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)
“Arctos!” called a voice, rousing him from memories. He passed his cousin, who was more a brother, with his pregnant mate beside him. Though Torben had previously enjoyed nothing more than plowing through bedmates, he’d somehow earned his ohalla kills before Arctos and had found his actual fated mate, a beauty named Dagny.
Torben raised his blond brows. “You look ready for a fight.”
“Fortune favor me,” Arctos said. “Though none could be as fortunate as you.” Berserker mates had become so rare that they’d begun to wed outside those destined connections, just for survival. Not so for Torben.
“As I like to remind him.” Dagny buffed her nails, her boldness on fine display. “He feels his luck, I assure you.”
“Indeed.” Torben grinned down at his female with pride. His heart given. About to be a father. Dagny’s very name meant “new day,” and she had been for the once aimless Torben.
Arctos was happy for them but also a touch envious. As a male facing his own mortality, he wanted nothing more than to continue his line. Yet few females would throw their lot in with a Berserker who’d teetered at the edge of ohalla for so long. Not to mention his missing eye and scars.
Berserkers said his bear marking and survival as a boy made him a type of chosen warrior. Chosen by bears, yet never by a female. He didn’t blame them.
“Talk later?” Torben asked.
“I’ll stop by on my way home.” To his empty, echoing den…
He passed the Channeler Stone. Moonbeams haloed the Berserkers’ most sacred monument, a huge monolith that lightning had carved into a bear shape.
Legend held that after the Exile, Yrsa had touched the stone and a bolt had struck it, giving her wasted clan their power of Berserkerage and the possibility of ohalla. Without these gifts—without the first channeler—they’d be dust beneath vampire boots.
“Ah, my lord of shields.” Yrsa’s voice rolled across the court, turning heads. “Arctos of the Wintry Eye.” Clad in a gray kirtle with a fur draped over her shoulders, she appeared fearsome, and not just because her Berserkerage was a thing of dark renown. Her crown was fashioned from claws and fangs, her throne of bear bones. “You look like a predator on a scent. What’s made your icy gaze so intent?”
“I’ve news.” Arctos relayed Inkletter’s report.
She listened, expression as sharp as a blade. “You trust this incubus?”
“I do. I’ve known him for years. If he says the vampires are making a power move, then they are. I’ve asked him to dig and get a timeline, but I don’t believe we can wait.”
“Can this princess trace?”
“She can’t. Likely has some other power. All the more reason to strike before it ripens.” Emilia Vlădescu could be a spellcaster or a dragon shifter.
Murmurs rose—excitement, aggression. This was why he’d trained his people so hard, prepared so much.
Yrsa canted her head, and her mahogany mane spilled over her shoulder. A bolt of silver, like a Valkyrie’s lightning, shot through her tresses, the only hint of her ancient age. After a beat, she said, “You’ll lead a small incursion. I want this valuable princess, Arctos. Go and fetch her for me.”
“A raid? We need a war!” As immortality danced out of reach for many like Arctos, dissension in the queendom mounted. Would the great Berserkers return solely to mortality for the vampires to pick off once more?
She arched a brow at his tone, and her lips curled without humor, reminding him of the bear he’d attacked as a young boy. When it had opened its jaws, Arctos had sworn he’d witnessed Valhalla inside its bloody gullet. Or fate.
Moderating his voice, he said, “My queen, you know I remain just eight kills away from ohalla.”
Her pelt-brown eyes narrowed. “Then go alone with your incubus,” she said softly. “And pray the princess has eight guards between you and immortality.”
Chapter 6
Ditch
Mount Nothrior
The wolf king is…strange.
He stood rigid before Ditch and Meera, heart hammering like he’d sprinted the whole climb.
His gaze flicked from her horns to her barely noticeable fangs to her swaying tail (her appendage had a mind of its own). He catalogued everything—leather pressing against her breasts, the way this catsuit hugged her crotch.
The male was handsome enough with his seven-foot-tall frame packed with muscles and his thick head of chestnut hair. He had even, masculine features and a strong jaw that hinted at legendary stubbornness. Against his tanned skin, his eyes were the color of Akelarre’s gray mists.
They called to mind the haunted hills and lakes of her perilous home world.
Still he said nothing. What she wouldn’t give right now for her witchly power to read others’ deepest desires. In this place, Ditch couldn’t divine his, could only read the edges of it. Hunger. “Are we just going to stare at each other, wolf king?”
He shook his head, jaw flexing as if he gnashed his fangs. He’d shoved up the sleeves of his dark blue tunic, and his clenched fists made his forearms bulge attractively.