Wind soughed through the pines above, chilling the water droplets the autumn sunlight hadn’t yet dried on Arthur’s skin. He shivered but made no move to cover himself. His blood always ran hot after a shift. Soon he’d be ravenously hungry, too, but he could put it off a bit longer. A glance sidewise told him Bedwyr was just as content. Maybe even more so, given how he sprawled in the grass, his eyes closed.
“Feel that?” Bedwyr said, his voice a soft growl, reminiscent of the bear form he’d embodied a quarter hour before.
“Feel what?”
Bed’s beard split in a wide grin. “We’re not on a fucking boat.”
Arthur chuckled. “Now you point it out…”
Bedwyr sighed. “Bliss.”
Arthur plucked a blade of grass, drawing it between his fingers the smooth way, then the rough. “We are due to meet the men at the docks—”
“Shhh.”
“The sooner we’re on the ship, the sooner we’re back at the villa.”
Bed gave a noncommittal grunt, and Arthur smiled. His man was not fond of boats. Or of ships or coracles or rafts or any other craft that might roll him about before dumping him into the sea. Nevertheless, Bed would have to board one today. Rhys had offered to send one to fetch them on this western coast in the upper reaches of Cymru, and Arthur didn’t intend to walk home.
He rose onto an elbow to better enjoy the view while they were alone. The silver strands that had begun to shine from Bed’s temples and beard. The way his blunt toes were spread in the breeze. His rounded belly that neither summer campaigns nor his current supine position could flatten. Arthur ruffled the thick hair there, still damp from their swim, enjoying the cushion under the flesh. Enjoying also how Bed stretched under his touch and then relaxed again with a groan.
“Comfortable?”
Bedwyr hummed.
Arthur slid his hand down to the other soft flesh he appreciated and cupped his hand over it. Bedwyr was feeling lazy indeed; he didn’t swat Arthur’s hand away even when he began to wriggle his fingertips. “Could’ve sworn I saw some stones hereabouts. Where’ve they gone?”
“Hibernating.”
Bed had become a surprising and steady purveyor of bear humor in the three years since they’d turned. Sometimes Arthur thought it a shame that Medraut and Gally were still too young to trust with the knowledge of shifters. They might laugh at their uncle’s weak jokes.
Not that Arthur complained anytime Bedwyr let his playfulness show. When they were alone, it was usually bait.
“Hibernating, eh?”
“Tucked up, safe and warm.” He opened one eye to squint at Arthur. “And peaceful.”
Well, that was as good as a dare.
He rolled on top of Bedwyr, settling one thigh between Bed’s. That grin flashed again, confirming Bedwyr’s intent. His hand brushed bits of grass and pine chaff from Arthur’s back before pulling him down. His mouth tasted so familiar Arthur couldn’t have described it with a blade to his throat, but he had sense enough to enjoy it. He kissed Bed with slow brushes of lips, lazy swipes of tongue. Presses of teeth that were more promise than threat.
His man craved a soft touch, always had done, and while Arthur didn’t know how that craving had developed, he’d nearly always been happy to oblige. Once in a while he forgot himself; when it came to touch and pressure, he preferred them harder, more aggressive. Fortunately, Bed took his lapses in stride, accepting his apologies, though he did occasionally take his revenge, subjecting Arthur to an extended session of feathery caresses that made him want to come out of his skin.
Once, he had come out of his skin. Had shifted just to throw his weight around. So, of course, Bedwyr had shifted as well and put him in his place.
The bite marks had taken a few days to heal.
Rocking against Bed’s hips, Arthur buried his nose in the man’s neck. His senses were still sharp from his shift, and Bed smelled fucking delectable. He had to tamp down the impulse to grind harder, push faster. During spring and summer, they had to find their moments between skirmishes. At their winter refuge, they had months of long, dark nights to enjoy each other. In this suspended state between missions and home, he was content to lose himself in this man until called to mark the hours again.
As if summoned by his thoughts, the familiar cry of a magpie sounded overhead. Ah, well. He gave Bed’s skin one last lick for now and rolled off him. “So ends our respite.”
Bedwyr groaned to a sitting position and looked around. “Where’s my shirt?”
A shadow passed overhead, drawing their attention to the sky. A great owl made a broad arc over the pond before flying off to the south.
Arthur frowned. “Owls are nocturnal.”
“When they’re purely owls,” Bedwyr said.
Arthur’s mind turned as they dressed and left the forest for the small port settlement where they were meant to meet their men and board the ship that would bear them back to Rhys’s.
They knew precisely one owl who wasn’t purely an owl—their old tutor and now the Myrddin to their people in the mountains. But why would Philip fly this far from home only to turn south again without touching down?
By the time they neared the docks, he’d deemed the daylight owl a coincidence. Here were their men, Palahmed and Gawain, Morien and Safir, carrying their campaign gear and ready for a winter’s rest. But then he caught sight of someone on the boardwalk who didn’t belong here.
Medraut. And he wasn’t alone. Beside him walked an older man, tall and silver-haired, leaning companionably toward the lad.
Arthur frowned. “What is happening? And who is—”
“Gods’ blood.”
He turned to Bedwyr in alarm, only to find a strange smile on his face. He followed Bed’s gaze back to the unknown man. After a couple of breaths, the fellow noticed them. He straightened and waved, and offered a smile that felt like a blow to Arthur’s ribs. “Gods’ blood,” he croaked.
He took off at a lope, weaving through the dockworkers in a matter of heartbeats, and soon was enveloped in an embrace he hadn’t felt in years.
“Oh, Arthur,” his father said in his ear. “How I’ve missed you.”
Arthur squeezed him tightly, trying to ignore how light the man felt in his arms. Then he stepped back and looked toward the ships behind his father. “Has Mama come with you?”
“No. You know how difficult it is to draw her away from her anvil.” His father touched a thumb to the scar on Arthur’s cheekbone, gift of a Saxon blade two summers before.
Arthur gripped his wrist. “Why are you here?”
“I can’t visit my son?”
At Rhys’s, yes, or at their shifter refuge a day’s walk from the river lord’s great hall. Not here, in the last northern Cymrish settlement before the territory gave way to Saxon control.
Arthur turned to greet Medraut. The lad had thirteen years now, and he’d sprouted in height since spring. Arthur gripped his shoulders, which were broader now and bore a heavy-looking pack. A short scabbard hung from his belt. “You were meant to meet us at the villa.”
“I asked Mother if I could accompany Master Matthias to you here.”
“What’s so important you couldn’t wait until we returned?”
Medraut looked at Matthias, who squared his shoulders and met Arthur’s gaze with a resolute one of his own.
“I’ve come north to find your brother.”
Arthur’s hands fell to his sides. The last of them to see Cai had been Bedwyr, just after he’d freed Arthur from Saxon captivity a few years before. Bed had fought off several Saxon wolves in his bear form, but when only one wolf remained, the beast had shifted—into Cai. He urged Bed to get Arthur away from the place while he could. It’d been the act of an ally, but none of them afterward could decide what Cai had been doing amongst the enemy. None of the options had been good, and no one had seen him since.
Arthur glanced at Bed, whose expression might as well have been carved from granite. He turned back to his father. “And you met us here because…”
But he knew why.
So it was no surprise when Matthias drew a deep breath and said, “I’m hoping you’ll join me.”
Matthias’s eyes were just as Bedwyr remembered, gentle in color and manner. And they had the same effect on him they’d always had, one that Arthur had never noticed, thank the gods.
“Hello, Bedwyr.” Matthias embraced him. Bedwyr scarcely had time to identify the scent rising from the man’s cloak—rosemary—before he released him. Then those eyes were on him again. “No one ever mistakes whose son you are, do they?”
The blush tried to creep up his cheeks. He took Matthias’s pack from Medraut, just to have something constructive to do. He had to mask his dismay that the lad’s eyes were even with his own. He would be taller than Bedwyr before the spring freshets broke.
They brought Matthias back to the camp they’d made in the forest outside the tiny port. By the time they’d built the fire back up, he was sharing some tale of Arthur’s boyhood exploits, and the men were having a good laugh at their leader’s expense. Bedwyr took advantage of their distraction to study Matthias.
The healer’s hands were still broad, his fingers still knuckly where they curled around his walking staff. His long hair, the color of dry autumn grass in Bedwyr’s memory, had gone silver. Aside from that, he looked much the same as when Bedwyr had last seen him. His smile carved deeper lines now and he was thinner, perhaps, but he’d always been tall and rangy. Bedwyr had always looked up to him, in that way and in others.
“How long was he up there?” Safir asked, grinning, as they stepped into their camp.
“Days,” Arthur tried to interject, but Matthias waved a hand.
“A few hours, at most. As soon as supper was ready, he discovered how to come down. Not all that gracefully.”
“Slid off the thatching like so much snow,” Arthur conceded.
“Into as much of a heap, too. I had to patch him up before Britte would allow him near the table.”
“Well, if Cai hadn’t…” Arthur began, then bit his words short.
Three years before, they’d encountered Arthur’s older brother among a gang of Saxons. And not just Saxon warriors, but among the wolf shifters who fought for them. It’d been a blow to Arthur to learn his brother had joined them. No one seemed to know why he’d done so. It was an unthinkable act for someone who’d been raised and trained by Uthyr to defend Cymru. Bedwyr had long wondered how Matthias felt knowing his older son roamed with the enemy now.
But Matthias didn’t seem angry, or resentful, or any other thing except…intent. “Cai is no longer among the Saxons and hasn’t been for some time.”
Bedwyr straightened in surprise.
A wince of something close to pain crossed Matthias’s features. “Uthyr captured and questioned several Saxons this past summer. Some of them had…fought alongside Cai.” He glanced at Medraut, and Bedwyr wondered if the men his father had captured had been shifters, taken in their wolves’ bodies. “They said—reliably, to a man—that Cai was only among them for a few weeks. That he left as suddenly as he’d appeared.”
“So where is he?” Bedwyr asked. Not that he cared. Cai was a traitor who’d nearly let Arthur be killed.
“We aren’t certain.” Matthias looked at Arthur. “Uncertain enough that your mother didn’t want me to make this journey. But we believe he’s gone north. South or west, other Cymry would’ve alerted Uthyr. East is out as well. Too much settled farmland. He’d be…conspicuous.”
In his wolf form, Master Matthias meant.
“There’s quite a bit of north,” Arthur said.
Gawain raised a hand. “I can vouch for that.”
So could Bedwyr. Four of them had traveled to Gawain’s home islands, the Orcades, years before, and Bedwyr had been glad to put that boat behind him. Damned things tossed a fellow about until his poor brain couldn’t distinguish sea from sky, and his stomach had emptied itself into both.
“Philip believes he saw Cai last winter,” Matthias said. “He followed him but doubled back when Cai crossed through the emperor’s wall.”
“The emperor’s wall!”
Medraut stood. “I’ll come with you, Grandfather.”
Arthur raised a hand to quell any further enthusiasm. He looked past Medraut to Bedwyr. “It’s nearly winter.”
Winter, when they now split their time between the stronghold they’d created and a few limited forays on behalf of Rhys. When they recuperated from the summer battles they’d managed to survive. When even the sun rested, and Bedwyr could talk Arthur into staying abed late most mornings. It was what the long, dark months were for.
Not for wandering about the icy, wind-driven barrens of the north, searching for the dog who’d betrayed them both.
Everyone was looking at Bedwyr now. Despite his best efforts, his gaze snagged on Master Matthias’s. In the firelight, the man’s eyes looked strange. Almost haunted.
Then he said, simply, “Please,” and all of Bedwyr’s neat winter plans billowed up through the trees like so many sparks.