by Jill Monroe
He didn’t live long enough to take a second breath. The would-be abductor fell at Breena’s feet. She screamed, backing away from the body, and the two accomplices rotated to face him. Their eyes rounded in horror, their hands shaking in fear. Osborn’s berserkergang always liked the fear. Thrived on it. The walls around them shook with his growl, and he went after the man closest to Breena. “Dare you harm a woman?”
“Just after a bit of fun. We had no money for the paid women. You can have ’er first.”
His offer was the last thing he spoke as Osborn snapped his neck with one hand. He rounded on the last, his knife in his hand. But the berserker hungered for barehanded combat.
“I wasn’t gonna do anything. My brother made me come.”
The man’s crying words didn’t slow Osborn from stalking toward him. His prey dropped to his knees, not much older than his own brothers, and Osborn paused.
“D-don’t kill me. Please.”
His berserkergang forged images of his dead mother and sister. Osborn wrapped his fingers around the young man’s throat. “Never touch a woman like that,” he ordered, his voice more of a snarl.
The young man shook his head. “No. I won’t.”
Osborn tightened the grip he held around his neck, watching as his face turned purple and his eyes grew more fearful. “Never harm a woman.”
He could only nod in response and Osborn let him go. The alley filled with the man’s deep gasps of breath.
Osborn never took his eyes off him. “You live. As a warning. Go.”
“Thank you,” he said, running as fast as he could down the alley and out of sight.
He turned on Breena, who lay on the dirty cobblestones of the alleyway. Her eyes were filled with confusion, and terror lined her soft features. His berserkergang bristled and swelled, at first thriving off her fright. Osborn stalked toward her. Breena shrank away, crawling backward, doing what she could to get away from him. To survive. The berserkergang inside him recoiled at the sight of her fleeing. His rage weakened suddenly, a different path from the slow fade his anger usually took. The day before, when he’d found her invading his lake, he wanted her to be afraid of him. Now the idea repulsed him. Made him feel ashamed.
Breena had backed herself into the wall, her eyes darting, searching desperately for a way to escape. He shucked off his pelt, tossed his knife to the side and sunk on his haunches.
“Breena.” His voice still shook with traces of his berserker rage. He closed his eyes, concentrated and forced the ber spirit inside him to settle. He’d never battled against his own berserkergang. Had never needed to. He glanced down at Breena. Never wanted to.
He gently touched her arm, the warmth of her skin chasing away the cold his berserkergang always left behind. Osborn watched as she took a deep breath, and forced her back to straighten. He hid a smile, because he knew Breena was girding herself to do battle. With him.
After a moment, she finally met his gaze. Accusation laced her green eyes, and any idea he’d had earlier of smiling vanished.
Breena was looking at him like something unworldly. Despised. It was something he was used to. Only he hadn’t realized he didn’t want her looking at him that way.
Few outside of Ursa understood the nature of his people. One of the reasons they kept to themselves. Most of the inhabitants of the other realms were afraid or relegated them as little more than animals. Things to be feared, yes, but also abhorred.
Osborn’s stare never wavered from hers. His expression grew brutal. Distrustful. He wasn’t in the practice of guarding his expression, and now was too late to start. But Breena’s beautiful green eyes were only filled with curiosity. That full bottom lip of hers curved in wonder.
“What are you?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
SO THIS WAS HER WARRIOR.
Breena had never seen anything so savage. Osborn fought with a ferocity unmatched by anything she’d ever witnessed. The knights who’d pledged themselves to her father prided themselves on their skill with a sword, jousted and battled from the lists at tournaments with precision and pride. But Osborn’s raw strength and power during the attack was brutal and ruthless.
Almost like an animal.
The perfect challenge to one who wielded blood magic.
A tide of denial and horror swept over her abruptly. Her knees weakened, and she doubled over. Osborn was at her side, his long stride getting him there in two quick steps. His strong fingers tangled in her hair, soothing her, and her stomach calmed.
“They were going to kill me.”
The man beside her only nodded. No words were needed.
“Tell me what you are, Osborn,” she urged.
He looked into the distance. “I’m a man.”
“You’re more than a man, you’re something else. Tell me.”
“I’m berserker. I fight with the ber spirit.”
“But how can that be? No one has spied a berserker for years. They’ve vanished. I almost believed it to be a legend.”
“Gone. Forgotten as if they never lived,” he said, his words bitter and biting. “I have vengeance of my own to think about.”
She shrank away from him.
His sigh was heavy and he rubbed the back of his neck in obvious frustration. “Are you okay?” he asked after a few moments of taut silence.
The man didn’t want to care.
But he did.
As if the sun had shot out bright rays to illuminate the truth, Breena knew she had her weapon against Osborn…if she wanted to wield it. She sucked in a deep breath and squeezed her eyes tight in relief. Breena had the weaponry, but it was his need to protect her that made her heart race.
She swallowed past the lump that had lodged in her throat. “Yes. Thanks to you.” She flashed him a grateful smile. He blinked at her, settling on the backs of his heels. Was he surprised? How did he think she’d react? Afraid? He looked over to his side, examining the dead bodies to verify that, yes, they were indeed still dead. He wouldn’t meet her gaze. Osborn was afraid that she’d reject him or be frightened by him.
She gripped his arm, giving him a squeeze. Her own magic hadn’t been wrong to draw her to this man. He had to be the one who’d help her reclaim Elden.
But the man maintained a real aversion to the notion that he was being used for his sword. Something had made him hard and suspicious, and she was going to find out. Her mother often complained of men stifling their emotions and that half the time a woman needed to come along and give them a good pop just to release the pressure. Osborn seemed to be holding himself tighter than a sealed drum. Maybe what he needed was for her to give him a good figurative smack.
Maybe he needed her just as much as she needed him.
Now to get him to aid her without him knowing. She searched her mind for ideas, quickly discarding and refining until she hit on a scenario Osborn just might agree to.
She brushed the hilt of his sword. “Teach me.”
He glanced down at her fingers wrapped around the handle of his sword, then up at her. “What?”
“Teach me what you do.”
Osborn shook his head. “It cannot be taught to a woman. At least, I don’t think so. There were never any women with the berserkergang.”
“Then teach me to fight. I’ve never seen anything like what you just did. You were strong when you fought the creature in the lake. I doubt any man could walk away from that battle as you did, but in the alley you were invincible.” What was it her mother always said? That there was nothing wrong with spreading a little flattery when it came to a man?
At least he seemed less…unrelenting.
“There will be other men bent to attack me now that I’m out on my own. I have to be able to protect myself.”
Her fingertips bumped into his, and he jerked. Good.
“You won’t be my warrior, I can accept that, but at least give me a chance. Surely there are methods I could learn from you—how to use a knife…something. Anything, Osborn. I have to
find my people. To avenge.” To survive.
His shoulders slumped. Yes, she was wearing him down.
He stood, towering over her, then extended his hand to help Breena to her feet. “I don’t wish to talk in this place of death.”
She glanced over at the two dead bodies and then quickly looked away. “What about them? Are we going to leave them here?”
“Vermin like that? Anyone who’d prey on the helpless, especially women and children, deserves nothing less. This is where they belong.”
After wiping his blade, he slammed his knife home in his boot scabbard. Reaching for her hand, he guided her toward the entrance. He scanned the scene past the alley, keeping her in place against his back. A protective move, and she allowed herself a small bubble of hope.
Apparently satisfied no one would witness their escape, he pushed them forward, joining the bustling crowd. Osborn routed her in a direction leading away from town, winding through the streets of the village, and avoiding contact with strangers. She tried to reclaim her earlier enthusiasm for this visit before she’d been attacked, wanting, needing, something normal. Maybe if she concentrated on the wares at the various stalls and booths. But Osborn led her past each one, refusing to pause even at the ones selling delicious pastries and pies, despite their tantalizing smells.
“Pretty lady, over here.”
“A ribbon for her, sir?”
But Osborn ignored them all, and kept them walking. Once out of earshot of the townspeople, she couldn’t hold her questions in any longer.
“I’ve heard the berserkers were crazed. Couldn’t control themselves when they were…” She didn’t know the word. Few did anymore.
“Under the berserkergang,” he supplied for her. “And if we couldn’t control it, that’d make us poor warriors.”
“I could sense it, that berserkergang. You’re the most powerful fighter I’ve ever seen, but you knew who I was and didn’t hurt me.”
“No, I wouldn’t hurt you,” he told her softly.
Did she mistake hearing that near whisper of his? Not on purpose. “What happens to you after the rage has passed? I’ve heard berserkers are at their weakest, but you were invincible after the fight.”
“Nothing is invincible. The wolves have their silver, the vamps have their sun. I am just a man, but with my Bärenhaut, my pelt, only raw materials of the earth can hurt me. If the battle is long, then yes, I cannot go on without rest.”
“And if the battle is short?” she was almost afraid to ask.
“Then I seek the relief only a woman can give.” She felt her cheeks warm with embarrassment. As he’d intended her to feel. That was the last question she planned on asking, and she had so many about the man. She suspected most would go unanswered. Was that why she found him so intriguing? That she’d never fully know the story of this berserker?
“What other things have you heard of my kind?” he asked.
So he did want to have a conversation. “That women aren’t—”
She stopped her words in time. Was she about to actually tell him that?
“Breena?” he asked, using a voice she suspected few had dared argue with.
Something flickered in his eyes. Heated.
“That women aren’t safe around berserkers. That they take what they want. Who they want. Make a sport of challenging men with daughters.”
He halted and gripped her shoulders, forcing her to face him.
“That rumor’s true,” he told her, his eyes on her soft lips. He grasped her chin between his fingers, rubbed the tender skin with his callused thumb.
“Do you feel safe with me, Breena?”
She chose not to answer. Breena pulled her chin from his clutch, and they continued down the path.
Not too far on the outskirts of town, a peaceful green-grassed clearing stretched near a quiet river, and Osborn finally stopped. The line of the forest stood only a few steps away, and the fresh pine smell scented the air.
“This is beautiful,” she told him, remembering the story of the girl who stayed too long in a meadow picking flowers. She’d enjoyed the sun on her face so much that she’d lost her way, finding only a wolf to trust to lead her home.
“It’s easily defensible.”
“What does that mean?”
“With the river to my back, I only have to defend three sides. The forest can provide coverage for a potential enemy or if I need to regroup.”
So many things to know. Where she saw a place to kick off her shoes and run, Osborn saw a good place for battle. “See? I’m already learning.”
Her warrior met her gaze, and the smile on her face disappeared. The fierce passion simmering in his eyes made her swallow. “I will teach you, Breena. But what will I get in return?”
“Wh-what do you mean?”
“Everyone must earn what they eat. What can you offer?”
“Well, I can…” She tried to remember all the important duties she maintained in the castle that could translate to Osborn’s home. “I can sew a beautiful tapestry for the cottage. Maybe one depicting your greatest victory,” she told him, warming up to the idea.
He raised a brow. “What would I do with a tapestry?”
“The fabric holds the drafts at bay. It will keep the cottage warm at night.”
The brown in his eyes darkened. “I want other things to keep me warm at night.”
Images of them together, skin to skin as they were at the lake, warming each other with only the heat of their—
“I can carve candles that can light the cottage at night,” she rushed out in the hopes of chasing the idea of them intertwined out of her mind. “The candles are bright enough to work by.”
“My brothers and I work sunup to sundown. We have no need of candles, we’re already in bed when the moon is out.”
Osborn seemed so much closer than he had just a moment or two ago. The clean, crisp scent of the woods that surrounded the cottage filled her nose, and her arm felt warmed from the nearness of his big frame. Too near.
“Give me your hand,” he told her.
With a reluctance she didn’t want to show, she offered him want he wanted. His long fingers engulfed her hand, and he turned it over to examine her palm. He gently rubbed his thumb over a scratch at her wrist. The feel of it sent shivers down her arm.
“How’d you get this?” he asked.
“When I was wondering around in the woods, I fell and landed on a stick.”
His fingers glided along her palm, and she found it hard to breathe. “How about this abrasion to the heel of your hand. How did you get this?”
“I was trying to climb a tree for some fruit. The bark wasn’t very forgiving.”
He brought her palm to his lips, and placed a kiss to her injury. Except nothing on her body was in pain anymore. She’d never felt so…well.
“Your hands are soft. When you cup my cheek, it feels like the petals of a flower against my face.”
Those shivers he’d started with his thumb, they were now generated by his words alone. An awareness of him, of his strength and scent and beauty as a man, made her tremble. He placed her hand on his neck, and her thumb began to explore him in tiny circles. The way he encouraged her touch in his dream. Their dreams.
“You don’t have the hands of a woman who works to earn what she eats. You do not prepare the meals in your home, do you?”
Breena shook her head.
“Nor do you wash the clothes or even sweep the floor.”
An edge to his voice took her out of the soft haze his words had seduced her into. Osborn was trying to prove some point here. She just didn’t know what it was.
“You can’t cook. You don’t know how to do laundry or mending or take care of a house. How will you repay me for my training time?”
“You could teach me those things and then I could do them for you.”
“That would take more time and I’m not inclined to waste.”
“There’s got to be something I can do to get
you to teach me,” she said, hating how her voice sounded so near a plea.
Osborn lifted a brow. “I wonder what that could be.”
Then his gaze dropped to her breasts.
Her breath hitched. Her nipples tightened, and pushed at the rough material of her loaned shirt. An inner warning told her Osborn’s actions were far more calculated than only desire. He was challenging her, trying to intimidate her, and make her wary so that she’d back off and not seek the killers who murdered her family. Breena would not be intimidated. She shrugged her shoulders, not realizing until afterward her movements would make her breasts push even more against her shirt.
His eyes narrowed at the changes of her body. He seemed to grow bigger, more tense, if such a thing were possible, right before her eyes. A ripple of want rushed through her. Breena longed for the feel of him. His touch chased everything from her mind but him, and the way he made her feel. Breena forgot to be afraid, to worry and to mourn what she couldn’t fully remember but knew was lost.
He reached out a hand and cupped her breast. Filling his palm, molding her to his liking. She gasped when his thumb slid over her nipple in a gentle caress.
“Why’d you come back for me?” she asked, needing to know the answer almost as much as she needed his hands on her.
“This,” he said, and he tugged the large shirt down, exposing her breast. He leaned down and took it into his mouth. Breena clutched his shoulders at the exquisite feel of his lips on her skin, the warmth of his mouth and the gentle graze of his teeth on her nipple. Her knees felt weak again, and she grasped him tighter, losing her fingers in his hair and rolling her head back to allow him more of herself.
“You taste so good,” he said against her skin, and he tugged on the other side of her shirt, giving him free rein to her other breast.
“You feel so good,” she echoed.
Osborn made a little growly sound, and he circled the tip of her nipple with his tongue. Warmth and wetness pooled between her legs. This was better…