“I know.” Ragnar sneered. “A runner came and told us.”
Leif glared at him, willing him to act at least a little subservient in front of others—mortal, wholly human Southerners at that. But Ragnar kicked his chin back, torq gleaming defiantly in the low evening light, and stared him down. The bastard.
Leif turned to Leda. “All the Sels in camp are slain?”
“Those that didn’t escape. Another portal opened, and most went through it.” Her lips pursed unhappily to show what she thought of that. She bore a smudge of dirt along one cheek, and her hair had half-fallen from its intricate pile of curls atop her head. Her gaze cut sideways toward Ragnar, and then back. She inclined her head to a regal angle and said, “I want to commend your man, here. He fought bravely, before the animals fled.”
Leif allowed his gaze to slide back toward Ragnar, and he saw the dirt streaked on his arms; smelled the crust of dried sweat when he next inhaled. “With a weapon?”
Ragnar’s lashes flickered; his throat bobbed and shifted the torq. He was offended. “The lady offered me her sword,” he said in a brittle voice that suggested the moment they weren’t in front of others, he’d have some choice words for Leif.
Leda cleared her throat and recaptured his attention. She lifted a single brow in a pointed way. “He also helped to douse the fires. Your man Ragnar isn’t the prisoner you should be worried about.”
“Who…” Leif started, genuinely bemused.
And Ragnar said, “The Sel.” His voice had a low, angry grind to it, and his face was all harsh, sucked-in angles when Leif turned back to him. “Or were you listening when I told you before that he escaped?”
He hadn’t been, no. Not really. But he growled a warning and said, “Yes. But I don’t feel it’s our most pressing concern at the moment.”
Ragnar’s eyes flashed, pupils narrowing in a way that Leif knew it took no small effort not to shift, torq be damned.
Leda said, “Isn’t it, though? Your grace,” she said in a tone that suggested she viewed him now as a child rather than a prince, “how do you think the Sels knew where to strike? More importantly:whodo you think carried Amelia through a portal?”
“No…” he started, but that was the only answer, wasn’t it? The only logical conclusion.
Ragnar bared his fangs in a semblance of a smile. “You have your pet hostage, and she had hers. You both might lose your heads thanks to them.”
17
It was for the best that Ragnar turned and marched back down the hill, but Leif hadn’t given him leave to do so.
He followed.
“The men are in need of direction, your grace,” Leda called at his retreating back, a clear reprimand.
Leif threw a wave over his shoulder and kept walking.
He walked all the way down the road and around the bend, keeping just close enough behind Ragnar to see the dark gold of his hair rippling as he ducked between two guards and entered camp. Then Leif kept walking, past confused Southerners who shouted questions at him; past blackened tree trunks and the wreckage of tents; past his own pack members, who he waved away with a growl. They looked hurt and confused at his rebuff, but he knew they would wait for him, and would follow when he was ready to lead.
For now, he kept walking, following the thick, unhappy scent trail that Ragnar laid down all through camp, and then out the other side of it and down the pine needle-covered slope studded with boulders large and small.
The din of voices and clamor of camp breaking had faded by the time Ragnar’s scent intensified, acrid, boiling with fury, so sharp that Leif pulled up short. He realized that his own heart was pounding in automatic, sympathetic response, and that his hackles prickled unpleasantly. A member of his pack (mate, the stubborn wolf voice said in his mind) was distressed, and it was his job to soothe him. To right all the wrongs, and settle the equilibrium.
Leif could hear Ragnar’s open-mouthed breathing off to his left, and knew exactly where he stood, just on the other sideof a screen of anemic cypress trees. But he didn’t turn that way. He laid a hand on the nearest boulder, its cool, moss-smooth surface, and worked to slow his own breathing; to push an aura of calm out into the air.
In response, Ragnar sucked in a sharp inhale, cursed to himself, and, if anything, grew more agitated. Pine needles crunched and shifted under his boots.
Leif was baffled.
He chuffed in lupine inquiry, and earned a growl in response, low and defensive.
Leif stared ahead, at the stunted tree trunks that writhed and dipped, a frozen portrait of the winter winds that scoured the mountainside. He said, “You care nothing for the Southerners. None of them.” He turned his head, finally, and glimpsed Ragnar standing between the tree trunks, blue eyes glowing in the shade of the branches. He looked small: tucked into himself, shoulders rounded, spine bent, head ducked low enough that his torq was hidden in his hair. “Not even Amelia. Perhaps,” Leif said, comprehension dawning, “especiallynot her.”
Ragnar bared his teeth. “How perceptive of you,alpha,” he snarled, mocking. Irate.Hurt. He sounded as though Leif had hurt him.
“I thought you liked her. I can smell that you want her, at the very least.”
“Almost as much as you, eh? Will you weep now that she’s gone? Rend your clothes? Will you burn the world down to get her back?”
