Chapter 4: The Fury of Want
He found her in her alcove hours later, the woven furs casting deep, shifting shadows in the lamplight. The scent of the herb shed still clung to her, lavender undercut by the sharp pine of Bror’s anger. She was braiding her hair for sleep, her fingers working the fiery strands with a forced calm, when the heavy hide over the entrance was shoved aside.Bror filled the space.He didn’t speak at first. He just stood there, a monument of silent fury and mead. The lamp’s flame guttered in the draft, painting his face in harsh, jumping lines. His eyes were glassy, the winter blue gone murky and dark.The smell of fermented honey and sweat rolled off him.
“You’re my wife,” he said. The words were thick, slurry, but their intent was stone-hard.Riva finished her braid, letting it fall over her shoulder. She kept her voice even, a flat line in the charged air.“I am. And you are in my quarters uninvited.”
He took a step, then another, until the heat of him pushed against the room’s chill.“My hall.My quarters.” Another step. “My wife.”
She stood, not yielding ground, though he loomed over her.“Bror.Go to bed. Sleep it off.”
He laughed then, a short, sharp exhale with no humor in it. His hand shot out, fingers closing around her wrist.The grip was iron, meant to bruise. “You give yourself to him in a shed.Smiling.Talking. You share my table, my title, and you give your friendship to him.”
She didn’t struggle. She let her body go loose, her mind cold and clear.“I gave nothing he didn’t earn. You threw him away.I picked him up. That’s not a gift; it’s salvage.”
His face contorted.The raw pain in it, fueled by drink and jealousy, was startling. He yanked her closer.Her free hand moved faster than thought.
The crack of her palm against his cheek was a stunning report in the small space.His head snapped to the side. For a heartbeat, everything was suspended—the flickering lamp, their ragged breaths, the shock vibrating in the air.Then he laughed again, a broken, awful sound. He turned back to her, the red mark blazing on his bearded skin. Before she could pull away, his hands were on her face, cupping her jaw, and his mouth was on hers.It wasn’t a kiss. It was an invasion.A claim.The taste of mead was sour, the pressure brutal. She bit down, hard.The coppery tang of his blood filled her mouth. He grunted but didn’t release her; instead, his arms locked around her, crushing her to him. She could feel the rigid tension of his body, the furious, frustrated need.
He spun her, pushing her back against the stacked furs of the sleeping ledge.The air left her lungs in a rush. His weight was immense, pinning her. One hand fumbled with the ties of her trousers, his movements clumsy with drink and desperation. She shoved at his shoulders, her nails digging into the wool of his tunic.“Stop,” she snarled, turning her face away from his seeking mouth.
“Why him?” he breathed against her throat, his voice ragged. The words were torn from somewhere deep and wounded.“Why can you talk to him?Why does he get your smiles? Why not me?” His hand found bare skin, sliding between her thighs. The calloused roughness of his palm was a shock.She gasped, her body arching involuntarily.
Her mind was a storm of fury and pity. This clumsy, angry man, this Jarl of stone and silence, was breaking apart against her, and all she felt was a terrible, clarifying rage. Not just at him, but at the whole stupid, wasteful situation.At the duty that bent them all out of shape.
She stopped pushing. She looked up at him, at the pain etched in the lines around his eyes, the blood welling on his split lip. “Is this what you want?” she asked, her voice low and fierce.“This?Force and silence? Is that the only way you know how to have me?”
He stared down at her, his breath coming in hot gusts.He had no answer. Only a shattered, hungry look.
With a rough sound, he yanked her trousers down further, freed himself from his own. There was no more gentleness than before, only a raw, angry need. When he pushed inside her, it was with a single, driving motion that made her cry out—a sound of shock, of abrupt, startling fullness.
He stilled, buried deep, his forehead dropping to her shoulder.A tremor went through him. Then he began to move, and it was nothing like the stories, nothing like the careful, functional duty she had braced for. This was a battle, a release of weeks of coiled tension and jealous anguish. Each thrust was a punctuation to his unspoken torment.Why.Him.Why.Not.Me.
Her body, traitorously, responded.The initial shock melted into a reckless, reciprocating heat. Her anger found a physical channel. Her hips rose to meet his, not in submission, but in a furious counterpoint.Her legs wrapped around his waist, pulling him deeper into the rhythm. She could taste his blood on her own lips.She could feel the sweat soaking through both their clothes.It was brutal. It was honest.It was, in its own violent way, a conversation they could finally have.
He whispered against her skin, agonized, “Tell me… tell me what to do.”
She didn’t answer with words. Her hands came up, not to push, but to grip the back of his tunic, her fingers tangling in the wool. She held on as the pace quickened, as the tight, furious coil within her wound tighter and tighter. The pleasure was sharp, edged with pain and fury, utterly consuming.
When his control shattered, when he spilled into her with a choked, broken groan, she was right there with him. Her own release swept through her like a forest fire, burning away thought, leaving only ash and sensation. For a long moment, there was only the sound of their breathing, the heavy pound of blood in their ears.
The weight of him collapsed upon her, warm and solid.The anger was spent, leaving a hollowed-out calm. She expected him to pull away immediately, to retreat into shame or stony silence.He didn’t.
He lay there, his face buried in the curve of her neck, his body still joined with hers. His breathing slowed, deepened. One of his hands, which had been gripping the furs beside her head, relaxed, came to rest clumsily on her braid.
She stared up at the dark wood of the alcove ceiling.Her mind, clearing, was a jumble of conflicting truths. She hated him for this.She hated the stupid, desperate path that led them here. And yet, the slow, tender stroke of his thumb against her scalp, the unguarded weight of him trusting her with his exhaustion, stirred something else entirely.A pity so deep it felt like a wound.
After a time, he shifted, pulling away from her. He dressed in silence, his back to her, movements heavy with the aftermath of mead and spent passion. He didn’t look at her as he adjusted his tunic. At the entrance hide, he paused, a broad, dark silhouette against the faint torchlight from the hall.
He spoke to the hide, his voice gravelly and low, stripped of all its earlier heat. “It won’t… it won’t be like that again.”
Then he was gone.
Riva lay in the tangled furs, the scent of him and of sex lingering in the cold air.She felt sore, used, strangely clear. The physical act, for all its violence, had spoken volumes his words never could. His jealousy, his longing, his utter incapacity to bridge the gap he himself had created.
She pulled her trousers up, her movements slow. She wiped at her mouth, her fingers coming away smudged with his blood.Why him?Why not me? The question hung in the room, finally answered not by her, but by his own body, by the heartbreaking simplicity of his need.
He didn’t want just an heir.He wanted to be chosen. And he knew, on some level, that Dain had been chosen—by Riva, in friendship—in a way he himself had failed to be.
A cold determination settled over her, sharper than the northern cold seeping through the walls. This couldn’t continue. This cycle of silence, jealousy, and brutal, misunderstanding contact would break all three of them.She had chosen Dain as a friend.
She woke to a dull ache between her hips and the metallic memory of blood on her tongue. Dawn’s grey light seeped through the furs, doing nothing to warm the chill that had settled in her bones. She dressed slowly, every movement a reminder of the night’s brutal honesty.The main hall was quiet, the morning fires not yet built. Then she heard it: a sharp, scuffling sound from near the grain stores, followed by a voice, low and furious. Dain’s voice.She moved closer, staying in the shadow of a support beam.
Dain had Bror by the front of his tunic, shoved against the rough timber wall. His eyes were fixed on Bror’s face—on the swollen, split lip and the distinct, reddened outline of a handprint across his cheek. “Look at that,” Dain hissed, his calm completely shattered.“Look at what you’re wearing. What did you do to her?”
Bror’s gaze was somewhere over Dain’s shoulder, empty and defeated. He didn’t answer.He didn’t try to explain the handprint or the blood. Instead, his hands came up and gripped Dain’s arms, not to push him away, but to pull him closer.“Don’t,” Dain warned, his voice a thin wire of anger.
Bror said nothing. He just leaned in and tried to kiss him, a messy, desperate press of his battered mouth against Dain’s. One hand let go of Dain’s arm and dropped to his own belt, fingers fumbling with the leather tie.
“Stop it.” Dain wrenched his face away, but Bror pushed forward, his body a solid wall of need. He was breathing in ragged gasps, his movements frantic and clumsy. He got his belt open and pressed against Dain, his intent unmistakable, a ragged echo of the night before.It wasn’t desire. It was a frantic, terrible plea.Dain understood suddenly.This wasn’t about passion. It was a man trying to erase a proof of guilt, to overwrite the violence done to a woman with a different kind of claiming.To reconnect in the only broken language he had left.
“You fool,” Dain whispered, the fight draining out of him, replaced by a cold, sorrowful clarity. He held Bror’s shoulders, not pushing him away anymore, just holding him still as Bror’s forehead fell against his collarbone with a shudder. The desperation bled out of Bror then, leaving him hollow and shaking.
Dain stood there, feeling the tremors run through the man he loved. The answer was written in the handprint on his face, in this shameful, frantic grope.He knew exactly what Bror had done, and worse, he understood why. The jealousy, the loss, the crashing failure of it all.
He gently, firmly, pushed Bror back until an arm’s length of cold air stood between them. “Fix your clothes,” Dain said, his voice flat.He watched Bror mechanically tie his belt, eyes still avoiding his. The Jarl looked smaller now, stripped of all his stone and silence.
Without another word, Dain turned. He left Bror standing there in the dim storeroom, surrounded by sacks of grain and the weight of his own actions.His own path was clear now. He walked toward Riva’s alcove, the questions he needed to ask her already forming, sharp and unavoidable.
He found her sitting on the edge of her sleeping ledge, fully dressed, staring at her own hands. The oil lamp was out. The alcove was grey with dawn’s half-light, and cold. She didn’t look up as he entered, but her spine straightened, a warrior bracing for a blow.
“He came to you.” Dain’s voice was flat, drained of the fury from the storeroom. It wasn’t a question.
Riva finally lifted her head. Her green eyes were dry, but the skin around them was tight. The fiery braids from the feast were gone, her hair a loose river of red over her shoulders. She looked young, and terribly tired. “You saw his face.”
“I saw it.” Dain leaned against the carved door frame, not entering fully, giving her space. The air between them was thick with things done and said. “I also saw him, afterward. Trying to… erase it. On me.”
A sharp, pained understanding flashed in her eyes. She looked down at her hands again, at the fingers that had left that mark. They were trembling. “I didn’t… I didn’t want it to be like that. For any of us.” Her voice was a rough whisper. “I am sorry, Dain. For letting him touch me, when I know… I know it must cut you.”
He crossed the space then. The furs on the floor swallowed the sound of his boots. He didn’t speak. He simply knelt in front of her, his own hands—quick, clever hands that could mend a bowstring or a wound—coming up to cover hers. He stilled their trembling, his thumbs smoothing over her knuckles. Her skin was ice.
She sucked in a shaky breath, her gaze locked on their joined hands.
“It wasn’t a gift you gave him,” Dain said, his voice low. “It was a wound you both share. I know the difference.” He leaned in then, slowly, giving her every chance to pull away. She didn’t. He brushed his lips against hers, a touch as soft as a breath, tentative and utterly foreign.
He pulled back just enough to see her eyes. “I’ve never kissed a woman,” he confessed, the admission leaving him feeling strangely exposed.
A surprised, damp sound escaped her—a laugh, choked and soft. She brought a hand up, her fingers lightly tracing his jaw. “You are doing better than Bror’s first kiss with me,” she murmured. A real smile touched her mouth then, fleeting and bright. “He tried to touch my breast like he was checking a horse for girth. All grab and no finesse.”
Dain’s own laugh was a quiet huff of air, a release of tension. He rested his forehead against hers. “He seems all alpha brute. But most of the time,” he said, the words feeling dangerous and necessary in the grey light, “it’s me fucking him.”
Riva went very still. Not in shock, but in a deep, reassessing focus. The pieces she’d been puzzling over—Bror’s awkwardness, his jealous anguish, the way he watched Dain with a kind of possessive desperation—clicked into a new, coherent picture. It wasn’t just a past affection. It was a current, ongoing truth. The power dynamic she’d assumed was completely inverted.
“Oh,” she breathed, the syllable holding a universe of understanding.
His confession hung between them, simple and world-altering. She felt his breath warm on her lips, saw the faint tremor in his own hand where it still cupped hers. The winter-blue eyes she’d thought were always commanding were, in this secret, pleading. A slow smile touched her mouth, not of victory, but of dawning possibility.The pieces weren’t just fitting; they were forming a new, entirely different picture.
She pulled back just enough to see his whole face, the silver in his dark hair, the careful intelligence in his eyes.Her fingers, still intertwined with his, tightened their grip. The idea, audacious and utterly logical, rose from the wreckage of the night before. It felt less like a thought and more like a stone finally settling into its rightful place in a wall.
“Maybe,” she began, her voice a low, considering thread in the cold alcove. “If you are open to it…” Her free hand lifted, her fingers gliding into the short, dark hair at his temple.The touch was exploratory, gentle. “…we both could discipline our pup?”
Dain went perfectly still.Not in rejection, but in absolute, riveted focus. His grey eyes searched hers, looking for any trace of mockery or cruelty.He found only a fierce, clean certainty.
“He could have chosen us both,” Riva continued, her thumb stroking the line of his jaw. “But he tried to be a hero, to bear the weight alone. Don’t you think we should show him that we can choose for ourselves?” The question wasn’t rhetorical. It was an offering, laid between them on the frozen ground of Bror’s failures.
A slow, real smile broke across Dain’s face then, the first unguarded one she’d ever seen from him. It transformed him, stripping away the years of watchful patience. It was a smile of liberation, of a path finally clearing in a dense wood. He leaned forward until their foreheads touched again, a silent seal on the pact.
“He never could take a hint,” Dain murmured, his voice thick with a dizzying blend of affection and resolve. “Might need a firmer hand.”
Riva’s laugh was a soft puff of air in the dim space. “I have two hands.” She shifted, pulling back to look at him squarely.“So. How do we start?”
Dain stood, pulling her up with him. His mind was already moving, plotting with the tactical clarity he usually reserved for patrol routes or grain stores. “He’ll be in the training yard.Always is, after a shame. He’ll be pounding a post until his knuckles bleed, trying to outrun the feeling.”
“Then we meet him there.” Riva gathered her hair, swiftly re-braiding it with a practical, decisive tug. The aching soreness in her body was just a fact now, a fuel. “What’s the play?”
“Together,” Dain said, the word definitive.“No secrets between us.Not anymore. We show him a united front. He gets no retreat into silence, no hiding in his Jarl’s shadow.” He reached out, straightened the collar of her tunic where it had twisted. The gesture was startlingly domestic. “You’re sure?”
Riva caught his hand, held it flat against her chest for a moment so he could feel the steady, determined beat beneath. “I’ve never been more sure of anything.” She released him, turning toward the entrance. “Let’s go collect our wayward dog.”
The training yard was a wide, slushy patch of churned earth and old snow, bordered by racks of wooden weapons. The morning air bit sharp, scented with pine and damp wool.And there he was, as predicted. Bror stood before a heavy practice post, his back to them, shoulders rolling with the force of each blow.Thud.Thud. Thud. The steady, punishing rhythm spoke of a mind trapped in a cage of its own making.He wore no gloves. Even from a distance, they could see the dark smears on the worn wood.Riva and Dain entered the yard side by side. They stopped, a short distance away, and waited.They didn’t speak. They simply let their presence become a fact in the space, a quiet alternative to the monotonous violence of his strikes.
The thudding stopped.Bror’s arms fell to his sides, his head bowed. He knew they were there.He had likely sensed it the moment they stepped into the light.Slowly, he turned. His face was flushed with exertion and cold, the handprint faded to a blush, his lip swollen and split. His eyes, that winter blue, went from Dain to Riva and back again, wary and confused.He expected accusation, perhaps another fight. He did not expect their calm, aligned silence.Dain spoke first, his voice carrying easily across the crisp air. “You’re going to ruin your hands, Bror. Then how will you hold your axe?”
Bror stared, uncomprehending.This wasn’t the script.
It was Riva who moved. She walked toward him, not with the hesitant steps of a wary bride, but with the easy stride she used on the training grounds. She stopped before him, close enough to see the sweat beading at his temples.She didn’t look at his face. She took his left hand in both of hers, lifting it.The knuckles were raw, the skin split.
“Fool,” she said, her tone matter-of-fact, almost clinical. She looked past him to Dain. "We should take him inside.”
They didn’t ask. They simply closed the space around him, a pincer movement of quiet intent. Dain took his right arm, Riva kept hold of his left, and they turned him firmly away from the post. He offered no resistance, his body moving with a stunned pliability, the fight bled out of him by shame and their united front. The walk back to the longhouse was silent, their boots crunching on the frozen ground, his between them.
They bypassed the main hall, entering a narrower passage that led to the Jarl’s private chambers. The room was larger than Riva’s alcove, dominated by a wide bed heaped with furs. A cold hearth stood opposite, a massive chair of carved oak beside it. The air was still and carried his scent—leather, stone, and the lonely smell of a space inhabited by one person for too long.
Dain guided Bror to the center of the room and released his arm. “Stand there.” The command was soft, devoid of anger, leaving no room for argument. Bror obeyed, staring at the floorboards, his bruised hands hanging loose. Riva moved to the heavy chair, sweeping her cloak aside before she sat.The position afforded her a clear view. She settled back, her posture regal and watchful.Dain circled Bror once, a slow assessment.He stopped behind him. “You went to her last night.Drunk. You laid hands on her.”
Bror’s shoulders tensed, but he gave a single, curt nod.
“You put your hands on me this morning,” Dain continued, his voice dropping into a lower register.“In the storeroom. Like you could wipe the slate clean with a different kind of touch.”
A shudder ran through Bror’s broad frame.He said nothing.
“Look at me,” Dain said, not raising his voice.Bror turned his head, just enough to meet Dain’s gaze over his shoulder. The confusion and raw hurt in his winter-blue eyes were devastatingly clear.
Dain held that look for a long moment.“You don’t get to run from this. You don’t get to hide in your duty or your strength or your silence.Not from us. Not anymore.” He reached out and began unlacing the thick leather jerkin Bror wore, his fingers efficient and impersonal.Bror stood motionless, allowing it. The jerkin was eased off his shoulders, followed by the woolen tunic beneath, until his torso was bare to the cool air.
Riva watched from the chair, her breath steady. The lamplight caught the scars mapping Bror’s back and arms—old battle marks, the story of his survival etched into skin. He was powerful, a landscape of muscle and weathered flesh, yet he held himself with the quiet vulnerability of a man awaiting judgment.Dain stepped back. “You understand why you’re here.”
Bror’s voice was a grated whisper. “Yes.”
“Then you know what comes next.”
Another ragged, “Yes.”
Dain moved to the belt at his own waist. He unbuckled it slowly, the leather sighing as he pulled it free. He folded it once, the heavy bronze buckle cold in his hand. He didn’t look at Riva, but his words were for her as much as for Bror.“This isn’t about her.This is about you.Your choices. The gap between what you want and how you act.”
He took his position to Bror’s side. “Count them.”
The first crack of leather on flesh was a sharp, startling report in the stone room. Bror’s entire body jolted, a harsh breath escaping his clenched teeth.A bright red line blossomed across his shoulder blades.
“One,” Bror forced out, his voice strained.The second stroke landed lower, parallel to the first. His fists clenched at his sides, the raw knuckles white.“Two.”
Riva didn’t look away. She watched the lines rise on his skin, watched the play of tendons in his neck, the rigid control he fought to maintain.There was no pleasure in it, but a fierce, surgical satisfaction. This was truth-telling of the most physical kind. Each strike was a punctuation to the unspoken failures—the failed communication, the failed trust.Dain’s rhythm was measured, relentless.Five.Six. Bror’s count grew thicker, his body trembling with the effort to stand fast. Sweat gleamed on his spine, trickling down through the new, angry welts.
After the tenth, Dain paused.Bror was breathing in ragged gulps, his head bowed, his cock red, hard and leaking. The room held only the sound of his struggle.Dain looked past him, to Riva in the chair. His grey eyes were clear, asking a silent question.