by Holley Trent
Erin pulled her gaze from her mother and looked at Will. “She can’t talk. Had her vocal cords damaged in some accident when she was a child. I can hear her.” She beamed. “It’s easy. No headache.”
He tucked her hair behind her ear. “See. You work just the way you should, huh? You’re going to have to relay anything she says that’s meant for the group. Only Ollie, and possibly Tess, would be able to pick it up, and even those would be maybes.”
“Okay.” She nuzzled his hand near her ear, as if reflexively, but seemed to realize she was doing it, because she stopped. She cleared her throat. “Um…” She gave her head a shake, as if giving second thought to saying anything aloud. “She wants to know who you are. What should I tell her?”
Good question. He had an opinion, but he wanted to leave the official labeling up to her for the time being.
“There are many more who would defect if they could,” Lee said, picking up Ollie’s conversational thread. “Maybe they don’t say anything in public, but if you listen, you can catch glimpses of what they’re thinking and what they want.”
Erin gave Will’s foot a nudge with her own. “Answer me. What do you want to tell her?”
There were so many labels she could stick to him. Afótama researcher. Former neighbor. Lover. He hoped she’d choose a different one, though, but he wouldn’t feed her the words.
She sneered at him.
He shrugged.
“And what is it that you want?” Tess asked Mr. Arnold.
“I’m scared to say. I figure once I tell you what you came here to hear, you’re not going to be so willing to grant it.”
“I may have a reputation here for being petty, but I promise you it’s a rumor. I’d like to think I’m a reasonable queen.”
“But what I want isn’t reasonable.”
“Try us,” Ollie said.
“Well, you’re not gonna want to hear this, but it has to be said. I tired of holding my tongue, and since I’m sitting here in the company of folks who might actually be interested, I’m gonna go ahead and say it.”
Mrs. Arnold whipped around in her seat and shot daggers at him with her eyes.
“No, Lil, I told you if I had a chance, I was gonna go ahead and say it. If Erin doesn’t like me for it, I’ll deal with it. I’ll take the blame.”
He leaned over the seat and squeezed Erin’s shoulder. “Don’t blame her. She’s not the one with the mouth.” He sat again and crossed his arms over his chest. “Chieftain. Queen. You’ve got snakes in your nest. A lot folks out here in Fallon like that a good deal. They crave seeing the Afótama brought down a few pegs, and while I think some of you certainly need it, I try to hold my malice for the people who deserve it.”
“What do you mean by snakes?” Ollie asked. “You mean the kidnappings? You’re not asserting that those were all inside jobs, are you?”
“No, I wish I could tell you something about that. It’s a shame how all those kids got snatched and that you’re having such a hard time finding all of them and drawing them back in. I’m talking about a different kind of kidnapping. When your matriarch was busy putting out fires after her daughter and son-in-law got killed, and so many of your little ones went missing, your own people were using her distraction to do dirt behind her back.”
Tess turned in her seat and pulled her leg beneath her for a bit of added height. “Nan cleaned house after the others and I were kidnapped. She laid off all the staff and it took ages to hire people back. We did it again recently with me at the helm.”
Erin tensed at Will’s side again, and her energy spiked to that nauseous place of sudden-onset fear and embarrassment. “My father still…works…”
Before Will could pull her close and comfort her, her mother wrapped her arms around her.
That should be me.
That should have been him comforting her, and not some stranger he wasn’t certain he trusted yet. But that was jealousy, and jealously was unfair. He couldn’t be her entire world, no matter how much he wanted to light hers up. And if Erin trusted her, he would have to, too.
“Rewind,” Ollie said. He steered them onto the highway going east and picked up some speed. “Kidnapping in what way?”
“Like Erin was,” Lee said. “But instead of folks doing it in secret, they did it right in front of our faces and thumbed their noses at us. They figured no one would be find out because we’d be too scared to say anything. None of us wanted Muriel pissed at us.”
“If you’d been able to feel my grandmother’s reach, you would have known she wouldn’t have been pissed at you,” Tess said. “She doesn’t consider the folks in Fallon to be as disparate from us as you seem to think you are. After all, my father was one of you. If people in Norseton were doing shitty things, she would have given them the punishment they deserved. But she couldn’t have fixed what she didn’t know about. Now, tell me exactly what you mean about your children.”
“They were using us like we were some kind of kid farm. They would show up here like tourists, you know, and would hang around looking for young, stupid couples like me and Lil. I don’t know how many fell for it. Maybe three or four couples, but that wasn’t the only mess they were up to out here. They told us if we didn’t keep our mouth shut, they’d tell Muriel we did some shit we didn’t do, and that she would rain down hell on us.”
Erin drew her hands back onto her own lap and pulled her elbows in tight to her sides. Her posture was defensive, as if she wanted to take up as little space as possible—to not be visible.
And as much as Will wanted to touch her—to take back the hands her mother had clasped—he gave her some space, because as her mate, he could feel she needed it. He couldn’t give it to her for long, though. The longer she hurt, the more he would. It would be harder for them to pick themselves back up if they both allowed themselves to descend to a dark place.
“Muriel wouldn’t have done that,” she whispered. “She’s a good woman. She’s…like everyone’s grandmother.”
“You know her personally?” Erin’s sister, who’d been quiet up to that point, asked.
Erin stared at her knees and nodded. “My… Well, never mind. He’s the cook at the executive mansion. I spent a lot of time there as a child, and even now.”
“Right under her nose.” Lee shook his head. “Right under her fuckin’ nose. Smiling in her face, probably, while coming out here and undermining the peace between the groups. Of course she wouldn’t have know anything was happening, way out here. Of course you’re going to have a few folks in your midst who still have that Viking wiring. They wanna go out and raid and take what they want. They would have been off her radar, that far away from home.”
“Do you know who the others are who were doing dirt, as you called it, in Fallon?” Will asked.
Lee shrugged. “The few names I know probably aren’t real names, but you can probably figure out if you have extra kids in Norseton you shouldn’t have. You got any sore thumbs there? Folks who don’t quite fit in?”
Will looked to Erin and she looked up at him. Her shoulders where hunched and expression guarded, but some of the fear ebbed and her loud brainstorming came back to him loud and clear.
“Probably wouldn’t want them to know we know. I could probably figure out who’s out of place if I interview them…if they let me interview them. I bet I could figure it out.”
“I bet you could,” he whispered.
She cringed. “Sorry.”
“Stop apologizing. I told you I’d help you with that.”
At the movement in his periphery, he looked to see Ollie pressing his right hand to Tess’s neck and massaging where it met her shoulders. Being so near to her for a change, Will could intuit the anger she fought so hard to keep off the web, and that with Ollie’s touch, she calmed. He helped her rein in the toxic thoughts that could leach into the collective consciousness and create the disquietude that everyone felt, but couldn’t discern the cause of. Because she was queen, they shared her psyc
hic pulse, even if most of what she put out was filtered by Ótama. She had to be very angry indeed.
Betrayal.
After a few minutes of silence, Ollie said, “I imagine the favor you want is to be taken to Norseton.”
“We’re ready to go, Chieftain,” Lee said. “If you’ll have us.”
Ollie took his eyes off the road for a moment and caught Will’s gaze in the rearview mirror. Will could read the question in them—the “What do you think?”—and honestly, he didn’t know what to think.
He looked at Erin, who squeezed his forearm tightly and swallowed. “Please don’t make this be my decision. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I don’t…I don’t want people angry at me.”
Her parents, she meant. The ones who’d raised her, and not the ones in the car. There was going to be upheaval, any way they sliced it, because Tess wasn’t going let things stand as they were, and Muriel sure as shit wouldn’t, either.
He cleared his throat and looked at Ollie again. “Lora has a cabin a couple of hours from Norseton. Maybe she’d be willing to lease it out for a while until dust settles.”
Tess had her phone in her hand in a flash. “I’ll call her. If that doesn’t work, we can find something else. I’d never say no to anyone who genuinely wishes to live amongst us, but we have to be careful with how we integrate people into the community.”
“And out of it,” Erin whispered.
Will entwined her fingers with his and gave the back of her hand a kiss. She already knew what needed to be done. It scared her—he could feel that—but she wanted to do the right thing.
“Sometimes, allegiances change,” he told her. “It hurts when family drama is tangled up in the flux, but I do believe you’ll come out stronger in end when all is said and done.”
“Or I could have even more people hating me for starting rifts.”
“If that happens, we’ll deal with it,” Tess said. “I’ll deal with it.”
Erin cringed.
Will couldn’t help but to laugh. Of course she was going to be overheard. She was sitting in an SUV with three of the most powerful psychics in the clan, and she had telepathic volume control that only worked half the time.
“Deal with what?” Lee asked.
Erin turned slightly and looked at him. “The fallout. There’s gonna be fallout, and I’m gonna to be the one who triggers it. It’s the right thing to do.”
Lee nodded and wore the dopiest grin.
Will certainly understood it. Lee was probably proud of what his daughter had become.
Erin might not have believed she was much to revere, but she had so much potential. She could be a force to be reckoned with—Afótama in heart, if not by lineage. Will would have been a fucking idiot if he wasn’t proud of that, too.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“You are going to get me into so much trouble,” Erin whispered as Will bent her over a large, flat rock.
“You reneging?” He hooked his fingers into the waistband of her sweatpants and wriggled it down a few inches. The warm, desert breeze tickled her backside and made her prickle with fear and anticipation.
“It sounded like it’d be fun.” Then again, she hadn’t been thinking particularly rationally when Will had suggested it. She’d had so much on her mind, and he’d whispered the idea in her ear in that seductive way he had, and rationality flew the coop.
She liked performing for him, liked letting down her defenses one by one and letting him see everything there was to see about her. It was scary as hell, but liberating at the same time. He stripped her defenses one kiss at a time and always left something behind to fill in for what he took away. She wasn’t too proud to admit that she didn’t have her shit together, and he didn’t criticize her for it. He just offered solutions.
She wasn’t so sure public sex counted as a solution for any problem, but a morning of teasing foreplay had left her aching and wanting, so she wasn’t inclined to refuse.
He pressed into her with a torturously slow thrust that made all the air in her body seep out as if she were nothing but a deflating ball.
“Damn.” She bit down into her lip and gripped the edge of the rock, and tried to block out everything that would distract from pleasure. The blinding sun overhead, the occasional shifting of small rocks from wind and small animals nearby, the distinct possibility that they’d be spotted, and if they were, Will probably wouldn’t stop.
“Don’t stop,” she whispered.
“I’ve barely gotten started.” He gripped her waist and pulled out of her, only to thrust right back in, harder and deeper.
“Fuck.”
“Is that request or a complaint?”
She clenched him hard and growled, which did nothing but pull a chuckle from him.
“Do I make you angry when I tease?” He thrust and swirled his hips, massaging her tender passage and already elevating her to that place where she’d have no choice but to fall apart. She’d do it right there on that stone where people could see and she wouldn’t care, because then they’d all know who Will belonged to. The boastful Viking in her liked that very much.
He bent over her and pulled her earlobe between his teeth. The pain added a new and welcome edge to the pleasure, and the ache seemed to radiate through her body to make everything tighter and keener. He nipped her again, and sent frissons down her spine to her sex.
She tightened around him and tried to cry out at the incredible pleasure, but he pressed his hand over her mouth and fucked her harder.
“Will!”
“Don’t try to keep up. If you want to come, come. I’m going to enjoy this as long as I can.”
“Fuck.”
He rubbed against her G-spot again and again, knowing that massage would undo her much sooner than later.
She pushed up on her toes, legs shaking and body aching for release, and with one more skillful stroke, he pulled her metaphorical strings and undid her self-control.
“Yes, fuck yes,” she cried out when he pulled his hand away.
His chuckles gradually changed to moans, and his trusts became slower and more forceful, his grip on her more urgent.
“Give it to me,” she whispered.
“As if I could say no to you.”
“Sure had me fooled.”
Spent, he slipped out of her and helped her fix her pants.
He tied off the condom and tucked it in a napkin he pulled from his pocket, and Erin looked around.
They remained alone on the often-busy trail. “I feel like I should earn a merit badge for this,” she said.
He slung his arm over her shoulder and started her walking toward town. “I don’t know if that’s kinky enough for a merit badge.”
“What would that take? Different hole?”
“Maybe. Wanna come back and give it a try later? I’ll let you know the verdict.”
“I need a little more of a guarantee. If I’m going to drop my pants in public, the least you can do is promise me a reward.”
“My cock isn’t reward enough?”
She tapped her chin in faux contemplation. “Let me think about it.”
He pulled her in for a quick kiss and gave her ass a squeeze. “Maybe think about it while we’re in the shower. I’d like to be early for the meeting for a change. We’re always the last ones stumbling in.”
Erin’s cheeks burned, remembering exactly why that was.
“Tess doesn’t seem to mind. She understands, but we need to at least try to keep our hands off each other long enough to get shit done.”
Erin didn’t want to keep her hands off him. They were trading little parts of each other, and they were both so needy in different ways. Touching was a balm for both. And sex…well. Touching usually led to sex.
“What do you think is going to happen this time?”
“Hmm.” Will paused them at the side door to his building and tapped his keycard against the sensor. “I don’t want to speculate. I do know Muriel read your reports on the people you gue
ssed were Fallonites. I know she wasn’t happy, but she didn’t say anything. I imagine she and Tess wouldn’t do anything without a plan.”
He started Erin up the stairs, giving her butt a little push.
“Especially with folks like…my…”
“If it breaks your heart to call them your parents, don’t. You don’t owe the Petersens anything. You don’t even have to decide how you feel just yet. It’s okay to reserve judgment.”
“Okay. Well, with the Petersens still in the community and none the wiser, the clan leaders will probably have to be careful about how they confront people.”
“And they have to do it before word gets out that they’re interested in asking questions. If they run, we’ll probably never get the information we need.”
“We’ll have one side of the story.”
Will grunted and unlocked his apartment door. “One side’s not ideal, but it gives us something to investigate, at least. Go shower. I’m going to check my email real quick.”
She headed to the bathroom, shucking her clothes as she went, and pondering her place in the impending upheaval.
Ótama had said their kind needed to reunite to regain the strength they’d had a thousand years ago.
But Tess was the realist. She’d said to Erin the previous night when driving her out to Lora’s cabin to see the Arnolds that sometimes, things had to crack further before they came back together. Just like bones that needed to be re-broken so they’d knit correctly.
The Afótama were having a similar problem. They needed a clean break from all the deception of the past few decades before they could fix themselves. Erin was an unexpected party holding one of the hammers. Scared as she was, she’d do what needed to be done.
It wouldn’t be easy, but as Will kept telling her—things worth having were rarely easy.
SERIES NOTE
Dear Readers:
If Erin, the heroine of Viking’s Pride, seems familiar, it’s because she was first introduced in the series opener The Viking Queen’s Men. The boy-next-door Will is a new character to the series, but you’ll be seeing lots more of him. You’ll be seeing lots of both of them, in fact! The Petersen storyline gets picked back up in the very next book—Nadia Hall’s story, Viking Flame.