Wregen #3
“I was,” the liar squeaks, finding the breath to spit out two words as I inadvertently loosen my grip.
Snarling, I squeeze harder, ready to be done with this delay.
And then my ferocious, stubborn skjaldmaer places her lips around my wrist and bites. Hard. I’m so fucking surprised—and my cock is so fucking enthused—that we drop the vermin we should have already killed.
She leans down, spitting out some of the blood she drew, and picks up the beast, cradling it next to the tits that belong to me. It takes every bit of will I can muster to stop myself from reaching out and finishing what I started.
But I can see what it would cost me, and I’m not sure if I’m willing to pay that price.
Finaan’s brow is furrowed, her caresses soft as she inspects this creature. She wants him, and for reasons that I will never understand—and probably despise until the end of my days—I want her to have him.
I snap out “Fine” before I can change my mind. “But if you truly are Ratatoskr,” I add after a moment, “explain your presence.”
He watches me in silence, his eyes bright, for too long. I’m about to change my mind and kill him after all, when Finaan reaches out a hand to take mine. I let her, unsure what to think about this odd gesture.
“It’s okay,” she whispers to the rat. “I won’t let him hurt you.”
“I said I would let him live,” I snarl, “if he answers my fucking question.”
The rat sucks in a deep breath and throws the most telling side-eye I’ve ever seen at Finaan. And I understand the annoying rodent better than I ever would with a few words. The little liar is playing her. She can’t see it yet, but she will. And then I’ll kill the fucker for tricking my mate.
“I spent millennia as messenger for the gods,” he says after a few moments, “trusted to carry messages between Hraesvelgr and Níehoggr.”
“The eagle at Yggdrasill’s highest point, and the serpent at its roots,” I explain when Finaan’s eyebrows squeeze together.
She nods and mouths “Thank you,” before taking her attention from me, where it belongs, and giving it to the creature.
I am not pleased. Still, I clench my free fist, gently squeeze the soft hand still resting in mine, and let him continue.
“In all that time, I never faltered or failed. I was their faithful courier. The fates weren’t satisfied, though. When Ragnarok shook the worlds and everything within them—opening a path between Midgard and Jotunheimr—the Norns betrayed me.”
“The females who weave the threads that spell our fates,” I interject, my stomach rumbling with a need to pull her attention back to me that I don’t understand and wish I could squelch like a bug.
“I know who the Norns are,” she whispers. And then she turns and gives me a smile that’s so bright—so free of the hate and anger and disgust she usually wears around me like a shield—it takes my breath away.
For one little spark of time, the briefest flare of light inside my dark soul, I see the life I might have had if the god who sired me had sown a different kind of beast inside the babe he seeded in my mother’s womb. If Finaan and I had met in the sun instead of the shadows.
I let myself savor the thought for a moment before pushing it aside.
Dreams only lead to devastation in Helheim, and I will never break that realm’s hold on me.
Dropping my mate’s hand—the chill of the cave replacing the warmth of her fingers—I focus on the manipulative little vermin resting against the bosom that belongs to me.
“How did they betray you?” Finaan asks, returning her attention to the creature.
“Yggdrasill cast me aside,” he responds, a catch in his throat. “The tree I’d served for millennia spewed me down like the mead that fell from óeinn’s ass in his escape from Suttung.”
“Hel told me of that day,” I tell Finaan, still unable to stop myself from capturing her attention whenever I can. “Humans supped of it for days, and wrote sonnets to óeinn’s rear-mead.”
“Do you want my story or not?” the little rat demands. Jealous thing, eager to claim my mate’s attention, when every bit of it belongs to me.
“He’s not a good storyteller,” I murmur as I finally pull myself from the appeal of Finaan’s bright eyes and search for the wall I built centuries ago to stand between me and every other being in my life.
Finding it in memories of the fates’ ruin of my life—the beast nobody should be asked to bear, and the time I chose in Helheim to escape him—I snap my barrier back into place.
It drenches the hints of emotions that had started to seep into my psyche, a hurricane dousing a flame.
“I’ve heard enough,” I declare, reaching out and plucking the creature from Finaan’s tits.
Spinning, I throw it at the turnip dragon, scowling as the beast’s tongue whips up to catch it from the air and settle it on the ground.
“If he’s coming with us, you’ll carry him,” I order, glaring at the two of them until the squirrel crawls up the dragon and settles on its back.
Then I turn and stride away. We’ve been in this cavern too fucking long, and I’m getting soft. I need to get home, where my liege can remind me who I am.