Page 11

Then she recalled the taproom.

Rain on the shutters. Peat smoke thick enough to chew. Two men at the long table by the fire, one with a gap where a tooth should be, the other with a hand on her elbow that had started polite and was no longer, saying, “Sit with us, lass. Just one drink. Daenae be like that.” Her back against the settle. Her voice, bright and hard, running out of clever things to say.

Freya had always managed to find clever words, but she couldn’t at that moment. Those men had been determined to get her to drink with them and possibly do worse. She had wished they would leave her alone, but they obviously wouldn’t.

Then a shadow had fallen across the table, a big hand had closed over hers, and something cold and heavy had slid onto her finger.

“Ye dropped it again, love.”

She’d looked up to find black hair, dark eyes, and a beard that needed a barber. She’d never seen him in her life, but he was looking down at her the way a husband looked at a wife who was always losing things—fond and long-suffering. And she’d understood, in one dizzy heartbeat, and closed her fingers around the ring.

Then he had turned to the two men watching him carefully. They looked regretful that they had ever decided to start this fight in the first place.

“And who are ye?” he had asked pleasantly. Curiously, even. “Should I kill ye for bothering me bride, or would ye rather I just cut off yer hands?”

The claim that she was his bride should’ve made her angry, but she wasn’t going to bother with that when he was defending her. No, he was protecting her in a way she had not expected from a stranger.

The gap-toothed man had knocked over a stool while getting up. His friend hadn’t stopped to right it. In fact, he had just laughed at his predicament. It showed that one did not need enemies when they had friends like that.

“Thank ye,” she’d said, when the door had slammed shut after them.

“Weak.” The stranger had sat down across from her and reached for the jug. “I’d have enjoyed the hands.”

She had laughed. God help her, she had laughed, because it had been such a ridiculous thing to say.

“So ye wanted to cut off their hands?” she asked now. “I didnae ken ye were the Wolf, but I suppose it makes sense now.”

“Would ye rather I have let them touch ye?”

The question landed somewhere under her ribs and stuck there.

She didn’t let herself think about it. Not the hand on her elbow. Not the settle at her back. Not the other thing, the older thing that sat behind it like a shadow behind a door.

She shook her head once, hard, the way she’d shake off rain. “Nay, of course nae.”

“Then…?”

“Then thank ye.” She pulled the ring off and held it out. “Truly. Ye did me a kindness, and I’ll never forget it. But as ye can see, I’m safe now. I’m with me family. I have no further need of yer protection.”

He didn’t take it.

He didn’t move at all. He folded his arms across his wide chest once again, tilted his head to the side, and looked at her. Not at the ring, but at her. Slowly, from her hairline to her hem and back, as if she were a page he was reading twice.

“What?” she prompted, when she couldn’t bear it anymore.

“It seems ye have it wrong, me Lady. I have come here for a reason.”

Freya stiffened. She had heard that before from men, and it never ended well.

“What do ye mean?”

“I’m nae here for the ring, me Lady. I’m here for me bride.”

She balked. “But ye just said that it was just a lie ye said to protect me—to which, of course, I am grateful.”

He chuckled. “Lass, ye truly daenae remember, do ye?”

“Aye, I just told ye I remembered the two men harassing me and ye coming to me rescue. What more is there to remember?” she scoffed.