by Megan Crane
Melyssa only nodded, and then her face crumpled. Helena squeezed her once more and then let go.
She stepped around the couch, aware again that there must be noise all around her, even from sweet little Rhiannon whose name combined both her parents’ names into one in a perfectly formed little memorial.
But she only heard the racket her heart made in her chest and the ringing in her ears. She only saw Tyr.
Behind him waited that snake of a man Ferranti. Behind him loomed a whole bleak future she wanted nothing to do with. But she’d chosen it. She’d do it. She understood something now that she hadn’t before. People did what they could. Maybe Melyssa had never been able to sacrifice herself or follow their parents’ lead into all that danger. That didn’t make her less, it made her different. But Helena was built to fight. She always had been. It was why she was still alive.
She’d shared the particulars of her family’s mission with these raiders and they’d already taken down Krajic, which she’d thought was impossible. They’d already proven themselves good stewards of the secrets she’d carried. And she, meanwhile, would do what she’d always done best and survive, to play out a different part of the same mission across the sea somewhere. Even if she was nothing but a distraction, a little bit of misdirection while the raiders got the lights back on, that mattered. It was still her life’s purpose. And she’d do what had to be done the way she’d always done everything: alone.
She took one step. Another.
Tyr’s arms were crossed over his chest the way they’d been on the night they’d met. His face was set to ruthless stone. Only his dark eyes glittered, furious and wild. As beautiful and as dangerous as he was.
She stopped before him and tipped her head back to look at him. She knew if she touched him, she’d never do this—any part of this—so she threaded her fingers together in front of her and held his terrible gaze with hers.
“As a girl I dreamed of raiders,” she told him, and she didn’t care who heard her. She didn’t care if everyone did. They’d seen her have sex with him right here in this room. What did it matter if she was even more naked now? “They were never the nightmares other kids had. I dreamed of a wicked, dangerous man with wild dark hair and shoulders that blocked out the world.” It hurt not to touch him. It burned through her. “Maybe some part of me recognized you the moment I saw you. Maybe I knew even then.”
“Knew what?” he bit out. Daring her, the way he always did. As if he already knew the answer. He probably did.
“I love you.” She said it. Simple and clear.
Tyr didn’t move. His dark eyes flared, so bright and hot it made her flush in response, and she saw something huge move over him, through him, like a northern wind, but he didn’t move a muscle. He only stared down at her, and said nothing, and his silence broke her foolish little heart in two.
She told herself she’d survive that, too.
Somehow.
And then everything sped up. She stepped around him on legs that had gone shaky and soft, and somehow she didn’t topple right over. She moved through the crowd of raider brothers, aware they shifted out of her way and let her through only after looking behind her at Tyr. And then she walked back into that central circle. Wulf lounged there in his massive, ornate throne, his blue eyes glittering fierce and intense when they met hers, though he didn’t move to help her. He didn’t sit up any straighter or stop toying with his beard.
Helena met Rolland’s gaze without flinching or backing down, not at all surprised when the weak little man she’d spent her last ho-hum winter marriage with looked away within an instant.
Then, finally, inevitably, she looked at Ferranti.
Their mutual loathing filled the space between them and raced through Helena like a shot of grain alcohol. She felt almost giddy with pure hate, and the beauty of this was there was no need to hide that any longer. She didn’t try.
“You’re lucky you’re worth something,” he snarled at her.
“Yes,” she said, not backing down an inch. “Lucky is exactly how I feel right now.”
Ferranti grabbed her upper arm and yanked her to him, and Helena bit back the surprised noise she might have made at that because she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of hearing it. Of thinking for a second that he’d hurt her.
But she could hear a noise anyway and it took her a moment to realize it hadn’t come from her at all, but from the wall of raiders all around her. A low, menacing growl—so loud it was as if every last one of them had taken exception to Ferranti’s handling of her.
Including Tyr, who had followed her back into the circle and now stood at Wulf’s side, where she’d watched him take their mutual enemy down.
Helena thought she might cry again, but she refused to give Ferranti the satisfaction of that, either. She refused to let him think for even one second that he might have caused it. Maybe someday, on that awful journey that loomed in front of her, she’d break, give in to tears. Maybe.
But not today.
“Stop dragging this out,” she snapped at him, her teeth clenched so hard they ached. “Let’s go already.”
She expected him to start hauling her out of the hall with those hard fingers that were already digging into her arm, but he looked past her instead, back up toward the throne. That meant she had to look as well, and Helena didn’t know how much more of this she could take. How many more times she could look at Tyr, so harsh and forbidding and astonishingly beautiful to her, watching her so intently that it made her shake.
“I want the sister, too,” Ferranti said, red faced and flat voiced. As greedy as ever. “That child is my blood. I claim them both.”
“No.”
Her throat felt torn. That was how Helena realized she’d hurled out that word too harsh, too loud. She jerked in Ferranti’s hold, trying to break free, but his grip was painfully sure.
“Leave her here!” she threw at him. “You don’t care about her or her baby!”
“I care about my blood and the future of humanity, you little bitch,” he snarled at her. “Like all decent, compliant people do. Not raider trash like you.”
That growl again, but this time, Helena thought it came from her, too.
Ferranti didn’t care. He bared his teeth at her and then he faced Wulf again.
“My woman and my child,” he ordered the raider king. “My claim is blood. It’s law.”
This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be happening. The raiders started to shift again and she knew Melyssa would be coming through and Helena didn’t think she could bear—
But that was when her gaze caught on Tyr.
He still stood next the king, a glowering, simmering fury packed into that supremely powerful male form, all of his formidable attention focused squarely on her.
Once again, everything around her seemed to dim and fade. Ferranti’s bruising grip on her arm. The way the wall of raiders seemed to buckle and then fill again, as if they were fighting—or holding each other back. None of that mattered.
There was only Tyr.
I don’t need help, she’d told him once before.
And it was as if he was telling her the same thing now, with that starkly furious expression on his face and holy hell in his eyes.
No one sails a ship alone, he’d said. You know what happens if you do? You either feed your own dumb ass to the sharks or you run aground somewhere and wait for the carrion birds to pick your bones dry.
He’d told her she could trust him and she had. She did.
She loved him.
“Tyr,” she whispered.
And she didn’t know how he could possibly hear her over the tumult around them, the shouting and the threats. But there was only him. There was only this.
She knew he heard her.
He will always hear you. That was her own voice in her head, but it might as well have been his. She heard him, too. She felt him in her bones.
“Tyr,” she said again. Louder this time. �
�Help me.”
For an endless, impossible moment that lasted at least seventeen lifetimes inside of her, there was nothing but that gleaming approval in his beautiful gaze. It shivered through her, warm and right.
He made her feel safe, even across a dangerous room.
And then the moment was over, and Tyr was moving.
“Stop.”
Tyr used that war chief voice of his, pitched to carry over battlefields, over the clash of steel and the cries of the wounded. Or so he’d told her once, in the wet, steamy embrace of his shower with her legs draped over his arms and her back against the slick wall.
Every raider froze. Even Ferranti went still, as if he couldn’t help himself.
“Helena is mine,” Tyr said in that same voice, so his claiming words filled the hall. Her heart. Maybe the whole of the world. “Let no hand touch her without my blessing.”
Beside him, Wulf nodded, and Helena could have sworn that she saw satisfaction in the king’s cold blue eyes. But Tyr was already coming off the raised platform, jumping down in that sleekly threatening way to land directly in front of Ferranti, every last inch of him the weapon of war he was.
Then he drew his blade.
* * *
“Did you not hear me?” Tyr growled at that dumbass kinglet, who only stood there gaping at him, his face nearing an alarming purple shade. “Take your hand off my woman.”
And he was a nice guy, so he didn’t kill the bastard right then and there.
“Go to hell!” Ferranti howled, and he gripped Helena even harder, even more viciously, so she hissed out a little sound of pain. Screw that. “You can’t—”
Tyr was done waiting. He’d had a long day already.
She’d told him she loved him. She’d asked for his help. That in no way canceled out the fact she’d planned to sacrifice herself like some ancient martyr to the church or the punishment he was going to mete out for that egregious behavior, very slowly, over the next twenty years or so, but it was a start.
It was all a good start, and this asshole was still gripping her so hard Tyr could see the marks.
Marks on the woman he had just claimed as his. Ferranti had hurt her.
He did it again, yanking on Helena’s arm so hard she went up on her toes—
So Tyr cut the little bitch’s hand right off.
One clean stroke. Problem solved.
And there was the blood and the screaming and the usual commotion. All the good stuff, but Tyr couldn’t really find it in him to care about that as much as he had before. He didn’t care about anything except Helena in his arms again the way she was in the next instant, wrapped up tight and protected by his blade, the way everything inside him whispered it was supposed to be.
And would be, from now on.
His brothers dealt with the mainlander who tried to jump him and stared down the two mercenaries who hung back like the pay-to-play losers they were. One of the camp girls heaved a weary sigh and gave the man bleeding on the floor of the great hall—not the first and unlikely to be the last—the scarf from around her tits to use as a tourniquet.
The weakling who Tyr really should kill for attempting to claim Helena as his wife helped Ferranti stand. Eventually.
“I warned you,” Tyr reminded the pissant kinglet quietly. “I told you on the beach you should have sailed away while you still could. I told you your fate was sealed.”
“You took my hand,” the man panted at him, the wild light of sheer hatred and significant blood loss contorting his features into something straight out of a nightmare. “You can’t keep my blood. My flesh. Keep the bitch. I want that baby.”
Tyr didn’t think there was a single person in this room who thought the man was seized by any paternal longings. Hell, he’d probably fling the infant overboard the first chance he got. Tyr growled at the thought.
Wulf unfolded himself from his throne and stood before it at last, his cold gaze bright. Mayhem, Tyr thought. His favorite.
“I cannot in good conscience separate a man from his child, his blood,” he said, very casually, and if he heard the choked sound that had to be Helena’s sister he gave no sign. Helena only buried her face in Tyr’s chest, so he could feel the hard, panicked breaths she took. Wulf looked around the hall, his brows high. “But how can we be sure the child is his?”
“Of course the baby is mine. I fucked that dumb bitch all last—”
“The child is mine.” Jurin’s booming voice rang out through the hall, and Wulf’s mouth curved. Jurin pulled himself up to his full, massive height and scowled at the man clutching his useless arm to his chest and weaving on his feet. “You want to fight me for blood rights, bitch?”
Tyr felt a slight pang. The little kinglet would slither away and honor demanded they let him given the promise of safe passage, but—
Instead, the crazy piece of shit howled again, long and insane. And then lunged, one bloody stump and one hand outstretched. Directly toward Helena, as if he wanted to give Tyr a little gift on the occasion of his claiming a mate.
Tyr accepted that gift.
With great pleasure.
And he didn’t look back at the crushed remains of Ferranti, king of nothing, on the floor when he’d relieved that bastard of his bright red face and the head it was attached to with a single swing of his blade. He was done with this shit.
Tyr swept Helena into his arms at last. He held her against him where she belonged and he didn’t care that they both had Ferranti’s blood all over them as long as Ferranti stayed dead.
And then he carried off the woman he’d claimed to his lair, like the raider he was.
* * *
Tyr kicked his way into his rooms and carried Helena straight into his shower. He didn’t put her down until the water was pouring down and the hot steam was already billowing. Then he set her gently in the hot spray and peeled her clothes from her body.
And he washed her. He wanted every trace of her old life off of her. Every moment before he’d claimed her, straight down the drain.
He scrubbed her gently, his big hands against her soft skin, and he scowled at the bruises on her arm. He stripped out of his own clothes and he washed all the crap off of him, and then he held her there against him for a long time.
“Tyr—”
“Not yet,” he grunted, cradling her head in his palm and holding her there, against his heart where his clan sigil marked him. Where she belonged.
Eventually he turned off the water and toweled them both dry. Then he swept her up into his arms again and carried her into the bedroom, where he took her down into the furs and the pillows and wrapped himself around her and that, too, felt like a long time coming.
“Don’t you ever throw yourself in the path of some crazy person like that again,” he told her, his voice low. He felt the fury sweep through him, a deep burning thing that he didn’t think would ever leave him. Not ever. “I’ll kill you myself.”
“That’s so heartwarming.” Her smart-ass voice, right there against the crook of his neck. “So tender and affectionate.”
He smoothed his hands down the silken slide of her back, cupped her sweet ass in his palms. “I claimed you, woman. I can’t kill you.”
“Raiders have laws like that? That surprises me.”
But she didn’t sound surprised, she sounded like she thought it was smart to tease him. And she moved her hips against him sinuously as he dragged her fully on top of him, rubbing her soft little belly all over his agitated cock.
“It’s not a law, it’s common sense,” he told her. He tipped her down toward his mouth so he could lick one of those proud nipples; get his mouth all over one of her perfect little tits until she groaned and wiggled against him, making everything better, that easily. He grinned up at her. “Kill one mate and you scare off the next.”
“Charming,” she said, but her gray eyes danced silver when she looked at him, like the sea he loved, and she was already rocking against him so he could feel how slippery she was,
how deliciously hot.
He lifted her up and she reached down to grab a hold of him, guiding his thick cock straight to her entrance and then trying to slam herself down on him.
“Easy,” he muttered, because he didn’t want to hurt her. He never wanted to hurt her. She felt etched all over him, into him, more indelible than his tattoos. “Easy, baby.”
But she was unstoppable tonight, and she was already so damned wet for him, and she only had to rock back and forth a couple of times before he was sunk all the way inside of her. Tyr shifted on the bed, gripping her hips as she started to move over him, her soft thighs snug around him and her hands braced on his chest.
“You want to fuck yourself,” he gritted out at her, “this is how you do it.”
She laughed a little bit and then she grinned, and she drove them both crazy for a long, long time. The slide and the hitch. The roll of her hips. She rocked herself to a shuddering finish, making those cute little noises and digging her fingers into him, and when she was finally coming down from that, Tyr flipped her over on her back and started driving into her for real.
Helena threw back her head as he hammered into her. His fear, his fury. The idea of losing her to Krajic, that bastard Ferranti’s hands on her. Mine, he thought as he gave her everything, holding nothing back. Mine, he thought as he let that sweet, hot pussy milk him.
“Mine,” he roared as she arched against him and dug her nails into his arms, screaming out his name as she burst into white-hot flame beneath him.
But it was her name he shouted out when he finally came.
And then, finally, they collapsed against each other, and slept.
* * *
It was still dark outside when Helena woke up.
She lay there, warm and safe, with Tyr’s massive arm thrown over her and one heavy leg thrust between hers. Krajic was dead. Ferranti was dead. The raiders knew her family’s secrets, and more, could do something about it, and Melyssa and her baby were here.
Maybe, just maybe, everything might be all right. For the first time in as long as she could remember. Maybe.
She let out a long, deep breath, as if she’d been holding it for years—and Tyr woke. She felt him come to instant awareness and his arm clutched her tighter.