Startled, I could only stare at him with my mouth gaping open. “You’re the alpha.”
He stared down at our sleeping queen in his arms, his face twisting with agony. “Only at her behest.”
“Which is all you need.”
“An alpha can’t be weaker than another in the group.”
Now he was starting to anger me, which was not easy to do. I might be vocal about minor irritations, but I never allowed true rage to overwhelm me because it’d be extremely difficult for me to claw or fly my way out again. “There’s a reason I don’t like to be reminded of my full name. No one in their right mind would claim the Black Mountain is weak.”
“The Black Mountain fell into the Endless Slough.”
Fighting the urge to shift my arm into a sword and stir up the essence in his gut, I settled for a heavy hammer and gave him a few solid whacks in the back. “Youjumpedinto the Slough to save our brother. You did what needed to be done to reach himdespitethe Eternal Slough flowing all around him. I sure as fuck didn’t risk myself to fetch him from the rings, but you went without hesitation. That’s the kind of alpha any queen needs.”
The ice man entered the bedchamber carrying a bundle of fresh linens. Since Dörr still held our sleeping queen, I started tohelp Lokken roll Svar off the bed. But as soon as I touched him, Svar leaped up out of the bed like Karmen’s blood sizzled on his backside. Whipping his head from side to side, he crouched, panting, searching until his gaze fell on our queen curled against Dörr’s chest.
Svar’s crystalline eyes clouded over with thick oily essence that streamed down his face. “She’s injured. Goddess below, I knew it.” Baring his teeth, he leaped at me, burning his claws in my midsection. He bit my shoulder to the bone and tried to shake me off my feet.:Why the fuck didn’t you stop me?:
“She’s fine, you fool.” I clubbed him on the head with my hammer fist, even though that clashed his teeth together and he bit a hunk out of me. “Nice of you to think I could have stopped the Endless Slough singlehandedly. Which only validates my argument with our alpha. Only he could have truly stopped you outside of Helayna herself.” I shook him off and grimaced at the black dripping down my arm and chest. “At least make yourself useful and help Lokken. I don’t want to foul the fresh linens before we even get them on the bed.”
Instead of moving toward the bed, Svar hesitantly stepped nearer to our alpha. He stretched out his trembling hand toward our queen but didn’t dare touch her. “She’s unharmed?”
“After she subdued you, she shifted into a dark alfar like us,” I said. “She gained even more power.” I couldn’t help the edge of glee creeping into my tone. “I took her flying.”
Now it was his turn to gape. “She’s like us? How?”
“How are we here on this side of the tree? The same magic.”
“Our queen is mighty indeed.” Lokken made quick work of the first layer of bedding. “Which we should discuss. All of us, at some point, though I don’t think anyone’ll be able to lure Gunnarr from the table for at least an hour or two.”
:I can hear you just fine,:the bear said in our bonds.:I guess that’s why you hear me so clearly. What’s up?:
“You’re not Aima,” Lokken began, a hesitant look fleeting across his face. “I mean no disrespect, and I don’t mean this as any sort of challenge to your authority, alpha. But she’s extremely powerful. I spoke truly when I said she’s strong enough to be a Triune queen.”
Dörr carefully laid our queen into the bed, and they tucked her in beneath another soft blanket. Then they moved back to me and Svar in front of the fireplace, keeping our voices low so we didn’t disturb her.
“I don’t know what the Triune is,” Dörr said. “Though I agree she’s a formidable queen. I knew the moment we heard her call from inside Jörmungandr she would rock Yggdrasil’s branches with her might.”
“The Triune is a group of queens who rules all Aima,” Lokken replied. “They represent the goddesses, and if I’m not mistaken, even speak for the Great Mother of All. They’re usually the oldest, most powerful queens who have slowly consolidated their power base to make a claim to join the Triune. I don’t know much more about how the choices are made or the hierarchy among queens, but I raise this as a concern because there’s at least one open seat on the main Triune.”
“We met a Triune queen,” I said. “Though she seemed very young to me.”
Lokken’s eyes flared. “Really? What was her name, do you recall?”
“Shara Isador.”
“Isador. Hmmm.” Lokken frowned, shaking his head. “I’ve not heard of that house. I know the names Queen Marne Ceresa of Rome and the queen known only as the Dauphine, formerly from France. There’s another darker Triune, but I can’t recall its name.”
“Triskeles?” Svar asked. “I’m sure the Isador Blood introduced his queen thusly.”
Lokken shook his head. “I’ve not heard of Triskeles before. The consiliarius will be able to explain much better than I anyway. But she’s not Blood. She won’t know what it means to us for our queen to rise to the Triune.”
My tone sharpened. “What will it mean for us?”
“The more powerful a queen is, the more Blood she needs to sustain her power. It’s very likely that Gunnarr’s the first of many new Blood she may Call.”
:Plus her Call was extremely powerful,:Gunnarr added.:Nearly capsized my canoe when I felt it slam into me. A Call like that could raise the dead.:
“More Blood won’t be a problem.” I started to shrug off the man’s concern but Dörr remained silent, his bond a heavy cold weight in my head growing grimmer by the moment. “Even more powerful Blood. Older Blood. It doesn’t matter. She loves you. She loves us.”
