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“Like recognizes like, I suppose,” Connor shot back.
He saw Ragnar stiffen, and then the man threw his head back and roared with laughter. A bit over the top, Connor thought, but the grin looked true enough, if wry, when it came his way again.
“Fair play to you,” Ragnar said, and faced the action again.
Connor thought it might have been a bit less awkward than it had been.
But then a bright flash from the center of the yard snatched his attention, and he turned his head in time to see Reggie’s sword go sailing toward the far wall. Before it landed with a clatter and a puff of dust, Leif closed the distance between them, and did something tricky with his foot that caught Reggie around the ankle, tripped him, and sent him flailing backward.
Reggie’s back hit the earth with a rush of forcefully expelled breath, and Leif’s sword winked in the cloud of dust that boiled up around them, flying for Reggie’s throat.
Connor surged to his feet before he was aware of thinking to do so. His hand found the hilt of the sword on his hip, and anger flared hot in his belly – the sort of blind, overwhelming anger that was half panic, and that could think not of strategy, or self-preservation, but only of getting to his lover and putting himself between him and the man towering over him. Naked steel glimmered in the vulnerable space that separated a murderous Northerner from the scar that marked Reggie’s life as forever altered, and Connor wanted to throw himself across that bright, killing bar, take its strike for himself, and spare Reggie.
“Wait.” A hand caught his arm and held it fast before he could charge across the yard, and when Connor couldn’t pull free – it was a damned strong hand – he whirled on whichever fool was restraining him, sword singing as he drew it from its scabbard.
Ragnar’s brows lifted in a look of mild reproach. “What do you plan to do with that?” he asked, nodding to the sword. “Look.” His hand squeezed on Connor’s arm. “He’s won the match, but he’s not going to run your man through.” In a lower voice: “You need to get hold of yourself, mate.”
How dare he? Connor was…
He was making a scene, wasn’t he?
Slowly, he turned within Ragnar’s grip to look again at the combatants. The dust was clearing, shredding as a burst of still-cool breeze tumbled over the wall and across the yard. The men were hooting and hollering; coins flashed as bets were collected.
Reggie lay on his back, hands up and empty in a clear pose of yielding. The tip of the sword, Connor saw clearly now, was not at his throat, but resting at the highest point of his chest, not quite touching, and quivering, faintly, as Leif heaved for breath. Reggie’s expression was one of dismay…but he didn’t look stuck in his head, the way he sometimes did. His brow was furrowed, mouth tugged down in a frown, but his eyes didn’t have that glazed, faraway gaze that marked his venture backward into foul memories.
As for Leif, the prince looked…unwell. Face pale and shining with sweat, his lips trembling as he sucked in great draws of breath that lifted his chest, and left his torso twitched, involuntary pulses as though each inhale pained him. He’d pushed himself too far. He’d won…but it had cost him.
“Damn,” Ragnar murmured beside him, and when he let go, Connor stayed rooted to the spot. It was Ragnar, and not him, who crossed the yard, and took a grip on Leif to urge him away.
Leif whipped a glare toward him – but it didn’t hold much heat, and soon enough, he lifted his sword, and let Ragnar heard him over toward the water barrel.
It took an effort, but Connor didn’t go to Reggie; leaned his hip on the wall and let Reggie pick himself up, dust himself off, and waited, waterskin held out in offering when Reggie joined him, batting at the good-natured jeers hurled at him from the spectators.
“Thanks,” Reggie murmured, accepting the skin, and poured half the water over his sweat-flattened head before drinking the rest in a few greedy gulps. When he lowered it, he took a good look at Connor’s face, and then burst into surprised laughter. “You worrier, you.”
“Shut up,” Connor grumbled. “I told you: he’s not like fighting a normal man.”
“No,” Reggie agreed, and looked across the yard to where Leif had rested his hands on the edge of the barrel, hair and face dripping as though he’d plunged his whole head under water. “It’s the wolf thing, I suppose. He anticipated every move before I made it, and there’s no reason a man that big should be able to move that quickly.
“Well.” He turned back to Connor, a grin breaking across his dirt-streaked face. “He’ll give those golden bastards something to think twice about.”
Connor released a deep exhale, and scrounged up a returning smile. “You’ve changed your tune quickly. Only last night you were bristled up at the man like a wet cat.”
Reggie’s grin widened, though Connor noted the twitch of irritation in his eyelid; he would always chafe beneath anything that so much as hinted at criticism. “That was because I hadn’t fought him yet: I can’t properly evaluate a man until we’ve fought.”
“You haven’t fought me.”
“No, but we’ve fucked.” Reggie patted his cheek. “And that’s its own sort of fight.”
~*~
“Are you well-pleased with yourself?” Ragnar asked that evening.
The answer was no, obviously, but Leif didn’t voice it because it seemed too obvious.
After a rejuvenating head-dunk in the water barrel in the training yard, he’d taken on the next three challengers, and then insisted on walking round to inspect his wolves, all of them had bedded down in a shady alcove just past the tree line; all were suspicious, and uncertain, and far from pleased that their alpha and chief beta had gone to stay in the house with the unfamiliar humans. Leif did his best to reassure them, and shared with them the plans for the march soon to be executed, and though he left the meeting with a host of doubts, he hadn’t detected anything like mutiny or anger in their midst.
Ragnar had tailed him, his constant shadow, all the way back to the manor, and up to his borrowed room, and tutted and fussed and assisted, without being asked, when he stripped down, and wiped himself with water from the bowl on the washstand. He lay now in a pair of clean – and thankfully large enough – trousers on top of the bed, arms flopped out to the side, window open to allow in the cooling evening breeze.
