by Marsh, Anne
Tyra didn’t ask to become a werewolf and all she wants is to get on with her life. But when a prophecy foretells that the werewolves will bring about Ragnarok, the Norse end of the world, the entire paranormal world is gunning for her new Pack.
A mercenary and soldier of fortune, Calder clawed his way to the top of the Viking world and he’ll defend his brothers-in-arms to the last breath. But nothing could have prepared him for the newly turned werewolf who demands his help.
Calder doesn’t trade sex for favors, but there’s no denying the intense sexual chemistry between them and soon the lines between duty and pleasure blur. But if Tyra wants to keep her Viking, first she’ll have to learn the sweet pleasures of submission…
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At the
Viking’s
Command
ANNE MARSH
Copyright© 2014 Anne Marsh
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, with the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
Cover design by The Killion Group, Inc.
Before
Killing was the easy part.
It was the fucking incarceration he didn’t like.
Crouched on the floor of his cell, Calder tested the bars as he’d done every day for the last month. The steel-reinforced iron didn’t give and the drugs pumping through his veins left him too weakened to shift into his bear form. He’d stay here until his captors dragged him out for the night’s fight, only to shoot him full of another damned drug and dump him in the pit to face off against a paranormal opponent who hadn’t signed up for hand-to-hand with a Viking berserker. Like the last night and a seemingly endless string of nights before that, he would take down the other fighter, sometimes even without going berserk and shifting into his bear form. Because fighting was the one thing he did well. Fuck.
Eventually, the pit keepers would screw up. Someone would get the drug dosage wrong or drop a weapon. Eventually, he’d get out of here, find his fellow Vikings, and—yeah—put the pits out of business. He might be a mercenary for hire, but he hadn’t signed up for a starring role in an illegal fighting ring. He and the other Vikings been drugged and taken coming off a battlefield, leaving him with no memories of how his ass had gotten to Las Vegas, Nevada where the pit fights were carried on in subterranean arenas deep below the Strip.
The owners of the fight pits were dangerous predators, men who set one paranormal against another for the sick amusement of the watching crowds. A few fighters were volunteers. Most, however, were there against their will, compelled to fight by a combination of drugs, instinct, and a desire to live one more night. Calder had been separated from the rest of the Vikings two weeks ago. The isolation might have been the first step in a plan to break him—or merely a prep step toward psyching him up to fight his brothers. Didn’t matter, because neither was happening.
When he heard the heavy boot steps moving down the hall toward his cell, he dropped into a fighting stance. The cell next door was empty—he’d killed the occupant last night in a pit match. Either the boot steps heralded a new neighbor, or his guards had plans for him.
Keys rattled as the cage next to him grated open. The guard wasted no time, tossing a small bundle inside before slamming the door shut and re-locking it. He banged on Calder’s door next and Calder growled. He was really tired of this shit.
“Brought you some eye candy, Viking,” the guard called out.
Riiiight.
There was silence from the other cage, followed by a small, feminine groan. That was new. Paranormal females could be every bit as vicious as their male counterparts—the cells held at least one Valkyrie—but so far Calder had fought only males. The female rolled over, giving him his first good look at her. She was tiny, only five foot four inches. She was also curvy and soft. Long dark hair fell over her face, concealing her expression. She wore a bloodstained USC T-shirt, a pair of cotton shorts that hugged the curve of her ass, and sparkly flip-flops. Bruises and scratches covered her legs as she curled into a defensive ball, moaning. She looked sweet, innocent, and weak.
The fragile vulnerability had to be a front. He certainly knew better than to trust her. Anyone the pit keepers intended to fight had to be capable of winning, even if her clothes screamed Club Med escapee instead of dangerous killer here.
Since it had been a long time since he saw a female so pretty, however, he spent the next two hours staring at his new roomie while he pushed his body through a brutal series of pull-ups and push-ups. She was definitely better looking than the giant-werewolf hybrid that had occupied the space last. That opponent had lasted a full twenty minutes in the ring against Calder.
She came to screaming. Typical. It took another hour for her to stop the noise and, even then, he suspected she shut up only because she’d come close to losing her voice. The whole time she hollered, she drove her hands against the iron bars, shaking and clawing at the restraints. Since he hadn’t been able to batter his way free in his bear form, there was no way she did it with her pretty pink nails.
Eventually, he got bored. “You’re not getting out.”
Her head whipped around and—nice touch—she almost hyperventilated when she spotted him. She needed to be more aware of who was in her space. She’d been so focused on the door that she’d neglected to check out her surroundings.
She babbled something he didn’t catch and rushed toward the bars separating her cell from his. Foolish. He could have stretched a hand through the bars and snapped her neck. Should have done it and saved himself the time because, eventually, the pit keepers would send her into the ring against him and she’d lose. Killing her quickly would be an act of mercy. It had been a long time, however, since he’d had company and he was actually tired of the killing. Chocolate cake might be the nectar of the gods, but serve it up for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and it got old.
She didn’t stop the flow of questions, but they slowed down some into a stead flow: “Where are we? Who kidnapped us? Who’s getting us out?”
He had a question of his own. “What are you?”
To his surprise, she poked him through the bars. Most paranormals took one look at him and backed the hell up. They saw a seven-foot-tall Viking with shaggy hair and ripped muscles, and didn’t get within touching distance until they were dying. And that was without his usual arsenal of weapons. Before he’d come to the pits, he’d gone nowhere without his battle-axes.
His new neighbor didn’t seem to notice he was a lethal killer. She jabbed her finger into him again to punctuate her litany of questions. He looked down and glared at the offending digit, but she didn’t remove it.
“Is this an international slavery ring?” She countered her question with another one and then she was off and running again. She talked and talked and talked. Since her constant stream of words gave him plenty of time to think, he decided he didn’t really mind. Not being a talker himself, the constant silence sometimes got old. His new neighbor also had a pretty voice to go with her face, so he admired the scenery until, eventually, she stopped. Apparently, she topped out at 112 conspiracy theories. He’d counted.
“What are you?” he repeated.
“Pissed,” she snapped and he grinned. She did have a backbone. Good for her.
“Vampire? Elf? Land sp
irit? Valkyrie? Werewolf?” She didn’t look like any of those. Perhaps she was a minor goddess. A very, very minor goddess. Of fluffy slippers and sparkly flip-flops. She was certainly no tough girl.
Slumping against the wall beside the bars separating them, she rested her head against the wall. “You’re crazy. Which is totally understandable.”
Her opinions on his sanity—or lack thereof—were irrelevant. He didn’t move away, either. Stupid. Instead, he took up a similar position, leaning against the wall a mere foot away from her, drinking in her scent. She smelled like a fruit bowl. Peaches and raspberries and something creamy. Her scent was so much better than the death and blood stench of their prison that he wanted to sit there and just breathe, which qualified him for the crazy label she’d tossed in his direction.
When she shifted at sunset an hour later, he realized that he’d underestimated her after all. Her transformation was beautiful. Bones cracked, her body jerking as it shed her humanity like so much unwanted clothing. Fur rushed over her skin in a long, smooth roll of white and gray. A snow wolf. Imagine that. Fuck him, but Fenrir’s get was the last thing he’d have pegged her for.
His neighbor threw back her head and howled. In her lupine form, she was undeniably powerful. She snapped her jaws at him, growling as she battered her body against the iron bars. Hel. Since she was one of Fenrir’s children, she was also squarely in the kill-on-sight camp. Like most of the paranormal world, the Vikings didn’t tolerate werewolves. A seer had foretold Odin’s death at the hand of a werewolf, a death that would kick off the start of Ragnarök, the Norse Armageddon. As a result, Odin’s policy was simple.
Kill the wolves.
Every. Single. One.
Calder and his fellow berserkers weren’t exactly high on Odin’s current list of favorites—understandable, as they’d been created by Loki to wreak havoc—so none of them could afford to piss off the god. It was too bad for his little wolf. She’d go down and go down hard, even though she hadn’t asked for the bite that had rocked her world.
Too bad, so sad.
He knew all about bad breaks himself.
~~~
Tyra came to. That was the only word for it. She didn’t wake up, because she hadn’t been happily asleep in her bed. In fact, she wasn’t sure where she was or how she’d gotten here. Or even who she was. That was the scariest part. Her memories were all jumbled up, but she couldn’t latch onto anything other than the heart-pounding rush of adrenaline and the vicious throb in her left breast.
At least, she was pretty sure she was awake and not dreaming. Please God, let me be dreaming. But she could see her hands, and that wasn’t supposed to be possible in a dream, was it? She’d been walking…somewhere. And then something…someone…had sprung out at her. She remembered the pain and the screaming, but it was like her brain had been wiped clean before she woke up here...yesterday? Today? She remembered the cell and yelling for help, but then her memories did a fade to black and she’d lost more time. Worse, whoever she’d been before, whatever had brought her here, she didn’t remember.
A whisper of sound brought her head up and about stopped her heart. Yep. Despite everything else she’d forgotten, she remembered the big, blood-streaked man crouched on the other side of the bars. In addition to being the biggest man she’d ever laid eyes on (and somehow she remembered that), Mr. Tall, Dark, and Feral was seriously cut, his body rippling with muscles. He also clearly didn’t believe in clothes, because the man was mostly naked except for some kind of leather and fur loincloth that screamed sexy barbarian.
She was almost certain she didn’t know him. When she wracked her brain, trying to force the memories, fragmented, postcard-like images danced in her head. A room with fruit cut crookedly out of construction paper. Children’s faces. A small house with a bright red door and dead geraniums because she killed plants. The shadowy interior of a limo, women’s faces smiling as they lifted plastic Champagne flutes in a noisy toast to a white tulle-wearing woman. Flashes of bright lights, hotel high-rises, and…a pyramid? Connecting the dots was a task of Herculean impossibility—but she knew with bone-deep certainty that those dots were all that was left of her memory.
“Oh, God.” The two words barely covered her panic. She needed her memories back.
Her barbarian companion looked about as comforting as a rock bed, but since he was the only part of this nightmare she recognized, she scooted toward him. He heaved a sigh and extended his hand through the bars, like they’d done this before. Whatever. She’d take what she could get. She slapped her hand in his and his fingers curled around hers.
“How do we get out of here?” He had to know more than she did, if only because she knew absolutely zip, nada, zilch about what was going on. One of them had to fix this and it couldn’t be her.
“There’s no we, sweetheart.” He didn’t even bother to turn his head. His fingers tightened, though, his callused fingertips rubbing over the backs of hers.
“Fuck you.” She’d had it up to here with non-answers.
The corners of his mouth tugged up when she snarled at him. What kind of a man was he? Talk to him politely and he ignored her. Curse him and he paid attention. Fine. She could kick him in the balls too. Whatever it took to make him take charge of their getting-out-of-there plan.
He turned his head and looked at her. “How much do you remember?”
Right. This wasn’t her first day at the rodeo. She’d woken up here…before? She looked down at her body. Her skin looked liked a roadmap that said she’d been to hell and back, with plenty of pit stops along the way. Blood streaked her legs and she scrubbed hard with her free hand. Her breathing suddenly sounded like a vacuum cleaner gone bad, air wheezing in and out of her lungs at a panicked rate.
He growled at her. Actually growled at her. “That’s not your blood.”
“How do you know?” Nice to know she wasn’t punctured in some vital spot, but she still couldn’t let that blood stay stuck on her skin. End of story.
“Only one fighter leaves the pits alive. You’re not dead, which means you won.”
Say what?
“I’m not a pit fighter.” Whatever that was. Was she? Because, honestly, right now anything seemed possible. Her companion certainly looked like the kind of guy who could go hand-to-hand and do mixed martial arts.
“You are, because you’re not dead. There are only three kinds of people in the pits. Fighters. Dead fighters. And pit bait. Pit bait dies first.” Shoot. He sounded beyond certain.
Oookay. “You’re not dead either.”
“No.” He closed his eyes and made himself comfortable against the wall. So close. Only four feet, possibly five, separated them. She could poke her hand through the bars and—what?
“What am I?”
“Besides a pit fighter? You’re a werewolf.”
Werewolves didn’t exist. “You’re right about one thing. You’re crazy.”
He made a why me noise. “Somebody bit you. A werewolf somebody. His bite changed you.”
Automatically, she touched the spot on her breast where her skin burned and throbbed. Since she couldn’t remember anything much—except for the excruciating sensation of pain—his theory suddenly seemed as plausible as any. Yanking her hand out of his, she pulled up her T-shirt and whimpered. There was no other way to describe the embarrassing thread of sound that escaped from her. She did have a bite mark on her breast. Four of them. Livid and inflamed, the bites were obscene tears in her skin. Not only did her injuries hurt like hell, but it was just possible that he was right.
“Overkill,” he growled and, when she looked at him, he was staring at the bite marks and he definitely wasn’t entirely human any more. She didn’t know what he was, but his face grew larger and harsher as his shoulders expanded and his body shot up, taking on a brutal, animalistic cast.
“You’re an animal.” The words flew out of her mouth before she could stop them. Way to go, antagonizing her only friend.
“Only par
t of the time.” He bared his teeth. “And, unlike you, only when I want to be.”
~~~
“How recent was the bite?” He’d seen her shift. He’d known she was a werewolf—and that meant, since she was female, she’d been bitten. Fenrir’s children bred only male children. The females were converts, forcibly bitten and changed. They shifted at night only, taking on their human shapes during the daylight hours. For the first week or so after the conversion, the newly-turned were feral, savaging anyone they encountered. It explained how she’d survived her first night in the pit. She’d been an instinctive killing machine.
She glared right back at him, her brown eyes indignant as she went on the offensive. “Did you bite me while I was out? That’s sick.”
“I don’t bite.” Unless he’d shifted into his bear form when he went berserk. Then, yeah, he’d been known to bite his opponent, although he went more for rending and tearing. Biting was for oatcakes and dogs.
“Right.” She sniffed and gave him her back.
He understood about having a beast living inside you. And, hel, his beast liked hers. He blamed it on his imprisonment—it had to have affected his head, since he was a Viking berserker and she was a werewolf. It should have been death on first sight. As a mercenary for hire, he generally only gave a fuck about world politics and domination when caring earned him a paycheck, but even he wouldn’t stand around and let Armageddon happen. But the first week or so after a bite, the newly turned rarely remembered what they did. New wolves rampaged unchecked and that was likely why their captors had brought her here. She was pit fodder even if she likely remembered none of it.
Still, although the keepers had dragged her out into the pit each night, each morning, they also brought her back. She didn’t die. By the third morning, she’d stopped screaming when she woke up and had started inventorying her hands. Yeah. She’d finally figured something was up and maybe she’d started to believe him. She didn’t like her situation and she definitely hadn’t accepted it—but she wasn’t stupid either.
