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She was buzzing too strongly with the proximity to magic and mystery for that.
“…melia?”
“Yes?” Damn, but it had happened again: she’d gotten lost in her thoughts. Lost in thoughts of arms bared to the cold spring air, and burning blue eyes, and low, lupine growls through human teeth…
Argh! She was being ridiculous.
She gave herself a mental slap, stood up straighter, shoulders back; pushed authority into her voice, and said, “Yes?” again. More firmly.
Connor and Reggie exchanged a hard to decipher look, and then turned to her as one. It was infuriating, really.
Connor said, “I don’t think they took a shine to me. You’ll have to be the one to forge the alliance.”
~*~
Alliance forging wasn’t something to be done hastily, so Amelia took half an hour to gather her thoughts. That was what she was going to tell anyone who asked her why she paced the length of Alpha, nose to tail, for a half hour while the sun dipped below the tree line. It sounded better than sayingI’m nervous, and I’m stalling. Should she mention the dreams? What if Leif hadn’t had them as well? What if they’d been totally one-sided?
But how could she have possibly imagined what he looked like? From the exact shade of his eyes, to the color of the fur on his tunic collar.
Ragnar as well. He’d been a wolf, in that other place, but one with a pelt the same deep gold as the man’s hair; the eyes were the same, the piercing blue he shared with his cousin.
That couldn’t be a coincidence. They had to have been there with her, in that dreamscape; and given the way they’d stared at her, they remembered it, just as she did.
But what did thatmean?
Alpha finally sat up, and made an inquiring sound, and Amelia realized it was full-dark. That his eyes glowed like embers, and that torches burned on stanchions around the perimeter of camp.
“I suppose I’ve wasted enough time, haven’t I?” she asked him.
He opened his mouth and bleated a cry that sounded accusatory.
“Oh…” she muttered. “You’ll come and save me if they try to eat me, right?”
“Kirik!”
She sighed. “Very well.”
Other tents had sprung up in the crushed grass, cookfires burning merrily, men gathered round them with flasks and dripping legs of rabbit. A few called respectful greetings, and she lifted her hand as she passed. The tent that was meant to be hers – and, really, she didn’t need a fancy tent, though her generals insisted a leader always had the largest, finest tent – glowed from within with lantern light, and as she approached, she realized the dark shadows clustered around it were not merely shadows, but men.
Wolves.
Leif’s pack.
Her pulse quickened, and she forced her breaths to be even and slow, held her posture regal and fearless, though her skin crawled.
A few paces from the closed flaps, one of the shadows stood, and coalesced into the shape of a tall, broad-shouldered man who towered over the men of her company. She pulled up short, and held her ground while he stepped into the torchlight, and she was stupidly proud of herself for not shrinking back.
Gods, but these Northmen were big.
This one wore his dark-brown hair loose on his shoulders, save the places knotted with beads of bone, a dull ivory in contrast to the gemmed and silvered beads Oliver and Tessa had described in their letters. Trophies, she thought: bones from kills. Human or animal, she couldn’t be sure. He stood with his shoulders rolled forward, hands hanging too far from his sides, a pose made for springing; it was all too easy to envision him lunging forward, hands reaching, hard mouth thrusting out into a muzzle.
He spoke first, which startled her. A rough, “My lady.” His was a voice rarely used.
“Good evening,” she greeted, channeling her mother’s cool, most commanding tone. (She hoped she managed, anyway.) “I’d like to speak with your–” Notprince. They didn’t call him that. She’d caught snatches of their reverence, as they murmured to him. “Your alpha. If he’s available,” she amended.
Alpha. She’d named her drake that, yes. But it felt strange to refer to a man that way.
Not a man: a wolf.
