Reintroducing to the Clan

A look of guarded satisfaction settled over Rodereus' weathered features as he processed Jagnar's reassuring words.

Giving a curt nod, the patriarch rose from his ornate chair, the various sigils and gemstones adorning his ceremonial robes glittering in the crimson brazier light.

"Very well, then. For now, I shall observe and reserve final judgment," he rumbled. "Go and prepare yourself. This evening, I shall formally reintroduce you to the rest of the clan at the grand banquet hall."

'Wait, reintroduce? What the fuck, old man!' Soon he realized what the patriarch had in mind and why he wanted to introduce him to the family. Just now, he witnessed the power of the ancestral blade, and now he wants to put me on the spot by getting everyone's attention.

Jagnar, too, wondered why he didn't question the blade. Now, through the clan, he wanted to keep an eye on him.

With a deferential incline of his head, he watched as Rodereus turned and made his unhurried exit from the great hall, each booted footfall resonating against the stone floor.

As soon as the towering oak doors thudded closed behind the patriarch, Jagnar pivoted and hastened back through the dimly-lit corridors towards the family's private quarters.

His grandmother Gloriana and his half-sister Elysia would no doubt be awaiting him anxiously.

Sure enough, as he pushed through the arched doors into Gloriana's opulent receiving room, the two women immediately descended upon him in a flurry of skirts and trailing lace.

Gloriana reached him first, her wizened features alight with unabashed relief and joy as she flung her arms around his broad shoulders in a fierce embrace. Elysia was only a bare moment behind, adding her own slender arms to the tangle as she pressed her lithe form against Jagnar's side.

"Oh, my darling boy, you've finally, truly returned to us!" Gloriana's voice was thick with barely restrained emotion as she showered his cheeks with fervent kisses. "What did that incorrigible old tyrant have to say? I trust he did not give you any undue difficulties."

Jagnar couldn't quite suppress the amused chuckle that rumbled up from his broad chest at his grandmother's irreverent tone when referring to her husband. Clearly, the decades had done little to temper Gloriana's famously fiery spirit and stubborn personality.

"Nothing untoward, grandmother. He has agreed to reintroduce me to the clan tonight at the evening banquet." He opted to omit the more...intense aspects of their confrontation for the sake of reassuring the two women.

Gloriana's brow furrowed in a disapproving scowl. "Is that what he intends? To parade you before the entire family assembly, garner their scrutiny, and fixate every eye upon you without proper preparation." Her tone made it clear that she did not approve of such naked grandstanding by her husband.

Elysia chimed in, her lilting voice laced with trepidation. "She speaks true, brother. Our siblings can be dangerous at the best of times, even without the added instigation of our grandfather's provocations. And if he so overtly signals his favor towards you, it may draw unwanted attention from outsiders as well."

The young woman's crystalline blue eyes were wide with naked worry as she gazed imploringly up at Jagnar. "You must be very cautious about how you proceed with them. They will not hesitate to seek any perceived weaknesses to exploit for their own gain."

Jagnar felt his chest constrict at the unabashed concern shining in their expressions. It had been so very long since he had been the beneficiary of such pure, unconditional affection. Gloriana's doting, Elysia's sisterly fretting—it caused something deep within his calloused psyche to stir and ache with a profound, unfamiliar yearning.

Moving with unhesitating confidence, he reached out to gather them both close, one arm snaking around each of their waists as he pulled them into his powerful embrace. "You need not fret so over my well-being, my beloved people," he murmured in a soothing baritone, patently at odds with his hulking form. "I am Jagnar Valen Sirius, descendant of the great Sirius clan and vaunted swordsman without mortal equal. No harm shall befall me at the hands of scheming brethren or conniving outsiders."

Jagnar said so haughtily, to ease up their concern.

Gloriana surprised him by letting out a sudden peal of husky laughter, her sable curls bouncing animatedly against his chest. "Ha! You've picked up a rather imperious streak since last we met, my proud wolf-pup!" She reached up to affectionately pinch one of his whiskered cheeks in a rare display of playful teasing. "But I suppose one cannot fault the confidence when it is so clearly well-earned."

With a decisive nod, she clapped her hands twice, summoning a retinue of liveried handmaidens.

"Now then, if you are to make a proper debut back into polite society, we must see you attired accordingly. To the bathing chambers with you at once! I will have the finest ceremonial garments prepared for when you've finished your ablutions."

Jagnar shot his grandmother one last look of inscrutable warmth before obediently following the maids through a side door and out of sight.

The next several minutes ticked by in a flurry of activity, punctuated by the clatter of buckets and basins being ferried to and fro. Finally, after what seemed to be an entirely brief period, Jagnar reemerged from the inner chambers.

Gloriana's breath caught in her throat as she drank in his form. Gone were the sweat-stained leathers and battered traveling garments of before. Now he cut an utterly regal figure in immaculate robes of midnight blue and silver, the ancestral colors of the Sirius line. Gleaming rank-chains looped across his broad chest, while pale filigreed patterns chased up the flared sleeves and hem of the silken overtunic.

His flaxen hair had been neatly tamed and secured in a high warrior's tail, the better to showcase the chiseled lines of his startlingly handsome visage. With his powerful shoulders squared and his chin lifted with aristocratic arrogance, he seemed every inch the haughty scion of nobility he was.

Elysia flushed becomingly at the sight, pressing one hand to her bodice as if suddenly afflicted with breathlessness.

Gloriana, for all her worldliness, could not quite conceal her own softening countenance. Clearly, some decidedly unmatriarchal thoughts were chasing through her mind, prompted by the sight of her grandson's virile beauty.

"What a sight to behold," she murmured, her voice barely above a whisper.

Without a word being spoken, Gloriana glided forward and looped one arm through Jagnar's while Elysia automatically mirrored her on his other side.

Together, the trio made their stately way through the manor's halls towards the site of the riotous celebrations that would mark Jagnar's long-overdue reintroduction to his birthright.

The people who made his life hell and who made him leave will all be present in the hall. Looking at the grand hall, Jagnar sighed heavily, 'I have come at last.'

As the immense oaken doors of the high-vaulted feasting hall swung ponderously open to admit them, light and raucous laughter spilled forth like an overpowering wave.

It was already night, and most of the honored guests had left; even the imperial prince had come and left after greeting the patriarch. People from various other prestiogious clans also visited the patriarch, sending their regards.

Right now, the hall is filled with clan and branch families of the clan.

A hush gradually fell over the raucous festivities as all eyes were inexorably drawn towards the trio making their stately entrance, especially Jagnar.

Jagnar could feel the weight of hundreds of curious stares boring into him, appraising and assessing this mysterious newcomer in their midst.

They made their way into the middle of the hall.

The assembled noblewomen seemed to be the most overtly affected by his presence. Delicate fans fluttered rapidly before flushed faces, while sidelong glances were exchanged behind upraised hands, accompanied by unmistakable murmurs and girlish titters. It was abundantly clear that Jagnar's striking, rugged beauty was causing more than a few afluttering heartbeats amongst the normally unflappable noble daughters, and even the older ones too.

His sharp gaze swiftly picked out and catalogued the various family members arrayed around the high table—half-siblings, cousins, aunts, and uncles.

As they didn't yet know about him, most regarded him with open curiosity and skepticism, though a few seemed to appraise him in a more calculating, weighing manner that set his instincts on edge.

It was his aunt Ordelia, Reyanald's younger sister, who reacted first to their approach.

Rising from her gilded chair at the high table, the statuesque woman's sweep of raven tresses nearly brushed the floor as she descended towards them. Her icy blue eyes, so reminiscent of Reyanald's own penetrating stare, openly roamed over Jagnar from head to toe in a singularly unabashed inspection.

"Well now, mother," she murmured at length, one delicately arched brow arching inquisitively.

"And just who is this strapping young... candy boy you've seen fit to parade into our festivities?"

A light, tinkling laugh escaped Gloriana's lips at her daughter's salacious appraisal, though her own gaze shone with profound fondness as it lingered on her grandson. "Why, Ordelia, don't you recognize him? Have the years dimmed your memory so severely already?"

Ordelia's brows knitted briefly in consternation as she pivoted her attention back to Jagnar, clearly fighting to place his admittedly very altered countenance. Around them, the rest of the assembled family began to lean in with open curiosity, likewise struggling to identify this enigmatic new arrival.

After a protracted moment of scrutiny, Ordelia could only shake her head in baffled admission.

"I'm afraid the years really have addled to my recollections then, mother. For I cannot seem to recall who this...exceptional specimen in our company is supposed to represent."

"Your youngest nephew, dear," Gloriana supplied with an indulgent smile.

A look of sudden comprehension bloomed across Ordelia's sculpted features, only for it to be immediately replaced by a rather unbecoming look of disbelief.

"Youngest nephew? You can't possibly mean—" Her voice dropped to a scandalized hiss. "That dead nephew we were all certain had finally given us good riddance years ago?"

The temperature in the hall seemed to plummet several degrees as Gloriana's expression turned utterly glacial. Even Elysia half-shrank back from the sheer force of arctic hostility her grandmother suddenly radiated.

"Mind your tongue before I have it removed, girl," the dowager warned in a tone that could have frozen the River Styx itself. "You refer to your blood kin and descendant of our proud Sirius clan. Show him the respect his station demands, or so help me."

"Gloriana." The single uttered word, spoken in that unmistakable granite-hewn baritone, sliced through the tension like a blade between ribs.

All eyes swiveled towards the figure of Rodoreus as the towering patriarch rose to his full, intimidating stature. Though his expression remained impassive and inscrutable, some intangible force of command and dominance radiated outward in all directions, as if the very air had grown heavier in his presence.

"Perhaps you would permit me to spare our beloved Ordelia any further indignities by making the introduction myself," he continued in that resonant rumble, each syllable carrying the weight of irresistible authority.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the High Table, may I present my grandson and heir, Jagnar Sirius, the youngest son of Reyanald."

A soundless exhalation of shock and awe rippled through the assembled masses. Jagnar could all but feel the weight of their disbelieving stares magnifying tenfold as they fully absorbed his grandfather's words. He met each and every gaze head-on, silent and implacable as a cliffside weathering a furious storm.

Nearest to him, Ordelia seemed to have recovered her typically unflappable mien. With a smooth, performant curtsy, she offered her nephew a sly smile that somehow managed to be equal parts welcoming and predatory in nature.

"Well then, it seems our family reunion is to be a rather momentous occasion," she all but purred in that dulcet alto of hers. "With the return of the prodigal son, no less. How utterly delightful."

A flicker of something indescribable lurked in the depths of her crystalline stare, something that hinted at vast stretches of unspoken intrigue and carefully veiled motives.

Jagnar found himself suddenly grateful for his extensive training and self-mastery; lesser men would have undoubtedly felt a reflexive shiver of trepidation race down their spines when confronted with the true, dangerous depths lurking behind that polished facade.

As Rodoreus continued with his pronouncements, Jagnar's keen eyes swept across the rest of the high table's occupants, committing each of them to his meticulously analytical mind.

There was his eldest half-sister, Jeanette, Reyanald's firstborn daughter, by his first wife, Edeline.

Her shrewd, penetrating gaze spoke of the tempering hardships inflicted but also of the latent ambition that continued to smoulder like a banked fire waiting to be roused back into a roaring blaze.

Next came his younger brother and sisters from Reyanald's marriage to his second wife, Seraphina, including Elysia, his full-blooded sibling. Of the litter, she had always professed the closest bonds and affection towards Jagnar, even from their earliest childhood years together. Her earnest, open countenance betrayed no guile whatsoever as she bestowed him with undisguised pride and joy.

The same could not be said for her younger brothers, Drogo, Pawlin, and Gawin. Each studied Jagnar with hooded, speculative stares and emotions guardedly inscrutable as they weighed and measured the implications of his return. They were not the only ones, by any stretch.

All across the high table, nephews, nieces, and grandchildren of every relation by both blood and marriage turned their regard upon him with varying degrees of surprise, scepticism, and even outright hostility. Every set of eyes glittered with the calculations of weighing potential advantages or threats to their own carefully cultivated ambitions and agendas.

All save one.

She sat near the centre of the lengthy table, a slip of a woman almost painfully slight and unassuming compared to the larger-than-life figures arrayed around her. Yet those who looked closely could not help but feel a subtle, undeniable magnetism exuding from her delicately lovely form.

The clan's cherished genius, Idrissa. She was Ordelia's daughter.

***

The weight of Rodoreus' pronouncement seemed to linger in the air like a suffocating miasma as the gathered clan digested the full implications. For the patriarch himself to so publicly and overtly embrace Jagnar, spoke volumes about the favour and esteem he now held the long-lost grandson.

Jagnar could all but feel the inscrutable stares burrowing into him from every angle and the resentment and hostility rolling off his siblings and cousins in practised waves of noble contempt. He met each of their looks levelly, his chiselled features an implacable mask that betrayed none of his inner ruminations.

They had loathed him before, when he had merely been the youngest, most disregarded of Reyanald's scattered progeny. His very existence had been an affront to their carefully maintained illusions of superiority and entitlement. Always the half breed bastard, never to be fully acknowledged or accepted into their smothering familial circles.

They had become his hell and never showed any mercy in his younger years.

Until he finally saw the truths they had tried so ferociously to conceal from his youthful eyes, the lies, the backstabbing, and the grotesque underbelly of depravity and hunger for power simmered just beneath their artfully cultivated veneers of nobility.

It had sickened him to his core. And so he had made his choices, charting a path that had led him far away from their toxic, stifling influences all those years ago. A path that had ultimately led him here, back to the proverbial viper's nest, but now possessed strengths and advantages they could never have fathomed in their limited scope of understanding.

Their open disdain and distrust mattered little to him now. In fact, he relished the prospect of dismantling each and every one of their carefully constructed ambitions through the pure, undeniable magnitude of his re-emergence. Let them seethe and simmer in their resentments; he would grind their fevered delusions to utter ruin in the days to come, he vowed.

For the moment, however, too many sets of eyes studied his every move and micro-expression. Too many ears eavesdropped for any errant word or inflexion that could be twisted to their own purposes, no matter how seemingly innocuous.

Jagnar was starting to feel bored and tired of their furious glares at him.

With a perfunctory nod to the few branch family cousins that dared approach and engage him in vapid small talk, Jagnar extricated himself from the stifling environs of the hall.

As expected, Elysia had already been spirited away by her lord husband to attend to their own matters.

Gloriana remained at Rodoreus' side, playing the consummate hostess in overseeing the lively celebrations that would undoubtedly stretch long into the evening hours. None paid him any mind as he slipped through the shadows of the grand archway and ascended the curving stone stairs into the upper recesses of the old keep.

The sounds of revelry faded to a distant murmur as Jagnar's booted footfalls carried him deeper into the ancestral home's heart. At length, he came upon a nondescript wooden door tucked away at the end of an abandoned corridor.

He turned the latch and stepped inside.

The sparsely appointed antechamber opened up into a more spacious second room with all the furniture. But it was the adjoining bed-chamber that drew his interest.

With a contented grunt, Jagnar shrugged off the ceremonial outer robes, leaving himself clad in a simple linen undershirt and trousers. Snagging a crystalline decanter of rich burgundy wine from a nearby cabinet, he strode over and all but collapsed onto the room's lone bed.

"They certainly haven't changed one whit in the intervening decades," he mused aloud, a terse chuckle punctuating the words. "Though I suppose I cannot fault them for being so predictably threatened by my return to prominence."

One dark brow arched upwards as his fingertips caressed the ornate etchings on the decanter's flank. "Perhaps if they had bothered evolving beyond their petty self-interests and biases, they would recognize the potential I represent. Alas..."

With a negligent shrug, Jagnar upended the decanter over his lips, downing a healthy draught of the potent wine. It was as he drew the crystal away and let out a satisfied exhalation that the faintest murmurs of conversation reached his ears from beyond the chamber door.

Stilling utterly, he extended his senses outward, rapidly pinpointing the sources. An unmistakable sound reached his ears—the creak of a door opening, followed by the rustle of clothing from the adjoining antechamber.

His brow furrowed as those noises were joined by muffled grunts and stifled feminine gasps of exertion. A confused, questioning smirk played across Jagnar's lips as realization dawned.

It seemed someone was indulging in decidedly imprudent recreational activities just beyond that door.

Curiosity piqued, and he rose and padded silently across the room, carefully easing open the oak door with just a crack.

Peering through the narrow gap, Jagnar's eyes widened at the sight that greeted him.

The first was Aldren himself, already shrugging out of his sweat-stained undershirt as he stumbled into the room with exaggerated movements suggesting deep inebriation. Later entering the room was his dear elder sister, Elysia.

Close on his heels followed another nobleman Jagnar didn't immediately recognize, though the man's finely tailored attire and haughty bearing hinted at lofty status.

"Theresh, my pretty little filly..." Aldren slurred words that were nearly unintelligible as he flopped down into one of the high-backed chairs.

A lecherous grin split his features as he languidly spread his thighs, one calloused hand already snaking down to idly fondle and stroke the growing bulge tenting his breeches.

The strange nobleman seemed to require no further prompting.

With a predatory glint in his eye, the man stalked across the room until he was looming over Elysia. She seemed pleased as she stared at Aldren.

Jagnar could only gape, utterly flummoxed, as the brute reached out and seized a handful of his sister's skirts without preamble.

His free hand tangled in her flaxen tresses, yanking her head back at a painful angle.

When he finally pulled back with a contemptuous sneer, Elysia stared at him with a pleasured expression.

The man simply dragged his hands down the column of her neck to find the laces of her bodice. With a brutal tug, the flimsy garment fell away to the pool at her feet.

He shoved her backwards, sending her stumbling until the backs of her knees struck the edge of a table. She teetered there precariously for a moment before buckling backwards to sprawl in an utterly debauched position.

That seemed to be the unspoken cue the letch had been awaiting. With a few deft motions, he was shucking his own finery until they were both equally exposed before Aldren's smouldering leer.

Aldren seemed utterly transfixed, slowly stroking his thickening arousal as his glassy eyes drank in the floor show being enacted before him.

Jagnar watched Aldrena and couldn't believe it as he said, "What the fuck! Aldren is a cuck?" 

Pinning Elysia to the aged wood with one hand fisted in her hair, the nobleman loomed over her trembling form, only to pause, his gaze flicking unerringly towards the sliver of an open door.

Towards where Jagnar was.

This was no mere tryst, no illicit indulgence in petty carnalities—this was a perverted circus act performed solely for Alden's depraved gratification. And from the glassy, slack-jawed look of his sister, as she squirmed helplessly beneath her assailant's looming bulk, she understood the depravity all too well.

A cruel smirk played across the nobleman's lips as his dark eyes locked with Jagnar's. He knew they were being observed, reckless of the consequences in service of his own debased cravings and desires.

Elysia seemed to become aware of the connection as well finally. Her beautiful face crumpled, a piteous whimper slipping past her as shame and resignation warred within her shining gaze.