Chapter 44
After wiping me down with his linen breeches, Nordin ushers me into a warm bath that feels like a balm against the raw, bruised flesh between my legs. I sit in the crook of his body, head lolled against his chest, fingers caressing his corded thigh.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks, rubbing a bar of creamy soap over my body.
I press the contemplations of the Ragnarok Trials aside. “How perfect tonight was. What are you thinking about?”
“How I wish I didn’t have the responsibility of a pack, so we could barricade ourselves from the world until the next full moon.” He gently runs the soap over my stomach, then my mound.
“Your many admirers will be heartbroken come morning.”
“That the position of Alpha’s mate has been filled?”
I twist my head and peer up at him, at those sculpted lips he ghosted over the whole of me, at those hooded eyes weighed down by more than lust. “Alpha’s mate, huh?”
“Is it too soon to remind you that I intend to wear your name in ink on my ear sooner or later?”
I comb a damp lock off his forehead. “The pack is going to be shocked, since most still consider us cousins.”
“Imagine how shocked they’ll be once they find out you’re a valkyrie.”
My fingers freeze. “You plan on telling them?”
“Eventually. Once we drive the vampyrs off Isrike.”
My hand slides to his shoulder. “You promised me you’d stopped your war effort.”
A flicker of unease unsettles his expression.
I turn in his lap, kneeling between his legs. “You did stop them, right? You’re not still planning on charging into battle. Tell me you’ve retired this mad idea.”
“I’ll never stop trying to rectify the wrong I caused you, Zas.”
“What if I forgive you?”
“Do you?” My marked pause leads him to catch my face, fitting my chin in the scoop between his thumb and forefinger. “Truthfully, it wouldn’t change anything, for I haven’t forgiven myself.”
“You cannot go to war against dragons.”
“I wish you’d believe in me.”
“Again, it’s got nothing to do—”
“It has everything to do with you believing in me. If you don’t believe I’ll come home, then I won’t. If you do, then I’ll win.”
I shake my head free of his hand. “Do not put that sort of onus on me. I believe you’re strong. Even stronger now. I believe that if you charge into battle, you will come out the victor, but I also believe blood will flow on both sides, and I refuse to be the reason that even one life is wasted.”
“If I sit back and do nothing, then in a few decades, you die.”
“Unless Taeric dies first.”
He rolls his lips.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
He cuts his gaze to the bar of soap he resituated on its golden saucer.
“Nordin?”
“My father’s convinced that I might not have erased your magic, but instead displaced it. Which would explain why Skarnir is still cursed and still alive. Far thinks that we need to either purge you of it completely or have it retrieved.”
Although there’s much to unpack, I start with, “You’re speaking to your father again?”
“He’s written me letters. I haven’t responded.”
I wonder how Ulf suggests purging me, since only dragon-fire burns away valkyrie magic. His plan better not be to tie me to a stake.
“He claims the iron-laced tonic he had you ingest was his attempt at purging you of magic.”
I snort. “Yeah, by purging me of life.”
When Nordin swallows, my body stiffens with revolt, and I screw my head off his palm.
“Oh my Gods, you actually believe him! Nord, if your father had been trying to aid me, he wouldn’t have done so behind my back.”
“I know, Zas. Which is why I don’t believe him.” He shakes his head. “Come here.”
“Come where?”
“Closer.” He bands his arms around me and gathers me so near it feels as though he’s trying to slot me inside his body. “I’ll never let anything bad happen to you again. You trust me, right?”
“I do.”
“Then trust that I would kill my own father if he ever tried to harm you again.”
His hushed confession disturbs my breathing, turning each inhale shallower and each exhale shriller until my head begins to spin like the thoughts locked inside.
Thoughts of Ulf. Of vampyrs. Of war. They haunt the rest of my evening.
The rest of my night as well. Twice, I startle awake. The first time, Nordin is there. He tucks me into the warm crook of his body, lulling me back to sleep.
The second time I wake, I’m alone and the sheets are cold. I stare up at the large, round window, wishing the sky overhead were the color of alpine asters instead of the ominous shade of dawn thunderstorms, the same way I wish Nordin hadn’t already left.
I plod to the bathing chamber with a slight limp, wincing as I empty my bladder.
The area between my legs feels swollen and raw.
I imagine it’s normal. If only Saga were here so I could ask her, since I refuse to ask my mother.
For all our complicity, I don’t see myself telling her that I slept with Nordin.
I’m guessing she might already be aware, seeing as I didn’t go home last night. If Mor had been worried about my safety, she would’ve sounded an alarm, and no alarm, to my knowledge, echoed through the valley.
I splash my face and neck with fresh water just as hinges groan and my name resonates in the silent house.
“In here,” I call out, securing a towel around my body.
Nordin stands on the threshold of his house, a platter laden with so much food that he needs two hands to carry it.
“Did you leave anything for the rest of the pack?” I move slowly down the hallway, trying hard to attenuate my limp.
I mustn’t be doing a good job of it, because his expression creases with concern. He goes to set the platter down somewhere, then returns to me and offers me his arm as a crutch.
“If your ambition was to ply me with food for another round between the sheets, I have to warn you that my body’s out of commission until further notice.”
“If only I’d known…” he says with a long-suffering sigh. “I wouldn’t have asked Thyra to prepare a platter fit for a full day of sex.”
My eyes widen. “Did you truly ask her—”
“No. It might come as a surprise, but I know how to heap food into bowls.”
I huff out a laugh, pillowing my cheek against his bicep as we walk.
“I ran into Eira at breakfast.”
My cheeks pinken.
“She asked if you wanted your tools brought to the forge or to your room.”
“Is that all she asked?”
He cants his head. “Yes. She’s intuitive enough to have figured out the rest without asking.”
“Did she—say anything about it?”
“She told me that if I tried to go to war with the vampyrs, or didn’t reject a true mate bond, she’d shear my hair off at the roots.” He reiterates Mor’s threat with a smile.
Instead of settling, my nerves riot.
“What?” he asks, reading me far too well.
“For some unfathomable reason, I’d discarded the idea of you getting a true mate.”
“Keep discarding it.” He spreads his legs wide and leans over, reaching for my hands. “It’ll never happen.”
How I wish his confidence could smother my doubt. He tugs on my fingers until I stand, then guides me around the low table and onto his lap.
“I choose you, Zaskja.” He wraps his arms around my middle. “Whatever and whoever Fenrir throws at us, I will always choose you.”
His declaration pours so much heat into my chest that it liquefies my heartbeats.
“I hope you’ll always choose me too,” he adds with a touch of uncertainty that makes me cup his face.
“There’s no one else for me, Nordin.” Because the curve of his smile remains too weak for my liking, I ask, “Why do you doubt this?”
“Because you’re young, and fucking beautiful, and—”
“And fucking yours.” When I catch him glancing at my ear, I say, “Someday soon, I’ll wear your name.”
He holds his breath. Lets it back out. “You realize that we no longer have to wait until your birthday?”
How Ulf must regret having altered my year of birth on the beam of life…
“Perhaps it’d be better to wait until my birthday to set a noble precedent for the rest of the pack.
Just in case your father, or one of his councilmen”—like the one who was only to eager to inform Havrik of my significance to Taeric—“mentions they altered it under duress. Plus, waiting will give everyone time to prepare…and adjust.”
Nordin taps three fingers to his lips while tipping his face toward the large beams crisscrossing the ceiling.
The ones decorated with Fenrir’s likeness as well as with the Ravine creed, which I’ve come to learn by heart—after finding out it was invented by the first Ravine Alpha and not the one preceding Nordin: In shadow, we walk.
In unity, we rise. In moonlight, we thrive.
“What did you just ask Fenrir?” I ask, after Nordin’s fingers lower to my thigh.
“Hmm…” He slants his mouth over mine and steals a kiss. “I made a wish.”
“Am I allowed to hear it?”
“Yes.” He slips his hand under the hem of my towel, fleecing a soft groan from my lips. “After we speak our vows, I’ll tell you.”
“That’s so many moons away…” I gripe.
“Only nine and a half, Zaskjalill. Unless you change your mind about that precedent?”
“Exploiting my curiosity is downright wicked of you, Mr. Stormsson.”
This time, his smile not only reaches his eyes but also climbs into them and sets the infinite blue ablaze. I feel so happy it hurts, and that scares me, because every time I’ve felt this way in the past, something terrible ensued.
The day my first blood finally came, I learned I wasn’t a shifter.
The night I gave Nordin my journals, he crippled my innocent heart.
The first time we fooled around, Sigrid stomped in with a cruel revelation.
What will happen this time?