Never Back Down

by Susan Harris

  “Erika,” Ever began, but Erika held up her hand. She continued to watch the man, who leaked power from his pores, even as he grinned like an imbecile.

  “You really do not have a clue who I am, do you?”

  Erika lifted her brows. “You would think the confused looks, blank stares, and your ass hitting the sand would have answered that for you.”

  The beautiful stranger laughed, stepped closer, took hold of Erika’s right hand, and lifted it to his lips. Still holding onto her hand, the man said with great pride in his voice, “I am Loki, son of Laufey, adopted son of sorts of Odin, and therefore half-brother to Thor Odinson, and Ever, daughter of Odin and future Queen of the Valkyrie. And who might you be, little warrior?”

  Erika schooled her expression, but could not disguise the jump in her heart. This man, this god, was renowned for his many exploits in mischief, his escapades in trickery, being the father of many feared beings like Fenrir and the goddess Hel, as well as, according to a few, many sexual perversions.

  Instead of dwelling on the fact she faced a god, Erika squared her shoulders before saying. “I am Erika, born of the sands, daughter of no one, destined protector of the future Valkyrie Queen, and General to the armies of Valhalla.”

  She snatched back her hand, rubbing it on her skirt. She held the gaze of the god, whose eyes seemed to hold the universe within them, a collision course of stars and galaxies. After not backing down from him, he gave her a quizzical look.

  “Why are you not worshipping me, General?”

  With a shrug, Erika replied. “Not interested, thanks.”

  Ever, who had been watching the exchange with muted amusement, hurried over to Loki and threw her arms around him. He spun her around as if she were five. Erika cringed at the jealousy that sparked inside her, yet, if she were being honest, she was not sure if she was jealous that Loki was hugging Ever, or the other way around.

  Erika spun in the sand, as Ever chatted unreservedly with Loki, and proceeded to storm away from them. The sand pinched her toes as she bolted from the lovey dovey scene on the beach. She had barely made it across the sand before Loki called out to her.

  “I look forward to speaking with you again soon, General.”

  The sexual undertone in his words caused a shiver to dance up her spine, like an invisible caress.

  Erika’s last sight of Loki, before she disappeared into the trees, was of the god watching her walk away, like he had found her interesting and alluring. And not surprisingly, Erika felt the same.

  It would be months before she saw Loki again, yet he managed to pop in more often than Erika liked, chuckling when she snarled at him. It infuriated her.

  “It infuriated me also. The fact I could not even get you to smile at me.”

  Erika pulled her legs from Loki’s grasp and hugged her knees to her chest. “I had other duties to attend to than to think of upsetting the infamous trickster god. Ever has always been my top priority. That will never change.”

  Loki tilted his head, his lips pressing into a firm line before he clasped his hands together. “Would I appeal to you more if I were a woman? I can do that for you, if it is what you prefer.”

  Erika glared at him, but her expression softened when she saw that Loki was not teasing her, simply wondering if she would have succumbed to him sooner had he worn the guise of a woman.

  “No,” Erika replied, softening her voice just a little. “I do not prefer women over men. Or vice versa. I just like who I like. If it massages your ego, oh glorious one, I think you, as you are, are plenty hot for me.”

  “Good.”

  The smugness in his tone nearly eviscerated all the good work Loki’s magic hands had made by relieving some of the tension in her muscles. Erika hopped off the chair and stood, walking back toward the small bed in the corner.

  “Now that I’ve stroked your fragile little ego, perhaps I can get some sleep. There is a big fight tomorrow that I need to rest up for.”

  Folding his arms across his chest, Loki frowned at her, the expression marring his beautiful features. “There are many out there that would relish the chance to slay a Valkyrie. Without your sisters, even without the P.I.T team, you are vulnerable. Even I cannot protect you without incurring the wrath of Thor.”

  Erika snorted. “I can look after myself. Have done so since the day my mother abandoned me on the sands of Valhalla. I am a Valkyrie General who has clocked up more battle miles than all her sisters combined. Those who would strike out at me, they know who I am, what I am. Let them come if they can find the courage. I will bathe in their blood with a smile on my face.”

  “Damn woman, that is sexy as sin.”

  Erika waved him off, sitting on the edge of the bed. She gave him a little wicked grin. “Now unless you want to sex me into slumber, I suggest you leave so I can rest.”

  Loki vanished, leaving Erika alone… but she could sense him lingering around the room. Snuggling down onto the mattress, she pulled the blanket to her waist.

  The side of the bed dipped as Loki reappeared, pulling the blanket up to her chest as he held her gaze.

  “How about a kiss goodnight?” Erika asked sleepily.

  Loki leaned down, his lips inches away from her own. Her pulse quickened and she fisted her hands in the sheets.

  “The problem is, Erika,” Loki said as he leaned in even closer, his breath on her lips. “If I kissed you, I don’t think I’d be able to stop.”

  He disappeared a moment before his lips would have grazed hers, and Erika growled in frustration. Her growl went unanswered; the aura that inevitably came with Loki had gone from the room.

  Erika tossed and turned before falling into a fitful sleep.

  And when she did dream, it was of a god with sinfully good hands.

  Ever

  Sitting in silence, Derek munched away on his bacon sandwich, his eyes never once straying from hers. When he finished, Ever studied him as he wiped his mouth with a napkin, leaned back in the chair, and gave her a wolfish grin.

  “So, you’re a Valkyrie?”

  “Ya.”

  “You don’t sound too chuffed about it, Ever.”

  With a sigh, Ever rested her elbows on the table and then perched her chin in her hands. “It hard to explain, Derek, it really is.”

  “Try me.” The gorgeous man across from her growled, the only thing betraying the cool exterior of his expression.

  “When I accepted who I was, when I spoke the words that broke me free, it was intoxicating, overwhelming, and unexpected. I remembered everything about my other lifetimes–my lifetimes with you–and then I remembered just being me, Ever Chace. I may be a Valkyrie, but I am also the woman who never felt whole until I met you.”

  “Then why did you run?”

  Ever gave him a small smile, thinking over her words before she spoke again. “I got all of these flashes of memories when I became my Valkyrie self, and after my father’s ravens came to chat with me, I wanted nothing more than to keep you safe, keep you all safe. He showed me a vision of his path of destruction and the countless, pointless deaths because I–her–me, is too proud to hand over the keys to a kingdom I never really wanted in the first place.”

  Cracking his knuckles, Derek narrowed his gaze, and Ever felt a strange sensation, a wave of lust that sparked from the unbridled aggression that lurked as Derek’s eyes flashed to amber before returning to their oceanic blue.

  “If there is one thing I learned from being part of a team, it’s that we are better together rather than by ourselves. When you are within a team, you have people watching your back, keeping you safe. It works both ways. If you had come to us, come to me, then you wouldn’t have run off, dividing up the team and making us all easier targets.”

  Stan ventured out to glance around the corner, and Ever turned to wave him off. Thankful for the few minutes to collect herself, Ever wet her lips, conscious that Derek still watched her as if he suspected she would bolt at any second.

  “At t
he time, I felt I was doing the right thing. Maybe I was wrong, but what’s done is done. I went from being a woman in love with this amazing man, and having a fantastic career and friends, to being a fucking Valkyrie warrior who held the fate of the world in the palm of her hands, held your fate in my hands. I didn’t want it back then, all the responsibility, and I still don’t.”

  “And so, you ran.”

  There was no question in his words, just the simple truth of the coward she had been, running away to try and solve her problems. Deep down, since she had first rode the lightening and vanished from Cork, Ever knew one day, and one day soon, she would have to return and face the music. But the music had come to face her and by the gods, she felt relieved.

  “Look, Derek,” she started, her fingers dancing over the bracelet. “I know I messed up. I had to come to terms with who I was in order to be ready to fight my father. I never meant to hurt you. That was never my intention.”

  Derek’s entire body trembled as the rage he had on a leash slipped. Amber pierced his eyes, his hands gripped the table, and the table groaned under the pressure of his grasp.

  “If you could not break Stan’s furniture, I’d be ever so grateful. He’s been good to me, Mr Broody.”

  “You told me… you said we would do this together. You said that you needed space, making it sound like it was because of me and who I was. Ever, you told me that we were in this together. After everything we shared, after everything we’d been through, you said you wouldn’t and you fucking did!”

  The last few syllables came out in a roar, and she fought not to cover her ears. She supposed it was lucky that it was midmorning and the lunchtime rush had not started, because she was not certain that Stan would have any customers left if an enraged werewolf went on a rampage in his café.

  Shoving the fake hair from her face, Ever reached over and grabbed Derek’s coffee cup, lifting it to her lips and taking a huge gulp. His attention now on her, Derek released his grip on the table and grasped her hand holding the cup in his. The moment their fingers touched, a spark of electricity shot through her, and from the growl in Derek’s throat, he felt it too.

  “I understand why you are angry, Derek. I would be too if the shoe was on the other foot. But I can’t do anything to change the past, even if I wish I could. I’d go back and let him have Valhalla and stop this sorry family feud that could get everyone killed.”

  Derek closed his eyes, not removing his hand from hers, and she saw him breathe in and out a few times as if trying to reign in the beast that was his other self.

  “I take it,” Ever said, giving him space to calm himself. “That Erika filled you in on the whole sorry story of it. So, you know by now that I am the daughter of a god and a goddess, half-sister to only half a dozen gods, and I used to, before this all started, ferry souls of the fallen to Valhalla.”

  Without opening his eyes, Derek asked. “Do you know what you did, the night you stopped me from dying when Donnelly stabbed me?”

  Thinking about it, Ever shuddered. When Stephen Donnelly, a very sick human, denied the change numerous times and facing death, had kidnapped, harvested, and killed supernatural teenagers, as well as ended Melanie’s mortal life by forcing Caitlyn to make her a vampire. In the end, when Donnelly had sensed something other in her, she had come face to face with him and held her own, until Derek in wolf form had taken Donnelly down. Derek almost died in the process. Only Ever claiming his soul had stopped him from dying.

  “I claimed your soul as mine. It means that in the event that you do die, I will feel it, and it is my duty, and mine alone, to escort you to Valhalla. It means that any supernatural out there who can see auras or souls will know that you have been marked and that you belong to me.”

  Her words came out a little husky, and Derek grinned. “I like the way you claim me.”

  Ever chuckled, reluctantly slipping her fingers free of Derek’s hold. “You’re such a wolf.”

  “Guilty.”

  They shared a smile, and then Derek’s eyes darkened. “Can you take off that goddamn bracelet already? I want to be able to feel you, feel the bond. Do you know how much it hurt when you put on that goddamn hocus pocus crap? It felt like claws inside my mind, ripping away the part that connected me to you.”

  “I’m sorry, Derek. I really am.”

  “I don’t want your apologies, Ever,” Derek said, his lip curling slightly into a snarl. “I wish I could hurt you the way you hurt me. But I know that if I had the chance, I wouldn’t do it. I love you. What I want is for you to drop this whole woe-is-me attitude and man up. My timeframe has moved up, I need to get back to Cork. There are people back home that depend on me, depend on us. Let’s go home.”

  Panic welled inside her chest at the thought of going home. What would she say to Erika, the loyal soldier who would step in front of a blade for her? What would she say to her parents, the ones who raised her? How in the hell would Samhain react to the fact that the daughter she had raised as her own was not human and more powerful than Samhain would ever be? Derek had fallen in love with the intelligent, human Ever Chace. Would this affect how he felt about her, like she had dreaded from the start?

  “Tell me what just ran through your head.” When she hesitated, he growled. “Tell me.”

  Ever blurted out all her fears, afraid that if she didn’t get them all out, then she would not be able to again. Derek was safe, and he wouldn’t care for her show of weakness.

  “Ever,” Derek said in a soft voice. “I love you. I love all of you, baggage and all. I don’t care whether you are human, demon, half of something I can’t even pronounce. Once I had gotten through the fog of rage and hurt, do you know what I felt? Relief.”

  “Why?” Ever queried, a little stunned by his words.

  “Because you became less breakable.” A statement of fact. “The fears I had that I would somehow get you killed, or you would grow old and die and I would be alone. That’s all gone. You are an immortal warrior who could take me down with the flick of her wrist. I might not remember anything about our supposed past lives, but I’m sure as hell that even the past me would’ve found that sexy.”

  Ever assessed him, tilting her head to the side, her heart beating a mile a minute. “So basically, you’re telling me I’m worried over nothing, and that I should’ve just stayed put.”

  “Basically.”

  Ever slunk down into the booth, hanging her head as tears pricked her eyes. “I don’t feel like her, Derek…the girl who made the bargain with Odin. I still feel like I’m Ever Chace, the girl who you ran into that day at the college. But this power in me, it terrifies me. I’m afraid I’m going to hurt someone.”

  “I may have only known you for a short time, but you could never hurt anyone, Ever.”

  “I’ve killed people, Derek.”

  “So have I. Do you feel any different about me knowing that?”

  Ever shook her head. “No, I don’t. I still love you. But I regret dragging you and the team into my horrible family issues. Erika, she was borne into it, but you guys had no choice in the matter. If I go back,” Derek’s snarl made her rephrase her words. “When I go back, if you stick with me, then you will have to deal with my family, the good and the bad.”

  Derek snorted. “I’ve already met Loki. That was an experience.”

  That dragged a smile to Ever’s face. “It always is.”

  Derek leaned across the table and took her hands in his, his gaze pointedly glancing at the wolf charm on her bracelet, before dragging his gaze up to meet hers.

  “I get it, Ever, I really do. The rational part of me understands why you ran rather than stick around. You tried to lone wolf it, but you forgot that you had a mate, and a new family who look after our own.” Derek rubbed his thumb over her knuckles, his eyes sparking amber. “I know you regret what you’ve done, but everyone has regrets, Ever. They regret the career they’ve chosen, the person they married, or not seeing the world before they settled down. Tha
t’s just life.

  “But, you can’t let those regrets stop you from living…really living…in the here and now. You know what I think? Fuck our past lives, and let’s live in the moment; let’s just be Ever and Derek. Screw destiny, screw the future…C’mon, Ever, what do you say? Will you live in the moment with me?”

  Ever swallowed hard, a lump forming in her throat. She realized, there and then, that Derek would have ran with her like he had done so many times before if she had just stopped to ask him. There was nothing she could do about the past. It was time to stop looking at the past and worry about the future.

  Her fingers danced over the bracelet as she readied herself to remove it. The air suddenly became too thick to breath and Ever groaned, slapping a hand over her eyes. Maybe, if she wished hard enough, when she opened her eyes, her brother would not be about to ruin the moment with Derek.

  “Oh, this is very romantic, isn’t it?”

  Ever opened her eyes when she heard the scuffle, looking up to see Derek pin Loki to the wall, the trickster grinning like an idiot as Derek’s hands turned into claws, digging deep into Loki’s charcoal suit.

  “Now, look what you’ve done! You ruined my favourite suit! You can’t go around trying to poke holes in people; it’s rather impolite.”

  “I had just about convinced her to come home and you show up and put a boot in it.”

  Ever got to her feet, aware that Stan had come out at the commotion, and she had little time to defuse the situation. Plus, Derek had reined in his animalistic nature, but Loki had a tendency to bring out the worst in people.

  Ever slid out of her seat, strode up to Derek, and ran her palm up his chest. “Derek, please let my pain in the ass brother go. He can’t help it, being an idiot is in his DNA.”

  “Hey…I resent that.”

  Derek’s chest rumbled with a growl, and she asked him again. “Please, Derek. As bad as he is, Loki would never have shown up here unless he thought it necessary.”

  Releasing Loki, Derek stepped back and returned to his seat. Ever hugged Loki quickly, punching him lightly on the shoulder. “Why can’t you do anything normal for a change?”