by Lucy Monroe
"What is kisa?" Artair asked, fully aware of how serious his mate was, but unable to simply shift and leave. Not sure he was able to leave at all.
"Baby cat."
"You called me kitten?" Artair asked in indignation, using the Gaelic word.
"If that means baby cat, ja."
"I am not a baby."
"Nei. You are a fully-grown man and my mate." The heat in Einar's blue eyes was enough to burn Artair from the inside out. "It is an endearment among our people."
"So, you would not care if I called you cub?"
Einar stared at him like he'd lost his mind. "Do I look like a child to you?"
"Do I?"
"Nei. You look like a man I want, kisa. And like a man I will hold more dear than any other."
And that made him a kitten?
It was an endearment. Endearments were part of tender feelings, weren’t they? Einar was trying, in his Viking warrior way, to give Artair what he believed his mate needed.
Artair smiled at his big, gorgeous mate. "You may call me kitten."
"I prefer kisa. I do not speak Gaelic like my cousin. Perhaps my mate will help me learn."
"But your father spoke Gaelic at the meeting."
"And I understand some. Enough to talk a bit, but I am not fluent as Haakon is, or even as well versed in the tongue as my father."
"It is a good thing I have learned the Norse tongue then."
"Ja. Destiny led you to what you needed to be, my mate."
Or they could have communicated in the ancient language of the Chrechte. When he said so, Einar smiled. "That might draw strange glances from the humans among my father's people. If the newest member of our longhouse spoke to me in a strange tongue none but the Chrechte among us recognizes."
Artair shrugged. His mate had a point. "So, did the Seer tell you that I would be able to speak Norse?"
"Nei. It is a happy surprise."
Artair nodded, accepting Einar's words.
His grandfather had not had as many visions in his entire life, it felt like, as the Seers and celi dis that had been called to serve the Chrechte these recent years. Was there a pattern to these visions? If there was, Artair hadn't seen it yet. Some were little, some were big. Some were for the present, some for the future and some even dealt with the past.
Artair's thoughts were interrupted by the scent of his mate's arousal as it grew stronger. Did simply standing near him increase Einar's desire? The idea heightened Artair's own need tenfold. To be wanted after so many years of being rejected by the man he believed would be his only mate was a spark to the wick of his desire, sending it burning hotly through him.
His gaze flew to Einar's. His mate's blue eyes were filled with intense hunger.
He should step away, but he didn't want to.
He wanted to feel Einar's lips on his. He wanted to touch his mate's naked body. More than anything, Artair wanted to be wanted.
And Einar's scent, the look in his eyes, the set of his jaw, the way he held his body as if trying with everything in him not to reach for Artair said that Artair was wanted in exactly the way he so vitally needed.
Einar's gaze fixed on Artair's lips, his expression going even more ardent. "If I kiss you, I will claim you."
"Not if I tell you to wait." Artair was no Seer, but he knew Einar was a good man. A strong warrior, he was capable of controlling himself.
"You trust me." Einar said it almost wonderingly.
"You are going to be my mate. If I don't trust you, that does not happen." As he said the words, he realized how true they were.
Artair could not withhold his trust from the man who would be his mate, not and accept that mating.
Einar's jaw went granite hard as he inclined his head. "To bond our souls, we must trust one another."
Artair would have agreed with words, not just his thoughts, but Einar pulled his body close once again and leaned down to press their lips together. Artair's mouth molded to Einar's of its own volition, instincts guiding him where experience was lacking. Artair had never been kissed. He had never kissed another on the lips. Not family, not a lover. He'd never had a lover.
He'd known his mate since before he discovered sexual desire.
Einar pushed those thoughts from Artair's head as he claimed him as surely with a kiss as he would eventually with his body.
Artair's body suffused with heat, pleasure bubbling through his blood like the natural springs near the Balmoral ceremonial caves. Einar's lips were soft and sure at the same time, his mouth drawing forth a reaction in Artair that was overwhelming and more foreign than the language he'd been at pains to learn these past three years.
This was what it was like to kiss?
This was what it was like to be touched by another who desired his body?
He swayed toward Einar, craving more closeness, needing more touch. Einar pulled him in, the proof of their desire rubbing against each other for the second time, sending sparks of unequalled pleasure throughout his body. Artair felt like he could climax right then, his body was so sensitized and every inch of his skin immersed in ecstasy.
Einar's hands roamed down to his flank, leaving sparks of hot pleasure in their wake.
Artair moaned, overcome by delight in this altogether strange embrace. To have his mate so near, naked flesh pressed against naked flesh, their mouths fused, tongues colliding.
The kiss went on until his lungs burnt in his chest, the need to breathe acute, but still Artair did not want to break his lips from those of his mate.
He would love this man, with greater depth than he knew himself capable.
Just as terrifying, he would crave him with everything inside himself.
These were truths he could not deny, but neither would he acknowledge them to anyone but himself.
Einar made another one of those purring sounds a man should not be capable of, the low rumble going right through Artair and the urgency in his loins grew, his lower body thrusting against Einar's of its own accord. His balls tightened, the sense of urgency growing with each second the kiss went on and every movement of his hips.
For the first time ever, Artair's body experienced the pinnacle of pleasure in another's company. Delight exploded out of him even as he broke the kiss to shout his joy.
This was what it was to share his sexual ecstasy with another, to share his body.
It was the most amazing, intimate, physically satisfying moment of his life.
He'd known there was supposed to be more pleasure with a partner than by his own hand, but this? This feeling of euphoria, this incredible sense of happiness as his mate roared out his own climax, shouting Artair's name at the last, it was unbelievably wonderful. The fragrance of their shared passion tugged at Artair's wolf, the need to shift nearly uncontrollable.
Artair grabbed Einar's face and pulled it down the few inches needed so they could kiss again. The melding of mouths completed Artair's sense of rightness, his absolute ecstasy in that moment.
Einar's chest heaved as they broke their kiss. "My beast wants to claim you."
"We just…I mean, we…"
"Came? Ja. And the pleasure has only made my desire to join our souls stronger."
"Your father said a week."
"My father is jarl, I am your mate."
"Aye, you are my mate, but I want my week."
"After what just happened? Why?" Einar scowled. "We are well matched."
"As if we were created one for the other, aye. But I want to get to know you, and not just your body." Though he would not deny to himself just how very much better he wanted to get to know his mate's body. "Before we bind the rest of our lives together."
"I'll give you your week, mate, but mark this, our lives are already joined."
CHAPTER SEVEN
Haakon moved restlessly on his bed, the sounds of the longhouse unfamiliar to his beast, though that was not what kept him awake. Tomorrow he sailed with the Norse merchants to Balmoral Island.
From the
re, he was tasked with traveling to the mainland and finding the Sinclair clan where a dragon was supposed to reside.
A dragon.
Haakon had been born asmundr, but his giant cat was no dragon. His father had always told Haakon that the only being who could absolutely defeat an asmundr was the dragon. Even the griffin with its ability to fly was better matched.
The dragon could breathe fire from the sky, incinerating any in its path.
Had this dragon ever killed with its fire?
Haakon knew that to protect those under his care, he would do so. He himself had used his fearsome fangs to do as much.
Beyond wondering what the dragon Chrechte would be like, and thoughts of what his new life might bring was his fear for Neilina. Had his mate found her way on the ship she sailed with her companions?
Haakon wished he'd taken a moment when their spirits were united to look at those who she deigned to travel with, the two who were welcome into her life.
Part of him desperately wanted to sleep, to go to the place of other and confirm she was well. His need to protect her would not disappear with the knowledge they would never be mates in the flesh.
And as much as Osmend had said that Haakon might one day find another, the asmundr doubted that. His bond was already too strong with his conriocht mate. Only one of their deaths might sever it.
And he had no desire for his mate to die, no more so himself.
Not quite sleeping, though not fully awake, Haakon felt the call of the Chrechte spirit world. The energy calling him was harder, darker than when he felt called there by his mate.
Did that mean she had died? Or was in such peril it tainted her call to him?
He found himself walking through mist into a forest glen he had never visited before. The sound of a waterfall mixed with chirping birds and the swish of a warrior's blade.
Drawing his sword and spinning to face his foe in one movement, Haakon leapt back holding his weapon in a defensive pose as he recognized the man facing him.
"Father!" Haakon shook his head, trying to clear the image before him, but Bjorn, the Firebrand, once the Destroyer, remained. "How are you here?"
"I am spirit," his father replied as if that should be obvious. "More to the point, how are you here, my son?"
Haakon saw no reason to withhold the truth from his father's spirit. "I have been many times to see the woman destiny chose as my mate."
"You have a mate." A smile unlike any Haakon had seen when his father was living creased the other asmundr's face.
Haakon wished he could confirm such and keep his father's clear delight in Haakon's good fortune intact, but he had never lied to the other asmundr and was convinced he could not now, in this place even if he tried to. "Nei. She will have nothing to do with me."
Bjorn blanched, pain like nothing he'd ever allowed his son to see haunting eyes identical to Haakon's own blue orbs. "She refuses you?"
"Ja."
"Why? Does she love another?" His father's voice cracked with a torment Haakon was shocked now he'd never recognized.
"Nei." At least Haakon was fairly certain there was no other. "But she hates another enough to paint me with the colors of his brush."
"Who?"
Again, only the truth would do. "You."
"Me? Why would your mate hate me?"
"You destroyed her pack."
"She is Faol?" Bjorn spit the Gaelic word for the uffe out like it was a bad taste in his mouth.
"Why did you never tell me I had a brother?"
"He died centuries before your birth. What good would come of telling you of him?"
"I do not know, but he was my brother."
"He was part of my past, son. Not yours."
"Your past shaped my future. It is only right I should have known about it."
"Nei."
"Ja. Because you used your asmundr power and strength to destroy the very people destiny had called you to protect, my mate considers me and those like me abomination."
"The Faol and Éan stole my mate from me." Again, his father did not use the Norse word for uffe, saying much about how disconnected he felt from the other Chrechte peoples. "They stole my child and because they did, he did not bond with me enough to call forth the asmundr. I had to live on after both died, my heart turned colder than the Norvegr winter in my chest."
"But my mother, your second mate, she thawed the ice around your heart and spirit. You told me at least that much." Bjorn had cherished the non-shifting Chrechte woman.
"Ja. I would not be in this place if she had not, I do not think. I love her still."
Haakon had never heard his father speak of love and found it a little disconcerting now. "You had great affection for her," he agreed, unwilling to say a word he wasn't sure he'd ever spoken.
"I still do. She shares eternity with me." He sighed. "Or rather, I believe I share eternity here with her."
"Yet you still hate the uffe?" Haakon demanded, not understanding. If his mother had thawed his father to such an extent, why had this abiding antipathy remained?
Bjorn scowled, looking very much as Haakon remembered him. Hard and unyielding. "What I gained later did not negate what I lost."
"And what you took? Can anything I do negate that?" Haakon wondered.
His father's shoulders slumped, his expression filling with regret. "I should not have gone raiding, but my urge to kill, to do battle was strong. I thought better to follow my king's urgings than to turn on the people around me."
"You thought you might turn on the kotrondmenskr?" Haakon asked with horror he made no effort to veil.
"In those years after my son and mate finally passed, I was entirely alone."
"You had a pride."
"I was not connected to them as an asmundr should be. My soul roamed the earth without peace and connected to no other Chrechte until your mother brought me back into communion with the kotrondmenskr and helped me to feel something other than the dark rage that colored my every waking moment."
"But you were guardian. You taught me what that meant."
"I was broken, by bitterness, by loss. I did not see clearly until the day your mother came of age and her scent changed, calling to mine."
"She loved you so much."
"Ja. She still does."
"And your first mate?"
Bjorn frowned again. "She said she loved me once, but then after our son was born, she claimed to love another. Our souls bonded, but somehow she ignored that bond to allow another into her furs."
"She was human."
"And they might feel the mate pull, but their bodies do not respond the same way."
"Does she live here now?" Haakon wondered how that reunion had gone.
Bjorn shrugged. "I have not seen her in this land where spirits roam. Whether she is here, or not, I do not know. Her soul bond to me should have brought her to the Chrechte spirit world upon death."
"Or she has already passed on, to where spirits no longer commune with the living."
"Perhaps."
"And your son?"
Pain again creased his father's features. "I have not seen him either. Again, I do not know his eternal fate, but he was a strong and honorable kotrondmenskr."
"Perhaps you carry too much anger toward his mother, toward the people he was raised to consider family for him to find you."
Understanding lit Bjorn's face. "Ja, mayhap you are right."
"You must release your anger."
"You think that is so easy? For you it might be, you have no great atrocity to forgive as I do."
"Do you think not? I could hate you for costing me my own mate."
Bjorn jerked, as if Haakon's words had taken him aback. "I am your father."
"And you committed terrible atrocities for our kind before I was born. These actions have severed my chance of bonding with my mate, of having my own children, of living out the life fate ordained for me."
"I never wanted you to know. You must believe I never wanted y
ou to suffer because of my weakness and the acts it drove me to."
Haakon shrugged. He knew that. While the word had never been spoken between them, he'd always known his father loved him, cared about Haakon's happiness and life. Nevertheless, both no longer had a choice but to live (or exist maybe) with the truth that his father's actions centuries before his birth had dictated Haakon's future.
"I am sorry. Even if she is uffe, you deserve to have your mate."
"The uffe are not all evil, anymore than all asmundr are murderous beasts as you became."
Bjorn flinched, but inclined his head. "I recognized the error of my ways. I gave up those murderous ways."
"You do not believe the uffe realized their own errors?"
"It was both the Faol and the Éan."
"Even now, you do not use our words for them. Do you still hate them so much, even after mating another and having a son who did become asmundr?"
"I am proud you are protector of our people, but it was knowing I would not have to watch you die that gave me my greatest joy when the stone called for the asmundr."
"Our stone…it is only a chip off the true Paindeal Neart." Haakon knew that now.
"Ja. That too was my fault. My actions caused a great schism in our people."
"How could they not?"
Bjorn nodded. "At first, all our people stood behind me, but when I allowed my anger to turn me against other Chrechte, killing them, many said they would not live under the protection of a murderer."
"Osmend did not leave."
"He'd foretold your birth."
"Didn't knowing another mate lay in your future give you some measure of comfort?" Haakon could only wonder.
"I never allowed it to. I didn't believe him. I'd lost my faith in Providence. I no longer believed I had a higher purpose."
"And so you killed without discrimination."
"I let some live."
"Like my mate."
"How is that possible?" Bjorn wondered, his brows drawn together in question.
