The Innocent (Clan of the Woodlands Book 2) Read online

  Clan of the Woodlands

  The Innocent

  V. K. Ludwig

  Copyright © 2019 by V. K. Ludwig

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  The characters and events in this book are fictional. Any similarities to real people or organizations are coincidental and not intended by the author.

  For Samantha. Thank you for all your feedback, chapter after chapter after chapter.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter One

  This book is recommended for mature readers due to adult content, graphic scenes and inappropriate language.

  For the best reading experience, please see below for the order of books in this series:

  Clan of the Woodlands:

  #1 The Bastard

  #2 The Innocent

  #3 The Chieftain

  Chapter 2

  Before the exchange…

  Clan of the Woodlands

  Autumn

  I stood up straight and drilled my spiteful stare right into Rowan’s eyes. “Do I have fucking horns on my head and a beard hanging from my chin that I’m not aware of?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me,” I yelled, my voice shakier than I wanted it to be. “Do I look like a fucking Pygmy goat to you? Or what makes you think that you can just offer me to a guy like a prized milk doe?”

  His gaze pinned me down like a vulture, relentless and piercing right into my deepest fears. How could my brother send me away like that?

  Heat flushed through my body, and a primal scream clogged my throat.

  It never came out.

  Instead, the venison stew pushed back into my mouth, leaving a sourness behind that made me gag. Terrified and on wobbly legs, I dashed for the window and gave it a push.

  “Autumn, I didn’t mean to…” Rowan’s words trailed off, but I would have ignored them, anyway.

  A fir-scented draft blew underneath my nose and inside my room, tugging on the spider web at the frame’s corner. I turned and leaned against the windowsill, letting my eyes wander over all the knots on the walls, which bled yellow stains through the white-washed pine logs.

  Hair lifted on my arms — not only from the cold breeze — which teased the flames in the fireplace with bursts of oxygen.

  Pictures flashed through my mind, each more gruesome than the one before. Everyone knew the Clan of the Mountains wasn’t a place for women; not even as the wife of their chieftain.

  What if he took what he wanted without asking, or shared me with his most-trusted men after he had put an heir into my belly? The thought stripped my room into nothing but an empty, white canvas.

  A backdrop for a dark memory.

  A memory making me tremble.

  I could smell it. Right there under my nose.

  The stench of his breath breaking at the column of my neck.

  The taste of iron on my lips when I bit his tongue to shreds.

  “I’ll stab him to death before I let him or anybody else touch me.” I wanted to spit the words at him, but my voice was close to soundless. Rowan’s clenched jaw told me he had heard me anyway, and I stomped toward him.

  I stopped just inches away from his nose and pointed at the silver picture frame on the mantle shelf. “They kidnapped Darya, your wife. Sold her off as a sex slave if they had the time, or perhaps raped her bloody right then and —”

  “Enough!” He slapped my hand down. Strong enough to make it sting, but too weak to scare me. Nevertheless, I had flinched at my own words. If saying them pulled the floor out from underneath me, how did my brother manage to stand upright?

  Droplets of spit clung to the corners of his mouth. He took a step toward the shelf, which attached to smooth river rocks stacked high and at least two-men wide.

  Three wooden boards leaned against the sides of the fireplace, one stretched rabbit hide each nailed to them. They had vibrated and jumped underneath that single move of his.

  Furious and with shaky fingers, he grabbed the picture and turned it face down. “Don’t you fucking dare bring her into this. They have always denied it,” he said, his hand resting on the frame for a few more seconds. Then he jerked them away like a calf from a freeze brand.

  He went on. “And we found no proof that would give me a reason not to believe them. They wouldn’t be that stupid. From what someone told me, he isn’t a bad guy and trying his best to keep shit inside the bowl up there, just like we do down here.”

  Not a bad guy? Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit.

  The definition of not a bad guy could be stretched into all four cardinal directions nowadays. And it seemed as if I was about to find out what exactly it meant to live up North: between white mountain caps, endless forests and rock-solid turds at negative ten degrees on a winter day.

  Rowan walked over to the window, leaned one shoulder against the frame, and took a deep breath as if nausea had crept up on him too. The embers in the fire glistened in specks of red, devouring the blackened wood like my brother’s words devoured me.

  “For the sake of peace between the clans, I have no other choice but to let him marry you.” His voice came out pained, but his posture remained calm. Almost indifferent.

  “I don’t even know him,” I said and walked over to my bed, throwing myself into the pile of fluffy pillows. “You always accuse the Districts of being unable to love and form meaningful relationships. And here I am, forced into an arranged marriage with a guy I don’t love, who might say pineapple belongs on pizza.”

  “I can clear that right up for you because pineapple does go on pizza. Everyone who says different is a dirty heathen.” He wrestled a smirk on his face which fainted back into his default-scowl in less than two seconds. “Besides, they don’t have trade agreements with the Districts, so I doubt the conundrum will ever come up. And just so you know, he doesn’t want to marry either, but his elders convinced him that it’s time.”

  I gazed over to him and wiped away a tear which hadn’t formed yet, but I was sure waited behind my eyelids. “He has elders advising him?”

  “Uh-huh. Rumor has it he even listens to them. Imagine that. I’ve got enough people yapping in my ears, the last thing I need is a bunch of big-eared oldsters spitting in my mead. Heard the women say he’s handsome, too.”

  He stretched the word handsome out like a piece of disintegrated gum. Savage. Badass. Asshole. Rowan was ok with being called many things. Handsome wasn’t one of them.

  “That’s good, right?” I asked him, desperately grabbing for something that might calm me down.

  “It’s a smart political move —”

  “Smart political move?” I hissed and threw a pillow at him, which hit his chest like a concrete wall and plummeted to the
ground. Rage fueled my mouth like hot coals a steam train. Calm sucks! “What am I? A fucking policy? I want to marry for love, Rowan, like everyone else does. You preach it to the villagers, but you want to deny it to your own sister?”

  He kicked the pillow against my desk, and a feathery cloud burst from its seams like the sudden fury in his eyes. “Love is fucking overrated, and I can tell you that from personal experience. Might be a family curse, who knows. In any case, you will marry him, and you will marry him soon.”

  “I won’t marry someone I don’t love.”

  “Well good luck with that,” he said, his tone going heavy on the sarcasm. “At the rate you’re going, I don’t see that happening in the next twenty-four years.”

  “You are such an asshole.” My lips trembled, and anger cut through me like the broadhead tip of an arrow. “How was I supposed to get to know a guy well enough if you insist on sitting in the same room with us during a date?”

  “So?” He shrugged his shoulders. “You don’t need to be alone in a room with a guy to fall in love. It’s not like I’m listening to your conversations.”

  “Does Hunter ring a bell? The last guy who asked me out? He now leaves the room whenever I enter it. Do you remember what you did after he blew me a kiss from like twelve feet away?”

  He flung his head back. “Oh, come on, that guy couldn’t even take a joke.”

  “Rowan,” I sat up and placed my hands onto my hips. “You drew your finger across your throat and then pointed at him.”

  The way his ears tensed told me he hid a smirk underneath his beard. “Yeah, like I said, he had no humor whatsoever.”

  Breath burst in and out of my lungs as if my body already prepared itself for life in the mountains. I had woken up so many times, knowing this conversation would flare up again at some point or another, but what did I do? Nothing.

  Because I can’t trust. And without trust, I can’t love.

  I shook my head at my own thoughts and sunk my face into my palms. Love or no love, at least I would have stayed here where I belonged if only I would have married one of our men. I should have done this way sooner.

  I got up, walked over to him and leaned myself against the opposite side of the frame. Drowned in a thick layer of fog, the forest offered nothing but the scent of yesterday’s rain, like loam and moss, and nothingness beyond the first line of trees.

  What he stared at I couldn’t say, but his nostrils remained flared.

  Slow and appeasing, I placed my hand onto his ink-sleeved arm. “What if I marry one of our men? And I mean it, Rowan. Give me two weeks, and you will have me married off.”

  “Not exactly a smart political move. The Clan of the Mountains is desperate for women.” He said it as if it wasn’t the standard of measure out here. “We both know why you’re not married yet. Let me tell you, you have to get over the past and move on, baby sister.”

  “Like you moved on? I had no idea you officially divorced Darya.”

  The veins on his arms popped without a single movement, his breath slow and deep. “I had more important shit to do. Can’t divorce the dead either.”

  “Then let me move on and marry one of our men!”

  He kneaded his chin and pulled the hairs on his beard several times as if he considered my words. All the while, my brain came up with the worst best idea out there and shot it right out of my mouth. “How about Adair?”

  The kneading stopped, and he crossed his arms over his chest. “What about him?”

  Well, that sure was brain flatulence at its best.

  How did I come up with an idea as half-baked as this one, considering Adair had yet to hear about his tremendous luck?

  Curious and observing, I let my eyes stroll across Rowan’s face and posture, decoding how he might react.

  Head cocked, and eyes narrowed, he took a deep breath… and held it. Noise coming from somewhere close by made him jerk his head.

  “What the hell was that?” he asked, silencing me with his hand held up before I even made a noise.

  Feet scurried underneath the window, crunching leaves and shifting across slick rocks. A quick flicker of pale hair dived and disappeared into the darkness.

  Oh shit, shit, shit!

  Panic swirled around my head — did Rowan see what I saw?

  I let my hand dart for the window. “It’s a hedgehog family. They made themselves a nest down there so they can hibernate.”

  “Hedgehogs are solitary,” he said and tried to keep me from closing the window, but I had it closed and locked before his hand reached my wrist.

  I gave him a smile. “Guess it’s just one then. I don’t mind that little fella out there as long as —”

  “Little fella my ass,” he said. “Unless that thing is a two-hundred pounds whopper with spikes on it, I bet it’s one of the young guys trying to peek into your window. Where’s my shotgun?”

  Rowan stomped toward the bedroom door, his shoulders square and his knuckles cracking.

  My fingers tingled, the tips slowly turning numb. If I wouldn’t do something, right fucking now, I’d be responsible for a death. “Would you allow Adair to marry me?”

  The question made him stop in his tracks and swing around, the look on his face as icy as the shivers which climbed up my spine.

  “If I weren't such an old fart, I might have sworn you asked me if Adair can marry you.” He sucked one side of his cheeks deep into his mouth. “But that’s impossible because none of you guys ever cared to mention that you have some sort of interest in each other. Now I am wondering, is that because you prey on a desperate guy to marry you, or because he has been sneaking around with my sister… behind my back.”

  Oh, fuck!

  I held his gaze and shrugged my shoulders in slow-motion, buying my brain a few more seconds to think. He was right on the money.

  “Umm.” I plunged my hands into the pockets of my jeans. “No sneaking around. But we might have talked about it a —”

  “Please tell me a stray bullet won’t accidentally hit one of my best men once I pump the metal into that direction.” He pointed at the window, and my heart fell to the bottom of my stomach. Why did he have to sneak up tonight?

  I had to do something, so I optioned for a good old-fashioned tantrum.

  “I see what you’re doing here, brother.” I raised my chin and stomped my foot on the ground. “You’re trying to ignore my question. Don’t condemn me to a miserable life, just because you can’t man-up to face your own misery. I refuse to spend the rest of my life crying myself to sleep like you do.”

  “I don’t cry,” he yelled. “You’re talking out of your ass again.”

  I wasn’t, and I hated myself for using it against him.

  “Yeah, sure. You go tell yourself that, but before you do, please answer my question. Would you agree if Adair wanted to marry me?”

  He took a deep breath and made a clicking sound with his tongue, dragging seconds into minutes. “Are you sure that would be a wise choice? Do you love him?”

  My body tensed as if I on trial, standing accused of lying before I had even spoken the words.

  I couldn’t do it. Those four letters were holier to me than whatever rafters, cement blocks or stained glass windows had remained intact at the old church to the East.

  “I don’t love him,” I said, “but he is a decent guy, and you said it yourself: he is one of your best men.”

  “Well, yes, but…” He scratched the nape of his neck as if he pondered his words. “I’m not saying that guy has nothing worth falling in love over, but he sure as hell struggles to show it. Don’t you think he’s a bit of a, umm, a bit of a jerk?”

  “No more than you, and I survived living with you for going on twenty-four years now. Guess I can make it another thirty with him. So… is that a yes?”

  Heavy as if filled with gravel, he dragged his muddy boots over the floors, pacing before the fireplace like a cold-blooded animal. I shifted my weight from one leg to the other and back
. My heart raced at the thought of marrying Adair.

  What if he says no?

  Fuck! What if he says yes?

  But then again, we had been kind-of-dating for three weeks now, sneaking in a few secret conversations between window frames and store shelves. He was just as desperate to find a wife as any other guy in the village, right?

  “And?” I asked and tapped my foot nervously on the floor to speed up his thinking.

  Rowan put one hand against the flagstones of the fireplace and stared into the flames. He sighed as if he had flung a wild boar onto his shoulders after a fresh kill, pinched the bridge of his nose, and shook his head. “There’s no need for you to marry Adair, baby sister. Truth is, I planned to scare you with the arranged marriage thing because I knew you would fight it at all cost.”

  My eyes wandered over the room, chasing for an invisible explanation to all this. “T-then there isn’t really a chieftain looking for a wife? This makes no sense. Why would —”

  “Oh hell yeah, he’s real,” he said. “His name is Xavier. But I stopped negotiating your marriage to him months ago. He seems nice enough and all but, well, I just couldn’t lose you too.”

  Even with the nighttime chill, my body threatened to burst into flames at all the confusion which clouded my head. I wrapped my arms around me, keeping myself from doing something stupid like drumming my fists into his back. Why would he play such a fucked up mind game with me?

  “I don’t get it.” I bit my upper lip and tried to make sense of all this for another moment. “You say that I won’t have to marry their chieftain, correct?”