Edge of Control: (Viking Dystopian Romance) Read Online Free PDF

knew better than to think about Riordan again, however briefly. She was incapable of
not
looking over at him once she did, which she knew was a mistake even as she did it. And the fact she found him in exactly one half-second in the dark, smoky night with a fire in the way was not, as she tried to tell herself, because she’d been paying such close attention to everyone and everything the way she should have been.
    It was that
thing
. That goddamned chain that maybe only she could see still connected them. That terrible pull that tugged at her no matter what she wanted.
    He haunted her without even trying, the asshole.
    Worse, when she found him there on the other side of the fire, arms crossed over that mighty chest of his and his legs in a fighting stance, he was looking right at her. His dark, knowing gaze was torture. It gleamed and it tore through her, and it took every bit of willpower she had to hold it a moment. To keep her face still and blank as she did. And then to look away as if she was bored straight down to her bones.
    She’d been telling herself it would get easier around him for almost ten years now.
Fingers crossed that happens one of these days,
she thought darkly.
Any. Fucking. Day.
    “Listen,” the first mercenary was saying, his voice cracking as he spoke, which made a few of the brothers bellow with laughter. “We have no trouble with you.”
    “Tough shit,” Jurin boomed out, making both mercenaries flinch. “We have trouble with you, motherfuckers. That’s what happens when you try to blow a raider party straight into hell.”
    “Who hired you?” Wulf asked when Jurin’s voice faded away, his own tone mild. Faintly inquisitive, if that. He looked casual and mildly bored as he squatted there, his blade dangling from his hands as if he’d forgotten about it.
    But there was nothing but murder in his gaze.
    Maybe that was why the mercenaries—who usually tended not to be a particularly chatty group of assholes, in Eiryn’s experience over any number of battlefields these last few years—fell all over themselves to answer. It was a garbled mess of
western highlands
and
the big one
until Wulf held up a lazy hand.
    “One at a time,” he ordered them, precious little
casual
about him then.
    “The church,” the first mercenary threw out. “It was the church.”
    “The whole church?” Wulf sounded dubious. “That seems unlikely. This is one of their temples.”
    “No. A bishop or some shit,” the other mercenary said. He spat blood into the fire. “The head of the Great Lake Cathedral.”
    “Bishop Seph,” Gunnar growled from somewhere to Eiryn’s right. There was a low muttering from another part of the loose ring of raiders, as they all filled each other in on Gunnar’s recent adventures with the runaway nun who’d known that particular bishop back in her obedient days.
    Eiryn exchanged an unfriendly look with Tyr in lieu of a discussion and figured they both knew the story as well as anyone. No need to trot it out now like all the other, gossipy brothers who were really just looking for a reason to remind themselves and each other that when they’d first laid eyes on Gunnar’s nun, beautiful the way the church’s chosen pussy were always beautiful, she’d been stark naked save for the collar and metal chain she wore. Horny bastards.
    The mercenary frowned. “You know him? Cold, reedy fucker. That stupid landing strip beard thing on his chin, like all of them.”
    But Wulf didn’t answer him. He spun his blade between his hands and then rose to his feet, still smiling slightly as he did, and the mercenary’s voice trailed off.
    Wulf shot a glance at Tyr, who nodded as if his king had issued a set of orders, and then Wulf exchanged a longer, darker look with Gunnar. Eiryn told herself there was no reason at all she should care what sort of things her half-brothers were communicating to each other like that. Gunnar had wanted to kill Wulf a month ago, but what the hell.