behind her. She knew it would be he who would give chase. Though she hadn’t understood his words, she knew that he’d laid some sort of claim to her. She had felt it on the beach. His eyes had claimed her as surely as his hands would if he caught her.
His footsteps were hard on the ground and getting closer, no matter how fast she ran. His heavy gaze bore into her, touching her with its power. It crawled up her back like fingers clawing at her gown and reached for her neck. As he drew nearer, the visceral potency of his scrutiny made her heart leap into her throat and left her knees weak. When she couldn’t take it another moment, when she was sure he would grab her, she ducked around the safety of the forge. But he was there, already rounding the opposite corner of the massive stone hearth to block her path. There would be no hiding from him.
He stood tall and wide before her, bent slightly at the knees, hands ready to grab her. He was larger than any of the men she knew; she was small and slight next to him. His eyes blazed with his intention to have her and she realised there was nothing left to do but fight him. She would long for death eventually if he took her; it was better to have it meted out to her now. She held no illusions of walking away from the fight. He would smite her out as easily as he would an insect. With that realisation, Merewyn’s heart stopped its frenzied beating and a cold certainty descended over her body, bringing with it a calmness she had never experienced.
Her decision made, Merewyn’s fingers closed around the hilt of the seax she kept in the belt at her waist and pulled it from its leather sheath. The long, thin blade would be useless against the chain mail he wore on his torso, so she’d have to aim low...or go for his throat. Just as she debated, he reached out for her, taking the choice from her by making her slash at his arm. She was rewarded with his low grunt of pain. Merewyn immediately pulled back to try again, but he recovered and lunged for her.
She swung blindly, only to have him grab her wrist and twist her arm behind her back. He yanked the knife from her before his other hand grabbed her free wrist and held it pressed to the stone hearth at her back. It happened too fast. Before she knew it, she was staring up into his face, so close that it left her breathless.
Death didn’t seem to be an immediate option. The relentless pound of her heartbeat returned to send the blood whooshing through her ears. It rushed through her so fast and hard, it urged her body to action, but she was stuck, forced to await his judgement. As his gaze raked her, she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was somehow appraising her worth, perhaps wondering how much she might fetch him in the slave market, or if he should just kill her now.
But then she met his eyes, and she realised it was neither of those. The look of fiery possession was unmistakable, and it seared her where it touched. It licked across her face and down her neck, a living flame, burning her up as though she was fuel for the fire. She’d never seen someone look so focused, so resolute. He meant to keep her for himself. He meant to own her...to violate her. She closed her eyes tight against the knowledge.
He didn’t move.
Inches separated his broad chest from hers, but he made no attempt to touch her further. His breath brushed her cheek, calm and steady—not erratic like hers—and she observed it smelled of winter, cool and mild. It was foreign and uninvited, but not repugnant. The hands that held her were firm, but not hard. Nothing was happening as she’d imagined it might.
Confused by his inaction, she chanced opening her eyes to see the sun had finally found an opening in the clouds and was glinting along the knit mesh on his shoulder. Her gaze followed along the corded muscle of his neck, noting absurdly that it was clean shaven. Weren’t the Norse barbarians supposed to be unkempt?
She followed the bearded curve of his strong chin to the hard, straight line of his mouth and upwards over the bizarrely graceful curve of his cheekbones. The man could have been a Viking god. The small lump at the bridge of his nose was his only flaw. She took a deep breath and found the courage to meet his eyes. The blue was vivid in its intensity. It made her stomach twist in fear, but at the same time she realised there was no rage in those eyes. She couldn’t quite identify the emotion that burned there.
He wasn’t a god, she had to remind herself. The small creases around his eyes had been put there from years of squinting into the sun, or maybe it was possible someone had made him laugh enough to create those lines. Merewyn took another long, deep breath and felt his warm breath fill her lungs. It shifted something within her. Faster than her heart went from one beat to the next, she was no longer overwhelmed by her fear. He was real. No longer just the monster sent to tear her world apart. Maybe he would listen.
‘You don’t have to take me. You can leave me here. I haven’t been trained in any skill, so I won’t be of any use to you.’ The words tumbled out before she could get a grasp on them to make them into something compelling. She tried to keep her voice steady as she reasoned with him, but it still trembled near the end. And when his gaze left her face to flick downwards over her body, she knew without a doubt the skill for which he was assessing her. Another pang of terror shot through her, but she forced herself to stay calm and focused her gaze straight ahead. It landed on his hair where she studied the contrast of a single sun-bleached strand against the dark wheat of the rest of it, still damp from the morning’s mist.
‘You would choose to stay with your family when they would give you away?’
He looked to the bruise she knew had formed along her cheekbone. His voice was low, not mocking as she might have imagined it, and the words were his first spoken solely for her ears. The rough texture of it awakened something inside her, and she had no idea what it was. Only that its sound seeped in through her skin and warmed her in the pit of her stomach, claiming some part that hadn’t been given, leaving her startled and disturbed.
She closed her eyes to force it out, but that only made Blythe’s words sound louder in her head. Take her! They hadn’t been forgotten in her fight with the Northman. They still echoed in her mind. What would it mean to stay with her family? Could she stay, knowing that she was expendable to them? Today’s blow wasn’t the first from Blythe. It wouldn’t be the last. But how could she go...willingly? How could she leave Alfred and everything she had ever known and loved? She wouldn’t. She couldn’t submit to being owned by him. Couldn’t resign herself to a fate where she was nothing. Whatever it meant to stay, it would be preferable to the uncertainty of belonging to him.
‘I would stay with my family rather than go with a Dane.’ This time, she made sure her voice was strong.
He was silent as he looked her over, his gaze touching every feature of her face, lingering on the bruise. Merewyn shifted so her hair partially covered it, hating that he could see it. His eyes settled on hers again. She would have sworn he saw deep inside her to that place he had awakened. It didn’t seem fair that he could see so much of her when his face was stoic and closed.
‘If you stay, you will be given away again. To a Dane, to a Saxon. You won’t know until it’s happened.’ He sounded so certain. She hated him for that above all other things.
The words created a fissure in the, until now, pristine tapestry of her mind. Madness lazed in that tiny abyss. She resisted the pull in that direction and tried to shut out his words, to convince herself that he was lying, but there was a profound and underlying truth to them that she couldn’t deny. If someone had told her yesterday that Blythe would utter those hated words, she wouldn’t have believed it. But they had been said. Was it a stretch of the imagination to think she might offer her again?
Nay! Alfred wouldn’t allow it.
But Alfred wasn’t here, came the answer in her mind. She jerked her wrists to try to break free and when that didn’t work she kicked him in his booted shin. It was a fruitless attempt, but she struck out at him as much to deny his words as to get away from him.
His grip tightened and he twisted her around so that her crossed wrists were held tight against her belly and his arms held her within their prison. His chest pressed solidly against her back, holding her front pinned to the forge. The rough stones pressed into her cheek. It was useless to struggle; he completely engulfed her with his size.
‘Deny what you will, but