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“What is it, Tove?” he said softly, concern replacing confusion, surprising me when he cupped my cheek with his big, warm, weapon-roughened hand. He searched my eyes as if trying to understand what was happening inside me. “Are you well, my friend?”

I nearly leaned into his touch because it felt so good and told him, “No, I’m not well so long as we aren’t together,” but Helga came back, and I stepped away, both thankful and frustrated by her swift return.

“Thank you, Helga,” I managed, as she handed him his clothes and boots. Glancing back and forth between us, she continued to wear an amused look.

“We will join you to break our fast in the great lodge soon,” I said when she lingered, obviously eager for more details about the strange start to our day.

“I look forward to it.” Her smirk blossomed into a knowing grin. “I imagine what just happened will be an interesting tale. One you two should know already has tongues wagging.” She shrugged. “I couldn’t say what will come of it, but again, ’tis nothing your people did not anticipate.”

Although that was the last thing I wanted to hear, given that Knud and I could not be together, there was no hope for idle gossip.

“Then we will be sure to contradict it, if need be,” I made clear, and ushered her along, waiting until she was gone before continuing my conversation with Knud about the bear.

Unlike me, Knud didn’t request that I look away when he dressed but kept his eyes on me when he tossed aside the fur and pulled on his trousers, giving me more than enough time to enjoy the sight of him if I so chose.

If I didn’t know better, it was as if he were deliberately enticing me.

While tempted to let my gaze drop and enjoy all he had to offer, I knew better. Now that my confusion and fear had passed, if I took in all of him, I might very well give in to the ache blossoming between my thighs. A need that had begun when I first laid eyes on him and only intensified when he touched my cheek. He had never done that before, let alone with tenderness, and I wanted more.

Far, far more.

“I couldn’t say why you recall the night you saved me from that bear the way you do,” I continued, holding his gaze before looking at the fire, still marveling at what I had witnessed that eve. I had startled awake only to find an enormous polar bear standing nearly nose to nose with me. “Just that nothing went the way you thought it did, save your courageousness.”

“Go on,” he prompted, joining me, fully dressed now, his expression guarded when he looked at me as if he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to hear this. “What varied?”

“What happened after you threw rocks at the bear, distracting it away from me toward you,” I revealed, trying to steady my breathing at the sheer terror I had felt. Though it was my first time meeting Knud when he was but a boy, my fear for him had been palpable, as if I had known him always.

As if he were part of my heart before I even met him.

“The way you recall it, he charged you and caught your temple with his claw before lumbering off.” I shook my head. “But it didn’t go that way, my friend. The polar bear went at you and knocked you flat on your back, then stood over you and roared, dwarfing you in size.”

“Nay.” His brow furrowed, and he shook his head, too. “’Tis not how it went at all.”

“’Twas,” I replied gently, understanding how off-center and alarmed he must feel. “When you hit the ground, you lost consciousness but stirred awake at his roar. Then…” Both terrified at the memory of his vulnerability yet marveling at it all, a shiver rippled through me. “Then, you showed no more fear at that moment than you had when you drew him away from me. Instead, you narrowed your eyes and roared right back, silencing him, miraculously enough. Then…”

I shook my head, still in awe of what I’d witnessed before going on. “Then you reached up, as if beckoning him to you, and he lowered his great head. I thought surely that he would maul you, but he did no such thing. Rather, he lowered his forehead to your forehead, and you two shared a moment that we seers would call a spiritual connection.”

“What happened after that?” he said softly, his voice deep with emotion as if my revelation might be helping him to remember.

While tempted to touch his scar again, I clenched my fist and gestured at it, instead. “Without the bear ever attacking and inflicting an actual wound, your scar formed, and the bear lumbered off, leaving, I believe, a piece of his spirit with you. The ferocious berserker that sometimes comes out when you battle. The strength you found when you saved my father years later. The power you harnessed by all accounts. ’Twas the polar bear inside you fighting off another bear, Knud. A polar you shared a similar soul with, making you a true Helvig in every sense of the word, whether born to our tribe or not.”

“Because I should not have survived that second bear any more than your father,” he murmured, nodding slowly as if this all made sense when another might claim I was being foolish and he was merely a courageous warrior. “That bear was even bigger than the first, so we should have both died that day.” His eyes met mine. “Just as you and I should have died when faced with the first.”

“Ja,” I confirmed. We very much should have. Polars were notorious killers when confronted. Of all the types of bears out there, the polar bear was the last anyone wanted to come across.

“Yet we didn’t die because you are a Helvig seer and I…?” He shook his head again, trying to make sense of everything. “What, who, am I that I could do the things you claim that first night? Things taken from my memory yet with your words feel realer by the moment?”

“I couldn’t say, other than it makes you one of us in more ways than you ever realized.” I did my best not to touch him again when all I wanted to do was rest my hand on his broad chest and feel the beat of his heart. A fierce, protective heart full of more courage than any I had ever come across. “I believe the bear brought you to the Helvigs and me that night. Brought you to your rightful people, no matter who you might have been born of. Then its spirit returned this morn yet again to lend us strength, mayhap.”

“Mayhap,” he murmured. “And I do agree that your, our, Helvigs are my rightful people.”

His voice grew soft, and he, yet again, surprised me when he cupped my cheek. Then he outright shocked me when he said words I never thought he would.

Chapter Four

Knud

From the moment I awoke to a polar bear, of all things, poking its great head into my cottage, before it raced to Tove with me following, my mind had been in a never-ending whirlwind of fear and disbelief. Fear wasn’t something I typically felt as it served no purpose in battle, but when it came to something threatening Tove’s life, it owned me.