her some peace. How could it though? When she knew his son was her true mate, the one person fate had decreed the other half of Neilina's soul?
What fresh cruelty was this? After all she had lost, to lose any hope of happiness in the future because of who fate had decreed her sacred bonded?
At least they had never claimed one another. She had at least a tiny seed of hope for companionship over the centuries she would live as conriocht.
Something in her spirit cried out in pain at even the thought of sharing her body with another, but they had never claimed each other physically. She could overcome her own inclinations and find some sort of contentment with another.
She wanted that to be true, but a feeling deep in her soul said it was not.
"Are you well?" Freya, her adopted daughter, asked from the other pile of furs in their bedchamber, deep in the forest cave. "You whimpered in your sleep and it was a sound so unlike any you would make, it woke me."
"I did not whimper." Offense she made no effort to hide laced Neilina's tone.
She did not make helpless noises, or those of fear, or sadness. Not for centuries. Not since losing all she held dear in one bloody, defeated day.
Freya struck a flint to rock and lit the tallow candle beside her, the soft yellow light illuminating her face, lovely despite its scar, as her expression filled with disbelief. Freya pointed at Neilina. "There are tears on your cheeks."
"Impossible. I do not cry." Not since waking in that boat the asmundr had left her in, no doubt expecting her to perish at sea.
Neilina had known in that moment that her honor, her pride, her very place in the world, as well as her people, were lost forever to her.
Only now, hundreds of years later, her dreams demanded she act as conriocht again. Who was she to protect the Faol? But the dreams would not leave her alone.
Freya shifted in her furs, sitting up against the wall of the cave. "If you say so."
"I do."
"When do we leave for the island?" Freya asked, rather than pursuing the conversation.
Something Neilina appreciated, if she didn't quite trust it. Freya would revisit Neilina's supposed tears and whimper later, digging for answers. Answers Neilina could not give, not even to the protegee she had taken under her wing the very same year Neilina had begun to meet Haakon in the Chrechte land of spirits.
She had more important things to consider than the man who claimed to be a mate to her.
There were packs of Faol fighting the order of the Fearghall. That terrible secret band of other wolf shifters who believed the purity of the Chrechte must be maintained by destroying all whom they considered weaker. They despised those whose parents might shift but had been born with what they considered a fully human nature. Anyone who they thought would dilute the bloodlines of the Chrechte with some perceived weakness, or another.
The Fearghall considered the bird shifters inferior and were responsible for the decimation of that race.
They murdered without conscience, destroying and practicing the reprehensible act of murdering human true mates. Ostensibly, so the Chrechte could still have children with others of their kind, but just as likely to prevent the birth of children with diluted bloodlines from such a mating.
These evil among the Faol were far more treacherous than the clans set on fighting them realized. The Fearghall were more than willing to kill entire packs to preserve their way of life.
Neilina's dreams told her she must go to these clans to warn them. She must fight beside them as conriocht, something Neilina had not done in over two centuries.
A terrifying prospect, far more worthy of her attention and worry than the fact Haakon had thrown his sword down between them. Nelina would not concern herself that her supposed mate had left with every evidence he had no intention of returning.
Haakon's father had murdered her pack and the humans who relied on the Chrechte who lived among them. Just like the Fearghall, Bjorn the asmundr had been a shifter without honor, using the strength meant to protect others to destroy them instead.
She wanted no part of the son.
No matter if her heart, that dried and shriveled organ in Neilina's chest, tried to dictate otherwise.
She climbed from her furs and began to dress. "We leave for Balmoral Island tomorrow. It is urgent we reach the pack as soon as possible." She strapped on the weapons she wore under her leather tunic. "The Fearghall have planned something terrible."
"Your dreams will not tell you what?"
"No. I am conriocht, not celi di."
"They have a celi di, don't they?" Freya asked, knowing more about the Chrechte packs than any human not mated to a Chrechte was supposed to.
Considering the twenty-year-old woman who had lived with Neilina for nearly a decade was as close to a daughter as she was ever likely to have, Neilina felt no guilt for breaking Chrechte law in that regard.
"I believe they do, yes."
"So, why hasn't she been warned in her dreams?"
"I believe their celi di is a man and I do not know." Neilina put on the leather straps that held her sword in place and slid the weapon given to her by her great grandmother into position.
Why Bjorn
had left all her weapons with her, when he sent her adrift, Neilina did not know. But they were all she had left of her heritage.
"Who knows why God sends a message to one and not another? Why fate decrees the things it does?"
Like that Freya herself should have been born to parents who died before her sixth birthday and then taken in by an aunt and uncle who did nothing to protect her from the sexual interest of a married clansman three times her age. Or that Neilina should be mated to a Norseman and an asumundr at that!
Fate had much to answer for, in Neilina's opinion.
"Are you nervous about the sailing?" Freya asked, her brows furrowed, bunching the scar over her left eye that she'd carried since the fateful day Neilina had taken her under her wing.
"More to the point, are you?" Neilina asked with what gentleness was left in her warrior's nature.
"You don't get scared about stuff like this," Freya observed rather than answer.
"I don't allow anything to frighten me anymore." She had nothing left to lose.
Though looking at Freya, Neilina realized for the first time in centuries, that was not quite true. The young woman before her was too important to be dismissed as nothing. Only for the past nine years, Neilina had entertained no doubts that she could protect her charge. Now, with their quest before them, that might not be true.
If she could deny the quest, she would, but Neilina knew that when fate called one of her nature, she had no choice but to follow.
Freya bit her lip. "I've never been on such a long voyage. Are you sure our boat is secure?"
"It is a Viking boat, of course it is seaworthy." Neilina had stolen it decades ago and maintained it as she'd seen the Vikings do on her spying expeditions, taking supplies when necessary from their settlements.
Freya strapped on her own weapons, a woman's sword and knives Neilina had ventured far from the safety of their forest retreat to obtain. "But don't they usually have a bigger crew than two?"
Neilina shrugged. "It's a small boat, meant for a small crew."
"But two?"
"Yes, two will sail her just fine. You must trust me, Freya. I cannot leave you here." Part of Neilina wished she could, but how could she be assured of her adopted daughter's safety if she was not here to protect her?
A human woman, even one trained to battle, was far too easy a target if she was discovered by a hunting party. And the hunters moved deeper into the woods every year. "Besides Dìonach accompanies us."
"Your pet bear is a lot more likely to set the boat tipping than help us." Freya began putting out food with which to break their fast.
Neilina noted to herself that they would need to make bundles of their sleeping furs to take on the journey with them. "Her weight will give us necessary ballast."
Besides, the bear she had raised from a cub was fiercely protective of Neilina, hence her name. She had fought by Neilina's side on more than one occasion and the bear's protective manner had extended towards Freya as soon as Neilina had brought the girl to their cave.
Dìonach would stand with Neilina, between any harm and the girl she loved as daughter.
Freya shook her head. "You should think about leaving her behind."
"I cannot. Our souls are connected as surely as my wolf is within me." She had bonded with Dìonach through the Faolchú Chridhe, extending the bear's life to match hers.
It was a mystical ceremony she understood no better than the moment she became conriocht, taught to Neilina by the celi di who died the same day as the rest of her pack.
The woman had foretold the destruction of their people, if only Neilina had realized it. No one had.
No one could conceive of a guardian using his power to murder and destroy.
Dionach had been with Neilina these past fifty years and had not aged at all.
Freya poured water into cups Neilina had carved years ago. "She's a bear, not your mate."
"I have no mate."
"Are you sure about that?" Freya's expression challenged Neilina to speak the truth. "We share a bed chamber."
"We live in a cave."
"That is not the point. The point is that I am there when you wake from your dreams of this man you claim is not your mate."
"They are not dreams. He drags me to the Chrechte spirit world."
"So, he's some kind of draoidh?" Disbelief and a hint of mockery laced Freya's tone.
Despite what she'd been through, the young woman was strong and confident. Neilina was ridiculously proud of Freya's attitude and inner strength. Not that she'd tell the girl and give her a swelled head.
"He is not a wizard. He's Paindeal and that is bad enough."
"Why?"
"You know what his people did to mine."
"I know what human men tried to do to me. I know I'll wear this scar for the rest of my life because of the darkness inside those men." She indicated the thin scar that bisected her eyebrow and marred the top of her left cheek. "But I also know that I do not hold all men responsible. You taught me that."
Neilina had tried, but had never been sure of her success. "Do you not?"
"No."
"Yet you've told me you have no desire to marry, to have children."
"My parents' deaths left me to the not-so-tender mercies of my village. Why would I risk doing the same to my own child?"
But Neilina knew it was more than that. She'd rescued Freya when the girl was maybe eleven summers and they'd been together almost a decade. Freya had long since reached the age at which she could marry, but she'd denied any interest in returning to the human settlements.
She did not have a choice.
Neilina had no idea how long this journey would take, how many days or months she would have to live among the other Chrechte wolves if she hoped to save their clans from annihilation.
The one certainty she did have was that she would not allow to happen to them what had happened to her birth pack.
"Our ancient teachings exhort Chrechte to value all life and to respect the other races. The kotrondmenskr do not do that. To set an asmundr against other Chrechte for the purpose of overtaking land or possessions is anathema to our kind."
"Surely not all Paindeal are responsible for the actions of one man, no matter how evil he might be," Freya continued. "You have always claimed there are good as well as bad men. That humanity is not reflected in only the evil, but in the good. Do you not believe that any longer?"
"Of course I believe it, but this is different."
"How? One asmundr broke his vow to protect the Chrechte and turned his strength toward conquest and power. That does not mean his entire race is corrupt. By that reasoning, all Faol would be as evil as the Fearghall we travel to fight against."
The reminder was not welcome, but Neilina could not dismiss Freya's reasoning. It was sound.
Even if Neilina did not want to admit it, so she said nothing.
Freya nodded, as if Neilina's silence was agreement. "The terrible actions of that asmundr were more than two hundred years ago. Even if his…pack?" Freya paused as if unsure of her terminology.
"Pride," Neilina supplied.
"Even if his pride believed that was acceptable then, couldn't they have learned their lesson and changed by now? The rest of the Vikings have. They no longer plunder our coastlines, or even trade in slaves as they once did."
Neilina wanted to say, "No." To deny any hope of goodness among the Paindeal, but if she did, it would perhaps undo all her efforts convincing Freya that not all men were slavering monsters bent on sexual conquest.
"We need to eat and then finish preparing for the journey." Neilina sat down before their repast, taking an oatcake into her hand.
She was no more ready to face the possibility that the murderers of her family might come from a race that was not all evil than she was prepared to verbalize her true cynicism to her adopted daughter.
The pain of their loss had not dulled with time, nor had her guilt for not being the conriocht they needed. Nei
lina had lost her battle with the asmundr and the consequences for her people had been devastating.
***
Haakon woke before dawn, reaching for his sword even before he was fully conscious. He had his blade to the throat of the intruder into his family's longhouse a second later. His eyes adjusted to the darkness quickly and he recognized their pride's Seer, the old man's face etched with impatience rather than fear.
"Get that blade away from my throat, boy. I've had a vision and you must act."
Haakon let the sword drop, but he kept his grip firm on the handle, his body still tense and ready for battle. "Can this not wait for morning?"
"No." Osmend made no effort to speak quietly and allow the others in the long house to sleep as Haakon had done. "It is a matter of life and death for a Chrechte."
Haakon understood the Seer's visit, regardless of the hour. They could not afford to lose even a single of their numbers if the loss could be prevented.
"Explain."
"Do not take that tone with me, boy. You may be asmundr, but I was seeing for this pride before you were a twinkle in your father's eyes, may God rest his soul."
Considering the fact Bjorn, the Firebrand, had never accepted the religion from Rome, Haakon was not sure how much rest their God would give his soul. "Forgive my impatience, but you did say the matter was urgent."
"Did I?"
"Life or death and it could not wait." Didn't the old man even remember his own claims?
"I suppose that could be considered urgent."
What else? Haakon wondered, but did not make the mistake of asking aloud, uninterested in another rebuke from the old man.
Osmend clasped his hands against his belly and took a deep breath, let it out and then breathed again. "There is a boat. It is filled with Chrechte."
"Where?"
"Somewhere on the sea."
"And I'm supposed to do what? Use a divining rod to figure out where?"
"Do not be impertinent. These wolf shifters are on their way to Groenland."
"Wolf shifters?" Like his mate? Could they be from her pack?
