Chapter Two
SHE HADFOUGHThim valiantly, and for that she had earned a small amount of his respect. But now she was unconscious and bruised besides for her foolish escape attempt, and that made Ragnar less inclined toward positive feelings for his wayward wife.
He hauled her back up onto the horse, adrenaline still coursing through his veins. He hadn’t intended to turn this into a military operation but it certainly felt like a battle.
Why he’d thought it would be different, he couldn’t say now.
All he knew was battle.
And this creature…
He held her firmly as he began to maneuver his horse around to head back to where they had come, to where his private plane would take them back to the palace in Asland.
He would have her examined by a doctor as well. He was certain she’d fainted from fear, but there was a small chance she’d hit her head when she’d fallen. Or rather thrown herself off the back of the horse.
Little fool.
It had been a long time since he’d held a woman. He pushed that thought, and any accompanying desire, aside. There was no time for that. There was a reason he hadn’t indulged himself since taking over the throne. He had to stay sharp.
He felt the moment she woke up, her body no longer relaxed. She sat up against him, her body going rigid.
“Do not fling yourself down to the ground again,” he warned, against her ear.
She turned just slightly, her expression fierce. “Let me go!”
“We have an agreement.”
“I don’t have an agreement with you.”
“You do, signed by your father.”
“I didn’t sign it. It has nothing to do with me, except that my father decided my future without consulting me. That isn’t an agreement with me. Just with the patriarchy.”
“I will see the agreement honored.”
“Then you’re boring,” she shot back.
Boring?
He had been called a great many things, but never boring.
“Yes. Because you’re doing the exact thing that all men do. In the pursuit of power you will ignore everyone else.”
“I am ignoring nothing, little one. I have a country to run and to stabilize. Your father promised you to the next ruler of my country, and that is now me.”
“I don’t want to go with you.”
“I don’t care.”
If she was looking to find a man who might be moved to compassion by sorrow, or helplessness, then she was sadly looking in the wrong place.
All he had ever known was the brutality of survival. He didn’t remember the details of his family. Oh, he had been old enough when the royal family had fallen that he should have some memories of them, of his life at the palace before. But they were gone. Erased by whatever trauma had come that day with the deposition of the king and queen.
With their execution.
He had read about it in documents, in news articles. The king and queen had both been slain in their seaside home, but he had no memory of that day at all, or of any of the days before.
It was his nanny who had helped him escape—so he had been told. Though she had passed him on to members of her own family and not stayed with him, and that was where things had gone wrong.
