“Well, then you don’t get to fuck me in the ass, do you?”
He turned around, his look slightly incredulous but mostly aroused.
Ian walked up at that moment, so Huntley couldn’t say anything more about it. But he stared at me with eyes more intense than they’d ever been, as if fucking me at the foot of the bed hadn’t been enough. His breath released, and his nostrils flared for a moment, like he wanted to grab me by the neck and throw me down right there on the dirt.
I wasn’t staying in that cold cabin with no windows. I was staying in that warm bed. I was bathing in that hot tub. I was sleeping on that soft mattress with that big man beside me. He still had the scar on his neck from where I’d shot him, and it was hard to believe where we started and where we’d ended up.
Ian shifted his gaze back and forth between us, as if he knew he’d just stepped into a private conversation. “She can handle an ax?”
“Yes.” Huntley’s eyes stayed on me.
“She’s not going to chop me into pieces?”
He watched me. “Are you?”
I still wanted to go home, but I knew I would never make it back under the circumstances. Not when I knew about the Teeth, the yetis, and everything else I hadn’t yet learned. I needed a horse. I needed supplies. I needed a chance. “No.”
Huntley looked at his brother.
“Wouldn’t she say that anyway?” Ian asked.
Huntley turned to depart. “Not now. Not after everything she’s seen out there.”
Once I started chopping, I wasn’t cold anymore.
I was sweating.
The men worked on felling the trees, and then I had trunks to chop up. It took dozens of swings just to break off a piece of wood. And then I had to break that piece into smaller pieces. Now that I knew the amount of work that went into this, I would never take a warm fireplace for granted again.
“You’re good at this.” Ian appeared, in the same fur cloak that his brother wore, white with fangs along the edges. They were the only two who wore the cloaks, signifying their royalty. It was like my father and his uniform, the dresses I wore around the castle, the crest that Ryker displayed on the chest of his tunic.
“Just trying to stay warm.” I threw my ax down again and finally broke off the piece I’d been chipping away at. I propped my foot on it and wiped the sweat from my forehead with the back of my forearm.
He presented a canteen.
I took it and downed it.
He reached under his cloak and grabbed another canteen. “Wait, that’s the wrong one.”
“Too late.” Now it was empty, and I tossed it back.
He caught it, but there was a prominent look of surprise on his face. “You drank all of that?”
“Yep.”
“You’re going to chop off your foot.”
“I’ll be fine. Keeps my stomach warm.”
He returned the canteen underneath his cloak and handed me the one with water.
I took a drink of that one too, washing down all the liquor that still coated my throat.
He watched me, not the same way his brother did and not the same way his mother did.
I didn’t have a clue what he thought of me.
“Thanks.” I handed the canteen back.
He gave a nod and returned it under his cloak.
“How did you survive the fall over the cliff?”
He stilled at the question, caught off guard. Several seconds passed as he worked through the question and considered his response. “He told you.”
“Yeah.”
“We got lucky. There was a lake where we landed.”
“And you still survived?”
“I didn’t. I stopped breathing, but my mother brought me back. She pressed on my chest and breathed into my mouth until my heart started again. Huntley carried me until we found a cave. We made it through the night because she knew how to start a fire. If she hadn’t…we probably would have died.”
I pictured all of it in my mind, Ian and Huntley just boys at the time. “How old were you?”
“Eleven and nine.”
“I’m sorry…”
He stared with his intelligent blue eyes, absorbing my look while giving nothing away.
“I mean that.”
“That’s hard to believe. If it hadn’t happened, you wouldn’t have grown up in that castle, experienced luxuries most people don’t even know about.”
“A woman and her children should never be pushed over a cliff to their deaths. They shouldn’t be forced to survive the harshest elements with nothing but the clothes on their backs. That’s not hard to believe.”
He studied me. “So, you believe us? That your father did that to us?”
It was still hard to believe he was responsible for those heinous crimes, that the same violence in his blood ran in mine, but it was getting harder to doubt. “I…I don’t want to.”
When the light was almost gone, Ian walked me back to my cabin.