Sovereign

by Anne Schlea

  “You go home.” Kristoff meets eyes all around the room. “Zartan’s mansion is as secure as anywhere. I’m confident I have control of this hotel. Stay protected and protect your mates. In a week, we meet back here, and then we vote.”

  “What of the other families?” Antonia finally looks up, her face a sickly sheen of perspiration. Runa wonders how she hasn’t vomited. Antonia, the negotiator who had never fought a battle until a year ago, takes out an elder. The world still does hold surprises. “I think they might take issue with us installing a queen without them being present.”

  “Screw them.” Damian finally pushes up from the sofa, angry. “They should have been here yesterday. They lost their right to vote.”

  “We’ll form an alliance between our four families.” Zartan nods, his arm tightening around Antonia to help support her. “They can join later, once we know where their loyalty lies.”

  “Are you sure this hotel is secure?” Damian turns on Kristoff. “I need to be sure my wife is safe.”

  “I bought it months ago.” He nods, then looks at Tara and Runa. “I had the feeling I might want to own a property in Atlanta. I’ve had it reinforced and it’s magically protected. If anyone unfriendly is here, I’ll know. I wouldn’t put Runa or your wife at risk if I wasn’t sure.”

  Runa wants to click her tongue at him, chastise him for the implication she can’t take care of herself, but she knows enough to keep her mouth shut this time. Now isn’t the time or the place.

  Damian nods and holds his hand out to Tara. “If you don’t mind, we’re going to our own rooms, then.”

  “I’ll have extra guards stationed on your hallway.” Zartan claps Damian on the shoulder. “I’m proud to stand with you, brother, even if not for the reason why. You will do a fine job leading the clan.”

  “I hope you’re right.” Damian bows his head to Antonia and leads Tara from the room. Joseph leaves after him, heading to his rooms down the hall. Kristoff hopes he’s right about his security. A strategic hit on this hotel tonight would wipe out half of the ruling vampire families.

  “We should go, too.” Zartan pins Kristoff with a glare. “I’ll be calling the Old One myself.”

  “As you should.” Kristoff nods. “I would do the same.”

  Runa watches Kristoff bid all of his guests farewell, urging them to get home before the sun sets. This is a new world, one where the vampires may fear the darkness. One where the nosferatu are taking the lead for the first time in the war. What a difference the right kill can make.

  Once everyone is gone, Kristoff returns to the living room, watching Runa with careful eyes.

  Chapter 13

  “Mate a valkyrie?” Runa raises an eyebrow and cocks her head to the side. The air inside the room is suddenly very heavy, like breathing under water. He can’t be serious. Does he have any idea what her sisters would do to him? “Are you out of your mind?”

  “Heard that, did you?” He grins, all the formality of the night’s meeting melting away. “I meant to talk to you about it later, once some of this other is settled, but it’s the truth. I’m not fit to lead the nation. You come first; the last few weeks have proved that beyond any reasonable doubt. I live for you, not the vampire nation. Not anymore.”

  “You know the rules.” She takes a breath, ready to go through the same arguments as every other time. Instead, she finds she doesn’t have the energy. Her body sags, somehow deflated. The truth is, she’s tired of fighting what she really wants for rules she doesn’t believe in.

  “Don’t care.” Gently, Kristoff gathers Runa in his arms. “I’ll fight your sisters if I have to, but I’m starting to think I won’t. I know all the reasons you say it can’t be, yet you’re still here.”

  “All you’ve ever talked about is being King of the Vampires.” She looks him in the eyes, leaning back against his arms enough to know he’s holding her, keeping her from falling. He’s kept her from falling for too many centuries to count. Maybe nothing’s changed, maybe they’re just finally getting confident enough to admit it. “You’ve wanted this for as long as I’ve known you. You can’t give it up now, not for me. You heard Antonia; she doesn’t want it.”

  “I’m a leader, a warlord at that.” He smiles and leans his forehead against hers. His chest rises and falls with a deep breath, then a kiss on each of Runa’s eyes. “I know when to stand down, when to bow to a better man. Or, woman in this case. This is Antonia’s destiny, not mine. The nation won’t follow me if I’m with you, which leaves us with no other choice. I do what is best for the survival of the nation. We have to join together, one nation united under one banner. In time, the other families will follow Antonia. We won’t have a prayer of a chance of the other races joining our fight if it’s me.”

  “You read a situation remarkably well, for a male.” She smiles and takes a deep breath. She should be leaving here, return to her own nest where she can plan and focus her attentions on her sisters. The war isn’t going away, the valkyrie need to form a strategy and Runa needs to decide what to do about Kristoff, what to tell her sisters. When she goes to the War Council, there will be a fight. She needs to be strong enough to move the agenda; to convince her sisters to follow the vampires.

  “Stay.” Kristoff’s whisper catches her off guard, like he knows what she’s thinking. He probably does. He buries his hand in her hair to hold her close, his lips moving behind her ear to kiss her softly. “Trust me. This one time, please stay because you want to and not because you’re afraid to be alone.”

  He needs her tonight. To some point, she needs him, too. Something is changing inside her. If Runa is going to be honest with herself, it had been changing in her since they first started this relationship so long ago. Not for the first time, but maybe for the first time she’s willing to admit, she doesn’t want to leave. She wants to pull the blanket of Kristoff’s energy around her and drown in it.

  She wants to build something – a family? A home? Things that go against the valkyrie code as she’s learned it. Maybe the code is wrong. Maybe as a race they’ve taken their brokenness and made it a weapon, honing their hatred of weakness until that hatred has become a weakness of its own.

  She’s given centuries to her sisters. Met their every whim, fought every battle they’ve asked of her. She comes when called, fights, and stands with them. Yet none of them, save Britta, have stood with her in this. None of them came to save her when she couldn’t stand for herself.

  Kristoff did.

  Tonight, she’s going to do something for herself.

  Runa tilts her head back to allow Kristoff’s mouth to move against hers. When his hands shift, she jumps, settling her legs around his waist, trusting him to hold her weight.

  Kristoff runs his hand through Runa’s hair, gently untangling the blond curls. Despite her misgivings about trust and sleep, she’s snoring quietly, her body curved tightly around his. This is progress. Before the nosferatu took her, she never slept while they were together. Either she would leave to return to her own nest for the night, or she’d stay awake while he slept. As far as he knows, she’s never even napped when with him before.

  Tonight, she holds onto his body like a lifeline, trusting him to keep her safe from the monsters that run in the night.

  Maybe this will be enough. Maybe she’ll see now that she can trust him. Maybe this will give her enough courage to stay.

  Because he’s not going to let her leave again without a fight.

  The television is on and Runa doing stretches on the floor when Kristoff lets himself into the suite. She’s already done a workout, practiced in Kristoff’s big room with a target and the throwing stars that she feels like she’s never going to master, lifted weights, and eaten lunch alone. According to the happy routine they’ve set up, Kristoff shouldn’t be home until close to dinner when they’ll walk the floors of the operations portions of the hotel before eating in the restaurant.

  His arrival distracts from her guilty pleasure of Underworld, s
he looks up at him in surprise from her downward facing dog. It’s barely the middle of the afternoon and he looks angry. He looks the lethal kind of angry that usually means bodies will be piling up somewhere soon.

  Glancing at her own cell phone on the table, Runa wonders if she missed a message. Has someone else been killed? Another Blood Club with women being held prisoner? Maybe Torhild is hanging around the hotel?

  He moves toward the bedroom door, unbuttoning his shirt along the way. Waves of aggression roll off his body to change the temperature of the room, making it colder. When he reaches the bedroom, he closes the door behind him with a loud bang.

  Something’s up.

  Runa turns the television off and follows him into the bedroom.

  By the time she opens the door, he’s stripped off his shirt and has a dresser drawer open. She watches him move, the muscles under his skin tightening as he pulls out a black t-shirt and pulls it over his head.

  She pouts. “I like it better when you come home to take off clothes, not put new ones on.”

  “I’m holding a tight rein on my temper right now, nosh.” The pants come off for jeans, the movement methodical and stiff, his jaw tight. He looks like he’s planning on fighting. “Please don’t push me right now, I don’t want to lose my temper.”

  “What happened?” Runa leans on the wall closest to him. Even angry, his energy warms her, she forces her hands to her side when she wants to reach out and run them along his biceps.

  “We found him.” He looks away to button his jeans and change shoes.

  The world falls out from under Runa’s feet. A small part of her had given up hope. She’d begun to assume she’d spend the rest of her life wondering where he was, if he was doing to other women what he’d done to her. She tries to take a deep breath, then another, but can’t seem to get enough oxygen. When did her lungs get so small? She gulps at the air like a fish that’s been thrown out of water.

  Kristoff is suddenly beside her and she realizes she’s bent over. His hands close around her arms, guiding her to the bed to sit down. Somehow, he keeps her from collapsing on the floor by holding some of her weight. The bed sinks below her, he kneels on the floor in front of her. “Take a deep breath, you’re hyperventilating.”

  “Valkyrie don’t hyperventilate.” She corrects him half-heartedly. It’s hard to deny what’s happening right now in front of him. Irritated, her stomach gives a grumble and she wonders if she’s also going to vomit all over his feet. “Which him?”

  “You know.” The aggressive energy shifts to sympathy when he sits back on his heels. He rubs her arm lightly and shakes his head slowly. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have told you like that. I was angry and that was insensitive.”

  “Where?” The world stops spinning, allowing Runa to focus again. Kristoff is kneeling on the floor in front of her, his dark eyes searching hers for a sign that she’s okay. He’ll kill the bastard for her, she knows it. Without any question, he’ll go into whatever rotting hellhole the bastard has crawled into and rip him apart. “Where is he?”

  “South of town, in an old warehouse.” He hesitates, she can see conflict in his eyes. He wants to keep it from her, to keep her safe from the answers, but he’d promised truth to her. Between them, in this, there will be honesty. “He’s set up another lab. We’re going to strike at sunset.”

  Runa sits very still on the bed, her body feeling numb and on fire at the same time. Each breath fills her lungs with cold air. In. Out. She can focus on one thing at a time. Right now, breathing. Next, putting on her clothes. She knows Kristoff is watching her, his eyes searching hers like he’s afraid she’s about to shatter in front of him.

  Wordless, she leans down, kisses him on the top of the head, and then stands up. He watches her silently as she changes her clothes and then walks to his gun safe. Laying a hand on the electronic panel, it opens with ease. She looks over his assortment of weapons.

  Kristoff’s right arm comes around her waist, his left hand stopping hers from reaching for a gun, his head comes to rest gently on the back of hers. “I need you to listen to me, Runa, please.”

  She knows her body tenses and she fights to force it to relax. He’s going to tell her to stay at the hotel, she knows it, but she owes him the right to speak. “Go ahead.”

  “I’m not going to ask you to stay behind.” Runa’s body tenses again, this time in surprise. She tries to turn to look at his face, but he holds her firmly still. “It goes against every kind of instinct inside of me. I want to walk into that building and do worse things to that man than he ever did to you, but I know you, and I know what you need to do to be okay. Instead, I’m going to ask you, please, stay near me. We fight side by side, because, and this is very hard for me to admit, if you disappear again, if anything happened to you again, I think it would kill me. More than vengeance, I need to know you’ll walk out of this alive and unharmed. Can you please agree to that?”

  Runa feels her body sag. She’s valkyrie. Her sisters would say she should go in and fight the battle alone; kill the man and be done with it. It’s her battle and her kill. Yet, she doesn’t want to fight alone, and she can hear the pain and fear in Kristoff’s voice. He could have easily kept the mission from her, told her he was working late, and gone without her knowing.

  He could have brought the monster’s head back in a duffel bag for her; he would have been proud to do it.

  “Yes. I can do that.”

  “Thank you.” His arms hold her a moment longer, then reach past her into the cabinet. He takes out a pair of Glock 26’s and several magazines. Checking each gun over, he hands them to her. They’re small, lightweight, and easily concealable. Next, he hands her two magazines marked with black and two marked with silver. “The black magazines are regular bullets. They’ll slow him down enough to cause pain but won’t make him melt away like the silver bullets will. The silver magazines contain bullets laced with silver. Use those for a kill shot.”

  Runa takes the guns, loads them with the black magazines, and looks around herself, uncertain of where to hide them. Black leather pants and a black t-shirt don’t leave her much room to conceal a weapon. Kristoff produces a double holster from his closet and helps her into it. The guns are hidden right below her arms where she can easily reach them. The extra magazines go into her coat pockets.

  “It isn’t that I have an issue with you carrying the guns, but why?” Kristoff’s voice is calm, businesslike while adjusting the holster straps. He’s talking to her like another solider, this is good. This is what she needs. “It seems like you have enough firepower of your own to destroy just about anybody.”

  “The electricity will stop his heart.” She looks at him, cold and hard. Normally, it isn’t in her to cause more pain than necessary. A jolt of energy to the heart is quick and easy. That’s normal, but this is anything but normal. “It’s much too quick of a death. I want to make him feel pain first.”

  Kristoff looks at her, long and silent. She can tell he’s sifting through his own feelings, probably wondering how emotionally stable she really is. She isn’t offended because she’d do the same thing. It’s a stupid thing to bring someone into a battle that isn’t stable. She’s careful to meet his gaze, not to look down at the floor, willing him to understand.

  This isn’t something she wants to do. It’s something she must do.

  Finally, he nods. “Okay, then.”

  He looks at her carefully one more time and then turns to check his own weapons. His usual Glock comes out of the bedside table, magazines are dropped into his pocket and loaded into the weapon, and then he produces a pair of silver daggers that he hides in his boots.

  Once he’s ready to go, he turns back to Runa. Very somber, he pulls her into his arms. “No matter what you see today, remember you were wronged. The nosferatu, the scientist, they did you wrong. You are strong. You are beautiful. You hold no responsibility for what happened there.”

  Runa feels a welling of emotion and fears for a
moment that she might start crying. She pushes it away. It can wait. She’ll cry after the lab is destroyed and the keeper of the lab is in pieces at her feet. Once she has her vengeance, then she’ll let herself come to pieces. Then she’ll feel.

  “I love you.” He pulls back enough to hold her face between his hands. “It’s okay that you don’t love me. I understand the rules, and I love you still. I need you to hear it before we do this.”

  Looking into Kristoff’s eyes, about to set off toward a battle she’s both dreading and has been waiting for, it takes all her self-control not say the words that hover on her lips. I love you, too.

  She’s known it for a while and has had a terrible time understanding it but doesn’t want to keep fighting it. Valkyrie don’t love. That’s what she’s been taught since Freyja saved her from death. They don’t carry emotions, other than vengeance.

  Yet, when she looks at Kristoff, she feels something deeper. More real. Something she doesn’t want to let go of.

  The vengeance of the valkyrie didn’t keep her safe. Her sisters didn’t find her in that room. They didn’t stand guard in the night while she recovered. Their vengeance told her it was her own problem, that she never would have been taken if she hadn’t been weak. That her capture by the nosferatu had been her own fault.

  Kristoff has never made her feel like that. He came for her when they did not. When she was terrified to sleep in her own nest, he stayed awake, watching over her. He hadn’t pushed her and when she was ready, he held her as if nothing had changed. Now, when she’s ready to fight, he arms her and agrees to stand beside her.

  In their lore, Freyja, the goddess who creates the valkyrie, has a husband. He is her helpmate, raising their children while Freyja battles beside the gods.

  Why is the law so strict for valkyrie to be alone?

  Leaning forward, Runa pushes these thoughts from her mind. Now isn’t the time to wax poetic about love. Now is the time for war.