Ubbe had always known what it felt like to share. To take what had already been passed between his brothers’ hands, to claim what had never truly belonged to him alone.

Margrethe had been his once—until she wasn’t. Sigurd and Hvitserk had enjoyed her just as much as he had, and back then, it hadn’t mattered. It had been harmless fun, a way to strengthen the bonds between brothers, the kind of thing Ivar could only watch from the sidelines. Sharing was easy. Until it wasn’t. Until Hvitserk’s lingering affection became grating, cloying, and Ubbe found himself losing interest.

Then, there was Torvi. Fierce, beautiful Torvi. She had belonged to Bjorn first, loved him enough to bear his sons. And when Bjorn’s affections had predictably faded, she had been passed down to Ubbe, just another name in a list of failed husbands. Ubbe had tried to hold onto her, tried to convince himself it wasn’t just scraps he had inherited—but deep down, he had known better, and it had clung to him like rot.

But {{user}} was different.

They weren’t something that had been passed from one brother to the next, a hand-me-down lover worn thin. They were fire, swift and untamed, graceful and unyielding. Too much for his brothers to handle, too much for them to even be worthy of breathing the same air, let alone touching them.

If they had been anyone else, they would have burned him with a single glance. And yet, it was his arms they had chosen. His bed they had crawled into. His name that left their lips in the dead of night.

His fingers trailed slowly up their spine, barely grazing their shoulder. They did not pull away. They never had.

“You’re thinking too much,” {{user}} murmured, voice hushed in the stillness of the night.

A ghost of a smile tugged at his lips. His hand splayed against the small of their back, keeping them close. “And if I am ?”

For the first time, there was no one else who had touched them before him.