Lev touched my lips softly before turning away. In a matter of moments his long strides carried him out of the hut and onto the grass.
“Leah,” Tor said, his voice insistent. “Are you hurt?”
I shook my head. “No. I’m not hurt.”
“The baby?” Drogan asked, placing a hand on my belly.
I put my palm on top of his and took a moment to listen to my body. “Fine. But what… what happened?”
Lev called from outside and Tor picked me up in his arms.
“I can walk,” I muttered, but rested my cheek on his warm chest, glad to be held. My adrenaline seemed to have melted away and I was becoming weary.
Tor stepped over a body and he turned my head into his chest, covering my gaze with a firm hand. “Don’t look, Leah.” I didn’t fight him, simply relaxed in his arms and listened to the steady beat of his heart under my ear. A feeling of warmth and safety settled deep in my bones. I’d never felt this content, not one single day of my life before coming here, to Viken and these warriors who had claimed me as their own. I didn’t just have one strong mate to protect and care for me. I had the three strongest men on the planet. The reality of their power, their strength poured into me and I settled my hands over my belly, truly happy for the first time. I was carrying their child, a magnificent amazing child. And these men would watch over and protect my baby as fiercely as they cared for me.
While Tor stopped just outside the open doorway, Drogan went over to stand beside Lev. In the brightening dawn I could see the body on the ground, an arrow lodged in his side; it was the doctor.
Why did he want to kill my mates? Why would he betray his own people?
* * *
Drogan
I was a warrior. I’d seen death firsthand, friends and foes alike. I’d killed some men myself. Blood was certainly on my hands and I was jaded and hardened to such danger. Or so I thought. When men stormed into our hut, knives glinting in the double moonlight, fear pumped through my veins. I wasn’t worried for me or my brothers, only Leah. She was innocent and pure, and carrying our child.
I would protect her with my life. So would my brothers. And we had. But it had been others who had died. Squatting down beside the first man, I rolled him over. Blood seeped from the protruding edges of the knife Tor had used to pierce his heart. Tor wouldn’t have let the man live, nor did he believe a man should suffer before death. His thrust had been exact, efficient, and swift. The man hadn’t even seen it coming. Two more were like that, and a third had a broken neck.
That one was all Lev. He was deadly with a bow, but seemed to take a certain fierce pride in his ability to rip a man to pieces with his bare hands.
I followed Lev across the grass and to the man lying panting on the ground. I recognized the sounds of pain, of fear. Anger. He rolled from his side and onto his back to look up at us. An arrow pierced his side, just below the ribcage. He would not live long, not because of the wound, for it was easily treatable in the medical center, but because I would kill him once we had the answers we wanted. The doctor dared harm Leah. He would die.
“Why did you do this? Who are you working for?” I asked.
He narrowed his eyes. Sweat coated his face as his hand gripped the arrow where it entered his body, his fingers coated in blood.
He laughed, pain etching the sound. “Only those who want to see a better Viken.”
Lev angled his head toward the hut. “Those men, they’re dead. You’re dead next.”
“My death means nothing.”
“Then who should I kill?” I asked, squatting down beside the doctor. The sky was quickly brightening and the dark crimson of his blood was a striking contrast to the grass on which he was sprawled.
“Me.” We whipped our heads up to the voice coming from the woods.
It was Gyndar, the regent’s second in command. He was not meek, or quiet, or unimposing any longer. As he walked toward us in the flowing white robe worn by kings of old, a very modern blast gun pointed at us, it all made sense. The regent’s plan, the attack on Viken United, the assassination. Gyndar wanted power.
“We got in your way, didn’t we?” I asked. I tried to remain calm, to keep my hands from clenching into fists when I wanted nothing more than to walk over to the bastard and break his neck. Surely Lev was thinking the same thing. While I wasn’t surprised to see a weapon on the man, it didn’t fit the image I had of him in my mind. Gyndar seemed more the sort to hide behind smoke and mirrors, to make others do his less than savory work for him. Thus, the doctor was dying in the grass while Gyndar walked free.
“I just had to wait for the old man to die.” He offered a nonchalant shrug.