Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 112500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 563(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 563(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
High priestesshood.
Rose felt as if she’d been born for that job, as if she’d been training for it all her life.
No one would expect how far she’d go to avenge Lazara the Worthy and rid the coven of a demon-witch who lay down with dogs.
Chapter 32
Dagny
“Look! Emilia is staring after Arctos.”
“She’s staring at his neck,” Torben muttered. “Dreaming of a bite. Why are we even watching them? And why don’t you despise the vampire on sight?”
Dagny lifted her shoulders. “After the strigoi, that little leech appears almost cuddly.” In truth, she wanted something—anything—to change for Arctos, the flinty chief who hid his deep unhappiness behind command and discipline.
Over the weeks since the vampire had arrived, maybe something was changing.
Torben raised a brow. “I fear my warrior mate has a romantic’s heart.”
“You love my heart.”
“By the gods, I do.”
She gazed up at his earnest expression. Wind teased his blond hair, his dark-brown eyes clear and steady. My mate by fate. My love by choice. And that love had multiplied. She rubbed the big curve of her belly.
But lately Torben had grown secretive, protective to the point of smothering. He treated her pregnancy as if it were an affliction instead of a blessing. All because of one careless whisper from a member of the clan, a warning that still shadowed their joy.
Movement in the ravine below drew Dagny’s attention. Queen Yrsa descended the path with her guards, a storm wrapped in furs, to greet Arctos and his wife. The great queen’s power blazed beside the vampiric figure before her.
When Dagny glanced back at Torben, she found his focus narrowed on Yrsa. He often watched her that way—pensive and wary.
The queen’s recent choices had confounded many. Yet Dagny sensed a deeper game: a regent’s long strategy that only Yrsa could see. So Dagny gave her the benefit of the doubt. She always had. After all, if not for the queen’s summons to court, Dagny might never have met her mate.
And if not for Yrsa receiving divine powers at the Channeler Stone, Berserkers would be extinct.
Once the queen moved on, Arctos and Emilia passed below, the vampire’s gaze taking in his interactions with others.
“See that?” Dagny nudged Torben. “Emilia’s noting how the clan admires her husband, and she’s reassessing him.”
The warriors they passed straightened with respect. A few female gazes followed Arctos with more than admiration. He thought his scars made him unlovable; Dagny knew better. He simply intimidated mortals and immortals alike.
“When you speak to Arctos, do you sense his feelings toward her have changed over these weeks?”
Torben shook his head. “He was emphatic. He sees her as a parasite.”
“So that’s why he never brings her to feasts.” Arctos always left the princess behind with a guard posted at his den.
Those clan gatherings had once been rare, but Yrsa now hosted them weekly and would hold one tonight. To keep us content in the absence of war, Dagny suspected. She had slowed her pace for the babe, but afterward…gods help any enemies she came across.
She’d been born to fight, could only be sidelined for so long before she lost control of her Berserkerage. Her inner bear was slow to rouse, yet once risen, only obliteration could satisfy it.
“Maybe he just needs distance,” Torben said. “Yrsa sees to it they’re rarely apart. The leech is always underfoot.”
“And yet he eats little, drinks less, and barely speaks at the festivities. He’s haunted. What could preoccupy a warrior chief so completely?”
“Defense. He’s convinced she’s an infiltrator on a mission to destroy us. I share that conviction.”
It did outweigh the other: that she was the sole, decent vampire of her entire kingdom, and she just happened to scheme to reach their queendom.
“In any case, his desiring a bloodthief isn’t possible,” Torben added. “Not after what he saw done to his family. Those vampires drained his loved ones dry.”
And the same gang had beheaded Torben’s. At least he hadn’t seen his parents’ bodies. But she knew he’d imagined their deaths in a thousand gruesome lights.
Maybe a vampire living among them is too much to ask.
Unless she truly was different. “Emilia eats food though. You told me they share meals.” Vampires usually turned to blood before twenty, which meant Emilia had gone years without.
“For now. When her thirst rises, she’ll turn. A fed cub and a spring bear are two different beasts.” He exhaled. “She’s likely here for sabotage, and once her task is done, she’ll flee back to Bloodreach.” Arctos had posted extra guards over the food stores and wells.
Dagny tapped her lip. “Hmm.”
“‘Hmm’ what, wife?”
“Say Bloodreach dispatched her as a saboteur. Plans can change. When a female meets a good male, things…shift. And Arctos is very compelling.”
“Compelling is my cousin then?” Jealousy flashed in his eyes.
“There, there, my love. I’m taken.”
“Can we speak of something other than this farce of a marriage?” he muttered—then froze as Arctos’s big hand touched the vampire’s lower back to guide her along the trail. Emilia jolted as if shocked; even Arctos frowned at his own impulse.