by Mariah Stone
He stood and helped her up.
“They might call me a beast, but I am not that kind of beast.”
He did not look at her as he said that, dragging her towards Wind. But out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw her face soften.
CHAPTER FIVE
He’d caught her, this Viking, this mammoth. Was she destined to get caught by men? Back in Boston, and now here, in what she had come to believe must be Viking Scandinavia.
Mia’s back was pressed against Hakon’s front as they rode, his body warming her, his strong arms on both sides of her, holding the reins. She breathed heavily, feeling as if there was not enough air in his presence, her cheeks burning like hot coals.
She was still afraid of him. She would have been an idiot not to be—he could snap her in half with his bare arms if he wanted to.
But he also affected her in ways Dan never had, making her knees weak and her skin damp. And when he’d told her he wouldn’t touch her, a tension somewhere deep in her gut had released. Part of Mia believed him, even though she had heard similar promises from Dan countless times.
Another part screamed that she would be insane to trust Hakon’s word just like that. She could be wrong. God knew, she had been so wrong about Dan. But she believed she’d learned her lesson.
As they rode into Lomdalen, the sky behind the dark mountains glowed pink. The air was crisp and lush with the scent of dew and grass.
“How did you find me?” Mia asked.
Hakon didn’t answer for a while. When he spoke, his ribcage vibrated against her back, and Mia suppressed an impulse to lean against him and close her eyes. “It was too quiet. I awoke, and you were gone.”
“But how did you know where I would be?”
“I did not, Arinborg. I have this instinct. Like an animal. Something told me to follow you through the woods. But even if I had been wrong, I would have found you. My men are looking for you everywhere now.”
Mia bit her lip. She could not escape him, just like she could not escape Dan.
He stopped the horse next to Solveig’s house, which was three buildings down from the great house. He jumped to the ground and stood there, waiting, looking up at her. He was so tall his eyes were on the same level as her waist. He offered his hand and raised his eyebrows.
Hakon was gorgeous in his rough handsomeness. His shoulder-length dark-blond hair framed his face. His beautiful eyes were now almost brown in the light of the dawn. They were set deeper than what might be considered classically handsome. But it made him look unforgettable. Manly. The stubble covering his chin blended from dark blond to ginger to amber. A few scars disturbed his skin, three long and broad ones on his right cheekbone might have been left by the claws of an animal.
“Come down,” he said.
“Where are we going?”
“To wed.”
Not that again. Being his wife… Mia shivered from the thought of going somewhere alone with him. But whether it was fear or excitement, she couldn’t tell.
“You were serious? Now?” Her mouth was as dry as an autumn leaf. Why did marrying a woman he had never seen before mean so much to him?
He nodded. “You are not running away from me again.”
We’ll see about that, Mia thought, but put her hand in his. She’d wait for a better opportunity to run.
His touch sent liquid starlight up her arm. As Mia began sliding down, Hakon hugged her hips, then his head was right in front of her breasts. She could feel his warm breath through the cloth, and her world shifted. When her feet touched the ground, he didn’t let her go. Something ran between them as their eyes locked. Those golden-green eyes—they were almost amber now, in the misty light of dawn. An invisible curtain lifted in them, and his face changed. He became younger, just like she had seen him in his sleep, suddenly vulnerable, open. Raw pain hid there. She knew pain, too.
Hakon blinked and withdrew. His arms released her, and the curtain slid back down. The mask of the Beast was firmly in place again. Cold surrounded Mia instead of his warm arms, and she took a step back. She shouldn’t linger. She shouldn’t look for humanity in him. And she shouldn’t allow any empathy between them. This wasn’t her time, her place, or her man.
She was an imposter filling Hakon’s bride’s shoes. And her life and that of her child were forfeit if he found out before she could escape.
Hakon pressed his lips into a thin line. He tied the reins to the fence by the house. Someone walked out.
It was that small woman who wobbled when she walked.
“Solveig!” Hakon called, and the woman turned around.
“Hakon.” Then she noticed Mia. “Ah, you found her.”
“Yes. And we shall be wed now.”
“Now?” Solveig continued walking down the street, and Hakon took Mia’s hand, sending a not-unpleasant tingling sensation up her arm, and drew her after himself.
“Yes, now.”
“I must see to the injured first,” she threw over her shoulder. “Two more babes got sick.”
Mia frowned, the instinct of a doctor making her want to ask about their symptoms, but she bit her tongue. She doubted a Viking princess would know much about medicine.
The desire to help, to heal, to fix pulsed in her like another organ that kept her alive. She had pressed it down and ignored it ever since Dan had made her drop out of the pediatric residency program.
The memory of that night would always haunt her.
Dan and she had been having dinner on the balcony of his Marblehead mansion, celebrating her moving in with him. With the sunset view over the ocean and the amazing meal cooked by a Michelin chef he had hired, Mia had thought there was nothing more romantic. The man she loved wanted to lay the world at her feet.
Dan had stretched his tanned hand over the table and taken hers. “I think it’s time you quit the residency program, bella,” he’d said.
Mia had gaped. “Quit?”
“We live together now. I will provide for you—you know you have everything your heart desires. I don’t want you to get a call in the middle of a dinner party with my business associates. And you wouldn’t have time for pampering yourself. I want you to feel like a queen. My queen.”
“But I don’t want to quit. I only have two years left in the program, and I love it—”
His eyes darkened, and for the first time in the six months they’d been together, she could see it was from something other than lust.
“You—love—it?” Dan’s hand tightened until his knuckles whitened, and Mia gasped in pain. “Is there someone I should know about, Mia?”
“What? No! I’m crazy in love with you. I just moved in.”
His face relaxed, but his eyes were still cold. So cold, the ocean breeze turned from warm to chilly.
“If you’re in love with me,” he said, “you quit the job. I don’t want to share you with anyone. Or anything.”
She couldn’t believe her ears. “Come on. Don’t force me to make this choice.”
He launched across the table and grabbed her by the collar of her dress at the scruff of her neck. Champagne glasses flew, shattering on the patio tiles. He kissed her so hard it was a bite. It was a threat. Then he came around the table and hit her. She flew across the balcony, pain exploding in her head and body as she connected with the hard surface. He sank onto his knees next to her and took a fistful of her hair.
“You will quit your job,” he panted into her ear. Mia swallowed back her tears. How could a man who had promised her the world be so cruel to her?
She had spent the night wide awake, listening to Dan’s even wheezing by her side. In the morning, while he prepared breakfast downstairs, she’d packed her bag. When she appeared in the kitchen, full of resolve to leave him, Dan’s eyes fell on her luggage and went deadly. He put down the orange he was halving. But not the knife.
“Bella, you shouldn’t be a pediatrician.” Dan walked slowly towards her. “You’re not that smart. You don’t get to be a doctor
and a mafia boss’s girlfriend. It’s either one or the other. And I love you too much to let you go.”
A mafia boss? He was right, she wasn’t that smart. How had she been fooled into thinking he was a legitimate businessman? How many red flags had she willfully ignored?
He stood barefoot and bare chested in white linen pajama pants, his sculpted body gorgeous and as dangerous as the knife in his hand. “Are you really threatening me?” she asked.
He glanced at the knife, chuckled and put it on the cutting board. “I don’t think you want to find out, bella. And don’t even think about running out on me. I’ll find you anywhere in the world.”
She had known then that he would never let her go, that she had to bide her time and wait until he grew bored of her. So she had quit the residency program and focused on surviving whatever was to come. Until she had learned about the baby she carried…
Mia shook off the memories, but the feeling of being trapped with someone deadly clung to her.
Solveig stopped in front of a house that looked newer than the others.
“Solveig, if the babes need help, you attend to them first,” Hakon said. “But you are marrying us right after.”
Solveig sighed and shook her head in disapproval, but it was clear she’d do it.
She’d already entered the building when Mia blurted out, “Wait! I can help.”
Hakon and the woman stared at her, clearly surprised. “You can help?” Solveig said. “Are you a healer?”
Mia swallowed and looked at Hakon, expecting him to see this as a threat, to show disapproval, but he only studied her, puzzled.
“Yes,” Mia said, her chin high.
People in that building needed a doctor. And with all due respect to Solveig, Mia was the best shot they had.
“A princess and a healer?” Hakon said in disbelief.
“Yes.” Mia met his gaze. “And a good one.”
“If this is another trick to try to run away, you are a fool. I am coming in and watching you.”
Mia shrugged. At least he hadn’t forbidden her to do her job. If anything, he looked impressed.
Inside, the house looked like a smaller version of Hakon’s giant hall. Sleeping benches ran along the walls, a long hearth stood in the center of the room, there were no windows. There must have been a dozen people lying on the benches, including children. A woman gave a child a cup to drink from.
“What happened to them?” Mia asked.
“Many got wounded at the battle with your father last autumn,” Solveig said. “Several men were injured during raids earlier this spring. The winter was rough, and after a visitor came to the village three weeks ago with a cough, children have been getting ill. Hakon gave up his house for the sick.”
Mia looked at him in astonishment.
“Having one place for the sick rather than a sick person in every household saves Solveig time,” he grumbled.
“Didn’t we sleep in your bedroom? I thought you lived in that giant house?”
“Do you mean the mead hall? I did not live there before this autumn. It was my father’s. Even after his death, I did not live there.”
Mia looked around. She was no historian, but the idea of a hospital seemed strange for Vikings.
“Aren’t the wounded usually tended in their households by their wives, mothers, or sisters?”
“They are. But they get better care if Solveig can help them. It is hard for her to walk through the whole village with her bad leg.”
Who was this man? She didn’t know him at all. Dan would’ve never inconvenienced himself to help others.
“Do not look at me as if Loki stole my mind,” he said.
Something warmed inside Mia’s chest. She smiled. The anticipation of helping people who needed her lifted her spirits.
“I’m not, Hakon.” She respected his decision, but she couldn’t tell him that. She should remain distant from him—any sign of affection would give him the wrong idea. She looked around and rubbed her hands together, eager to start the work she’d itched to do for two and a half years. “Now, let’s see how our patients are.”
CHAPTER SIX
Hakon squinted as the darkness of the house enveloped him with the sweet and pungent scent of cooked herbs. On the sleeping benches to the left were his injured warriors. Spread throughout the rest of the house were children. The sound of their desperate coughing made his own chest ache.
Hakon watched as Arinborg leaned over a girl about eight winters old. The child’s face was red as she gasped for air, making whooping noises. She sounded as if she was trying to cough out a fly.
“Has it long been an interest of yours, Arinborg?” Hakon said.
“What?” Arinborg took the child’s wrist between her thumb and two fingers and stilled, concentrating. Then she pressed her ear against the girl’s chest and listened. She helped her to sit up and listened to her back, after which she pressed the back of her hand against the child’s forehead.
“Healing,” he said.
Her care, the determination on her face reminded him of his mother, and the thought was both sweet and painful. He remembered how his mother had leaned over him like that when he ran a fever as a child. Only Mother and Solveig cared for him. The rest kept away from his curse, just like his father.
Hakon remembered his mother’s face, her big green eyes full of love and worry. The gold of her hair shone in the light of the hearth. She hummed him a song to lull him to sleep. Her soft hand pressed gently at the back of his head as she kept him up so that he could drink an herbal remedy.
A sharp ache tightened his chest at the memory. He did not want it to fade away, though painful.
Arinborg did not stop her examination, but her mouth tensed. “Would that be wrong?”
It seemed Arinborg knew what she was doing, as if she had done it many times. Her eyes were focused, her hands were confident and calm, her face was tight with concentration.
“Not wrong.” Hakon shifted his weight. “Unusual.”
Solveig came to stand next to him and watched Arinborg.
Arinborg moved to another child and listened to his chest. “Because I’m a princess?”
“Yes. And also because someone like your father allowed it.”
Arinborg touched the boy’s forehead. He doubled up in a frenzy of violent coughing, and Arinborg’s brows knit together. “My father can go to hell,” Hakon thought he heard her mutter, but he could not say for certain.
Before he could ask, she turned to Solveig and him. “Running nose, low fever, high-pitched ‘whoop’ between the coughing attacks… I think these two children have whooping cough. It’s highly contagious so there will be more children and adults infected.”
Solveig’s brows rose. “Infe—what?”
Arinborg hugged her waist, as if protecting herself. “I mean, more people getting sick. And whooping cough is dangerous, especially for babies. I don’t have antibio—” She cut herself off and swallowed, her chest rising and falling. It was as if she was looking for words. “Special…herbs,” she finished, looking at Hakon expectantly.
Hakon struggled to make sense of what she said. It was as if some of the words were foreign even though she spoke them in the Norse language. Maybe she used the speech of healers and of gothi. Healing was the domain of gods, magic, and spirits.
“How do you know all this?” he asked.
“I’ve always wanted to be a doctor. I mean, a healer. I trained. I helped people. Until I was forced to stop.” Her voice broke and her shoulders sank. The life seemed to go out of her as she said those words. Hakon’s fists clenched. If Nyr had made her feel like this, how else had he treated her?
“I can help them.” She gestured at the children.
Solveig glanced up at Hakon. “The princess seems to know what she is doing.”
Hakon believed that. He knew skill and passion for a craft when he saw them. His bride was beautiful, kind, strong, and she was skilled at healing. Warmth spread in his che
st as if from a hot stone, and the ice around his heart began to melt. The feeling was as sweet as fresh spring water high up in the mountains.
Awe. Something he did not want to feel for the daughter of his enemy.
Arinborg still looked at him as if she wanted him to say something.
“What is it?” he said.
“Well? Will you allow me to help them?” she asked.
Should he forbid her that? Fool. Of course he should. She had impressed him so much he had forgotten the most important thing. Marrying her. Not letting her escape again.
To all gods, he needed to forbid her. If she moved freely under the pretense of gathering herbs and roots and such, she could run away again.
And yet, if she wanted to be a healer, if it would give her comfort and satisfaction in Lomdalen, maybe she would not want to run away anymore. She could be useful to his people. Solveig did not have as much strength as before and could use any help she could get.
“Yes, you may heal the sick,” he said, and a giant smile spread on her face, beautiful and precious. Seeing her smile for the first time, he wished he could give her something to be joyful about every day. Not that he should care about his enemy’s daughter. He only needed her for cover.
“But after we are wed,” he said. “My men will still guard you. I do not trust you.”
She nodded. “Solveig, you must have herbs and such.”
“Yes, Princess, I do.”
“We need something that contains salicylic acid. Let me think…they derive it from a plant…Filipendula ulmaria.”
She sounded like she was casting a spell. Even Solveig regarded Arinborg with confusion. “What did you say, Princess?” she asked.
“It lowers fever.”
“I use meadowsweet to lower fever.”
“Yes, that’s it! Then we need something with beta-carotene, like carrots, to strengthen the mucous membranes. We need garlic and onion to help fight bacteria…I mean, the sickness. We need oats or barley so that their bodies don’t lose as many fluids. I think we need a stew. The sick should eat plenty of it and drink lots of fluids.”