She stands and starts running toward me, her long hair blowing in the wind, her dress flowing behind her as she frolics. I hold my arms out, ready to embrace her, laughing heartily as she runs to me. My arms wrap around her, finally at home. Right where they should always be.
I hold her a bit longer than usual, inhaling the warmth pouring off her skin. She smells of the sun. My favorite.
“Beowulf, are you okay?” she asks, pulling away from me. Her long lashes fan over her cheeks with every blink as she stares at me with worry. She’s so small, but she isn’t weak. She is strong and smart and the kindest woman I’ve ever known
I should be the one asking her that. Three weeks ago, we buried her father. Three weeks ago, I changed from a boy to a man, and it is a secret I will take to my grave.
Because what I’m hiding will make Lilith hate me. And I’m too selfish to risk ever losing her.
“I’m fine, Lilith. It’s been a long day, and it’s good to see you. You look good.” Fucking beautiful, actually. “The sun is treating you right.” I smile, plopping down in the grass and staring over the cliff where the ocean goes on for miles. I can smell the salt in the air, carried by the breeze, and the birds sing as they fly over us. This is why it is our favorite spot. “How are you doing?” I nudge her knee with mine.
Her sigh breaks my heart. It’s my fault she feels like this. Guilt eats away at me. I’m so close to telling her the secret weighing down my heart, but I can’t.
“I’m getting better. My father wasn’t always the kindest man, you know, but he was still my father. Mother is a wreck. I don’t know how she will get through this.” She tucks a piece of her hair behind her ear, showing silver jewellery lining the outer rim.
“You always have me,” I offer in the softest voice I can muster.
“If anything happens to you, I’ll kill you myself, Beowulf.” She rests her head on my stomach. I hold back a hiss of pain. The slice across my stomach is still healing. A wound she has no idea about. A wound I will never discuss with her, ever.
“Always insistent of calling me by my full name,” I run my hand through her silky hair, loving how it glides through my hands so easily. “Call me Wulf, like everyone else.”
“We’ve had this conversation a hundred times. I am not everyone else. Your name is Beowulf, and that is what I will call you.” She lifts her head from my lap and gives me a hard, calculating stare. “Is that clear?”
“No, I’ll still try and convince you to call me Wulf. I can’t stand my full name.”
“Always so annoying, Beowulf.” She rolls her eyes and lies her head back down on my hard stomach.
“You love it,” I whisper, running my hand down her arm until my hand is covering hers. I hesitate for a moment. Should I try to intertwine our fingers? Would she accept it? I’m not a man afraid of much, but I’m afraid of this.
I swallow my fear, telling myself if I can run into battle, I can hold the hand of the woman I care for. Taking a deep breath, I hold it and take the plunge, locking our hands together. When she doesn’t pull her hand away, the beat in my chest pounds so hard I can barely hear myself think. Seconds go by, and she still holds my hand tight.
Nothing has ever felt so fucking good. It feels right and natural. I feel complete. It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her I love her. That I always have and will. I want to tell her all the dreams I have for us, but one mountain at a time. I consider her holding my hand an accomplishment. Tomorrow. Tomorrow I will tell her that we are meant to be together. She must know. She must feel what I feel.
Something this powerful and strong, it can’t be one-sided. It just can’t.
“You always make me feel so safe,” she says, her head turned to the other direction as if she is speaking to the sun.
I hear her words for me though, and tighten my hand in hers, leaning my tall frame forward and kiss the top of her head. “I shall always keep you safe, Lilith. I do not care if it kills me. You’re always safe with me.”
She turns around, straddling my waist, and I gulp heavily. I’ve never had a woman in my lap before. Lilith wraps her arms around my neck, and my hands land on her slender hips. She’s fragile and delicate. I had no idea I was capable of a gentle touch until I got to touch her. She showed me the kind of man I truly am. The man I want to be for her.
“You truly mean that, don’t you?” She tilts her head to the side, never taking her eyes from mine. Her hair tickles my arm when the breeze causes it to dance in the wind.
I gather the wayward locks in my grasp, so they don’t get tangled, and nod. “Aye, of course I mean it. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you, Lilith. I think… I think I’d go mad. You are like an angel to me.”
Her forehead falls to mine, and her sigh brushes across my lips. The chance to kiss her is here. It’s right here.
“Angel,” she giggles softly. “I like that. I feel the same, Beowulf.”
She tilts her head back up, and we inch forward, our lips closer than ever before. My heart stops beating. The world fades away, and it’s just her and me. Her body on mine, my hand brushing her cheek, and our noses brushing together. Goddess, this is what I have been waiting for.
“Lilith!” a woman screams from the other side of the forest. It sounds like her mother. The sudden intrusion snaps us both out of it. We groan in frustration.
I flop to my back, and she stays upright, on top of me. She looks good up there, something I’ve also dreamed about multiple… no, a hundred times. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Beowulf.” Lilith swings her leg over and stands.
I follow suit and grab her wrist before she gets too far from me. “Let me walk you home, so I know you are safe,” I say, rubbing my thumb on the soft skin under her palm.
“You worry too much. I’ll be fine. Like I am every time. No one can see us, remember?”
“Fuck them,” I growl. “Who cares? I don’t. I want to know you are safe.”
“Beowulf,” she repeats my name with exhaustion. We have had this conversation a hundred times. “You know we can’t. Not yet. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She slides her knuckles down my cheek, and my eyes close, embracing her touch. I place my hand on hers, not wanting her to go. And suddenly, she places her lips against mine. It’s quick. Almost too quick to even know it happened.
But it did.
“Tomorrow,” she whispers.
“Always, Angel,” I say, watching the love of my life walk away from me, taking a piece of me with her.
Chapter One
Beowulf
Present day
“I should have followed you home,” I whisper to her still body lying in a bed that swallows her small frame. “I should have told you that there was no arguing. That I was going to get you home safe, but like always, the love I had for you made me weak in the knees. And I let you go.” I hold her hands tight, but not too tight; I do not want to hurt her more than she has been already.
She’s so thin. Her cheeks are sunken in, showing how high her cheekbones are. Dark circles frame her eyes. She has cuts, bruises, and dried blood in her beautiful blonde hair. All these years, she has been with the Jackals being tortured. Goddess, the images running through my head of what they may have done to her make me so fucking angry. I should have looked harder and longer. I shouldn’t have given up.
How will she ever forgive me knowing I gave up after five years? She stayed with those monsters for seven more years. “What did they do to you, Angel?”
I run my hand over her head, hoping my touch is enough to open her honey-colored eyes.
“Wulf,” my Warlord Einarr’s voice brings my warrior to the surface. I shake my head and get myself together.
Placing her hand down on the bed as gently as I can, I lean over and place a kiss on her forehead. “I’ll be right back. I won’t leave you again. Aye? I promise.” I don’t bother whispering. I no longer care who knows how I feel about her. If they have a problem with it, they can take it up with
me, and being six and a half feet tall, no one challenges me.
I tuck the thick wool blanket to her chin to make sure she is warm, and turn around, giving my Warlord my full attention. “Aye, Warlord?”
Einarr peers around my shoulder to get a look at Lilith. I shuffle my stance to block his view. He lifts a brow at me, a silent question passing, but I keep my mouth shut.
“So it is true. You know this girl?”
“Woman,” I correct him. “Aye. We were childhood friends.”
“Is that all?” he asks. “I need to know if she will be a problem for you to perform your duties. We are preparing for war, Wulf.”
“I know that Warlord, but with all due respect, I have not seen her in twelve years. I searched for her for five of them. I thought she was dead. She is my priority. Everything else is secondary. And if that’s a problem, I don’t really fucking care.”
I shrug my shoulder and run my hand over the beginnings of a my beard as he watches me. Many emotions pass through his eyes, anger being one of them. Einarr is a fair leader, but he hates disrespect. I don’t mean to disrespect him, but I will not tolerate anyone speaking about Lilith that way. Not even my Warlord.
“You won’t speak to me like that again, or I’ll make sure you won’t see her for months, understood?”
“I’d just break out from wherever you put me, Warlord. Nothing shall stop me from protecting her. As if you wouldn’t do the same for your Lady.”
His eyes soften immediately when he thinks of Lady Thyra, the woman by his side. “You’re my best warrior, Wulf. I need you.”
He spins on his heel, his long fur on his back swishing as he goes. “Don’t ever use Thyra against me again. It won’t end well for you.” Einarr doesn’t give me a chance to respond. He disappears through the doors, Trident at his side.
Trident gives me a look as if I’ve lost my mind, and perhaps I have. I haven’t had a clear thought since I picked her up in the woods, carefully cradling her broken body against mine. I think a part of me is in disbelief. I’m in one of my dreams that I have every night. This one just so happens to bring her home to me. It can’t be real, but it feels like reality. I’m so confused. There is no way the only woman I have ever loved is in my life again.
When she wakes up, she might not feel the same for me as she used to. I’ve changed. I’m not a child anymore. I’ve seen horrible things. I’ve done terrible things. My body is scarred with hundreds of wounds from battle. My soul has hardened. I’m not as innocent as I used to be. Goddess, I’m not innocent at all. I’m not the man women love. I’m the man they fear.
I’ve taken all my anger, frustration, and thirst for revenge for what happened to Lilith into every fight I’ve ever been in. It’s probably why I’m Einarr’s best. I wield a sword like no other. And when I win, and I always win, I get any woman I want. Sometimes more than one. But that life tires me. Leaves me exhausted and unfulfilled. I do not wish to be the kind of man who arrogantly just fucks women and leaves them behind.
I wouldn’t be this man if Lilith didn’t disappear. I know that I would have spent these last twelve years with her. She is the kind of woman who changes the fate of a man, and she would have changed mine.
I can’t change who I have been or what I have done. I can be there for her now, love her now, care for her now, only her. And maybe she will see that somewhere, underneath the armor and cold heart, the innocent boy she kissed in the meadow is still there. He’s just under all the other bullshit life has thrown at him.
Maybe.
I plop back down in the chair next to her bed, lay my forehead against my palms, and scoff. There’s no way in hell that boy is still there. He is gone.
“Wulf?”
“Fucking, hell. What?” I snap. I just want to be left alone with her. Is that so much to ask for?
“You want to rethink how you greet me, Wulf?”
Damn it. I’m a fool. “Lord Grimkael. I’m sorry. I didn’t notice it was you. Apologies.” I drop to a knee and bow my head. I’ve always been the kind to react first, think later. If the Lord punishes me, I won’t be surprised. I’d take it like the man I am.
He puts his hand on my shoulder and pats the heavy armor. “Get up, Wulf. I’m a reasonable man.” He sits down next to me in the empty seat and laces his hands together across his stomach, staring at the prone body in the bed.
I can’t block his view of Lilith, not without getting punished or my attempt being conveyed as a challenge. I may be an ass, but I’m not stupid. Lord Grimkael can make my life a living hell if I fucked up enough with him.
“Einarr tells me you know this girl.”
The question is within the statement. He wants me to tell him what I know. Begrudgingly, I comply. I stand from my kneeling position and sit in the chair that I’ve warmed for the last two days and take her hand in mine.
“Her name is Lilith Black. We grew up together. She was my closest friend. I’ve known her since we were just children. She went missing twelve years ago when she was fifteen. I searched for her for five years and never found a thing. This was when the Jackals were still underground. I didn’t know they existed. I finally accepted she was dead.”
I rub my thumb across her withering hand, noticing her protruding blue veins. I can count the bones in her hands from her thin, translucent skin tugging across them.
“You love her,” he states in a low gruff.
“Aye, what of it?” I ask, feeling defensive. Lord or not, if he orders me to choose between her or this kingdom, I shall choose her. It shall always be her and we shall run like we should have done all those years ago.
“Stand down. I’m just making an observation. I want to know the girl. Does she have any enemies besides the Jackals?”
My stomach twists when I think of the one enemy she will have one day. I hold that inside and decide not to tell Lord Grimkael that information. “No. I do know her mother killed herself seven years ago. The loss of her daughter and her husband was too much for her to bear.”
“What happened to her husband?”
“He was beheaded a few weeks before Lilith was taken.” I wait to see if he asks for any other information. Not that I can give him any besides a confession.
“Einarr tells me you are choosing to stay here. I want to let you know that we will be gearing up for war. We have recruited many new men and must immediately shore up our defenses. Everyone is needed.”
“What? Why didn’t anyone tell me this?” I roar, anger coursing through my veins that no one came to me. I am a warrior. I should have been there when they made that decision. That’s who I am. It’s what I do.
“You were not at the last battle when you took Lilith back to the castle. When the Jackals fled, they said they would be back. I do not know if that means tomorrow or months from now. I need you to be ready. Whether she is awake or not, you will fight.”
“Aye, of course I will, Lord Grimkael.” I nod, knowing I have to pick and choose my battles, metaphorically speaking.
“Also, the Jackal Queen has escaped.”
Ice replaces the blood in my veins, making my entire body run cold. “What? How? That’s impossible. She was in the tunnels. No one can get down there.”
“It must have been a Jackal. It’s bad news. It means they got what they wanted. That’s why they fled. They are going to regroup and grow and come at us hard. We need all the men we can get.”
“That’s why Warlord was in such a pissed off mood,” I grumble. Einarr’s job just got a lot harder. He will have to go to surrounding towns that Lord Grimkael still rules over and recruit men sixteen years old and up.
Warriors used to come from a line of warriors, born and bred for battle. Times are different now. We need every man we can if we want to win against the Jackals. I think Trident and I may be some of the last of the ‘warrior bloodline’, not that it matters. If someone can swing a sword, they can fight.
“Aye, you caught on to that, did ye?” Lord Grim sighs. “He is such
a pain in the ass when he is moody.” He stands, pushing himself up from the chair. It creaks from the weight of him, threatening to give out. He looks down at the seat and kicks it.
“We need stronger stuff. Built for Vikings. Not fucking babies,” he growls and walks away. “Good luck with your lady, Wulf. I’ll be in touch.” The ruler disappears out the door, leaving me alone with Lilith once again.
I run my fingers up and down Lilith’s arm and sigh. “It’s hectic around here right now, but I promise I’ll protect you when you wake up. I swear it, Lilith.”
I settle back down into my chair and keep talking. Maybe if I do, she might hear me. She might wake up.
“You know, I remember the day you were taken. I’ll never forget it. I think about it every day, sometimes dream about it. It fucking haunts me. It’s my worst nightmare, but on the same day, that day… That day brought the best thing in the world, and that was your lips on mine. I waited so long for that. Goddess, I was ready to tell you how much I loved you. I wanted us to run away together, but fear held me back. And then you were gone. I heard your scream.”
I choke up when I remember how loud, broken, and frightened it was, still clear in my mind all these years later. “My life ended that day. I became a different man. I looked for you. I thought I’d get to you in time because I didn’t think I was so far behind the Jackals. You were just out of sight, and I could catch up. But damn it, you disappeared. It was like you never existed. But I knew you did. My life darkened that day. My soul as black as sin. If you wake up, you might not like what you see, but I’m begging you to wake up to see if you do. Because I love what I see, Lilith. You’re still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on. You are still my Angel, and you always shall be. Just wake up.”
But she doesn’t. As the night wears on, she’s still as a stone. I get up and lay down in the bed next to her, keeping my hand with hers because nothing will ever separate us again.
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