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“Why not?” Hayk shrugged. “You know you want me.”
My jaw worked soundlessly. I had no words. None at all.
Because I did want Hayk. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t known him when I woke up that morning. I wanted to fuck with him more than I wanted to eat my next meal.
And there he was, casually offering me exactly what I wanted.
As a way of luring Dmitri into giving up his secrets.
Dmitri, the man who insisted he owned me.
Fuck. I didn’t know what to think or feel about anything anymore.
“It sounds as though we all have plans for this afternoon,” Magnus said with a pleased smile, glancing between Neil and Peter as though he had ideas about how to spend their afternoon as well. “We’d better get to it.”
“Lunch will likely be served soon,” Olympus said as we all started up to the houses at the top of the hill. “But I could always have Mia tell the kitchens that we’re all eating in our own rooms today.”
“I would certainly like to take you up on that offer,” Magnus said, sending Olympus a knowing look.
I wondered if Magnus really wanted to spend his afternoon in bed with Peter and Neil or whether he would work behind the scenes to resolve what felt like a dozen problems and mysteries that swirled around us all. He didn’t really have a stake in whether people in Good Port actually thought Lefric and Olympus were responsible for the murder of a clerk, but if all of that was part of the much grander plot for the Old Realm to retake the frontier, then it was absolutely his business.
And if everything that had been talked about on the boat was accurate—and I was sure it was—in a matter of days, Jorgen Iceblade and Hati would show up with their men for a meeting that had the potential to reshape the frontier even more.
“Don’t worry,” Hayk said, shifting to walk behind me and to grip and rub my shoulders as he did. “I’ll be gentle with you, even if your Dmitri isn’t.”
Everything Hayk said aroused me and humiliated me at the same time.
“First of all, he’s not ‘my Dmitri’. I made a deal with him to become his pup in order to save Ludvig and the rest of us from imprisonment by General Rufus when we were in Seymchan.”
Hayk’s hands tightened on my shoulders, but he walked behind me, and I didn’t turn my head to see his expression.
“Secondly, I don’t care if I’m fucked gently or not. I’m not some wilting flower, I can take it.”
Hayk’s hands felt rock hard and heavy on my shoulders for a moment before he pulled away and picked up his pace to walk by my side.
“Who is Ludvig?” he asked.
It wasn’t the question I expected my grumpy statements to raise.
“He’s….”
I sighed and stopped just short of the patio in front of Olympus’s house. My friends were scattering to the various houses where they’d been given rooms—Magnus, Peter, and Neil were staying in Vikhrov’s house, Jace and Gennadi were at Patrius’s, and Sebald and Avenel had been given a suite in the house Demeter and Zangar and their families shared—and I watched them disburse for a moment. I couldn’t think of a single way to explain Ludvig that didn’t end with me embarrassing myself even more.
“Ludvig is the man who owned me from the time I was kidnapped by Karpov the slaver not quite two years ago until about six weeks ago, when we decided to break things off,” I said. “He’s the leader of a settlement called Meadowbrook, and he’s the brother of Magnus’s deceased lover, Rurik. He and Magnus are very close, and a lot of people think Ludvig will be the next king when Magnus decides to step down. Ludvig and I were traveling the eastern forest, gauging the condition of the wild wolves and seeing whether we could convince them to join the Wolf River Kingdom, but we ended up discovering just how lawless and vulnerable the wild wolves are, and how King Julius already has soldiers on the frontier, led by General Rufus. General Rufus is capturing wild wolves and forcing them to join the Old Realm’s army, and the only reason he could possibly be doing that—”
“Whoa, whoa, stop,” Hayk said, then burst into laughter that I thought was inappropriate. I scowled as he said, “No wonder you’re friends with Lefric. You talk as much as he does.”
“I do not,” I argued. But I’d just more or less given a speech about the condition of the frontier, so maybe I did.
Hayk rested his hand on my shoulder as he faced me. He certainly did like to touch. “You’ve just told me about ten fascinating things, all within the space of a few breaths,” he said. “I want to know about all of them. You were kidnapped and sold as a slave? You just broke things off with the man who owned you for over a year? And you volunteered to become another man’s slave in order to save him?”
I started to answer—though I wasn’t sure what I was going to say—but Hayk went on before I could get anything out.
“King Julius has an army on the frontier?” His voice pitched higher for that question, and a hint of alarm flashed in his eyes. “Someone named General Rufus is forcing wolves into his army? For what purpose? Does this king think he actually stands a chance of defeating the frontier?”
“You don’t think the frontier is vulnerable?” I asked in return, confrontational despite the fact that Hayk was asking good questions.
Hayk started to answer, then changed his mind. “I don’t know,” he said, blinking rapidly and tilting his head to the side. “I’ve never thought about it. I’ve always just assumed Good Port was strong, and that it was so far away from the Old Realm that no one cared about it.”
