The Hero and the Hacktivist

by Pippa Grant

  “Blushing?” Manning, the youngest, scans me up and down, smiling as he always does. “I believe the more appropriate adjective would be hyperventilating.”

  “You two fuckers are bloody useless,” grumbles Colden, the grumpy one.

  All three have this quasi-British accent that would be intriguing if any of them were tatted up, owned motorcycles, and not my stepbrothers.

  Colden shoves a wine bottle into my hand. “Drink.”

  Stölland’s national beverage is mead, and I learned the night before my mom’s wedding to the king several years back that I don’t tolerate it well.

  I take the bottle and glug off the top without asking for a glass, because he’s right. I need a drink. And I’ve known my stepbrothers long enough to know that when one is handed a bottle, one drinks off the bottle.

  Which is awesome tonight.

  Tonight, I need all the drinks.

  “Maybe this won’t be so bad,” Gunnar says to Manning, who nods his agreement while they both watch me swig.

  The two of them are nearly the same height, both with thick brown hair tinged with red in the sunlight, both with pale blue eyes, and both fathers now, though Gunnar—the crown prince—is always clean-shaven, whereas Manning, who’s so far down the line to inherit the crown that he’s been given permission to live in the States and play professional hockey basically until he’s too old to play anymore, almost perpetually sports a short beard around his never-ending smile.

  He’s madly in love with the perfect woman for him, and they have the most adorable baby together. Of course he’s smiling.

  Oh, god. Oh god oh god oh god.

  The possibility of having Martin’s babies is suddenly so real that my ovaries have just offered themselves as tribute to a cryogenics experiment. And possibly performed some sort of self-freeze.

  I take another fortifying gulp of honey wine and pray it stays down. “What won’t be so bad?” My voice comes out high and panicked like I’ve been sucking helium, only worse.

  Colden sighs. He’s shorter than his brothers by a couple inches, with hair much darker, almost the same shade as mine. I’m told he resembles their long-departed mother. And I know firsthand he prefers the company of sheep to the company of people.

  “The night before the wedding talk,” he answers.

  My face goes so hot my brains melt out my nose. Or so it feels. “Uh, guys, I don’t think—”

  Manning laughs. “Not that talk, dear Willow, though if you need pointers—”

  Gunnar silences him with a sneak attack headlock. “We were referring to the if you need to run, we’ll make it happen talk. Family tradition. Though I do believe this is the first time we’ll actually mean it.”

  My heart skips a beat.

  Or maybe four beats. “I can’t run,” I object. Or try to. The words get stuck, and I have to swallow them down with another healthy swig of mead before I try again, when the words once again get stuck.

  “You can, you may, and you should,” Colden replies.

  Manning twists and flails, attempting to get out of Gunnar’s headlock, which would be way more entertaining if the mead in my belly wasn’t churning like a tsunami of bad idea bubbles and overwhelming doubts.

  “We’ve bought you a ticket,” Manning says between grunts and twists.

  “A ticket to where?”

  “New York, but we can change it to anywhere,” Gunnar replies. He’s grinning now, clearly enjoying the hell out of getting the upper hand on Manning, who should be the strongest of the bunch since he plays professional hockey.

  My stepbrothers are all over-muscled Viking goobers.

  And I might possibly love them more than I love peanut butter cups right now.

  “Do you truly wish to marry Martin?” Colden asks.

  My tongue swells. I rub it over the roof of my mouth and I gag.

  “Exactly as we suspected,” Gunnar declares. He releases Manning, who springs just out of reach of the eldest Frey brother. “Come, Willow. We’ve a plan.”

  I stomp a foot and I sway. Whoa. That mead is yum. Am I supposed to be drunk this fast? I don’t remember getting drunk this fast last time. Although, I suppose not eating anything at the rehearsal dinner might’ve been part of the problem. I kept sneaking my food to the dog when my bridesmaids and mom weren’t looking.

  “I’m going to marrrrr—” I start, but I can’t finish. While my stepbrothers watch expectantly, I take another drink off the bottle, and I try again. “I want to marrrrr—”

  All three of them continue to stare at me.

  “Fudge you all!” I say.

  Gunnar and Manning smirk.

  Colden sighs again. “We can order him beheaded instead,” he offers.

  “And his mother too,” Manning agrees.

  “But not the dog,” Gunnar says. “Viggo’s rather taken with the dog. I daresay the dog may not make it back on the plane to the States.”

  “You can’t steal people’s pets!” Which is a phrase I’m capable of saying. Whereas I can’t make myself say I want to marr—marr—fudgesicles. You know. Do that thing. That ceremony.

  With Martin.

  I swallow half the remaining bottle of mead in four gulps. My eyes burn. My throat’s on fire too. But the alcohol is warming my belly and defrosting my ovaries, and I’m starting to breathe better.

  “When you’re king, you can do anything,” Gunnar tells me with a shrug.

  “You’re not the king.”

  “But I will be one day. And then my son will be someday after that. Which isn’t the immediate issue, my lady. The immediate issue is canceling your wedding.”

  “I know none of you are Martin’s biggest fan,” I say, pointing the bottle at each of them, “but he—he—we’ve been together for seven years. That’s like…like…a llama caw wedging.”

  I get two matching squints and another sigh.

  “A common law wedding?” Colden translates.

  I point the bottle at him. “Seventeen points for House Coldendorf!”

  The three of them share a look.

  Or maybe the five of them share a look. Why are there two Mannings and two Gunnars and only one Colden?

  I should’ve eaten something for dinner.

  And not used that secret passageway Manning showed me in my chambers—palaces don’t have bedrooms—to slip away from my bridesmaids tonight.

  My bridesmaids wouldn’t be getting me drunk and trying to talk me out of doing…the thing…tomorrow.

  Or maybe they would. They’re not Martin’s biggest fans either, and I’m almost positive last month’s book club topic was runaway bride books for a reason.

  I squeak as a thought hits me.

  “Did my friends tell you to do this?” I demand.

  They share another look. “The throne room,” they say together.

  “Oh, no, are the sheep in there?” I whisper. “They can’t be. Not yet. The sheep don’t invade the palace for washings until the washing day.”

  “For weddings until the wedding day,” Manning helpfully corrects.

  I point at him. The one of him on the left, I mean. “You told me so when I helped you herd them inside before Mom married King Tor.”

  “Bloody bastard, I knew that was you.” Colden catches Manning with a punch to the arm.

  Gunnar leaps between them. “Later,” he says.

  “Fight! Fight! Fight!” I chant. And then I giggle. Because I’d way rather watch Vikings fight than get marr—marr—marrrrr—fudgebuckets.

  “We possibly should’ve skipped the mead,” Manning says cheerfully.

  “The mead’s tradition,” Gunnar replies.

  “For the men in the family,” Colden points out.

  “For everyone,” Gunnar argues. “Merely because there hasn’t been a royal female born in the palace in two hundred years doesn’t mean the females should be excluded.”

  “She’s not technically royal,” Manning observes.

  “She helped you herd sheep
. She’s family.”

  Colden twitches his fingers at me. “Hand over the bottle, Willow.”

  I pull it to my chest. “No trucking way.”

  Am I drunk?

  Maybe.

  But I’m also seeing something very, very clearly.

  I’ve been with Martin for seven years. I know all of his eighteen cats. I know his birthday, his family’s birthdays, the gate code for his family’s Long Island estate house, that he’s allergic to soy and works too much, that the diamonds his mother wears in public are replicas of family heirlooms because she’s terrified the plebian masses will breathe wrong or steal the real pieces, and that he has some insecurities that come from not being loved enough as a child, which is why it took him six years and an anti-anxiety pill to propose.

  But I don’t know that I love him.

  I mean, I love him. But I don’t think I’m in love with him.

  He’s the outward physical manifestation of the perfect husband—successful financial blah blah something, animal lover, upper-crust family, respectful of my boundaries—and he’s also boring as h-e-double hockey sticks.

  And he never comes to my band’s performances, whereas my bandmates’ boyfriends are always there.

  Over dinner one night last week, I told him about Beatrix Clara Clementine trying to prove she could fly by leaping off the top of the slide on the playground at the preschool where I teach, and he had no idea who I was talking about.

  Beatrix Clara Clementine joined my class last August, and on her first day, she tried to practice being a submarine in the bathroom sink, which was the first of no fewer than ten instances this school year where we had to call an ambulance for the child. It’s June now. She’s been in my class an entire school year, and he still doesn’t know who she is.

  I don’t even know what Martin does for work anymore. We used to talk about stuff like this, but he switched companies to work for his uncle a while back, and now it’s all I don’t want to talk about work.

  And we haven’t had sex in four months.

  “We’ve a secret stash of mead in the throne room,” Manning tells me. “No sheep, I promise.”

  “Better fucking not be,” Colden mutters.

  “If there are, it was the Berger twins,” Manning replies. With a smile. Of course.

  I hug my mead tighter to my chest. “I’m taking this to bed,” I tell my stepbrothers.

  All three—five?—of them study me closely.

  They might be Viking goobers, and they might’ve gotten stuck with a stepsister who has no interest in any of this royal business, but underneath it all, they’re good guys.

  They’ve been good to my mom. They’ve been good to me.

  And it’s sweet that they care.

  But me getting marr—marr—dang it.

  It is none of their business.

  They can’t tell me what to do. They can’t tell me how to do it.

  “May I escort you back to your chambers then?” Gunnar asks.

  I shake my head, which makes something slosh between my ears, and not in a completely unpleasant way. There are enough guards milling about that if I get lost, someone will point me in the right direction. And since Mom’s so popular here, and everyone says I look just like her, there’s little chance of me finding myself with a battle ax to the throat or anything if they think I’m actually an intruder.

  “Pass along any messages for you?” Manning offers.

  I shake my head again, and there’s more wooziness.

  Woozy is good. Woozy is fun.

  Colden’s frowning the biggest. He pulls me in for a hug, which is surprising, because I really did think he only liked sheep. “We have your back for anything you need, Willow.”

  Gunnar grabs me next “Didn’t sleep a wink the night before my own wedding,” he says. “But I didn’t have the choices you do.”

  Right.

  Because his marriage was arranged. Short-lived, but arranged nonetheless.

  Whereas mine isn’t.

  They’re right.

  I can call this off. If I’m not sure, and I’m not sure, then I should call this off.

  I need to talk to Martin.

  Maybe after I take a walk.

  Click here to get Rockaway Bride!

  Books by Pippa Grant

  Mister McHottie (Chase & Ambrosia)

  Stud in the Stacks (Parker & Knox)

  The Pilot and the Puck-Up (Zeus and Joey)

  Royally Pucked (Manning and Gracie)

  Beauty and the Beefcake (Ares and Felicity)

  Rockaway Bride (Willow and Dax)

  Hot Heir (Viktor and Peach)

  The Hero and the Hacktivist (Rhett and Eloise)

  Charming as Puck (Nick and Kami)

  Exes and Ho Ho Hos (Jake and Kaitlyn)

  And more…

  About the Author

  Pippa Grant is a stay-at-home mom and housewife who loves to escape into sexy, funny stories way more than she likes perpetually cleaning toothpaste out of sinks and off toilet handles. When she’s not reading, writing, sleeping, or trying to prepare her adorable demon spawn to be productive members of society, she’s fantasizing about chocolate chip cookies.

  Find Pippa at…

  www.pippagrant.com

  pippa@pippagrant.com

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2018

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover design by Lori Jackson Designs.

  Edited by Jessica Snyder