by Nora Ash
And again. Her reason for being was to quell my need, quell the flaming anger, the devastation, the choking sense of despair, and I was not going to let her escape before she had done her duty. She was my omega, my vessel, my reason for existing.
Fuck!
Furious that even now, even as I pummeled her body to the tune of her screams and the wet thwacks of my hips smacking against her pussy and ass, I could not release the knowledge that all I was, was for her. Centuries of existing, centuries of building my power, of gaining glory and might on the battlefield meant nothing. The only thing that would ever matter was this tiny, infuriating human and how tightly she had me wrapped around her will.
Oh, but by the stars, she felt… she felt like life. I snarled with pleasure into the fog, clutching at her hip, drowning myself in her for every full thrust into her tight heat. Right now, there was only us. One in flesh as well as spirit.
I took her for every ounce she had and gave her everything of myself in return. I fucked her until her whimpers and cries turned to passionate moans, I fucked her through one orgasm, and then another. I fucked her until her moans turned to whimpers once more, pleas to finish spilling from her lips.
Finally, some long minutes later, when my rage was a distant memory and pleasure rolled through my veins like thunder, did I surrender to her cunt’s demands.
“Mate,” I moaned. “Anna!”
It was all the warning she had before my knot swelled hard and fast. I pressed inside her fully and stilled, instincts making me keep a firm hold of my mate as the thickness in her entrance turned painful and she squirmed to escape. I kept her pinned, forced her to accept the harsh stretch, groaning her name over and over while shudders of pleasure from the depths of my being wracked my powerful body.
My seed spilled into her in pulses, filling her in rhythm with my heartbeats. Completing our union in the most ancient, most primal way nature had created. In that moment, we were nothing but a man and his mate. An alpha worshipping his omega how she was born to be worshipped.
I relaxed over Annabel’s prone body, wrapping my arms around her torso to ward her from the cold mist.
She gasped at the movement, shifting restlessly underneath me, the pull from our tie no doubt unpleasant. I hummed soothingly against her ear and reached underneath her to rub her clit.
Annabel moaned softly, her body turning instantly pliable underneath me. “Purr,” she whispered, her voice hoarse from her screams. “Purr for me, Modi.”
It took maybe twenty minutes before my brain came back from orbit. When I came to my senses again, I was lying on top of Annabel, keeping just enough weight off that she could still breathe. My purr rumbled loudly through the nothingness, keeping the omega underneath me docile despite the uncomfortableness of the rough tree trunk she was pressed into.
I swallowed the rumble in my chest, cutting the sound off so instantaneously the silence following seemed deafening.
Annabel finally stirred. “Mm? Is something wrong?” Her voice was groggy.
“Shh,” I hissed, straining my senses against the fog. No sound reached me, and my nostrils were full of nothing but the scent of our sex. I waited for a full minute in silence before I finally relaxed. No beasts had snuck up on us while we mated.
Stupid.
I had lost myself completely in her, to the point that I had stopped paying attention to our surroundings. We might not have seen a single sign of life on our journey through Niflheim so far, but I should still have kept my wits about me. What if something had attacked while I was knot-deep inside her? What if I had let someone hurt her?
Sick dread helped the last of my cock’s swelling to subside. I pulled from her with a grunt of sensation, pushing myself to standing before I refastened my pants. “We need to get back.”
“Sure. Not a problem. Just need my legs to start functioning again,” Annabel muttered. She pushed against the fallen tree, groaning with the effort.
I hesitated for a moment, the weight of her and Bjarni’s accusations coming back now that I was no longer buried inside of her. The agony of our frayed bond returned as a dull, now familiar throb in my chest.
She managed to get upright, a hiss of breath escaping her as she caught her own weight. She limped as she picked up and pulled on her trousers and made her way toward me, making up my mind.
“I have you,” I said, the innate gruffness in my voice softened some by my recent climax. I did not wait for her to respond, scooping her into my arms without looking at her face.
“Thanks,” she said. Her voice was still groggy, and when I began walking us back to our small camp, her head came in to rest against my chest. She did not speak a single word on the way back, but her weight in my arms was a warm, comfortable reminder of her presence. And of our most recent union.
I had never had many thoughts on what my mate would be like, should I ever choose one, but I had had a hazy idea of the family I would create with her: a warm, comforting unit with me as its head. I would protect them, provide for them… and in return, I would be bathed in their love and adoration, be cared for and know I would always have that safe base to call home.
Instead I shared a willful little human with three other alphas—instead of a family unit, I was a small piece of a puzzle. Instead of warmth and adoration, there was pain and confusion.
Still… I could not deny that when I was with her, inside of her, everything was bliss. Everything felt better, warmer, safer than I had ever imagined it could.
In those moments, I loved her.
Annabel was fast asleep when I walked into our small campsite. Bjarni looked up from the fire he had been staring at, eyebrows raised.
I tilted my head toward the tent before I headed in there. I laid Annabel on the furs and tucked her in, taking a moment to look at her relaxed features. She looked so young when she slept. Young and innocent.
It was hard to believe that this tiny human held the fate of the nine worlds in her hands. Her entire lifespan was barely more than a blink in comparison to my own, yet I could no longer deny it. I had felt her power run through me like a current. Felt Bjarni’s strength within her, bolstering my own.
In the end, it did not matter how I felt about it. She was my fate.
I left her to sleep, leaving the tent to rejoin Bjarni by the campfire. Loki was fast asleep on the other side, snoring quietly.
“I see you spared him the sock,” I said, giving the God of Mischief a bitter look before I reached for my abandoned bowl. The food in it was steaming—a kind gesture from Bjarni, I suspected.
Bjarni shrugged. “Not much point when he’s sleeping. I suspect he already said what he wanted to, anyway.”
I narrowed my eyes at the blond giant. “I suspect you are right.”
The corner of Bjarni’s mouth quirked up in a half-smile. “She didn’t fuck the rage fully out of you, then?”
“It takes more than a bit of sex to forget someone accusing your father of treason. I would have thought you were familiar with the concept,” I replied tartly.
Bjarni chuckled. “You could say that, yeah.” He sighed and brushed his hand through his beard, the mirth leaving his eyes as he glanced at the still-snoring Loki. “He was never the best of fathers. Pretty much left us to our mother to raise, stopped by with presents now and then. Had a lot of expectations of us. It didn’t stop me from loving him, y’know? Even now, knowing he’d abandon us without another thought just to save himself… even if it does turn out he’s responsible for Ragnarök… He’s still my father.”
I grunted. Being sired by Loki had to be a pretty shitty lot. “At least you’re not an eight-legged horse logging around some haughty god all day.”
Bjarni snorted. “True. Could be worse. I could be splashing around the Atlantic, burping up shipping containers.”
We sat in silence for a bit while I ate. It was hard to hold back a hum of appreciation as the stew passed my lips and danced on my tongue—fucking Annabel had left me pretty deplete
d, and for all his faults, this Lokisson was an excellent cook.
“What was it like growing up with Thor as your father?” he asked after a little while.
I arched an eyebrow at him, still chewing on a mouthful of stew.
His lip curled up in a half-smile again. “I was told a lot of stories about your sire as a kid—a lot of them probably not entirely true. I always wondered what it’d be like—growing up the golden son of Asgard’s favored warrior. I suspect you’re not unfamiliar with the burden of grand expectations.”
I shrugged, refocusing on the stew. “I never minded. It is an honor to carry out my duties as Thor’s heir.”
“Your brother seems… of a somewhat different view,” Bjarni said, his tone still casual. “Sure, he was all ‘I am the son of Thor, you will respect my authority’ in the beginning, but I got the impression he has a more troubled relationship with your father.”
Images I did not care to entertain came up—of Magni as an adolescent boy, recently arrived in Trudheim, sobbing in the training yard after a lesson from our father, wooden sword still dangling from his hand. Red stripes from Thor’s belt coloring his pale skin.
I has been too young to realize how ashamed he had been and kept asking him why he was crying. He had eventually confessed that our father had told him his "Jotunn ways" were an abomination, and he would beat them out of him if he had to.
Magni had made me swear to keep that incident a secret, and I had. But my young eyes were open from then on, however much I wished they had not been. I saw the mistreatment my mother bestowed on him, and I saw Thor accept it. I saw Thor’s pride when Magni excelled at combat, and his anger and disappointment when he did not.
And I saw Magni redirect our father’s temper onto himself whenever I had failed, oftentimes letting me have the glory when an accomplishment belonged to us both. Thor liked to brag about us. He told tales of our prowess in the mead halls of Valhalla and offered our strength up in duels that we always won.
“My father is not the traitor,” I said quietly, finally putting the bowl of stew aside. “He did not come when I called to him not because he wants us to fail, but because I failed. He gave me the task of bringing Loki back. If he has to come rescue me, then I am an embarrassment. Unworthy of a place by his side. And so is Magni. That is what you wanted to know, is it not? That was the purpose of this little bonding moment?”
Bjarni hummed a thoughtful tune. “In part.”
“In part?” I glared at him, but my heart was not in it. Not truly. I was too tired and light from sex, and too… oddly calm. Telling Bjarni what I had never told another soul did not feel like divulging my secrets to an enemy. It felt like talking with a friend. Or a brother.
“You are my mate’s mate. That makes you my family,” he rumbled, stretching his long legs out toward the fire. “I feel you through Annabel, yet there’s so much animosity in our blood. I’m not suggesting we mend fences the way Saga and Magni did, but maybe we can find other ways to see eye to eye. Seems we both have shitty fathers—that’s something, eh?”
I chuffed an amused snort. “That is something.”
Silence settled again, save Loki’s soft snores and the crackle from the fire. I thought about what he had said—and what I had said. And about how resolute Magni had been in his idea that I share Annabel with him—and the Lokissons. How undeniably in love he was with the feral little thing. And her with him. With all of them.
Perhaps one day, she would love me, too. Maybe then the thought of giving her my heart would not fill me with gut-wrenching terror.
“How did they mend fences? Magni and Saga?” I asked, piercing the silence.
This time, the amused snort was Bjarni's. “You don’t want to know. Trust me.” He stretched and yawned. “Want first sleep?”
I darted a glance at the tent. The thought of pulling Annabel into me as sleep took me away was pleasant—and painful. A stab from where my bond hooked made me shake my head with a grimace. I wasn’t ready to face the stark contrast between our connectedness during sex and the gaping chasm between us the rest of the time.
“No. It is your turn.”
He nodded and threw another piece of scavenged wood on the fire before he got to his feet. “Night, then. Brother.”
Thirty-Two
Annabel
I awoke nestled in the crook of Bjarni’s arm. He was still fast asleep, sprawled out on his back as if the chill in the air didn’t bother him in the least. Which it probably didn’t, what with him being an alpha god and running at about a million degrees.
I curled up into him as tightly as I could, pressing my icy toes against his shins. Even though he’d clearly held me all night, my body temperature was still lower than ideal. Damn Fimbulwinter.
Bjarni groaned in protest, but obligingly rolled over so he could wrap me up in his grasp, enveloping me in all that delicious heat of his.
“Mmm. Thanks,” I mumbled, rubbing my nose against his blond chest hair as my feet climbed higher up his legs.
He clamped his knees together around them, stopping their ascent before grunting sleepily into my hair. “Is it dawn?”
“Hard to tell when it’s constantly gray outside,” I said. “But I feel moderately less exhausted than I did when I fell asleep, so I guess?”
He sighed. “Ah. Modi let me have the night, then. I’d be grateful, but if we’re passing Níðhöggr’s well today, I’d have preferred him to be at least semi-rested.”
Something heavy dropped in my gut, removing the pleasant vestiges of sleep from my mind. “Oh.”
“I know, sweetie,” he rumbled, patting my head. “He’s just… not that bright when it comes to his feelings for you. Give him time. He’ll get there in the end like the rest of us have.”
I grimaced. “I’m pretty sure he has no interest in feelings.” Apart from when he was fucking me. That was the only time there wasn’t any barrier between us, the only time being with him felt good. Right.
“Well, you’re not that bright about it, either,” Bjarni said, a good-natured smile in his voice. He dipped his head to brush a kiss to my lips before he rolled out from underneath the furs covering us.
“I’m gonna get breakfast started. If all goes well, we’ll be back in Asgard tonight. Once you’re reunited with Saga and Magni, I suspect you’re going to feel a whole lot better.”
A jolt of excitement burned away my gloom. Saga and Magni! I’d done my best to push down my intense longing for my two first mates, but it’d been there like a gnawing, aching wound for every second of every day. The thought of finally being with them again, knowing that I was only hours away from pressing myself into their arms, went a long way to lighten my mood.
It lasted until a little while later when Bjarni called to me to come get my breakfast.
I pushed out from the tent, eager to get started with the day—until my gaze fell on Modi.
My redheaded mate sat with his own bowl of porridge and salted meat, a grim expression on his handsome features. Upon my exit from the tent, his eyes darted from the fire to me for just a sliver of a second. It was long enough for the agony in our bond to flare, my heart giving a dull spasm in response.
Last night I’d gone to him to try and soothe his pain. It was obvious he wasn’t thrilled at the thought of his father betraying him—or the rest of the worlds. But I hadn’t managed to do that. All I’d accomplished was a moment’s respite. I’d allowed him to slake his anger between my thighs, but in the end, it changed nothing.
“Eat up, sweetie,” Bjarni said, his large hand landing on my shoulder as he thrust a bowl of breakfast at me with the other. “It’s going to be a long day. And challenging. We all need to keep our focus—passing Hvergelmir will require all of us to be alert at all times. All of us.”
The last bit he said with a meaningful stare at his father, who once again had a sock stuck in his mouth. Seemed Loki had gotten mouthy again.
The dark-haired god only gave him a reproachful glare in resp
onse.
I nodded, pushing the pain of my damaged bond to Modi to the back of my mind as well as I could. By now, I was used to feeling broken. It was a constant, gnawing agony, the result of being torn into four jagged pieces. If we made it through the day, at least by the end of it I would be reunited with Magni and Saga. Then there would only be one source of pain left.
I sat down by the fire and looked at my two mates. “Okay. What’s the plan?”
“It’s at least eight hours to Hvergelmir,” Modi said, apparently having also decided to pretend like last night hadn’t happened. “Once we’re close, we will know if Níðhöggr is awake. If he isn’t, passage should be easy.”
“If he is,” Bjarni continued, "we will have to rely on your magic to keep us hidden. Once we’ve passed, it’s less than half an hour to the portal.”
I choked. “My magic? I don’t know how—” My voice died when Bjarni raised his hand.
“You’ve proven time and time again that your strength and resilience is more than enough to carry us through. It won’t be any different this time. Modi and I will be there to guide you. Now is not the time to doubt yourself, mate. We’re on the final stretch.”
I nodded. He was right. Whatever I had to do to get us back to Saga and Magni, I would find a way.
The nearer we came to Nidhug’s well, the lighter the fog became. It was so gradual, it wasn’t before I noticed the huge, dark surface rising high on our right side that I realized how much easier it was to see my travel companions now.
“What’s that?” I asked, staring at the dark thing. In all directions, it stretched far out of my field of vision, the mist hiding its true size, but the looming nature of it reminded me of a mountain range.
“One of Yggdrasil’s roots,” Modi answered. He was up front, leading us through the frozen wasteland for the past few hours. He and Bjarni still took turns, even though there was no snow to press down to ease my way here. “The World Tree gets much of its nourishment from the springs surrounding Hvergelmir.”
