Lucia had almost been... unchaste, about to lose her purity - and therefore her abilities - right before the Accession!
One misstep had nearly cost Lucia her powers. Because Skathi hadn't gifted her with anything. Lucia's archery skills were on loan - and conditional.
How close she'd been. How close...
Yet even now her body was still thrumming for his touch - for more.
Lucia made it really simple for herself. The Accession meant Cruach. Succumbing to this Lykae meant no archery. She'd be defenseless if the Broken Bloody One escaped his prison and returned for her. Returned to make me pay...
Whatever MacRieve saw in her expression had him backing away with his palms raised. "There, lass. Doona be afraid. You've nothing to fear from me."
She knew her eyes were wild, her heart racing with dread. "I-I'm not afraid of you!" I'm afraid of him - afraid of being trapped back in his corpse-ridden lair. She put the back of her hand against her mouth as she retched.
Lucia, I gave you meat and wine....
"Now, Valkyrie, just wait. I dinna mean to upset you." MacRieve absently swiped a hand over his still-engorged shaft, as if it pained him - even now her body responded to the sight.
"If you're bent on leaving, then meet me here this weekend," he said tightly, as if this was a great concession. "Saturday at noon, we'll return. That'll give us both time to cool off, to think about this."
His offer did surprise her. "I... I don't know." He'd told her that she wasn't his mate, but she thought he'd lied since his reaction had been so fierce. Now she began to believe again, because otherwise he'd have been thumping his chest and snarling, "Mine!" as he slung her over his shoulder. "All right. I agree to it," she lied, feeling something she hadn't in a long time with a male. Five hundred years to be exact.
Terror.
There was no rain in the bayou Saturday night. Only quiet.
Garreth had been waiting here since quarter past ten this morning. He'd risen at dawn, too anxious to remain abed, and begun to get ready. He'd intended to take care with his dress, to present himself as a male of worth, like the leader that he was. Not like the hard-drinking, foulmouthed brawler Lucia likely thought him.
Then he'd realized he owned nothing but hole-ridden jeans, broken-in boots, and pullover shirts.
Hardly a fitting match for a lass with her delicate beauty. Hell, it hadn't mattered anyway. She's no' coming. What he didn't know was why. Yes, the Valkyrie hated the Lykae, considered them animals. But she'd responded to him.
Gods, how she'd responded. She'd taken her release and left him stranded and aching for his. He'd witnessed Lucia in the grip of passion, and she'd been like no female he'd ever imagined.
At the memory of her lust, his c**k swelled in his worn jeans, and he rubbed the heel of his palm down his raging erection. All week, he'd been like this, randy as a lad in his first brothel, no matter how many times he took release. He'd hoped to be inside her this day, imagining it in a thousand different ways.
But she's no' meeting me. He checked the clock on his sat-phone. Ten at night. Clearly, he needed to call this. Lucia, it seemed, was in no way easy. He'd gotten his wish, and wished he hadn't.
As soon as she'd left him here that night, Garreth had dragged Munro and Uilleam out of the still-going game and told them, "We need to find out everything we can on our new neighbors, the Valkyrie. All of them." He'd been amazed at how little the Lykae knew about that faction of the Lore. And again he'd sworn his friends to secrecy. "Say nothing about this to anyone." If word got back to the clan elders that they were about to have a Valkyrie for a queen...
3
He and the twins had agreed that no one could know about Lucia until she was bearing Garreth's bite mark upon her neck. The beast inside any Lykae would recognize the claim as Garreth's, would know she was forever under his protection.
Then the three of them had combed the streets of New Orleans, a city they hadn't visited often, and all the while, Garreth impatiently counted down the hours till this day.
Finding information had proved difficult. Big Easy Loreans were suspicious of the Lykae newcomers to their city and on guard with the Accession approaching. Garreth had come up empty in his search, but the twins had charmed a voodoo shopkeeper who'd told them much.
Now as Garreth waited in the swamp, he thought back over all they'd learned about Lucia....
"She's legendary for her archery skills," Munro had said. "Nothing else unique about her."
That was all she was known for? "There must be more. What does she like to do? What are her interests?"
"No one knows," Uilleam had answered. "She's just the Archer." As if nothing more needed to be said about her. It was how she was identified.
Munro had added, "But it's rumored that she feels agonizing pain whenever she misses a target."
Luckily, Garreth couldn't see that happening too often with her skill. But then his chest had grown heavy.
Was that how she'd gotten to be so good?
Above all, they'd learned the Valkyrie were peculiar creatures. Their origin alone fascinated him. Each Valkyrie had three parents. Whenever a maiden faced death with uncommon bravery, the Norse gods Freya and Wóden struck her with lightning, rescuing her to Valhalla. The maiden would wake there - healed, safe, and pregnant with a Valkyrie daughter.
The birth mothers hailed from all Lorekind - furies, witches, shifters, even humans. So the daughters would each possess the unique coloring and characteristics of the mother, but they all inherited Freya's fey features and her notorious acquisitiveness - in fact, they could be mesmerized by shining jewels, diamonds especially.
The Valkyrie were rumored to have glass-shattering shrieks, preternatural speed, and no need to eat or drink. Instead they consumed electrical energy from the earth and produced lightning when they experienced sharp emotions.
That had been a legend about Valkyrie he'd never quite believed until he'd been in the throes with one. Lightning had speared the night, and not only from the storm.
Garreth had learned about various individual Valkyrie as well. Nïx was their soothsayer, rumored to be three thousand years old and mad as a hatter. Regin was the last of the Radiant Ones and had skin that glowed. Annika was the dauntless leader of the New Orleans coven, a master strategist who lived to war with vampires.
No one knew who Lucia's birth mother was - or what she'd been - but the shopkeeper had said this Accession would be Lucia's third. Which meant that she was over a millennium old - near his own age.
In the end, Garreth had more questions about her than answers....