Zavier had already been heading back to the house when he heard the bells.

He told her never to use them casually. He told her of his extreme displeasure when one of his previous wives had used the bells to continue an argument. He hadn’t been at all pleased to haul his ass all the way up from the lower pastures to find a wife he could barely stand waiting in the yard with a sour look on her face and no peril.

Don’t worry, his Matylda had said with that smile of hers intact, wrecking him the way he hadn’t yet admitted she did. I will only ring the bells in the direst of circumstances, so you can be absolutely sure that what I require is your instant and immediate aid. If I want to argue with you, I’ll wait until you come home of your own accord.

He remembered exactly how he’d suggested that there were better ways to take out her feelings on him.

But that meant that when the bells split the blue sky in half, his heart broke right along with it.

Because he knew she was in trouble.

Zavier would have said that he’d left behind the things in him that had once made him one of the fiercest raider brothers. That it was all part and parcel of his previous life. That, at best, he was a rusty old man who kept his bladecraft as tight as it could be when it was a hobby instead of his calling, but had forgotten everything else.

But that was a lie.

Because the moment he heard those bells, he was a warrior again.

He left his truck hidden in a copse of trees in case anyone was looking out for him, the way he would do if he ambushed a man’s house. He helped himself to the emergency weapons he always kept on hand in his truck, shrugging into his harness as if it was a second skin. The way it had been, long ago.

The way it felt again today, now that it was needed.

And then he took off at a run. The way his brothers always had, that high-speed raider approach to anything that overwhelmed their enemies and spread those stories of their terrifying otherworldliness. Making them dark and scary nightmares even in the bright light of a noonday sun.

The last bell had only just stopped ringing when Zavier made it to the homestead. He slowed down, sneaking around the side of the barn, his gaze flying this way and that as he took in the scene developing on his goddamned land.

He couldn’t see Matylda, which was as likely a good thing as a bad thing, given so little information.

But he had no trouble seeing the pack of fucking jackholes pouring out of the Jeep and fanning out around his house. His house and his woman.

Rustlers.

He hated these fucking assholes.

They only came when the weather was good, dressed in their stolen leathers. They were never content with stealing a cow or two, or rounding up a few head of steer. Not when they could take a man’s lands in their greedy hands and live off of it until they ran it into the ground.

Zavier had been merrily killing rustlers as long as he’d been here. It was how he’d won Esteban’s trust, back in the day. It was one of his favorite sports, come to that, and if he’d been asked what he was most looking forward to over the summer he might even have said a little target practice with thieving fucks topped his list.

But today was different. Today, Matylda was in the line of fire, and that made everything less amusing.

Because like hell would he allow her to get hurt. Especially not by a pack of jackals like these braying idiots, who thought they could roll up to a man’s house in the middle of the day and get away with it.

This was the frontier. Weak-ass men didn’t make it through the winter. Rustlers were dumbasses who didn’t seem to realize that everyone in these higher elevations was already crazy, or they wouldn’t have tried to tame the land in the first place.

Zavier hadn’t been a raider in a long while. But he felt like he’d never left his clan or the eastern islands when he stepped out from behind the barn, slid his favorite blade from its sheath, and started across his own damned yard.

“This looks like a party,” he boomed out as he walked into the thick of it. “And no one thought to invite me?”

There were five of them. Bad odds for a farmer, maybe, but Zavier was no regular farmer. He was a frontierman, which was dangerous enough. The best part was that the rustlers couldn’t possibly know that he was something a whole hell of a lot scarier than that.

He was banking on it.

Sure enough, they laughed.

They laughed and laughed, and as Zavier walked toward them he could see that they’d started in on one of his windows, trying to wrench it open from the outside. More than that, he could see Matylda standing on the other side of the glass. His beautiful Matylda. Her red hair twisted up on top of her head. Her pale skin flushed with what he thought was actually her temper, after all this time.

As if the only thing that really made her lose her cool wasn’t his bullshit, but a pack of rustlers in her yard.

Because she was perfect.

For him.

And Zavier realized something he should have known from the start. He didn’t give a fuck how she came to be here. Who she or her sister owed or what debts were still out there or any of that crap.

This was his woman. This was his mate, in the old raider tradition. If any hand touched her but his, he’d cut it off. And enjoy it while he did.

These rustler assholes were perilously close to touching her, and that was close enough for Zavier to take grave offense.

He forced himself to look away from her, and that pissed him off even more.

Then there was nothing between him and the five douchebags cluttering up his yard except the morning air. And the inevitability of their coming deaths, as sure as the sunset and the next harsh winter.

“You’re misreading the situation, friend,” one of the rustlers told him, laughing to show how few teeth he had. “You’re in a world of hurt. You and your woman.”

Zavier smiled, feeling the weight of his blade in his hand. He might have walked away from the brotherhood, but there was no walking away from who he was. He would always be a raider, down deep into his soul. That was forever.

Just like Matylda.

“You and your cocksucking friends have exactly five seconds to get the fuck off my land,” Zavier said. Nicely, he thought.

All five men laughed. He’d thought they would. And really, they were doing him a favor, because otherwise he might have had to apologize to his woman for freezing her out last night and storming off like a whiny little bitch this morning.

A little mayhem was obviously a better option.

When the rustlers stopped laughing it had been more like forty seconds. Something Zavier didn’t hesitate to point out.

“I told you that you only had five seconds.”

He said it as if he was sorry. And received a lot of middle finger salutes in return.

“You can’t say I didn’t warn you,” Zavier murmured then.

And then he kept his implied promise. He threw himself into the fight, and it felt the way it did every spring when he dove in to his favorite lake here on his land to see if he could still swim after the long winter.

First there was the shock of the cold. Then the embrace of the water. Then his body took over, reminding him that he didn’t know how to drown.

Fighting was the same. Fist against bone. The swing of his blade. And his utter certainty that he would be victorious no matter what his enemies threw at him.

And then he was.

When he finally stood over the bodies of these dumbasses who’d tried to take what was his, he heard the scrape of his own front door, and then looked up to find his wife there, watching him.

And not just that. She’d decked herself out in a raider harness just like his, with blades hanging at the ready like she’d planned to go down hard.

“Were you planning to use those?” he asked.

Her cheeks were flushed. Her green eyes blazed. He loved it.

“If I had to,” she said, fiercely. Like it was a vow. Then she tilted her head to one side. “Where did you learn how to fight like that?”

“Why?” He felt his mouth curve. “Are you scared?”

But Zavier knew she wasn’t. Matylda moved toward him, stepping over the men he’d slain with a certain careless bloodthirstiness that made him want to fuck her right here, right now. And then again and again, for the rest of their lives.

She wasn’t a raider woman. But then again, he wasn’t really a raider, anymore. So he supposed that made her his raider woman, all the same.

“I’m not scared of a few bad men,” she told him, advancing on him. The way she walked made the blades dance in the harness she wore, and it was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard. “And I’m certainly not scared because you took them down. The way you told them you would if they didn’t leave.”

“Yeah,” Zavier muttered. “About that—”

“I am not leaving,” she told him, daring to cut him off. And she didn’t stop there. “I may have come here to pay off my sister’s debt, but that’s not why I want to stay. I’m not even sure it’s entirely you. I love it here. I love this farm. I love this land. I love the sky and the mountains and the sea. And I will not allow you to throw me back so you can get another insipid wife who you won’t be able to tolerate for more than a few months. And who won’t take care of my house or my chickens or my garden—”

She heaved in a breath, and she was closer to him then. So she pointed a finger straight in his face. And he let her, because he was in love with her. His woman. His mate.

“Or my man,” she said. “I won’t let you do it. So the only way you’re getting me out of here? Is cutting me down like one of these idiots.”

“I have a better idea,” Zavier said. “How about you just stay?”

This time she poked him in the chest, and he was surprised how hard it was. He wouldn’t say it hurt, exactly. But it wasn’t enjoyable either, and that made him proud. Because she was stronger now. She would have to be, or she wouldn’t have been able to ring those bells.

And the woman who’d gotten off that bus certainly wouldn’t have taken it upon herself to get in his face.

She was everything he’d ever wanted in a wife. A woman. And had never imagined he’d get.

“That better not be a trick,” she snapped at him.

“Matylda,” he murmured, like her name was a song. To him, it always would be. He reached down and he took her face in his hands, and then he pulled her against his body. And she came, because of course she came, because he touched her and she melted and how had he ever managed to convince himself that she was anything but perfect? This was the good stuff. This was the real deal. This was his woman, after all. “I love you.”

“Yes,” she replied. Her green eyes were bright with emotion but still, there was that edge in her voice. It made him love her more. It made him hard. It made him the happiest man in the whole of the ruined world, and entirely hers besides. “I know you do. You terribly silly, terrifyingly wonderful man. Don’t you dare leave me again.”

And Zavier stopped talking. He picked her up against him and he carried her into their house. He laid her down on their bed, he climbed up over her the way he always wanted to do, and he claimed her.

Again and again and again, he claimed her.

In the summer, she grew vegetables in the garden outside. And then pulled up the roots when the weather grew cold, torched the beds and mulched them, and let the soil sit through the winter.

And in the spring, the garden bloomed again.

And so did Zavier. Over and over, as the years spun by, one after the next, until he forgot that he had ever considered himself a monster.

Because his wife loved him. And treated him, day in and day out, like her hero.

Until that was what he was. For her.

Forever.