“And what will happen to me now?”
“We will send you home,” he said as the bright light started to fade around her.
“But then what?” she said with panic as she looked around. Slowly fragments of the white room were disappearing and giving way to black.
“We will be back for you, when the time comes,” he said.
“But when will that be?” she shouted. He was becoming fainter and travelling further into the distance. He was almost invisible and the bright white of the room was now completely pitch black.
“When?” she screamed.
“You’ll know.” He didn’t speak the words, but she heard them inside her head.
With a gentle thud, she felt as if she had been dropped on her back and then her world went dizzy and blank. In the back of her mind, she kept hearing the same words over and over…
You’ll know…
***
The sunlight blazed through the blinds and the birds were chirping incessantly in the tree outside of her bedroom window. Victoria jumped up and looked around her. She got out of bed and ran to the wall and pounded her fists against it. Nothing changed and her hands hurt from the force of them against the plasterboard.
“Where are you?” she shouted. But the room was silent.
She looked back to her bed and then outside onto the busy street below. Had she dreamt it all? She went into her bathroom and ran the tap before splashing water on her face. She looked exactly the same as she had yesterday and there were no physical signs that what she thought happened had actually happened. She ran the shower, removed her nightgown and jumped underneath the hot jets. She washed her entire body and felt between her legs. Nothing was different. The sensation she had felt after her encounter with the Lord was not there… She still felt like a born-again virgin. She sighed and laughed before turning off the shower and stepping out onto the bathmat and wrapping herself in a towel.
It was only 9 AM but she had a pot full of hot coffee brewing and her apartment felt warm for the first time in forever. She curled up on the couch and opened her laptop. She searched for “alien abduction” and a whole list of results flashed up in front of her. She hovered the cursor above alternative news articles and websites with experiences of women and men who had been taken and some of them described similar places and people that she had seen. She shifted uneasily on the couch. She had just about convinced herself that she had made the whole thing up. It was the late after-effect of too much booze and not enough sleep. She scratched her head and sipped her coffee… and then like a head-on collision, the feeling came back.
She was being watched.
Chapter Eight
Victoria left work early for the first time in almost a year around two weeks later and made her way quickly to the pharmacy. It was even colder now and she had brought out the double scarf and glove combo she had chosen when it all started and the ice seemed to be inside her. When she was looking at the shelves, she felt almost embarrassed. She couldn’t even explain why she wanted to do this in the first place. But maybe she already knew the answer.
Things had been okay for a day or two. The feeling of dread she had every time she opened her eyes clung to her, but she got used to it quickly and after a week she was so accustomed to it she felt almost protected. It was nice to know that someone out there was looking out for her. She had worked as usual and gone about her days as if nothing had changed. She avoided Helen’s requests for boozy nights out and rolled her eyes as she listened to her go on and on about her latest sugar daddy. She tried again to get Victoria to go and work at the club with her. She could tell she was feeling down and thought that she should quit her job and make some real money.
“Honestly, Helen, I’m fine,” she had told her. And in a way, she actually meant it.
After the second week had passed, she felt movement. It was low in her belly and rose up to her ribcage. It seemed to lay dormant during the day, but then when the world went dark, it began. Some nights she would wake and feel like she was being pummeled from the inside out. Like her intestines were being wrapped around its fists and dragged up and down.
“Help me,” she would whisper through the dark, just hoping one of them would listen.
She placed the test on the counter in front of the cashier and he bagged it up. She spent the last of her cash on it and walked home slowly, delaying the inevitable.
In her bathroom she watched the clock for two minutes before she dared to pick up the white stick and check the result. She almost expected it to say she wasn’t, that she was in fact crazy and that she had imagined the whole thing. At least then she could go and root through her chest of drawers and find the leaflet for the shrink. She exhaled and said aloud, “I hope you’re all finding this funny,” and then she stood up and swiped the test from the side of the sink.
Two pink lines….
Pregnant.
“Fantastic,” she smiled.
She closed her eyes and willed him to her: Come and get me… I know now… The time is right… Come and get me…
She lay in bed and looked up to the ceiling. The presence seemed stronger and the movements inside of her were powerful. Her belly was round, swollen, and protruding, and she knew it was going to happen. It was like her acceptance was all that was needed to bring the pregnancy to full term.
All around her the hum of what could have been an engine started. Light flashed before her eyes before she felt weightless once more.
The next thing she knew, she was waking up in a completely different room, in a beautiful house, with a gorgeous baby boy in a bassinet beside her. Victoria looked around and at the adorable little creature next to her. He was bright white skinned with large dark eyes and a cute little wisp of white hair.
“Hey, cutie,” she whispered as she ran her hand down his cheek.
“Oh, you’re awake.” The man’s voice came from the hallway and he joined her with fruit juice and toast on a tray. “I thought you might like these.”
It was the man from the bar. The alien man who had started it all and taken her to the ship. Victoria looked up at him, bewildered, and shook her head.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
“You’re being rewarded,” he moved closer to her and tipped her chin up so her lips met his, before he kissed her so deliciously slow that she thought she was going to melt in his arms.
“Rewarded?” she asked when they broke away.
“You’re the mother of The Lord’s heir… you are going to be looked after more than you could have ever dreamed.”
She looked down at the baby and then up to him.
“But… you?” she said.
“I’m a guardian,” he whispered, “I’ve been watching you for a very long time and I handpicked you for this, Victoria. The time had come, and it was right for you. This is your destiny.”
She sank back into the bouncing soft sheets and pulled her baby onto her chest. He was amazing. A wonderful mix of alien royalty and human humility. Victoria then looked up to the wonderful alien guardian by her side and felt the warmth spread throughout her body. She had finally got her happy ending… Her life had finally taken on some meaning. And she couldn’t have been happier.
THE END
Time Travel Romance
Through the Viking Gateway
Leena Archer
Copyright ©2016 by Leena Archer. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic of mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Chapter 1
Puririri
Puririri
Natalie blinked. Her phone was ringing. It was three AM, and her phone was ringing. Rolling over, she snatched the phone from the floor and looked at the number.
It was Cedric.
Groaning, she flicked her thumb over the accept call button.<
br />
“Cedric, do you know what time it is right now in Ireland?” she growled.
“That’s what I called to talk about.”
The chill, serious tone of his voice cut through Natalie’s sleepy haze. Cedric only sounded like that when something was wrong.
“Natalie… I can’t do this anymore.”
Natalie’s mouth opened and closed, and she choked out, “Can’t do what?”
“This. This field work. Your career. If you’re going to be spending half of your time digging in pits on the other side of the world, I’m done. Either get a job in the US, or we end this.”
Natalie’s throat seemed to be closing like a clenched fist. She had to force herself to speak.
“Cedric, we talked about this. You knew I was going to be traveling.”
“I thought you were going to get this field work shit out of your head and settle down at a museum job, or at some university, not spend half your life galloping across oceans. I didn’t sign up for this.”
“But what about the wedding? We already sent the invitations.” Natalie said desperately, searching for a straw to grasp at. “We put a deposit on the venue.”
“We cancel it. I’m not going to shackle myself to a woman who’s not there half the time. That’s not a marriage, Natalie. It’s me or the job. Choose.”
Natalie sat on her bed in silence, just holding the phone to her ear. Her blood was roaring so loudly in her ears it sounded like she was going over a waterfall.
“Natalie?”
“The job.”
“…What?”
Natalie took a deep breath, and an explosion of words burst out of her. “Cedric, you’ve never supported me. When I went into the archaeology program, you told me to buy lottery tickets instead, because I was more likely to make money that way. Every time I get awarded a grant, or find something interesting, you act like I’m trying to read you an encyclopedia about encyclopedias. You have zero respect for me, or for anything I do, and this has been my dream since I was five. So yes, Cedric, I will choose my job over you, because dead Vikings, who’ve been underground for a thousand years, still treat me better than you do!”
Ending the call, Natalie dropped the phone on her bed. Then she very slowly fell over.
Well. That was a thing that had happened.
It had been building for a long time. Sometimes, Natalie didn’t know why she’d even said yes. She’d just been so caught up in the moment, she supposed. The whole scene seemed to sparkle at the time: the fancy dinner, Cedric going down on one knee, everyone in the room clapping—and then it had all just fallen apart. They argued about everything, whether it was wedding planning or career plans or what to have for dinner, invariably ending with Cedric making passive aggressive comments about every single thing she did. Natalie had actually been glad to cross the Atlantic Ocean and get away from him.
Taking a deep breath, she sighed loudly, trying not to cry. One of the other women in the hostel room sat up, glaring at her.
“Will you be quiet? The rest of us are trying to sleep, here.”
Natalie resisted the urge to throw a boot at her. Instead, she got out of bed and started dressing herself, using her phone as a flashlight. T-shirt, khaki pants, a quilted polyester vest for warmth, and boots. Throwing her phone into her bag, she pulled her hair back into a tight ponytail and stormed out the door.
The hostel she was staying in was only a short walk from the excavation site. A farmer had been digging the foundation for a barn in a disused field, and found a barrow, an ancient grave site. Reaching the dig, Natalie turned on a floodlight. Maybe she could clear her mind a little by trying to find something in this giant, mostly empty pit.
Natalie surveyed the hole without actually expecting to see anything— only the dark brown of fertile soil— but a glint caught her eye. Something golden peeked at her from a corner of the hole. Hopping down, she picked it up and put a rock in its place, so she could mark its location later. T
It was a necklace made of thin discs of gold and inscribed with words; it was too dirty to read. There was a large pendant in the center, easily twice as large as the discs surrounding it. Natalie set it down in front of the floodlight and rummaged around the supplies until she found a clean-ish cloth. Then she began gently rubbing away the soil. As she cleaned, the world began to spin.
Natalie paused.
That was odd. She felt fine, now. With a shrug, she went back to her cleaning, and when she revealed the face of the central pendant, the world went black.
Chapter 2
Natalie found herself in that uncomfortable position where her eyes were closed but the world kept spinning, like she’d just gotten off the tilt-a-whirl at the county fair. She must have had a dizzy spell and fallen into the pit. Probably a delayed reaction from her fight with Cedric. The reality of it had just hit her all at once.
Natalie forced her eyes open, expecting to find herself surrounded by earthen walls and covered in dirt. Instead, she was lying on soft grass, with nothing in sight but a canopy of trees and an incredibly handsome man leaning over her suspiciously.
Very few men could pull off sideburns, but he did it admirably, his thick brown hair framing a square jaw and broad cheekbones. More than that, though, Natalie was caught by his eyes. They were dark and piercing, and fiercely intelligent. If this was an EMT come to rescue her, she was ready to be rescued.
Then she noticed that the extremely handsome man was holding a sword.
Sitting up with a yelp, Natalie looked around. It wasn’t just one man—she was completely surrounded. More than a dozen strangers stood around her, all of them armed, in some cases with farm tools. Not only that, the dig site was nowhere to be seen. These strange men must have picked her up and taken her somewhere.
This night just kept getting worse and worse.
***
It was the end of the day. The sun was starting to set. The men were heading for the main hall, ready for dinner after a long day’s work. Alrek himself was about to enter when there was a blinding flash and a crack of thunder. While everyone looked around in confusion, for there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, Alrek saw smoke rising from a field just outside the settlement. Whistling to gather everyone’s attention, he headed in that direction.
The field did not have so much as a blade of grass blown out of place, but it had sprouted a woman. She was lying flat on her back, apparently unconscious, with her mouth hanging open. She was so unnaturally pale that Alrek wondered if she was dead, until he saw her chest rise and fall with her breath.
She clearly wasn’t a Gael. Even if she was a Gael, Gael’s didn’t usually travel by means of lightning. She was unlike any woman he’d ever seen before, her clothes completely foreign. His men stared at her suspiciously. Even Banki looked like he wanted nothing to do with her. Still, Alrek thought, women didn’t just come out of nowhere. We’ll have to do something with her.
He was about to drop his sword and see if he could wake her when she woke up on her own. Their eyes met, for just a moment— and then she saw his sword and panicked. She jumped away with a shrill yelp, setting everyone even more on edge.
Alrek knew his men were looking to him for an order, but he stood silent as he watched the strange woman scramble about, a smile teasing the side of his mouth. She looked like a frightened chicken. Finally, she lurched to her feet, staring at them in terror.
Grabbing the bag slung over her shoulder, she held it out in front of her, saying something completely unintelligible. Even if she was speaking a language he knew, she was so upset Alrek wouldn’t have understood her anyway.
The men were beginning to shift, but Alrek held up a hand and they maintained their position. This woman seemed completely harmless. There was no need to kill her.
Yet.
The woman had noticed his motion, and turned to Alrek. He was stunned by the expression on her face—pleading desperation. They didn’t need to speak the same language for him to understand she was begging
him for mercy.
Her expression wasn’t the only thing he was stunned by. He’d seen many blue eyes in his life, but none that were quite the same shade as a calm ocean on a clear day. They would have been beautiful if they weren’t filled with fear, and the fact that they were, barely made a difference.
While Alrek stared, she continued to speak, babbling in that strange foreign tongue of hers. She began taking things out of her bag, dropping them on the ground in front of her— a small white tube, a metal ring with jangling keys on it, some pieces of paper held together with a coiled wire. Finally, she found whatever she was looking for and yanked it out, thrusting it toward Alrek.
Everyone jumped, Alrek himself included. Banki growled at his side, ready to thrust his spear forward, but Alrek flung an arm in front of him. The woman was standing there with her eyes clenched shut, shaking like a newborn foal. She clearly expected him to take the object she was holding.
Cautiously, Alrek leaned forward and took the object from her hand. It was rectangular, carved from some smooth white material Alrek had never seen before and decorated with metal edges and studs. Banki leaned over curiously, though he didn’t lower his axe an inch.
Alrek turned the device over, examining it closely, and to his shock, it vibrated and lit up like a torch. No, not like a torch. Not like anything Alrek had ever seen. The flat front of the object was glowing with some uncanny light, colorful symbols drifting across it. He couldn’t even have begun to guess the source of this light, or even what it was for.
Banki glanced suspiciously from the rectangle to the woman.
“What magic is this?” he muttered, glaring at her suspiciously. Giving him a frightened look, the woman started digging in her bag again, this time coming out with a folded leather pouch. This, she gave to Alrek as well.
BRICK (Forsaken Riders MC Romance Book 17) Page 95
