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But young though he may have been, he was a prince, also, trained and true; and before the wolf had stripped him of manners, he’d learned how to handle these sorts of tenuous conversations with aplomb. He inclined his head in the first show of deference. The first hint of anything like respect she’d seen from him since Alpha first landed amongst the snapped-in-half trees.

His voice evened out, more polish, less gravel, when he said, “My pack – my men and I have come ahead of the main Phalanx as emissaries, yes,” he said, conveniently leaving out the part about coming without permission, against the king’s wishes. “It was our intention to rendezvous with you and your men so that we could discuss our common enemy, and a possible alliance.”

“Possiblealliance?Wasyour intention? Has something changed?”

Before he could answer, Ragnar stepped up beside him. Hooked an arm over Leif’s shoulder, casually intimate, though Leif stiffened beneath his touch. “Don’t go turning the lady away on my account, cousin.” His gaze raked Amelia head to toe in a bold assessment of the sort she’d rarely received from other men – andneverreceived in a manner as salacious as this.

Her face heated…and her belly, the low, slow-coal warmth of arousal she hadn’t thought to feel after Mal. She tamped it down, as Leif turned and growled at his packmate.

Unbothered, Ragnar met his gaze and gestured at her. “I’m only saying. She–”

“Mind your tongue,” Leif snarled, and his tone not only quelled Ragnar – he stepped back, hands lifted – but sent a hard shudder down Amelia’s back. To her, he said, “We shall discuss an alliance. Perhaps as we travel.” Clipped tone, gaze withdrawing, dismissive.

“Yes,” she said, aiming for regal, and falling far short. “That will be fine. Let me or one of my men know if you require anything else tonight.” She spun, and marched from the tent – the dark-haired wolf moved to lift the flap for her – and didn’t stop walking until she was tucked away safe and hidden against Alpha’s side, where hopefully no one could hear the quick pounding of her heart.

~*~

Leif waited until Amelia had been swallowed by the dark – he could still see her, but no human could have, at this distance – then he rounded on Ragnar with a snarl.

The bastard had the nerve tochuckle. “You’re angry, alpha.”

Leif swiped at him, and Ragnar stepped neatly back, so his hand whistled harmlessly through the air.

Both of them knew that Leif could have gripped his hair, or his shoulder, or his throat if he’d truly wanted to – just as they knew that Ragnar would have gone down on his knees, head bowed in submission if it had been truly required.

Leif had grown far too lenient.

That was, perhaps, why he growled loudly and sharply enough to have Vidar scrambling to his feet. Leif caught sight of him, and tipped his head toward the tent flap. “Leave us.”

“Yes, alpha.” Vidar roused Harald, and then helped him limp from the tent and out into the night. They would be more comfortable out there bedded down in the cool grass anyway, curled up beneath the stars. For his own part, the confines of the tent were making Leif’s skin itch. It smelled of her, of Amelia. Her saddle bags, and extra cloaks, and furs, and somewhere, buried amongst the luggage, a spare pair of trousers blotted with her sweat and the dewiness between her thighs.

The wolves stationed outside could doubtless hear them, but for Leif, the semblance of privacy was enough. When they were alone – in body, if not in hearing – he put a hand in the center of Ragnar’s chest, andpushed. Not hard enough to knock him down, but it moved him back until he hit the tent’s center support pole, where he landed with a wince, a hiss, and a grin.

“I’ve just been shot, you know,” Ragnar complained, but his head was tipped all the way back against the pole, throat stretched and exposed, the torq gleaming in the lantern light.I yield, alpha. I’m yours. “You could show some care.” His lower lip jutted out in an exaggerated pout.

Leif bared his teeth, and the pout disappeared. They both knew that Leif had stood over him the entire time the Southern medic tended to his wound, flushing it and smearing it with unnecessary salve; that he’d growled and snapped at Amelia’s “general,” Lord Connor, until the man had wisely beat a hasty retreat.

“You’ve gotten too bold,” Leif warned, without any heat behind the words.

Ragnar grew serious – it was always eerie, when he did that, when the charmer and the clown dropped away, and left behind a sort of lethal intensity more acute than Erik’s most serious, kingly countenance. Erik might have been stern and broody…but Ragnar burned with a kind of murderous, bitter heat that still staggered Leif, at moments. Moments like these.

When he swallowed, the torq jumped, flash of silver in the low light. “And you’re still denying what you really are,” he countered. “What you reallywant.”

Leif’s heart began to hammer, and the flicker of Ragnar’s lashes said he heard it. “How would you know what I want?”

No grin this time; no more teasing. “I know you want that woman. I know you scored your own palms just now to keep from grabbing her.”

Leif passed a thumb over the claw marks he’d left in his palms – and then balled his hands into fists to hide them. “That’s just base, animal instinct.”

“Yes. That’s the most important kind. That’s thetruth.”

Leif leaned in close – not because he had to; they both knew that, too. “What would you have me do? She’s not a paid whore. I can’t throw her down and mount her.”

“You could start byaskingher. You smelled her; you heard her heart galloping. She was excited.”

Hehadsmelled her, had heard her. Had watched her tip her head back, and draw herself up, as brave and stubborn as her sister and cousin, but with a steely undercurrent. “She wasafraid,” he countered…but there’d been something else, there, too. A spark of interest. Perhaps against her will. A hectic, trapped-bird emotion that had manifested in the flicker of her lashes, the clench of her jaw, the flutter of the visible pulse in her throat. He'd wanted to put his mouth there, in that hollow, and taste the racing of her heart, the anxious sweat that pricked along her skin.

Gods, but he was an animal.