by Mariah Stone
How many times had she heard that over the past two and a half years?
“I am not coming back.”
He grabbed her hand and pulled her to his chest. “Yes, you are.”
She struggled to free herself, useless of course. But making a scene could be her chance.
“Let me go or I’ll scream,” Mia spat.
“No, you won’t, bella.” Dan moved his arm, and through the thin silk of her dress, she felt the cold barrel of his gun.
Needles pricked her from head to toe. “You won’t shoot the mother of your child!”
“I will if she brings the cops down on me.”
Mia’s gut twisted, her free hand shot to her belly and lay on it protectively. She scanned the cafeteria for help. People glanced at them with curiosity, probably assuming a troubled couple argued. Carla only looked into her cup like a naughty puppy. That old lady in the green suit stopped knitting and watched Mia with concern. But what could a grandma do against Dan and his two bodyguards?
“Help,” Mia mouthed to her.
But the woman didn’t even twitch.
Dan picked up Mia’s purse, shoved it to her, then dragged Mia after him, towards the doors for cafeteria staff. They walked past a bathroom door that read Employees Only and carried on towards the emergency exit. Desperation burned Mia like a fever. She had been so close to escaping Dan, to giving her baby a better future, a normal life—not a life inside the mafia.
But she’d failed. Dan now had a reason to find her anywhere she went. He had connections, ways of locating her, of chaining her to him. She’d had a chance after he had finally agreed to end the toxic relationship that had eaten her up physically and emotionally.
But she’d blown it. She never should have met with Carla. If she’d only waited until tomorrow…
They’d turned the corner of the empty corridor when a voice echoed behind them.
“Wait!”
They stopped and turned around, hope making Mia dizzy. But it was only the old lady.
“What?” Dan barked.
She stopped in front of them, small and harmless, not a trace of fear in her eyes.
“Listen, sweetheart.” She talked directly to Mia with an accent that resembled German. “I have a way for you to escape, but it is not an easy path. There is a man who needs you, and you need him—a Viking.”
Dan chuckled. “What, a Minnesota Viking? What are you blabbering about?”
“Expect strange things.” She did not stop looking at Mia. “You will not believe them to be possible, but they will be the truth.”
Mia swallowed. She had no idea what the lady was talking about, but Dan’s grip around her arm became stronger and began hurting her, and she started to worry about the woman’s safety. “You need to go. Now,” Mia said.
“Honey, you forgot something back at the table.” The woman’s hand went into her purse, and Dan pointed his gun at her. But the woman removed a golden object. Mia squinted. Something like a spindle, from fairy tales?
What a random thing. The old lady held out the spindle. “Take it, you forgot it.”
This was crazy. An escape? A golden spindle? A Viking that needed her?
Dan’s hand had already stretched out to the spindle.
But there was something so deadly serious in the old lady’s face, and so much strength in her gaze, as if destiny itself looked into Mia’s eyes. She slapped away Dan’s arm and reached out to the spindle. The lady’s eyes smiled at that.
What did Mia logically expect would happen? Nothing. Maybe the lady would tase Dan, or maybe she had pepper spray, or maybe she was a retired karate world champion.
Or maybe it was a mean joke.
In any case, Mia went with it. Once the spindle touched her hand, a buzzing vibration went through her, and her head spun for real. Nausea made her stomach heave. The world around her began evaporating. The last thing she saw was Dan’s astonished face, his hands grabbing at thin air in the place where she had stood a moment ago, and joy filled her nonexistent body.
And then everything disappeared.
CHAPTER TWO
L omdalen, Norway, June 21, 875 AD
HAKON FLUNG OPEN the door from his bedchamber to the mead hall, and the scent of a feast cooking hit him in the face. The two hearths running along the center of the mead hall both had rows of cauldrons. Women were cutting meat, chopping vegetables, and kneading dough on the tables around the hearths.
It was the day of the solstice. Finally, the long wait for the pieces of his plan to fall together was over, and Hakon blazed inside.
“I said a supper, not a feast!” he roared at the cooks.
The women looked up at him, eyes wide. A child shrieked.
“Go on, people.” Solveig separated from the row of women.
One of her legs was bad, and she wobbled towards him while wiping her hands on her apron. She was the healer of the village, and the midwife to his mother when he had been born. She studied his face. Her eyes stopped on the birthmark in the form of a snarling wolf’s head that surrounded his left eye and then spread across his temple and cheekbone and up to his hairline.
“Solveig!” he said. “Do you not need to attend to my wounded men?”
The first raids of the season had not gone well without Hakon, who had stayed home because he did not want to miss the summer solstice.
“Come, Hakon.” She stopped in front of him. “The people get a new mistress today. They want a wedding.”
“They want a wedding?”
She was small, but she was the only person in the whole village who did not shake from fear when he talked to her.
“Clearly, you do not,” she said.
“That is right, I do not. No happy wedding to his daughter is possible. There is nothing to celebrate.”
Solveig crossed her arms over her chest. “Maybe there is. Maybe she will be good for you.”
“There is no one in all nine worlds on Yggdrasil who would be good for me,” Hakon snarled.
Solveig cocked her head. Hakon hated when she had that look. As if he were a little boy who had been naughty and tried to hide it.
“Do it for the people then, Jarl. Give them hope. The hope of a normal life.”
Hakon breathed out a deep sigh and held her gaze. “There is no hope for them, Solveig. Not while I’m their jarl. You know that.”
She shook her head. “I wish you would stop with your nonsense. No hope?” She scoffed. “You wait and see. Maybe this woman is exactly the hope you need.”
“The only hope I need is for her father to stay alive so that I can kill him.”
He walked past her towards the gates of the mead hall. “Stop the cooking!” he thundered without looking at anyone. “Preserve the food. There will be no wedding feast.”
Disappointed sighs ran through the mead hall. As he approached the exit, people passed by him carrying firewood, and buckets with water. Children carried vegetables. As always, their eyes darted away from him. A girl passing by with a basket full of parsnips up to her chin—Hakon remembered her name was Ledis—could not turn her eyes away from him and stumbled upon the threshold. Parsnips flew, and she was about to meet the floor face-first.
Hakon darted towards her and caught her under her armpits before she fell. Parsnips thumped gently against the floor around them. The girl’s eyes widened, she snatched her arms from his grip and ran away with a squeal.
“Does the child think I’ll eat her?” Hakon growled.
Solveig wobbled to him and began picking up parsnips. “Maybe. Mothers scare children with stories of you so that they will not walk outside in the dark. The wedding would help make them see a different side of you.”
“They have known me their whole lives.”
“And they have been afraid of you just as long.”
His jaw clenched, Hakon walked outside, anger and frustration seething inside of him like the deep waters in Helheim. He was about to invite another person into his life who would be just
as terrified.
Hakon approached his new horse. It stood by the entrance, and it neighed and jerked its head as he came near, its eyes bulging, afraid of the smell of his wolf-hide cloak.
“Easy, Wind, easy,” Hakon said, petting the horse’s neck. “The cloak is already sixteen winters old, the wolf long dead.”
Hakon mounted Wind and guided him through the village, moving toward the forest. People resumed talking behind him, as if a threat had suddenly been lifted.
His Hersir, Torfi, had suggested going with him in case of an ambush, but Hakon was sure there would not be any. If Nyr had wanted to kill him, he would have done it back in autumn when Hakon was at his mercy.
He passed by the dark, weathered longhouses he had seen his whole life, the barn, the fish drying racks, the pit for smoking. The village swarmed with activity—people were preparing to meet their new mistress, the one who would end the danger coming from King Nyr.
Roofs had holes, gables were worn by weather, sheds, lean-tos and fences slanted. The streets should have been boarded. The dirt would turn into slush once it rained. The village was alive with the sounds of its everyday activities: the tong-tong of the blacksmith’s hammer, the mooing and squawking, the talking and occasional squeals of playing children. The air was filled with woodsmoke and the scents of cooked meat and baked bread, in order to welcome princess Arinborg.
There was something else, barely noticeable. A shift in the air, as if destiny was cooking something. Hakon hoped the Norns were weaving him the same destiny he had been breathing ever since his father had died two years ago.
The death of his enemy.
After a short while of climbing up the low slope of the mountain through the woods, he reached the sacred grove. Despite himself, curiosity stirred his stomach. He hoped Arinborg would be cursed by some sort of mark, as well, or was simply ugly. Then it would be easier to keep his distance from her. If she found out about his plan to kill her father, she could warn him.
The rocks of the sacred grove between the trees blackened. It was a large round clearing, with pines, aspens, and birches surrounding it like walls. Rocks rose like the shoulders of a giant between the trees, seeming as if they would move if you blinked. Right in the middle was a rune stone, next to the altar rock where ritual blots, the sacrifices, were made.
And next to that, a woman.
Hakon’s heart jumped and froze for a moment, taking her in.
She was leaning with both her hands against the rune stone, panting. Her long, strawberry-blonde hair shielded her face in waves. She was dressed in a beautiful, rich dress the likes of which he had never seen. The cloth looked thin, flowing, like water, down her body. Giant flowers the colors of spring decorated it, and it made her look like the spirit of nature awakening, a creature out of this world. Over her shoulder was a violet leather purse.
Hakon cursed under his breath. Why did Arinborg need to be so fair?
Before Hakon could greet her, a bear appeared from between the trees behind Arinborg. He growled and stood up. Across the clearing, to Hakon’s left, bees buzzed. Last year, Solveig had noticed a beehive in a tree, and no one had touched it on account of it being blessed by the gods.
Hakon’s blood chilled. The bear wanted the honey, but it likely thought Arinborg wanted it, too.
The bear roared, and Arinborg’s head lifted to look at the animal. She was beautiful: big eyes, soft mouth, high cheekbones. Hakon’s stomach twisted in fear for her. The bear launched itself forward, and so did Hakon on the horse.
Arinborg looked up at him, her eyes wide, and Hakon leaned to one side and grabbed her as Wind passed by her. He put her over the horse in front of him.
The bear charged them, rising on its hind legs and slashing the air next to the horse’s side as Wind galloped past. Hakon turned Wind around, and they rode right past the rune stone and away from the sacred grove.
Wind galloped down the path a bit too quickly for his liking, and Arinborg began struggling, then yelled, “What’s going on, you barbarian? Let me go!”
The female sounded willful, no better than her father. And if she was like her father, he would never feel anything for her besides hatred.
He glanced back but did not see the bear anywhere around the trees, and the footworn path behind him was empty. Hakon pulled the reins a little to slow the horse.
“This barbarian saved you from a bear, Princess.” Hakon held her still in front of him, her body warming his skin through the silk of her dress. She continued struggling.
“Stop the horse!”
“I can if you want the bear to catch up. But let me suggest it is better we are as far away from it as possible. If you continue to struggle, you will fall and break you neck. Is that something you want?”
She kept silent. Soon they arrived at the village, and people stopped and watched them, wide-eyed. Of course. The Beast brought his future wife home thrown over the back of his horse like a sack of wheat.
Hakon stopped Wind by the mead hall and dismounted, then put his hands around Arinborg’s hips to help her down. The gesture was probably improper, but he did not care. The curves of her hips were nicely rounded beneath the thin cloth under his fingers. Her body was both soft and firm, and warm, oh so warm. Her skin slid under the material as if it were silk, as well.
Arinborg landed on the ground and turned to face him, standing between the horse and Hakon. Her scent tickled his nostrils, so sweet and clean. She smelled like spring flowers and something else…some indefinable spice that seemed to belong to her alone.
Her big green eyes were a little slanted. How could she have such thick eyelashes? He was drowning in her eyes. Her cheeks were flushed, the color of a young dog-rose bloom. Her lips, full and soft, were slightly parted. The urge to kiss her, to taste her tongue, to take her mouth and bite her full lip rose in his body like a storm, his heart drumming in his ears.
No. He could not. He had decided he would not be involved with her. Not with his heart.
But he wanted her. The feel of her legs under his fingers, her scent, her beauty. He could not resist her, even though he needed to. She was his bride. He could have her if he wanted to…
And oh, Loki, he wanted to.
“Let all the gods be damned.” He leaned towards her to claim the kiss.
But as he did, her eyes widened even more in surprise, she doubled up and vomited. Warm liquid soaked through his tunic on his chest. He closed his eyes, his jaw tightening, as the people around them giggled, and his bride wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, studying him from under her lashes.
Of course. She must have been disgusted by his mark so much, she could not stop her feelings. Anger seethed in him.
Arinborg looked around them, and her hand shot to her throat. “Where am I?”
“In Lomdalen, of course,” Hakon said and took a step back. He needed to clean his tunic.
“Where is that?” her voice trailed off to a whisper.
He squinted at her. “What are you talking about, Princess? You know where it is. You traveled here yourself.”
Arinborg swallowed, her hands were looking for something behind her.
And then she turned and ran. Her skirts flapped on the wind, her long, graceful legs flashing. Shock froze him in place.
Was he that ugly? So ugly she had to run from him, breaking her father’s oath?
Hakon looked at his people to see if anyone understood what had just happened, but everyone had the same stunned look.
Then Hakon came to his senses and ran after her. She had to marry him. It was done. Agreed. Everything depended on it.
He reached her after two longhouses; she was not the best of runners. Grabbing her upper arm, he turned her to himself. She was breathing hard, but still tried to kick him.
“Get off me!”
He pressed her to his chest so that she would stop struggling. “Princess, you must honor your father’s agreement and marry me. If you wanted to change your mind, you should have
done it earlier. It is too late now.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. What is this, a movie set? A reality show? Where are the cameras? Let me go.”
She kicked his ankle, and pain shot through him. He tightened his grip.
“Why are you speaking these strange words?”
Then doubt hit him like a cold wave of the North Sea, and he shook her slightly. “You are Arinborg, aren’t you?”
Her face straightened. She froze, watching him carefully. “What would happen if I wasn’t?”
“If you are not Arinborg, you are an imposter who is pretending to be a princess and trying to marry a jarl. You would be judged and killed.”
She paled, and her chest rose and fell, making him painfully aware of her soft breasts brushing against him, stirring desire in him like liquid fire. “Are you Arinborg or not?”
She pressed out a strained smile, one hand covering her stomach. He hoped she was not going to vomit a second time. “Of course I am. I was testing you.”
She forced her face to relax—he saw the effort. But beneath the mask, that same frightened tension showed, that frown of someone who was terrified.
The expression he had seen around him his whole life.
“Good,” he said, releasing her but still holding her elbow. “Look. I do not want this marriage any more than you do. But it is settled between your father and me. I am not Brandr, god of beauty, but you will marry me. And if you do not like me, what bad luck for you.”
Arinborg’s eyebrows rose in surprise, but Hakon continued. “We are bound now, whether you find me handsome or not. You will be my wife. It is done.”
Even though she did not say anything, a cold resolve turned the spring-grass green in those beautiful eyes into malachite stone at his words. She tensed her jaw, seeming to withdraw somewhere deep inside herself.
“Fine,” she spat through her teeth.
“Let us go.” Hakon jerked and dragged her, hating that he was forcing an unwilling woman to marry him, and hating that she awoke in him a tiny part that wished she was not scared of the Beast like everyone else. That she would marry him gladly.
