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Ragnar cocked his head. “Fear and excitement aren’t all that different.”
Leif took his double meaning. How often had he confused the two emotions within himself? “Stop splitting hairs,” he growled.
“Stop bloody running,” Ragnar shot back. “It doesn’t have to be complicated. You want her, she wants you…”
“It’s by its very nature complicated. She’s Tessa’s sister–”
“So? Does Tessa’s sister not like a good fucking? Same as everyone else?”
“Stop it.”
“Wedreamedof her,” Ragnar said, a growl rumbling in his chest, where they stood near enough for Leif to feel it in his own. “We saw her in the Sels’ awful bowl. That was her, Leif, in that vision, you know it was. She was…”
Leif could feel it, as sickening and alluring as it had been standing that day in the Sel general’s tent: the tug of magic, the promise of a future he couldn’t predict. Maybe true, maybe a trick. Amelia backlit by fire, and Ragnar’s claws gripping him from behind. He still didn’t know what it meant,couldn’tknow. And that made him afraid. Excited. A nauseating blend of both.
“We’ve seen her, over and over we’ve seen her,” Ragnar continued, “when we go walking on the other side. She bloody spoke to you there! That means something. Ithasto.”
Leif agreed, but he wasn’t going to admit it.
He turned away, and put some distance between them, though his skin crawled, wanting close again. “It doesn’t matter,” he muttered, shaking his head so his hair fell over his shoulders and shielded his face, for all the good that did. Ragnar could read every tense line of him, every note of his voice. It was impossible to hide from him – perhaps that was why he continued to lie to himself. To both of them. An attempt to preserve some sort of privacy. “This is a war.”
Ragnar straightened from the pole, and took a step toward him, voice growing eager. He was always doing that: pushing into each and every crack that Leif revealed, angling in like the wolf he was toward his soft spots.
“Yes, it’s a war. Isn’t that all the more reason to take what we want now, while we still can? Must it be nothing but war, without any pleasure?” He stepped closer, and gripped Leif’s biceps lightly, just beneath the golden band he wore there. “You know that it helped, the women on the road.” Even closer, his voice dropping, note of hunger creeping in. “Ihelped. Do we not deserve to feel good, if we are to die in war?”
Leif turned his head, and saw the feral gleam in his eyes, his own heart knock-knock-knocking in time to the pulse visible in the side of Ragnar’s neck.
“We.”
“What?”
Leif said, “You saidwe. You said, ‘Take whatwewant.’”
He watched Ragnar comprehend his mistake, the flash of fear in his gaze, quickly-smothered, but evident in the sudden souring of his scent.
Leif managed to keep his voice very even, and very human, when he said, “Doyouwant Lady Amelia, Ragnar? Is that what you’re saying?We. Does that mean you want toshareher?”
Ragnar debated a moment; wet his lips; took a deep breath. Said, finally, “We’ve shared the others.”
He didn’t dodge this time, when Leif shoved him. Fell easily down so he sat on his backside in the trampled grass; tipped his head back and looked up in the face of Leif’s low, nasty snarl. “No one is sharing Tessa’s sister,” he snapped. “Not you, not me,no one. She is an ally, and she’s heading an army, and this is war. If you need to fuck something, find a camp follower. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”
Another painful-looking tug of the torq, as Ragnar swallowed again. “Yes, alpha.” Respectful…but not meek. And not, Leif didn’t think, the slightest bit deterred.
~*~
Amelia wasn’t sure she’d be able to fall asleep, but the heat of Alpha’s side, and the regular rise and fall of his ribcage as he breathed soon lulled her, and when she opened her eyes, she found herself in the gray-washed field of her dreams, where she’d first seen Leif and Ragnar. She stood beside the lake, its water smooth and dark, the grass standing tall and the trees still; no breeze, for once. Alpha gave her a cracked-eyed, sleepy look, and then settled with a snort of steam. No threats, then.
And no wolves, either, Amelia saw as she turned in a circle. The hazy sky stretched cloudless overhead, and for the moment, they appeared to be alone.
Until, suddenly, they weren’t.
A low pop, like the release of pressure in her ears when she climbed out of the swimming pond as a girl, sounded, and, as if by miracle, she found herself face-to-face with her sister.
“Tessie?!”
Tessa wore a rich, crimson velvet dressing gown belted tight over what was likely a finely-stitched nightgown, if the embroidery at its visible collar was anything to go by. Somehow, Amelia had forgotten the exact, rich russet shade of her hair, which spilled down her back past her elbows, loose save a neat braid behind each ear, the ends threaded with gleaming beads. Her skin, always so pale once she was old enough for Mother to worry about her time outside, insisting she carry a parasol so she wouldn’t freckle for the spring balls, was rosy now across her cheeks and bridge of her nose with fresh sunburn. She had a glow about her; she lookedhealthy. And, as she spotted Amelia and burst into a wide smile,happy.
“Lia!” she shrieked, and surged forward, hiking her skirts up against the long grass with one hand, waving madly with the other.
