Brenna pushed her hair from her face and ran after her three-year-old son, Gunnar. On the way, she cast a dirty look in Calder’s direction, only to find her mate laughing softly.

“Oh, you think it’s funny the way this young man keeps his mother on her toes?”

Calder dropped the blade he’d been using to skin a deer he’d brought home and with several long strides swooped a giggling Gunnar into his arms, then tossed him upward.

Gunnar released a high squeal of excitement and demanded his father do it again, and again.

Brenna sat on a stump near them, breathless. Her stomach, heavy with another baby, was taxing her every move.

She admired the way Calder held his son, the handsome figure he made. Not a single day had she regretted the choice she’d made to make a life with him.

They’d found an isolated region full of wildlife and plants as food sources with easy access to water, and a hill to build a cabin on. A cabin protected by the mountain behind them.

They’d been there a few months when Brenna had discovered they were not far from her father’s lands. She’d told Calder.

He’d asked her if she wanted to visit her father, his jaw tight. She knew it wasn’t her father that concerned him—it was the husband she’d left behind. As far as she was concerned, that man had not been her husband. They’d never consummated their marriage as man and wife. She’d never been much more than chattel to her husband, or even her father.

No, Brenna had told him. She had no wish to see anyone from her prior life.

Calder had nodded and acquiesced, though she knew his Viking blood wanted to seek revenge on the man who’d caused her such pain. For Brenna, there had been no reason for that.

She wanted peace and happiness. And listening to the sounds of Gunnar’s merriment, feeling the baby inside kicking, she knew she had exactly what she wanted.

* * *

Little did she expect that peaceful, happy life to be disrupted one day when a large, grimy man in rags and long hair, with tattoos on his face emerged into the clearing where she was hanging the baby’s clothing.

She’d given Calder another son, and she’d told him to name this one too, as she would name the girls when the time came, if they should have girls. She’d known that it meant much to her mate to give names to the children that would honor the men in his tribe and those in his family.

And she’d not been surprised when he’d named the next child Torsten. She’d wondered why he hadn’t named them after Halvar, his brother, but she wasn’t sure of the ways of his people.

The grimy, filthy man with wild eyes stared at her as if she were an apparition.

She bit back a scream and was thankful her children were both napping in the cabin.

But Calder was out getting water. And she was here alone. With this man with wild eyes and a strange demeanor.

She grabbed for the hatchet Calder had fashioned for her to keep at hand, one large enough for self-defense, but not so unwieldly as the one he sported for himself.

The man released a growl as he approached.

She raised the hatchet. “Stay back.”

“I know you,” the man snarled.

“Go away,” she warned him with a thrust of the hatchet.

He wasn’t close enough to strike, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to allow him to be.

A crunching to her left almost made her look. Almost. But she kept her eyes on the man.

Did he have friends? Would she be under attack from several of them? She took small sideways steps to get between the stranger and their cabin.

“Go,” she snapped, still keeping her eyes on the man.

Then came the last sound she wanted to hear.

“Mama?” Gunnar’s voice came from behind her.

“Stay there, Gunnar,” she cautioned her son.

“Gunnar?” the wild man said.

“Halvar?” Came from her left where she’d heard the crunching.

Except that was Calder’s voice. She cast a sideways glance. Calder was staring at the man.

Wait. He’d said, Halvar. That was the name of Calder’s brother.

She stared at the man. Could it be?

It was!

Calder came running toward the large man and enveloped him in a bear hung. “Halvar! I thought you’d perished.”