Master of Umbra (The Valhalla Series)

by Poppet

  His head eclipses the room when he dips to give me a gentle nibbly bottom lip sucking smooch.

  His hands have already dislocated from his mind and are fondling soft jiggly bits, my nipples perking up with eager interest.

  “Get out of here. Now you're not just distracting my men, but you're distracting me. I have such a boner I'll have to sit here long after you sashay your sexy arse out my door because it'll be awkward to walk with the sergeant standing to attention.”

  Leaning in to kiss his thick strong neck, I inhale his winter rain aftershave.

  Hmmmm!

  Dutifully getting off his lap, I point an accusatory finger at his nose, “Next time you give me a kiss and coffee or you can go without nookie.”

  “Threaten me again and I might have to tap a different keg. I don't follow orders, I give them.”

  Walking away I flip him the bird, not bothering to look back.

  I am so ready to lay into Gunn now. I have plenty of issues and he's a willing Boxing Bob dummy.

  *

  Deliah:

  Exhaling harshly, my breath whistling through my gritted teeth, I have the great lug with his fucking hipbone stuck in my neck, his elbow wedged in my crotch, and I can't think of a single maneuver to get out of this one.

  He's just too heavy.

  “War isn't a gentleman's game, Deliah. Fight dirty or you will end up the dead one in combat.”

  Okay buddy, you asked for it.

  Shoving my hand up his gym shorts, which is right on top of my head, I find hair and yank on it with the enthusiasm of a mongoose playing catch the snake.

  He vamooses so fast I double over laughing, “You said fight dirty.”

  “I'm not bitching, Deliah. It was effective, and that's all that counts in hand to hand combat.”

  Before I can catch my breath he's dropped down behind me, crossed his legs over mine, and has his arm around my neck in a garroting chokehold.

  The pressure is severe enough to give me black spots and I elbow down hard, sinking my nails into his forearm, wriggling my elbow between our bodies to poke the genitals.

  Flailing as I edge to passing out, I reach to yank hair, but his is shaved as short as Ewan's.

  Fuck!

  He releases me, leaving me to wheeze and gasp, “You need more training. Your instincts suck.”

  Thanks for vocalizing the obvious, fuckwit.

  “Tell me about your ex,” he says, as if it's no biggie.

  “What about him?” I mumble, guarded, uncomfortable with this line of questioning, twisting to look at my inquisitor.

  Gunn sits back, folding his arms and giving me a flat stare, “I want to know why he died. What was his crime?”

  I don't want to talk about Dias. I want to leave the past behind me.

  “It's none of your damn business. When you get your psychology degree I still won't want to talk about, so go interrogate someone else.”

  I make to move but his arm shoots out to block me, his hand clasping my wrist, staying me, “I shattered his skull for you, I had gray matter and neurons stuck to my fist like toddler snot, and I want to know why I had to do that. You owe me a reason girl.”

  His declaration gives me dread, robbing my limbs of strength and making me powerless, hopeless, weak.

  Staring at his hand, I manage to waver out in an emotional voice, “Let me go.”

  He does, but his gaze is so heavy that I can feel it trying to peel my skin off to find my shameful secrets.

  I'm shaking, my hands trembling when I twist further, lifting my shirt up on the side, giving him a glimpse of the damage I will carry as testament to Dias' love for the rest of my god forsaken life.

  His jaw clenches so hard I hear his teeth squeak together.

  A warm hand covers mine, his free hand tracing a fingertip over the exposed scars, warm breath basting the imposition while he stoops to inspect the trauma.

  Tears are falling now. This is my private hell, a place I don't choose to wallow, but the emotional hurt is still so raw that it wells up in me when I get this close to the cesspit of terror.

  Freeing my hairband I release my hair, tilting my head forward and feeling for the bald patch in the back. Showing Gunn the spot where hair never grows after the volts pumped into my head, charring the skin, almost killing me. I went into a coma.

  Oh god. I can't do this. I don't want to remember because it puts me right back in his hellhole of agony.

  “You want to know about Dias? He put the meth into methodist. He cut me up like he was playing a game of tic tac toe with a scalpel … he … burned … tortured … ” Wail!

  Gunn's on the sparring mat behind me and it shocks the suppressed sob right out of me when strong arms fold around me and he cradles me against his chest, pressing his cheek against my temple, whispering hotly, “I'm glad I got the honor to deliver justice. I'm sorry I upset you.”

  I'm too far gone. The skeletons in the closet have been exhumed and they're scarring my soul all over again, wracking me with shudders of grief. I lost so much to that man. He took my soul, he murdered my innocence, and he would have burned my eyes out if I'd seen anything that could damn him.

  It's instinct to curl in, to hide, burying my face and my pain away from a hall full of sweaty grunting men thumping each other. Too many witnesses.

  I just want to die all over again.

  “Let's get the fuck out of here,” mumbles to me, and I'm lifted, my feet dangling, but I still can't find the courage to look up.

  He hates me just as much as Dias did. There's such a flimsy line between love and hate, and I've seen it severed and used to strangle the sanity out of my head.

  When he puts my feet down on the ground of his chambers, I pivot, running away into the dark, only to be caught by my waist and hauled right back, “Deliah, wait. We're not all like that.”

  “You are,” I sob, my voice so unstable and watery it sounds like I'm possessed.

  Wrangled to face him I duck my head, sniffing, squeezing my eyes shut against the hot tears burning my irises.

  “Deliah, please don't run away. Yes okay, I concede, when we go berserk we're mad and unpredictable, but we are not malicious men. We would never harm our own, not ever.”

  “Let me go.”

  “I don't want to. I want to help, heal, to fucking make this better.”

  “You can't,” I mumble, the ache in my heart screaming in the hush of my broken tone.

  “I can.” Kneeling, crouching down, he tries to look up into my eyes, carefully taking my hand in his, “Holding hands is an act of love. Will you let me give you love?”

  “This is stupid, Gunn.”

  “No, what's stupid is how fucking blind I was. I was so busy running from my fate that I couldn't see why I was chosen. My eyes have been opened and I am willing to take that responsibility now. I need to do this. I can't explain how badly I need to heal you.”

  “It's behind me, I just would prefer to not discuss it again,” I sniff, trying in vain to use my firm tone.

  He doesn't speak, he simply holds my left hand with his left hand, pressing the palms together.

  The room tilts, a violent shock wave traveling up my arm to detonate my heart into skipping a beat, and I'm caught before my head hits the floor.

  Staring up with vertigo pinwheeling my reality, two warm gray eyes block the piceous ceiling, staring infinity into me, his solid embrace grounding me.

  Lifting my hand he kisses the back of it, “No one will ever hurt you again. Your body will heal the more you drink læraðr juice, and my power will heal the scars no one else can see; the ones in your heart. I promise I'll make this right.”

  I can hear thumping in time with my heartbeat in my ears.

  “What's that noise?” I whisper, feeling utterly disoriented and way too vulnerable.

  He cocks his head, listening, “What noise?”

  “That thumping.”

  Smiling delight at me, he puts my hand in his flat against his chest,
“This thumping?”

  It's enough to wrestle a smile from me, “Yes, how weird is that.”

  “Handfasting does that, our hearts beat in tandem.”

  Handfasting? Here we go again. This guy just doesn't know when to quit.

  “Gunn, uh...”

  But my argument is swallowed when his mouth covers mine and he compresses my lips in such a tender heartfelt kiss that it disturbs the nesting swarm of bees in my belly, giving me a swift kick of exhilaration.

  It's long, sweet, soft, poignant, and enough to warm my soul the way single malt whisky warms my cockles. Relaxing, feeling dizzy, I have a half smile stuck to my lips when he pulls away.

  “This is a promise for eternity, and I never break my promises,” he murmurs, giving me a raking stare brimming with sensual suggestion.

  I frown, unsure of what's transpiring.

  Lifting his own shirt, he shows me his scarred body, “I have them too. We're a match made in Asgard.”

  He bends over me again, licking inside my bottom lip and smacking his lips together, “Hmmm, tasty. I like my girls sweaty and pumped up from their workout.”

  Planting my hand firmly against his chest, I apply force, “What are you doing?”

  “Consummating my handfasting.”

  “But I'm Ewan's girl.”

  “No, you're not. You're mine. Ask him if you don't believe me.”

  I make to move but my legs are too unstable to hold me. My hand throbs as if he burned it with his own.

  “Why is this happening?”

  “Give it a few minutes, Deliah. You can't bond to another's soul without giving your body time to adjust.”

  Who are you and what the hell did you do with Gunn?

  He's giving me a bone melting smile, the kind that strips a girl naked and rolls her over a barrel for a good fucking, not stopping until the cask froths over from the stimulation.

  As if to illustrate his point he lifts his own left hand, licking the palm that just held mine.

  My sex clenches and my body heats and spasms with instantaneous effect. Gasping a breathless orgasm into his face, the scars on his chest blur when shame hits me hard.

  This is not happening.

  He twists his hand, showing me the mark tattooed on his palm. That wasn't there two minutes ago. I know, I've wrestled and sparred this man for the past hour and I've seen his hands.

  He lifts my palm for me and holds it like a mirror in front of my face. I have the same spiral on mine.

  “How did you do that?” I ask, my voice coming out all sex kitten gushy.

  “It's the union of soulmates, baby. I swear an oath to you that no man will ever hurt you again.”

  But you just did!

  Chapter 23

  He looked through the hole in the Odin Stone and wished that he might get the power of seeing Hildaland.

  - Orkney tale of Eynfree

  Deliah:

  Desperate to talk to Ewan, I manage to give Gunn the slip with excuses about needing to feed Bella and grab a shower, then rushed to the chief's quarters.

  My heart is racing with alarm at the sudden rift in my status quo and I stop abruptly when I spy Ewan dressed all in black, a thick cape on his shoulders and a hood covering his head to obscure his face, striding toward me with purpose and urgency.

  “Ewan?”

  “Liah, your timing is appalling darling.”

  “Where are you going?” He looks geared for a perilous covert mission.

  “I'm off to gather my people. You'll be fine here, I won't be gone long.”

  “You have more people?” I blurt, trying to understand the spider's web I'm stuck in.

  “I do. In fact, if you hurry you can accompany me. It's not every day I get to take a lady home to meet the extended family,” he says, looking seductive when he smiles invitation and temptation at me.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Ness Sten, to the ring of Brodgar.”

  Right, that really clears it up for me then. I feel like a foreigner on an alien world.

  Ewan gives me the provocative once over perusal, muttering, “Hang on, I think I have a cloak that will fit you.”

  Going to his tip of a closet, he rummages and rifles until a muffled 'here we go' crows from the recesses of chaos. Stalking the three giant steps back to me, he billows out a thick pelt of heavy material onto my shoulders, clasping it for me, “A trueborn you are. I'm beginning to get the deep soul-feeling there's more than fate and destiny in the winds today.”

  Touching the midnight purple-black material, it's soft and furry beneath my palm, like brushed velvet crossed with suede.

  “What's it made from?” I ask, fascinated by the insulating mantle.

  “Selkie pelt.” Nodding his satisfaction, he grips a hold of my hand, “Come on sweetling, we're leaving the secret way.”

  “Who did it belong to? It's way too small for you,” I babble, vastly sidetracked from my purpose.

  Moving us swiftly in an almost dreamlike speed, up a stygian obsidian tunnel behind his bathroom doorway, he answers, “My mother.”

  Oh my god, he must have it for me bad if he's letting me wear the heirlooms. In days of old to cover a woman with your cloak was as good as a marriage proposal, and fuck all to do with chivalry. My mind is reeling with the sub-texts to this thoughtful gesture from our chieftan. He's managing to make me feel cherished and important, two things a lady finds as addictive as books.

  Leaving the Blackmount forest he takes me directly to the Ring of Brodgar by planting his glowing sword in the ground, igniting an iridescent bridge across the sky from our lofty mountain lair.

  Somber clouds scurry overhead, obscuring the sky's sunny hearth with atramentous oppression, making the day as dark as the moment Odin bequeathed his eye for insight. The wind thrusts nebulosity with turgid speed, driving the murky brume with the ferocity of a baron scattering the illegitimate from the firstborns.

  “Quickly sweetheart, the gata only lasts long enough for us to transport.”

  “But we'll fall through it! A rainbow is nothing more substantial than vapor,” I object, my stomach doing the heave ho at how high we are. “What's gata?” I shriek belatedly, wobbling on the cliff's precipice.

  “Gata is olde Norse for road, this is the gata of bifrost, which means the road of light to god. It's called faith in the gods for a reason, poppet. Trust me, Liah. I'll never let harm befall you.” He takes a firm hold of my hand, pulling me forcefully with him onto the coruscating colors of the sevenfold firmament.

  It yanks us, barreling us across the sky in a time warp hallucination, the only sound an eerie whistling of dirge-like keening.

  Deposited directly into the middle of a wide flat henge surrounded with frosted heather, a clock of rugged slabs salute the sky, aside a loch so moody it mirrors the eyes of scrying hags on every pique in the choppy water. My heart is hiccuping when I turn to see the rainbow flickering out of existence.

  “What the fuck, Ewan?”

  “I'm Odin's grandson. This is nothing, wait until you meet my cousins.”

  “I thought all those men back in the Umbra catacombs were your kin?” I argue, my head reeling to keep up with this weirdness.

  He gives me a ravishing grin, “I am a complex man of many talents, Liah. I am the modern equivalent of Odin, there's much within my power to execute. This is your reality now, this is your heritage and your birthright. You'll learn these talents yourself in the following months.”

  “So, why are we here?” I ask, looking at the infinite ring of craggy bones.

  “This is where we knock to enter. Then we have a quick stop-off at my sire's stones, and then we go calling on the draugr.”

  Abandoning me, he circles deosil, along the inside of the ring of stone, touching each jagged tooth with that strange sword of his which glows with stellar mystery; the blade dancing with starbursts within its boundaries, as if it encapsulates nuclear fission and China's horde of exploding fireworks.

 
; Returning to my side, he plants the point of the sword in the earth at our feet and a new rainbow arcs across the ominous sky, unveiling a new Asgardian way to travel. I wonder if he gets frequent flier credits for this? The next location is so close I merge into the blur as a new henge zooms at us from just across the way.

  Accelerating through a warp to a point outside a much tighter circle of stones I recognize what they call the watchstone, the sentry protecting the inner circle. Water flows either side of us, roiling with secrets and dark tides.

  Walking silently side by side, huge menhirs rise out of the misty wraiths like a citadel for death dreamers. The specters stand erect and desolate, glistening wet with hazed breath, wearing enigmatic shrouds of tenebrous fog.

  Ewan wraps his arm around me, saying softly, “These are the standing stones of Stenness.”

  “Stane-is?” I whisper back, looking at the looming monstrosities.

  “It comes from the Norse words meaning stone headland. Be careful of the ditch, here let me help you over.” Strong hands circle my waist and he lifts me as easily as a child, putting my feet down on the grass next to the towering slab. “We enter on the north side, come poppet,” he says, taking hold of my hand and leading me around the ghostly circle. “One thing few people know about the geology sketch map of ancient Orkney, is that the monuments when they have a line drawn from one to the next mirrors the constellation Serpentarius and Serpens. It's an ancient oath of our holiest, a celestial and landlocked effigy of the almighty subduing the toxic influence of the sly.”

  “Why are we here?” I ask, keeping my voice low. This is like walking into a holy library, the atmosphere bidding me to subconsciously show reverence.

  “To look through the Odin stone. I want to show you my original home.”

  Careful not to trip, I match his stride, walking with him into the sacrosanct inner caim of the ancient monument. He pulls me with him, walking right through the creepy dolmen, the ground beneath us moving faster than us, as if we are skipping through a portal of acceleration. Approximately a hundred and fifty yards beyond the standing stones he halts at a pair of shimmering monoliths, both with a hole through its lower half.