Silence settled between them, awkward enough it made his skin itch. He couldn’t even look at the bed, never mind do what he really wanted to and collapse in a heap and sleep for a week. Instead, he walked to the door and stared out, his fingers curling on the rough-hewn frame. “You ever feel like you’re in a dream that’s not yours? Like you’ve stepped into someone else’s story… and you’re not sure if you’re supposed to be the footnote or the twist?”
Viper came to stand beside him, arms folded across his chest as he leaned against the wall on the opposite side of the door. He didn’t answer right away. Then, he softly said, “Every goddamn day, but today more than most.”
The hearth popped, and firelight caught on Viper’s tattoos—those new marks that mirrored the ones that crept slowly up his forearm. Ward’s gaze lingered on them for a moment, then slowly rose to meet the other man’s eyes. Neither of them moved as Viper held his gaze. For one breathless moment, the war, the myths, the magic… all of it faded. It was only them. Two men standing in the doorway, drawn to each other, but neither willing to be the first to act on impulses driven by the fire in their blood, the heat in their souls, and the marks swirling up their arms.
Time lost all meaning as they stood in the doorway watching the lake as silence crept slowly across the night. Eventually, thechill in the air won its battle against the lingering firelight and sank into his bones. Ward shivered from both exhaustion and cold and stepped back inside. Viper followed, moving to a corner where his weapons were laid out, almost as if Ward had laid out museum artifacts after a dig.
As Ward sank down onto the bed—because it was that or collapse face-first into the woven floor mat—he watched Viper unsling the rifle from his shoulder with fluid familiarity. The man knelt beside his gear, unscrewed the suppressor, and detached it from the end of his weapon. He checked the magazine and racked the slide back with a click that made something in Ward’s chest settle.
Viper worked in silence as he moved on to checking an eyepopping number of blades. Every time Ward was convinced it had to be the last one, he produced another from somewhere on his person. The clink of metal against stone and the whisper of cloth over steel were almost comforting. Viper’s movements were careful, precise, and respectful as if there was something sacred in how he cared for the tools of his trade. Ward had always found ritual in the quiet work of excavation, the brushing away of centuries to find truth beneath the dirt. He figured this was no different for Viper, because it didn’t look like he was prepping for war. It looked like he was winding down and letting the rhythm of the task ground him.
Ward let his body sink into the thick furs, the heat from the hearth a gentle pressure against his spine. His limbs throbbed with that post-adrenaline ache he usually only got after a long day in the field, followed by an all-nighter in the lab. He didn’t want to talk, and he certainly didn’t want to ask questions he wasn’t entirely sure he was ready to hear the answers to. But hismouth opened anyway. “Why are you cleaning your weapons in the middle of the night?”
Viper ran the cleaning cloth along the bolt. He kept his eyes focused on his task. “Because I never sleep as well when my gear hasn’t been cleaned. It kinda feels like unfinished business or something.”
Ward let out a soft sound that might’ve been a laugh. “That’s… weirdly relatable.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah.” He rolled onto his side, pulling one of the pelts over himself. “I catalog artifacts for hours after digs. Even when I’m dead on my feet, it’s like if I leave them lying around untagged, they’ll forget who they were before I found them.”
Viper glanced over at him, his expression unreadable in the flickering light. “You think they remember?”
“Don’t you?”
The silence that followed stretched between them until Viper returned to his task. “Sometimes. Sometimes I think the ones that mattered remember more than the ones who didn’t.”
Ward closed his eyes and breathed deeply. The air inside the crannóg smelled like peat smoke, oiled leather, and ashes. But underneath it was something more alluring, enthralling.
Him.
It’s him.
He had to say something, because everything he was told him that Viper wouldn’t unless he did. “I’m not sure I’m ready forall this,” he whispered. “Magic. Mate bonds. Warrior kings, not being able to go home.”
“You don’t have to be ready,” Viper said quietly. “You just have to keep moving forward. We’ll figure it out.”
Ward’s fingers curled into the pelt. He stroked his fingers over the soft fur. He was too tired to argue. Maybe… maybe, ‘we’ll figure it out’ was enough… for now.
The fire burned low by the time sleep dragged him under. He didn’t remember closing his eyes, rolling onto his side, or the moment exhaustion overrode the churn of thoughts that had refused to still in his mind. But sometime in the middle of the night, he surfaced—slow, thick, heavy-limbed—like floating up from beneath the surface of something ancient and dark.
The room was nearly pitch-black save for the faint silver wash of moonlight coming through the open slats of the window and the soft red glow of coals in the hearth. The silence wasn’t empty, though—it breathed. Deep and slow, a rhythm that matched the lake outside. Or maybe…
Him.
He was warm against his back. The weight of an arm wrapped around his middle, heavy, solid, unyielding. The long line of Viper’s body pressed full length against his from thigh to calf, and chest to spine. It should’ve startled him. It should’ve had him scrambling out of the bed like it was on fire. But all he could do was lie there, blinking into the dark as the sound of Viper’s slow, even breathing brushed against the nape of his neck.
Ward couldn’t bring himself to move, not even when the arm across him twitched slightly. Then Viper murmured something low and thick. The words sounded as if they were dragged fromhis throat. It wasn’t English or anything that Ward recognized immediately, but his brain recognized the cadence of old Irish. He was just too tired to figure out the exact words.
What the hell?
Viper hadn’t said anything about speaking Irish in any form. He’d picked up bits of Gaeilge on digs before, had tried more than once to wrap his head around medieval syntax, but this… this was something else. Raw. Primal. Beautiful.
The words spilled out again, softer this time, as Viper’s hand flexed against his chest, pulling him in tighter as if Ward were the anchor keeping him from drifting too far from shore.
Ward exhaled slowly as his eyes adjusted to the dark. Faint, like moonlight caught the mate mark and brought them to life, the swirling lines on his arm shimmered where the furs didn’t cover his arm. He craned his neck to peer at Viper’s and frowned as the patterns on his forearm pulsed once, then again… in sync with his own.
Ward’s heart stuttered. He swallowed hard, unable to look away. The patterns were identical, and they moved with the same rhythm, the same flow, like two halves of an ancient script finally brought together after centuries apart.
