Edge of Temptation

by Megan Crane

  “I’m sorry. I don’t see your whiny ass taking part in the Tyr bootcamp experience either.”

  Gunnar shrugged. “I’m the black sheep of the brotherhood. You’re the one who has a grudge against the war chief.”

  “I don’t have a grudge against anyone.” She wasn’t quite gritting her teeth. She was so pissed it sounded like she was chewing nails. “I just don’t like him.”

  “Liar.”

  Eiryn hated Tyr because he’d crippled their father. She’d made no secret of the fact that the moment Tyr was no longer the war chief of the clan and necessary to the king, she was coming for him. What Gunnar didn’t understand was how she could serve Wulf, knowing he’d been the one who’d given that order.

  For the first time, it occurred to him that maybe she didn’t know.

  He studied her as she stood in the center of the trail, her stance wide and centered in case he lunged for her. She was higher up the mountain than him, which put them at something near eye level. And though her chest still heaved with the exertion of her training, she didn’t sound winded when she spoke.

  “How long do you think you can blow off your duties?” she asked without bothering to respond to the name he’d called her. “Wulf might feel guilty for some reason, or at least sympathetic, but no one else does. We lose people all the time. That’s life. It’s been a year now. If you don’t start pulling your weight, you’ll be cut.”

  “No one’s going to cut me from the brotherhood.”

  She didn’t mean a metaphoric cutting. In the rare cases when men and women were removed from the brotherhood for any reason other than old age or death, their tattoos were cut and their heads shaved to rid them of any warrior’s markings. It was never a pleasant event. The shamed men rarely remained in the city, preferring to disappear into drink, the wilderness, or the mainland, where their dishonor couldn’t be discerned at a glance.

  None of that was going to happen to Gunnar. For one thing, the brothers would have to pass that judgment. Wulf would have to agree to it, however purely ceremonial the king’s blessing was in such cases when the brotherhood had already made its decision. And then, more to the point, the bitches would have to catch him.

  They were fast and deadly, but Gunnar had too much information. They couldn’t afford to send him off to potentially gift the clan’s enemies with the kind of knowledge he had about the clan and all its weaknesses. They couldn’t kill him, because they needed that information themselves and much of it was only in his head. Though that still left a lot of unpleasant possibilities involving cells and torture and a deeply miserable life locked away somewhere. Gunnar preferred to think things hadn’t reached that point.

  “Are you so sure?” Eiryn asked now, eyeing him in a way that made his skin prickle a little bit. He ignored it. This was Eiryn, not an army.

  “Don’t tell me they sent you to bring me in.” He made his voice scornful. “Only you? I’m insulted.”

  His half-sister appeared slight, but Gunnar knew better. The entire clan knew better. She was nothing but lean, dense, lithe muscle in a feminine package, as deadly with her warrior’s braids in a high ponytail and her training gear as she was in a full harness with her famous blade at the ready. She was also fast as hell. More than one fool had made a grab for her, only to find himself clutching nothing but air while she danced safely out of reach, her blade digging into his throat.

  “You seem remarkably confident for a man who’s been communing with wolves for a year.” Her dark gaze met his. “Wolves and the church, apparently.” When he didn’t respond to that, she shifted her weight slightly. “Last I checked there aren’t a lot of convents out in the snowy wastes where you keep that cabin of yours. Where did you find her?”

  Her voice was so light. Almost friendly. As if she wasn’t digging for information she’d enthusiastically use against him.

  “I never know who I’m speaking to,” Gunnar said softly. “My half-sister who shares my blood? Or the king’s favorite pet?”

  Eiryn rolled her eyes, reaching up to adjust her dark, glossy braids in their long ponytail. She didn’t dispute their shared blood as she sometimes did, claiming that since Gunnar and Wulf had cut her off when they’d unseated Amos they were no more kin to her than anyone else. And she didn’t get in Gunnar’s face about calling her the king’s pet, a term she deeply disliked. Both very familiar and tired battles.

  “You make a lot of noise about how you’re nothing like our father,” she said instead. He almost admired that she went straight for the deepest cut, no hesitation. That was what made her one of the few women who’d ever attained the brotherhood. “Meanwhile you’re the one who has a captive chained up in the basement, just like dear old dad.” She shook her head. “You know there’s a word for that, right?”

  He waited. Eiryn smiled.

  “Hypocrite,” she supplied, almost kindly. “Look in the mirror, Gunnar. You’re no better than our father. Maybe I should stab you in the spine and see how well you adjust to a life as a cripple.”

  Gunnar sighed, then ran a hand over his beard. It was damp from the fog. He was starting to feel the cold. And he didn’t know why he was tolerating this conversation. As if he could make his angry, spiteful little sister stop hating him because he talked to her for a change. He didn’t think Eiryn wanted to stop hating everything. Who would she be if she did?

  Who would he be, for that matter?

  He shoved that aside.

  “I have to applaud the effort,” he said. “If I gave a shit about either Amos or your opinion of me, that might have really hurt.”

  Eiryn only shifted her stance a little. Her dark eyes glittered a little bit more, reminding him they were a blue that bordered on black. So much like their father’s it was a wonder he’d never tried to cut them out. Maybe he gave more of a shit about her than he wanted to admit.

  “What you should be worried about is that you’ve all but challenged Wulf to a fight you must know he can only avoid for so long, with your disrespect and your bullshit.” Eiryn shook her head. “Anyone else would have found himself stripped of his rank and flogged for talking to the king the way you have.”

  “I’m sure that would have been greatly entertaining for you all,” Gunnar said dryly. “But then who would have painstakingly built the king the maps he needs to storm the mainland and seize control?”

  “He doesn’t want control.”

  “You’re delusional if you think Wulf ever wants anything else.”

  She glared at him. The fog was still swirling around them, here in the tall evergreens where morning took its sweet ass time, even in the height of summer. Far above, there was a patch of blue and the hint of the pale eastern sun. He wished it didn’t feel like home. He wished he could have felt something like this sense of belonging in that airless desert. In the dirty sprawl of the bandit city. Even in his cabin.

  But it was always these woods that called to him. This mountain. This air. Everything else was always only temporary.

  He thought he knew exactly why he was thinking such things, and it infuriated him. There was nothing permanent in this world with Audra dead. He couldn’t allow that to happen. He couldn’t weaken now.

  “Go on,” he invited Eiryn now, letting his aggression show and watching the way she instantly readied herself in case he came at her. “Don’t you want to call me a coward, too? Isn’t that where this is heading? Say the word, baby sister. I dare you.”

  He could see she was tempted. But the raiders didn’t like that word. They considered it a blood challenge. Call a man a coward and blood needed to be spilled over the insult, that was the law. Krajic had called Wulf a coward, the stupid mercenary whore, and now he was dead.

  A man’s honor defined him or he wasn’t a man. Gunnar couldn’t break his vows to Audra. Where would that leave him?

  “Come on, little girl,” Gunnar taunted Eiryn. “Take a swing at me. See what happens.”

  She only shook her head at him, and it wasn’t in
that condescending, pitying way Gunnar thought only his family members could affect. It was harder. Sharper.

  “You can rile Wulf,” she told him softly. With a kind of pleasure, he thought. “You get under his skin and he lets you. That’s not smart for him and it’s straight up stupid for you, but that’s between the two of you.”

  “There’s nothing between the two of us.”

  “Keep telling yourself that,” she shot back. “Meanwhile, you and I share nothing at all but blood. And you were a terrible son to my father, so let’s pretend that’s not a thing. You spent the last five years letting your mate poison you, getting confused about where your loyalties lie. You couldn’t get under my skin if you tried.”

  “You save that for Tyr, do you?” Gunnar smirked. “Or Riordan?”

  Eiryn bared her teeth at him. “Guess what, big brother? I’m not letting you goad me into a fight. This wasn’t about fighting. It certainly wasn’t a heart-to-heart.” She waved her hand between them and her gaze lit up with the kind of dark satisfaction that made that twitchy spot between his shoulder blades explode. “This? Was a distraction.”

  Realization was a sickening gut punch.

  Maud.

  Her name exploded through him and Gunnar took off.

  He should have known. When was the last time Eiryn had been so chatty? Why hadn’t he realized sooner that she was playing him?

  That, as ever, she’d been a honed blade. Wulf’s sharpened blade, pointed straight at him while they got to Maud in exactly the way Gunnar had wanted to avoid. He didn’t want her telling Wulf about her bishop, or the mercenaries they’d seen in Lincoln, or what Gunnar planned to do to her.

  He didn’t want his nun, his woman, his mate, in his blood brother’s clutches at all.

  Gunnar hauled ass down the side of the mountain, jumping the trail when it was faster, as focused and deadly as if he were already in the middle of a battle, with his own blade pointed directly at his king’s throat.

  He’d been telling himself that he didn’t want Wulf questioning Maud because she’d then become clan business and there were only so many full moons in the summer months, when visibility was more likely. He didn’t want to wait another year. He’d told himself that was the reason he’d kept her locked away, acting exactly as much of a freak as Eiryn had just accused him. Exactly like the man he hated most.

  But that was all bullshit.

  His heart was going nuts in his chest. He was a fury in raider form, hurtling down the side of a mountain at a pace that should have killed him. He thought he could have swum the ocean if he’d needed to, and just as fast.

  And this was not possessiveness. This was not a man getting angry because people were messing with his stuff. Hell no.

  This was a man ready to rain down fire on the assholes who dared touch his mate, and who cared if it was his king?

  Maud was his.

  End of story.

  And Gunnar didn’t slow down at all when he made it to the Lodge. If anything he moved faster, tossing brothers out of his way like the madman they already thought he was in his determination to get to her.

  To get to her—and then knock his blood brother the fuck out for daring to put his hands on her in the first place.

  14.

  Gunnar shouldered his way into through the doors that led out onto the glassed-in roof of the Lodge, aware that the absence of guards in the usually heavily monitored entry meant Wulf was extending him an invitation to join his little party.

  The patronizing asshole.

  He stalked across the roof, the rich scent of earth and growing things in the many beds tugging at him, but his attention was on the tower looming ahead of him and what he’d encounter within. He didn’t look out through the glass toward the bay, filled with a hundred small islands covered in evergreens. He didn’t stare across the city toward the rocky outcroppings still draped in the morning fog. He didn’t check the mood of the surging, sullen sea in the distance. The only thing he could focus on was Maud. His mate. And what they might already have pulled from her. Done to her.

  He’d forced himself to slow down when he’d slammed his way into the stairwell that led up to the roof from the brothers’ wing. To try to think. He ordered himself to breathe as he closed in on the tower, his body shifting into that tense, focused battle mode he knew so well. Lethal and intent.

  Murderous.

  Gunnar didn’t imagine Wulf and his little bitches planned to hurt his mate, necessarily. This wasn’t like that day in Kentucky, when he’d already suspected something terrible was happening by the time they’d come to find him. When he’d run through the carnage and had already had an inkling of what he’d find, because Audra hadn’t been any kind of fighter. Raider women were tough. Bold and surprisingly inventive when it came to protecting what was theirs. But they weren’t warriors. Audra had never had a chance out there.

  Audra never should have been there, a small, disloyal voice inside him said quietly.

  He ignored it, as he’d been ignoring it for a year.

  This was nothing like that day and too much like it. Gunnar’s heart was a kettledrum in his chest and his throat was tight and he wished he’d trained with his full harness instead of only his favorite blade, strapped to his back. He wished he had the full range of his killing potential within reach for what was about to happen. He reached the outer door of the tower and wrenched it open, hearing the door behind him at the top of the stairs scrape as someone came through it. He didn’t turn back. He knew it was Eiryn, that gloating, calculating asshole.

  It took every bit of self-control he had to keep himself from drawing his blade as he walked into the narrow, gloomy stone hallway that might as well have been plucked straight out of a medieval storybook. Because he might want to punch his blood brother in the face, and then some, but it was straight up suicidal to walk into the king’s private residence with his blade drawn.

  He stopped at the iron-studded door on the far end of this little time-traveling hallway, all flickering lanterns in the stone walls and no heat, the better to discourage any would-be attackers. He squared his shoulders and tried to dampen that furious roar inside him that was halfway to panic.

  Tried.

  Then Gunnar shoved through the heavy door, his hard gaze going straight to the fire and the deceptively comfortable seating area set there before the great stone hearth with ancient axes and antlers hanging along the sweep of chimney. Wulf was nothing if not subtle. Why wear a crown when he could display his power in so many other ways?

  Maud sat in one of the deep, wide armchairs, her posture straight and precise, which made something twist inside of him. She held her gleaming blond head at that specific angle that managed to convey both respect and dignity at once, the way only she could. She glanced at him, just a quick touch of her gaze that let him know that she was fine, if unnerved.

  He took a quick survey just to make sure. She was fully dressed and looked unharmed and unused. Her hands were folded neatly in her lap, her feet were bare against his blood brother’s thick rugs, and she still wore her collar.

  She still wore her collar.

  That went through him like a bolt of fire, a catastrophic wrecking ball, tearing through him and nearly taking him from his feet.

  But Gunnar was a seasoned warrior of the clan, not a little bitch, and he didn’t go down. He kept moving. His gaze shifted from Maud to Wulf, who lounged the way he always did in the chair next to her, the prick, his long legs thrust out before him and that obnoxious appearance of laziness he’d cultivated for years. Tyr stood near the fire, his arms crossed over his wide chest, while Riordan leaned against the wall with his hands thrust into the pockets of his trousers, doing a much less convincing impression of indolence.

  Only Wulf smiled. Of course.

  “How nice of you to join us, brother,” he said in his mild way, with that razor’s edge beneath. “I was getting to know your woman.”

  “My mate,” Gunnar corrected him. He fla
shed a hard look around the room to make sure no other brothers were lurking in the shadows, and kept moving until he could position himself with his back to a thick wall, not to the door he knew Eiryn was about to come through. “Do we interfere with a man’s mate now? Good to know.” He glared at Tyr, who’d officially claimed his mainlander in the carnage that had followed Krajic’s appearance in the great hall. “I’ll grab your Helena on my way downstairs and have a little chat with her in my basement. You can collect her when I’m done. She doesn’t look as if she likes the whip, but you never know until you try, do you?”

  “I hope you try,” Tyr threw right back at him from his place by the fire, and though his expression was dark and fierce, he didn’t move. “Because I’m the holdout here. I don’t buy Audra was really a traitor, because let’s face it, she wasn’t that bright. She was an attention whore who needed a more dumbass audience than you. But let’s be clear. You put a hand on Helena and I’ll sever your head from your body with a song in my heart, brother. Bring it.”

  Gunnar shifted his gaze back to Wulf.

  “Severing heads?” he asked. “Is that the going penalty for messing with a man’s mate? Are you offering yours?”

  Riordan growled from his position by the wall. Maybe Tyr did, too. Wulf only smiled.

  “Careful,” he warned in that quiet, amused voice that was all sharp edges and power underneath. “Be very, very careful where you aim that temper of yours, Gunnar. Not everyone here finds you as delightful as I do.”

  Gunnar didn’t spare a glance toward the door when it opened, keeping his attention trained on his blood brother instead. Moments later, Eiryn glided in to take her usual position at Wulf’s side, her dark eyes glittering with triumph.

  “Wonderful,” Gunnar said then. He itched to draw his blade, but that would only escalate things. And this situation sucked enough without a major escalation. “A family meeting. Dad would be so touched.”

  “He would try to light you on fire,” Eiryn said darkly.

  “That would be scarier if he could get close enough to me to light a match, little sister,” Gunnar drawled, viciously. “But he still can’t walk, can he?”