Biyu had smiled. Not only with men. And some of us just like sex, no matter who it’s with. She’d laughed at that, or maybe at Kathlyn’s expression. Am I blowing your virginal mind?
I’m not a virgin.
Having sex one time in a room full of people makes you technically not a virgin, yes, Biyu had said, sounding deeply amused. But there’s a big gap between that and actually knowing anything about sex.
If I was already through my fertility window, Kathlyn had said fiercely, I wouldn’t have to worry about that, either.
I’m sorry about that, princess, the courtesan had murmured, still sounding as if she found all of this a little too funny for Kathlyn’s peace of mind, and definitely not the least bit sorry. You might just have to sort out your life.
Kathlyn had thought about that when she’d finally come face-to-face with Wulf again.
“Welcome to our second meaningful ceremony,” she’d said brightly when it appeared that all he planned to do was brood at her. “You’ll notice I’m wearing the traditional copper, which signals I’m ready for a permanent marriage.”
“I know what it means.”
Kathlyn had ignored his cold, ferocious tone, much as she was ignoring the tense, not-so-tightly leashed way he was holding himself. As if he was just looking for a reason to go off. And she’d seen that power in him from the first. She’d wondered this whole time how anyone in the palace could imagine he was anything like tame. How they could have possibly convinced themselves that he was doing anything he didn’t want to do.
“At least this time you’re wearing a shirt,” she’d said lightly, as if she didn’t notice any of that. “It’s almost conventional.”
As if his blue eyes didn’t make her shake, inside and out. As if there wasn’t that aching, raw thing inside of her that only seemed to dim at all when he was buried inside her, no matter who else was watching. But she could only hold on to the pretense so long. And that thermal he wore over his usual black combat trousers and boots covered all his tattoos and the sigil that marked his heart.
“And I hate it,” she’d heard herself say, her voice wobbly and revealing.
Wulf’s gaze didn’t soften one bit. If anything, his mouth had hardened. But he reached over then and wrapped his hand around the column of her neck, his thumb tracing over the faint mark that was all that remained of the welts her father had beaten into her. That was how powerful Biyu’s herbs and pastes were. He’d stared at what was left of the welt as his thumb moved over it once. Then again.
And Kathlyn had thought that surely he could see the lump in her throat, so big it threatened to choke her altogether.
“Listen to me,” he’d said, something like fire in his gaze and his voice rough. “When shit starts to happen, I want you to get down. I don’t want to worry about you getting hurt.”
She shook her head, an abortive little jerk while he’d still been holding on to her.
“Did anyone tell you what a wedding here is like? It’s nothing like the mounting ceremony. It’s not really a transition so much as a transfer of property. The people will politely applaud, that’s all, and get back to their celebration.”
But the look he’d given her made her shake. It had reminded her of that mounting stage, when he’d been between her legs and deep inside her and somehow in her head, too.
“You’ll know what I’m talking about,” he’d said quietly. Intently. He moved his thumb over that welt once more, then he’d dropped his hand, and Kathlyn had hated that most of all. “Don’t overthink it. Just hit the ground, roll or crawl your way to safety, and wait for the shit storm to pass. Do you understand me?”
But it didn’t matter if she did or didn’t, because then they were being herded out into the cold by her father’s men with entirely too many Uzis at the ready, and there had been no time to say anything else. No time to tell him that she’d spent the past few days lying in her bed, healing—thanks to pots full of that revolting-smelling paste that Biyu kept reappearing with every early morning, with her usual brimstone-and-mockery approach to nursing—and thinking about her life through the lens of that newfound fury that she’d finally found, and embraced, at her father’s feet.
Kathlyn had decided that surviving wasn’t enough. No more tears. No more calm acceptance of terrible things. She wanted to live.
And she wanted to tell Wulf that, because she was no longer resigned to the end she’d always foreseen for this. For this winter. For them. For him. She wanted a future. She wanted the possibilities she could feel inside of her like so much bright color against the cold, gray winter days, bold and shocking and hers if she dared. She wanted the sensation he’d introduced her to, making it impossible for her to ever again accept that deep numbness she’d called normal for so long.
Kathlyn was tired of being anesthetized. She didn’t like pain, but at least it was colorful. Like Wulf was, every part of him and all that life-altering blue that scorched her every time she looked at him.
That was why she’d cut through the pocket in her brand new copper wedding gown and strapped the dagger he’d given her to her thigh. Because even if all she had left were a few brief moments to defend herself and the remarkable, powerful man who’d changed her so profoundly, she was going to do that. Her father could kill her and he probably would, but she’d go out fighting.
She was slapped back to chilly reality when her father said her name, out there on the steps of the palace with so many people looking on.
“You all know and love Princess Kathlyn,” he said, smiling affably as the crowd cheered. Kathlyn stood a little straighter, because that kind of smile boded nothing but ill. She glanced at Wulf beside her, who looked . . . bored. She blinked at that. “You see her in copper and might well be expecting a wedding today. But you see, my daughter is nothing but the bait in a trap.”
It was one thing to know something was likely to happen, it turned out, and something else to stand there in seeming quiet obedience while it did. Kathlyn tried to compose herself while her stomach knotted up. She stared out into the crowd, her gaze landing on an intense, dark-eyed woman who stood there in the front row at the bottom step, her surprisingly muscled arms crossed over her chest. Kathlyn didn’t know what snagged her attention, but the woman looked away before she could pinpoint it, her long dark hair falling over her face as if to cover her. And in the next instant, Kathlyn forgot her. Because her father was still talking.
“Look at this man who dares to stand beside the princess as if he is fit to touch her foot!” King Athenian cried out. To the crowd. To the lights. “Look at this creature who calls himself a raider king!” The word raider buzzed around and around the crowd, like an endless echo. “Raiders are childhood stories. They keep to the shadows and the night because that’s the only way they have any power. Bring them into the light, and what do you find? They are nothing but men. Vain, strutting men who do not know their betters when they see them.”
The palace guards moved then, pointing the guns they always carried straight at Wulf.
And at Kathlyn, too.
It seemed to her that everything slowed down again, the way it had in that back hallway the day Lorna had discovered her. She could see all of this play out as if it had already happened. In a moment they would hurry her away from Wulf so they could do whatever it was they’d planned to do with him, keeping her safe so her father could abuse her at his leisure later. And that would leave Wulf abandoned and alone, significantly decreasing any chance she might have to help him.
That was unacceptable to her.
Kathlyn did the only thing she could. She gasped as if she was shocked by such a show of brutality right there before her, all those guns and the harsh expressions on the guards’ faces or whatever. Then she crumpled to the ground, betting that as long as she wasn’t standing there like a target for all the kingdom to see how little Athenian cared that she was in his guards’ crosshairs, he’d ignore her.
And when no one rushed to her aid, she
knew she was right.
“Kneel, you rabid savage,” Athenian demanded, and Kathlyn couldn’t tell if the sound from the crowd was cheering or something more complicated.
The smooth stone of the wide step seeped into her, making her very cold, very fast. But it was a good thing. It helped her concentrate. She shifted her head slightly—carefully—so she could watch as Wulf turned that bored look on her father, then around at all her father’s men as if he hadn’t noticed them all lunging at him.
Then he sighed, sounding annoyed more than anything else, and sank down onto his knees.
Kathlyn didn’t understand how anyone could watch the way he moved with such contained ease and not realize he was deliberately subjecting himself to this. That he could have fought back, yet was choosing not to. The guards grinned smugly as if they’d made it happen, and her father’s smile grew positively friendly.
But Wulf’s show of kneeling down put him only a foot or two away from her. Kathlyn thought she could work with that. She’d seen the guards pat Wulf down in the great hall, which meant he was weaponless. And while she’d had fantasies of wielding the dagger herself when she’d strapped it to her thigh, as if she was a raider herself or had the slightest idea how to wield anything, the reality of all these guns in Wulf’s face disabused her of it. Fast.
She wasn’t a raider. But she could arm one.
Kathlyn kept her cheek pressed into the cold stones and her eyes on Wulf. And she very slowly, very carefully slid her hand into the pocket of her dress, then through it. Then she just as slowly, just as carefully pulled that very sharp raider blade from the little harness she’d made from strips of fabric and wrapped tight around her thigh. She eased the dagger out and then she paused, because her father wasn’t done talking.
He was never done talking.
“What hubris,” he was sneering at Wulf—and playing it up for the crowd. “To walk into my house. Defile my only daughter. Comport yourself as my equal. Mine.” His voice rose, his outraged affront washing down the length of the gorge. “I am the King of the Great Basin. There is no king or bishop in the western highlands who dares call himself my equal. But some washed-up barbarian scum like you imagines he is better than all these good, decent, highborn men?”
“I’ve always had an attitude problem,” Wulf said, as if he wasn’t on his knees with at least ten Uzis pointed at his head. As if, in fact, he’d just been woken up from a lazy afternoon nap and wanted to get back to it. “Ask anyone.”
Something shivered through Kathlyn then, and it wasn’t the evening breeze. It was something far hotter, winding its way over her bared skin and then pooling like light low in her belly. Sensation, she told herself, breathing through it. Panic and fear, and that searing heat that was what Wulf did to her, even now, when he wasn’t looking at her and both of them could die at any moment.
Whatever happens, she told herself, feeling any of this is a victory.
But even so small a taste of victory made her hungry for a bigger one.
Athenian took up his theme again, pacing as he shouted out his bitter vanity and stunning self-regard into the rapidly coming March night. And Kathlyn took advantage of the falling dark and the inky shadows that wove between all those showy lights that adorned the gorge. She moved her hand, still gripping the dagger, and shifted the wide, flowy skirt of her dress with it.
Slowly. Very, very slowly. Inching her way closer and closer to Wulf.
She didn’t know what part of that he saw, but his gaze slammed into hers suddenly, heavy-lidded and supposedly half asleep. But she was much closer and she knew him better than the rest of these people did. All she saw was bright fire, endlessly blue, and a harsh order to stop whatever the hell she was doing. Now.
All that in the space of a moment, breathless and intense.
Kathlyn moved the dagger in her hand and let the hilt of it peek out from beneath the copper hem of her dress.
Wulf blinked. And for a brief, head-spinning second, she saw something raw and dark and so powerful in his eyes that the only thing it could possibly be was—
But it was gone in the next instant. And he was the raider king again. Always. Cool and lethal and a harsh lesson waiting to be learned by all the men surrounding him with the guns they obviously thought would keep them safe from an unarmed man on his knees.
He inclined his head so fractionally that even as she saw it, she wasn’t entirely sure that was what had happened.
“Does the savage have anything to say in his own defense?” Athenian cried out—again, more to the crowd than to Wulf. All theater and no substance.
But Wulf, of course, hadn’t gotten the message that this was the part where he was meant to cower.
“I don’t require any defense,” he replied after a moment, his voice big enough to travel. He looked as powerful kneeling there as ten men did standing, and Kathlyn wondered if that was why all the men surrounding him gripped those brutish guns of theirs a little more tightly than usual. “But I’ll give you this. The sun has set on the first day of spring. The reign of winter is over.”
“How precious,” King Athenian sneered. “That almost sounded like raider poetry.”
But that was when everything behind them was plunged into darkness and the thousands of lights that lit the gorge winked out, leaving the whole of the stronghold strangled into the dark.
And for a moment there was nothing but an uneasy silence.
Kathlyn felt Wulf’s hand cover hers, though she didn’t hear him move. He squeezed once, then relieved her of the dagger.
“Remember what I told you,” he said in a low voice she doubted anyone could hear but her, as the muttering from the crowd rose on the wind. And yet it was no less a royal command for all that it was so quiet. “Don’t get trampled, princess. You getting hurt pisses me off.”
He didn’t explain himself any further. He stood. And Kathlyn didn’t wait to find out which feet he thought might start the trampling. She rolled herself off the top step, caught herself on the second, and started crawling. Away from the little scene unfolding around her father and the raider king he should never have underestimated.
“What the hell is going on?” King Athenian demanded from behind her. “Where are my lights?”
Kathlyn kept going, pulling her long dress along with her as she headed for the little line of mostly decorative trees that bristled between the steps and looming cliff face.
“You can call it raider poetry if you like,” Wulf said, sounding as casual as if he was sitting down to a friendly meal, and yet his voice seemed to boom all over the gorge. And straight into Kathlyn, as if he was spurring her on. As if he was with her. Inside her. “Or you can call it my wedding party.”
And that must have been a sign, because that was when all hell broke loose.
Finally, Wulf thought, when Gunnar cut the fucking power and this gaudy-ass palace went dark at last.
And more importantly, King Douchebag shut the fuck up.
Wulf liked the silence that fell when the lights went out. It was as if the sky itself was tumbling down on top of these mainlanders who, as far as he could tell, had never seen full dark before.
But he had. And he liked it.
Wulf moved quickly, taking the dagger his princess had thought to bring for him, because she was the only person he’d ever met who thought she had to protect him. It made that warm thing that was only hers inside of him hum to life, but he couldn’t allow himself to indulge that now.
Not now, when the only way he could protect her was to tell her to hide.
Not now, when this plan of his was finally coming together after these weeks of captivity.
Not when all the offenses he’d been swallowing down, all the crap he’d taken and the grievous insults he’d ignored—not to mention the two separate times he’d found his princess with that piece of shit’s fingerprints all over her body—were about to be answered. Decisively. In as loud and lethal a voice as he had in his blade and the force of his s
wing.
Oh yeah. Wulf owed that evil little fucker some pain, and he planned to deliver it.
He whistled once, high and hard, and got two whistles back in the next breath. He’d seen Eiryn in the crowd, right there at the bottom of one side of the steps, a dark fury in her gaze when she’d seen him take to his knees like a weakling prisoner. He’d bet Riordan was on the other side of the wide stair, ready to take on that flank at Wulf’s signal.
And that was when Athenian did exactly what they’d hoped he’d do, maybe thirty full breaths after the lights went out. He shouted something to his guards and they all converged on him in the dark. There was shouting and chaos, as was only to be expected when half the guards toting guns around out here were basically amateurs, which meant the few of them that were adequately trained had to do their thing around dumbasses like the ones Wulf had encountered at the gate. And every night at the end of his hallway.
Wulf stood ready as two figures he knew as well as his own melted out of the darkness and came to stand on either side of him. And he’d never spent this much time out of contact with his clan before. Out of contact with the warrior brotherhood that was the bedrock of who he was.
It occurred to him, as two of the best brothers in the clan took their places at his side, where they belonged, that he really hadn’t enjoyed the experience. He was clan first, a brother second, and king last. And solitary confinement was not for him.
“I hardly recognized you on your knees,” Eiryn murmured as she fell into her usual place beside him. “Before tonight, I was unaware they bent.”
“I hope you enjoyed the proof that I will do anything, even that, for my clan,” Wulf said, no trace of laziness in his voice any longer. “Because they will never bend again.”
“Let’s get this party started,” Riordan muttered from his other side. “It turns out I don’t much like pissant little palace guards who stick their fucking guns in my face.”
“You and me both, brother,” Wulf growled.