by Nora Ash
“But of course.” She blinked at me, twice, then shook her head, dismissing my protest to refocus on Annabel. “Come, shiny. There is something you must see.”
Annabel took a hesitant step forward, and Magni followed—but Verdandi stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Not you, godling. Neither of you. Just the omega.”
“There is absolutely no way Annabel will be out of my sight,” I said, stepping up to flank Annabel’s other side.
Magni crossed his arms over his chest, lips pressed into flat agreement.
For the first time since our arrival, the Norn’s face lost all traces of good humor, her expression darkening into something bordering on terrifying. “Did you not come here for my help?”
“Yes, wise one,” Magni said, and the hoarse note to his voice let me know that his blood probably also suddenly ran a degree or two cooler. “But she is our mate—”
“And do you think, after how much time and effort I have spent shielding her from danger, how I ensured you both found her before Ragnarök is upon us... that I mean harm to befall her?” Her voice was quiet, but still rang with the strength of a hundred drums.
“No, wise one,” I said, suppressing the urge to rip Annabel behind me to protect her from the powerful being in front of us. “We need your guidance to keep our mate safe. Please.” I kept my tone demure, because I knew Thor’s hotheaded son wouldn’t be capable of such a feat. And this being in front of us might be all-seeing and eternal, but my father had also warned me that she was quite the diva.
“Good!” Verdandi lit up in another too-wide smile, the eerie darkness surrounding her thinning to wisps. She held her hand out to Annabel. “We won’t be a minute. Come along, shiny. Let’s go have a look at your fate.”
Annabel hesitated for a long minute, before she drew in a deep breath and gingerly placed her palm against the Norn’s.
It took everything I had not to follow, pulled along by the aching string stretching between my heart and hers, as she disappeared into the dragon cave’s throat.
12
Annabel
As angry as I was with the two alphas who’d mated me against my will, a very large part of me wanted nothing more than to turn around and run back to their protection as Verdandi led me further down the stone dragon’s throat, our only source of light a small flame hovering over her free palm. And it wasn’t entirely because of the two new bonds in my chest humming irritably at being separated from my mates, either.
“You are so fearful,” Verdandi said, her tone unconcerned. “You have no need to be. I’ve watched over you since you were a babe.”
“Like my own personal fairy godmother,” I muttered, suppressing a shudder at the thought of the Norn hanging upside down in her true form in my nursery.
“But your instincts to seek protection with the godlings is good,” she continued, as if she hadn’t heard me. “I am glad. Your thread was… difficult to weave together with theirs. Such a willful soul.”
“My thread?” I asked.
“You will see,” she simply said. “Come.”
Not that I had much of a choice whether or not I came along. She still had my hand in hers, her grip light but with a quiet strength that told me I wouldn’t be able to break away if I tried. We walked for a long time, always down through an ever-spiraling corridor. The stone floor slapped against my bare feet, but it wasn’t as cold or rough as the terrain outside the cave.
When I was certain we had to be deeper than the roots of the cliff we’d scaled, Verdandi finally stopped. A veil shimmered in front of us, gossamer thin and interwoven with delicate strands of light. The Norn finally released her grip on my hand and brought it forward, drawing a finger down the length of the veil.
It parted in two, opening a rift into the darkness beyond.
“Come, shiny,” she said, before stepping through. The darkness on the other side seemed to swallow her hole.
“I’m… I’m not sure….” I hesitated on the edge of the flowing veil. Magic might be an everyday occurrence for this Norn and the two demigods above us, but I was still having a hard time wrapping my head around it all. I’d dedicated my life to finding facts, not diving head first through magical portals. And this was already the second of the day!
“Be brave, Annabel.” Verdandi’s voice gusted through the gap in the veil, like a cool breeze on a summer day. I stiffened as memories flickered for my mind’s eyes. I’d heard those words before.
“Be brave, Annabel.”
Every time I’d been scared, when I was a kid and feared monsters lay in wait for me under my bed, when I fell through the ice and thought I was going to die, when I’d had exam jitters. Those words had echoed through my mind. It was Verdandi’s voice. She truly had watched over me.
I sucked in a deep breath and stepped through to the darkness beyond. The veil caressed my skin, setting every hair on my body on end as tingles of sensation ran across my skin.
Then I was through, the musty scent of earth and decomposing plants enveloping me, but before I could take in my new surroundings, an agonizing hollow spread behind my ribs.
“No!” I keeled over, pressing a hand to my chest, the very clear memory of the pain and loss I’d felt the first time I stepped through a portal sending panic through my brain. But as I gasped and wheezed, the rendering I’d felt that first time until Saga came through with me didn’t set in. It never deepened to more than a dumb, deep hollow that gnawed at my gut.
“Your mates can’t follow us,” Verdandi said. When I looked up at her from my bent-over position, she gave me a sympathetic smile.
“Is that why I feel like this?” I asked, forcing myself back upright again. I pressed a hand to my chest, trying to soothe the emptiness there. “It was worse… when Magni took me from my world to here. Until Saga came.”
“He took you from another plane. We are still in Jotunheim—there’s just a barrier separating us from them now,” the Norn explained. “The connection between you—it is your greatest weakness.”
“I don’t know why they had to mate me at all. That so-called prophecy didn’t mention mate claims or some twisted, polyamorous relationship! And also,” I pointed a finger at the Norn, my ire with the whole situation mounting exponentially, “I’d really like an explanation for why you all think I’m the omega you’re looking for. A logical, based-in-facts explanation, please.”
“As you wish.” Verdandi turned her back on me. “Come, and you shall find the answer you seek.”
I finally looked up then, for the first time focusing on the room beyond. It was a great grotto, the space so vast I could only make out the nearest wall made from soil and held together by a net of tree roots. The majority of the room was filled out by a myriad of strings dangling from the ceiling high above, all glowing with the faintest of lights. There were thousands upon thousands of them, in all lengths, some as thick as a finger, others fine as spider silk, weaved together in places and drooping singularly in others. Most were in mossy, earthy tones, but a few here and there shone in silvery and golden hues.
“What is this place?” I breathed, stunned awe at the display making me whisper, as to not disturb the sanctity I felt hum through the grotto.
“This is where my sisters and I weave the fate of man and god alike. Every strand is someone’s lifespan,” Verdandi said as she led me through, nimbly moving between the long strands in pathways I’d never been able to find on my own. “And every dwarf, elf, Jotunn and what else have you, of course.” She paused, letting her finger run up along a sienna-toned string that reached just around my sightline, tutting as she caught it between index finger and thumb. “Well, now look at this.” Without pausing, she reached into a fold of her clothes and drew out a gilded pair of small scissors, snipping the thread. Its faint glow dimmed instantly, the thread shriveling into a dried husk. When Verdandi brushed past it, it crumbled to the floor in a small pile of ash.
“Was that… did you just kill someone?” I stared at the ash�
��then noticed multiple other mounds scattered around the ground nearby.
“He made a terrible choice. Went against his destiny. It was his time. Every string here will end up nourishing the ground one day, bringing life to the mighty world tree. Well… almost every string.” She wrapped a finger around a golden one, tugging demonstratively. “Some are fated for eternity.”
“The gods,” I murmured, looking at the golden string that seemed to shine brighter than many of its neighbors.
“Well, gods… and a few others here and there.” She glanced at me again. “Of course, Ragnarök may still change all of that.”
“Will everyone really die?” I asked, following her when she began walking again. “Is there no way to stop it?”
“Of course there’s a way to stop it,” she said, as if that was the dumbest question to ask. She finally paused and stepped aside, pointing at a fine cluster of strings tangled in an intricate pattern. “That’s why you’re here, shiny.”
I frowned at the strings she’d indicated. One of them lit up with a bright, rosy glow. Surrounding it was a number of silvery and golden strings. “Who’s that?”
“You, silly,” Verdandi said, giving the rosy string a poke. My spine tensed in response, an echo of sensation running up along it. “Why do you think I had those young godlings bring you here? You are the shiny one. You can stop Ragnarök—if you choose to.”
“W-what?” My heart thudded unevenly, a sucking sensation setting in in my chest, as if a black hole had suddenly opened up in my sternum. “But they said—I’m just here to—”
“To save their bloodlines by popping out a kid or two? Yes, I told them that.” Verdandi let her finger slide down to one of the golden strings wrapped around mine. “They needed to tie your souls together, and for an alpha, that means mating. Much easier to get them to accept a shared mate claim if they think they’re helping their own lineage. Which, they would be. Just not quite how they anticipated.”
“I don’t understand.” I croaked. “Why me? What am I supposed to do to stop the literal end of the world? Isn’t there… someone better qualified? Like literally any god?”
The Norn sighed impatiently, poking my thread again. Another ghostly chill ran up my spine. “I told you. You are the shiny one. There is no one else. Look here—” She trailed her fingertips down the rosy thread to where two golden strings, one slightly more of a champagne than the other, wrapped around it. Further down another two glowing threads of gold coiled, and below that again, one of pure silver. They all entangled with each other in a mesmerizing pattern, but all along the rose-colored one ran as the center core, tying them all together.
“The five godlings will support you, and you them. Only together can you defeat the darkness. There is so much treachery in Asgard. I have shielded you from those who sought to destroy you before you could grow into your power, but the time has come to fulfill your destiny.”
I stared at the coiling threads, my heart hammering so hard in my chest I could feel my pulse in my ears and taste iron on my tongue. “I don’t have any power. I’m just a human. Just an omega. Also… five? I’ll have five mates?”
“You have more power than you think, Annabel,” Verdandi said, voice solemn. “But you need their help to unlock it. All five of them.”
I shook my head, fighting back tears that welled without warning. “You’re wrong. All they’ve done is hurt me. I don’t even have power over myself now, let alone enough to save the whole fucking world! You said I can choose to follow my supposed fate—and I’m telling you I can’t. Someone else, someone with actual power, will have to step up.”
Verdandi looked at me for a long moment, her face betraying nothing. Then, she reached out and laid a careful finger between my eyes. The grotto flickered, and my vision darkened.
“I want you to see what your choice means, Annabel,” she said softly as the world faded from my vision.
Then everything turned black.
* * *
I blinked my eyes open, and was hit in the face with a howling wind that sent a chill deep into my bones. All around me was a wasteland of snow, engulfing me up to my waste, and more came tumbling from the gray skies.
“We have to keep going, Anna!”
I turned in the direction of the male voice shouting to be heard over the wind. Magni was there, snow and ice crusting in his red beard now much longer than the scruff he’d had the last time I saw him.
“W-where are we?” I asked. He didn’t answer, only wrapped his arm around my shoulders and hunkered down over me, protecting me from the icy winds as best he could. I looked down and realized I was no longer wearing Saga’s donated clothes, but a complete set of winter gear. It did little to protect me from the plummeting temperatures.
A shadow appeared ahead, almost completely wiped out from the falling snow.
“Thank Odin,” Magni gritted as he pushed us forward, using his strength and size to plow the dunes of snow aside for me. It took so long to make it a dozen or so steps, but finally the shadow turned into a person. Despite the thick coat and drawn hood, I recognized Saga’s features and a measure of anxiety eased at the sight of him.
“Is help coming?” Magni asked.
Saga shook his head, his mouth tight and eyes drawn with… with grief, I realized. My heart thudded unevenly, and I reached for him without thought.
He wrapped me in his arms and buried his head against my hood, breathing deeply. “There is no one. They’re all gone. We are the last.”
“No,” Magni whispered. “No, we can’t be.”
“I saw them die,” Saga said, not lifting his head from me. It was hard to breathe in the tightness of his embrace, but I clung to him nonetheless, too scared and confused to battle against the instincts who told me my mate needed me. “It’s over.”
There was nothing but the howling of the blizzard for a long while, until Magni finally said, “We have to keep going.”
“There’s nothing to keep going for,” Saga said.
“There is our mate,” Magni hissed. “We promised to bring her to her parents. Don’t you dare go back on your word, Lokisson!”
Saga finally lifted his head then, and there was despair and fury in his eyes. “Didn’t you hear me? Everyone’s dead! Her family, our families—everyone! This is the end, and there’s nothing more we can do!”
“What? No!” Grief threatened to suffocate me, the shock of his words squeezing my sternum flat against my breastbone. “They’ve got nothing to do with this!”
“My mate,” Saga whispered, touching a cold glove to my cheek. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry we couldn’t protect you. He won.”
I stared up at him, and in his eyes I saw the truth. This was the end. Of everything.
Ragnarök had come.
A deep rumble shook the earth underneath us, making me stumble and fall away from Saga just as the soil and snow burst apart mere inches from where we stood.
I shrieked in horror as a gigantic larva-looking monster rose from the ground in a cascade of dirty ice, rising above us so high I had to crane my neck to see it in all its terrible magnitude. Its gaping maw had gleaming teeth the size and shape of daggers.
“Annabel, run!” Magni roared. He leapt in front of me, drawing a sword from his belt as he took stance next to Saga, who also pulled his weapon. The air crackled with electricity.
But I couldn’t move. My feet were leaden, nailed to the ground as the two men who’d each claimed a part of my soul attacked.
The monster shrieked, a piercing sound that made my ears ring, and dove for them. Magic seared the air, thunder deafening the shrieks of the beast, but even their divine power wasn’t enough.
Blood splattered the ground as the larva bit savagely into Magni, rendering him in two. My heart gave a spasm and then a searing pain I’d never known existed tore through my chest.
I fell to my knees, screaming in agony and denial as the light snuffed out of Magni’s green eyes.
Saga roared h
is fury out and leapt at the beast, burying his sword in its side. It shook him off, the blade still buried in his flesh, and turned on him as he fell to the ground.
Dark magic rose around his fallen figure, but it wasn’t enough to ward off the next attack.
“Saga! No!” I cried his name into the storm as the last shred of my soul was torn from me, and nothing was left but agony and despair.
* * *
“Annabel.”
The sound of my name made me blink and open my eyes.
I was in the cave once more, the earthy scent of decaying plants filling my nostrils as the icy grip of the blizzard released my body.
I stared up at Verdandi from where I’d crumbled on the floor of the grotto, my body trembling as if fighting off seizures.
“Every being has a choice if they wish to follow their fate or not,” the Norn said softly. “For some, it means an unfulfilling life of regret. For others, an early death. For you, Annabel… it means the end of everything there ever was and everything that would have been. There is no one else. It has to be you. You will find your power with the men destined to be yours. Only then, only if you surrender your fears and claim your birthright, will the events of your vision not come to pass.”
“My vision?” I whispered. “You mean… you didn’t… make that up?”
“Of course not,” Verdandi said, head cocked. “I only helped you see. Your power of sight unlocked earlier than it should when you fell through the ice as a child. You will need to find a way to control it.”
“How?” I asked. “I don’t….” The image of Grim’s mismatched eyes glowing with fury as he stood over me flashed for my mind’s eye. Not a “daymare.”
A vision.
She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again. “If you choose to accept your fate, you must find Mimir. He will guide you on your path. And you must allow the three remaining godlings to mate you. Only united will you stand a chance.”
