Bound By Blood & Fate (Knotty #3)

Prologue

Long before kingdoms rose or clans carved their names into stone, the gods bound a monster.

Fenrir, son of Loki, the great devourer, was shackled beneath the roots of the world. His rage shook the earth. His hunger split mountains. And on the night the final chain closed around his throat, he tore loose a single shard of himself—a sliver of spirit, sharp as a fang and wild as winter.

It flew from the gods’ sight like a spark from a dying fire.

A fragment only, but still dangerous.

Still hungry.

The gods believed it would fade.

But fragments remember where they came from.

Across sea and storm it drifted, searching for flesh strong enough to cage it. It found that vessel not in a king or warrior blessed by the gods, but in a lone Viking youth standing on the edge of exile. A boy named Vargr Wulverson.

The fragment burrowed into his bones and slept.

Years passed. Blood spilled. Seas churned.

But when the boy became a man and crossed into the lands of the Picts, the fragment stirred.

For the first time, it scented a spark.

A woman of flamehair and fierce heart—Liùsaidh, daughter of Donald. Her spirit called to the fragment the way fire calls to wind. And in the joining of wolf and flame, the sliver of Fenrir woke fully, howling beneath mortal skin.

Not whole—but enough.

Enough to bind, claim and brand their bloodlines with an ancient sleeping hunger.

Generations passed. Kingdoms fell. The wolf fragment withered, then slept again. But it was never gone. It travelled through sons and daughters like an echo trapped in bone, waiting for a moment when wolf and spark would draw breath in the same lifetime once more.

And when they do, the fragment remembers.

Always.

It has only one instinct left.

To find the spark, awaken the beast and complete what Fenrir began.

Fenrir’s spirit shall never wither nor die.