“No!”
Alarik couldn’t be sure which voice carried more insistence, Anna’s or Ragnar’s. An interesting response, to be sure. He leaned back slightly, taking their measure. Both faces bore scowls worthy of a battlefield, and he couldn’t help but chuckle “You look as though I’ve loosed Fenrir.”
Anna stooped, snatched up her sewing basket, and positioned herself like a shield beside Ragnar. “This woman—” she hitched her thumb over her shoulder at the sleeping Cassie— “is as useful as a three-legged mongrel. She tries, I grant you that, but my own blind Gwenn keeps a better hearth and home. Don’t play the fool, Alarik. I know she carries your seed. You’ll not foist her and your by-blow on me. I’ve mouths enough to feed.”
He studied her face for a tell. Some twitch of mirth or spark of amusement in her gaze. But she merely set her jaw like forged iron. Either Anna was a consummate player, or—by Thor—she believed this.
His gaze drifted to Ragnar, whose color had drained. His hands curled into fists so tight, his knuckles blanched bone white, and a vein stood sharp at his temple. His chest rose once—controlled. Not outrage. Something worse. Something wounded.
What sort of game was this?
Alarik scoffed, shaking his head. “Your folly, both of you. This jest won’t catch. I’ve never once—”
A thunderous crash near the back door stole the rest of his sentence. Logs clattered and rolled across the packed-earth floor, the sound ricocheting off the rafters. Cassie stirred, moaned, but did not wake.
Magnus stood in the doorway, wide-eyed and frozen, his massive arms conspicuously empty and firewood still rolling at his feet. “Magnus sorry,” he said simply.
Ragnar’s gaze flicked to Cassie, concern written in the crease of his brow.
And that’s when Alarik understood.
Whatever this woman was to his cousin was no small thing. Strange, that. He’d only met her nigh an hour ago.
Casting a single, murderous glance at Alarik, Ragnar stomped past Magnus like wind battering a tree, knocking the big man off balance and disappearing into the daylight with fury trailing behind.
Alarik scratched the back of his neck. He’d caught the distinct impression that if his cousin carried a broadaxe, it would be buried in his own skull by now. But why? Jealousy? Impossible. And yet Ragnar had looked less like a warrior ready to fight and more like a man who had just been struck where no shield could cover him.
Why would Anna have conjured such a thing?
