Chapter 5
Lorna
The spanking continued, each swat precise and measured.
I lost count after twenty, my bottom burning with a heat that seemed to radiate through my entire body.
Worse than the pain was the humiliation of it—bent over this stranger’s knee like a misbehaving child, my most private parts exposed to his view.
“Please,” I sobbed, maddeningly uncertain of what I even wanted. “Please, Herra—”
“Better,” Aksel said, his hand pausing on my heated skin. The touch should have been a relief, but instead it sent confusing signals through my body. “You’re learning. But we have much work to do.”
He pulled me upright, steadying me when my legs wobbled. My panties were still tangled around my knees, my dress bunched at my waist. I knew I looked absolutely ridiculous—the prime minister’s wife, standing half-naked in some warehouse, tears streaming down my face.
“Remove the rest,” he commanded, stepping back to observe me. “Everything.”
This time I didn’t hesitate: the pain from whatever the horrible device was that they had somehow installed between my thighs didn’t linger, but the soreness Aksel had left in my backside motivated me to obey with alacrity.
I don’t have a choice, the voice in my head said.
No choice. My Herra will spank me again if I don’t do as he says, and it hurt so much.
My fingers fumbled with the buttons of the sundress, pulling it over my head and folding it with shaking hands.
The bra followed, then I pushed my panties the rest of the way down and stepped out of them.
I stood naked before him, fighting the urge to cover myself, hide the thicket of ash-blonde curls that every good girl knows a man should never see.
“Good,” he said, his gray eyes sweeping over me with clinical assessment. “Now we can begin your real education. You’ll shave your fisse before your next session, as a sign of your servitude, but nakedness is enough for now.”
I shuddered at the casual way he spoke of removing the natural covering of my private places, but Aksel had turned to move to one of the workbenches, returning with what looked like a collar made of soft black leather. Silver runes were etched into its surface, catching the light as he held it up.
“This is to assist your progress,” he said, approaching me with the collar. “A training collar. It will help you access what’s already inside you—the ancient knowledge that runs in your blood. You’ll wear it when you’re here.”
I didn’t understand what he meant, but when he fastened the collar around my throat, something shifted. The room seemed to shimmer at the edges of my vision. The carved symbols on the wooden pillars appeared to move, to breathe, as if they were alive.
“What—” I started. I looked wildly around, and the effect—whatever it had been—went away. I turned to Aksel, my eyes wide.
“The women of the North once held great power,” Aksel said, circling me slowly. “The volur—the seeresses who could glimpse the threads of fate. That knowledge was suppressed, hidden, but never truly lost. It runs strongest in those who submit to their true nature.”
“It’s… magic?” I breathed, my heart racing.
Aksel smiled, the expression knowing—almost smug.
“If I were a different kind of Herra,” he said, “I would say yes, and let you believe the way the volur did a thousand years ago. But your new Herra is an engineer. It’s not magic, Lorna; it’s science and design.
The collar enhances a certain kind of sense that you have access to through the nature of your sexuality. ”
I swallowed hard. “My… sexuality?” I whispered. The mystifying events of the last three days had begun to form into a constellation that seemed no less impenetrable, but nevertheless had a shape—a very distressing shape.
“Yes,” Aksel said simply. “Your sexuality. The part of you that craves submission, that needs to be owned, controlled, disciplined. That part connects you to something much older than this modern world your husband represents.”
He moved to another workbench, returning with what looked like a simple wooden box, carved with the same runic symbols that decorated the collar around my throat. My skin prickled as he set it on the floor in front of me.
“Kneel,” he commanded.
I sank to my knees on the cold concrete, acutely aware of my nakedness, of the way the position made me even more vulnerable. The collar seemed to grow warm against my skin, and for a moment I could have sworn I heard whispers in a language I didn’t understand but somehow recognized.
“The volur were not merely fortune-tellers,” Aksel said, opening the box to reveal a set of carved bone tiles.
“They were advisors to kings, keepers of ancient wisdom. But their power came from understanding their place in the natural order. They submitted to the gods, to fate, to the men who owned, and used, and protected them. Through that submission, they gained sight beyond sight.”
He lifted one of the tiles, and I gasped. The symbol carved into it seemed to pulse with light—not magical light, I told myself firmly, but something my brain was interpreting as light because of whatever technology was in this collar.
“Your husband is selling Jagland to the highest bidder,” Aksel said, his voice taking on a harder edge. “The Synergy Group, the Russians, anyone who will line his pockets. He doesn’t understand what he’s destroying—the ancient contract between the land and its people.”
“I know,” I whispered, my voice rough. “I’ve been trying to find evidence, to stop him somehow—”
“Evidence?” Aksel’s laugh was sharp. “Evidence means nothing when the entire system is corrupt. No, Lorna. We need something more fundamental. We need you to remember what you are.”
He placed the tile in my hand. The moment it touched my skin, images flooded my mind—not memories exactly, but something deeper.
I saw women in rough-spun dresses standing before warriors, their eyes milky white as they spoke prophecies.
I saw myself, but not myself, kneeling before a man whose face I couldn’t quite see, accepting his collar, his command, his seed.
I saw threads of light connecting everything, showing how Takken’s betrayal would ripple outward, destroying not just Jagland, but something essential about the North itself.
“What do you see?” Aksel asked, his voice seeming to come from very far away.
“Threads,” I gasped. “Connections. Takken… he’s not just corrupt. He’s part of something bigger. The Synergy Group is using him to—” I broke off, the vision fragmenting. “I can’t… it’s too much.”
Aksel’s hand settled on the back of my neck, warm and steadying. The contact grounded me, pulling me back from the overwhelming cascade of images.
“You can sense this much already because of how I’ve disciplined you,” he said, his thumb stroking along my hairline in a gesture that was almost tender.
“The pain, the submission—it opens pathways that have been closed for generations. But to truly unlock what’s inside you, I’ll need to train you thoroughly as my bed thrall. ”
The words sent a shiver through me that had nothing to do with the cold air on my naked skin. Bed thrall. Such an archaic term, yet it resonated in my bones like a struck bell.
“Stand,” he commanded, and I rose on unsteady legs. He took the bone tile from my trembling fingers and returned it to its box. “Your initiation begins now.”
Without another word, he turned and walked toward a door I hadn’t noticed before, hidden behind one of the carved pillars.
I followed, my bare feet silent on the concrete, the collar warm against my throat.
The doorway opened onto stone steps that descended into darkness.
Ancient steps, I realized, far older than the warehouse above.
As we descended, lights flickered on—not electric but something else, a soft blue glow that seemed to emanate from the walls themselves.
The air grew thick with the scent of pine resin and something deeper, earthier.
My heart hammered against my ribs as we emerged into an underground chamber whose size made my eyes go wide—and then even wider as I saw what the space contained.
A longboat dominated the center of the subterranean space.
My breath caught. It was beautiful and terrible, its dragon-headed prow rising toward the vaulted ceiling, its sides decorated with shields and weapons that looked both ceremonial and deadly real.
Torches burned in iron brackets along the walls, their light dancing across the polished wood of the vessel.
“This is a replica,” Aksel said, moving toward the boat with reverent precision. “The original was burned with its owner a thousand years ago. But we’ve maintained the traditions, the rituals that bind us to our ancestors.”
He beckoned to me with one scarred finger, and I found myself moving toward him before I’d made any conscious decision to obey.
That strange detachment descended over me again, as if I were watching myself from somewhere outside my body.
My bare feet carried me across the cold stone floor while my mind scrambled to understand what force compelled me.
Was it the collar’s technology? The neural implant he’d mentioned?
Or was it something inside me, some shameful part that wanted this?
I shied away from that last thought, unable to face what the answer might mean.
The moment I came within reach, Aksel’s controlled precision changed in an instant. His hands seized me with sudden force, one arm sweeping beneath my knees while the other supported my back. I gasped as he lifted me effortlessly, my naked body pressed against the rough fabric of his shirt.
“The Sons of Odin believe in doing things the old-fashioned way,” he said, his voice carrying a note of dark satisfaction as he strode toward the longboat’s side.
“No, wait—” I struggled in his arms, pushing against his chest, my legs kicking uselessly in the air.
But even as I fought, I felt that treacherous heat building between my thighs, my body’s response to his strength, his control.
The contradiction made me struggle harder, desperate to deny what I was feeling.
Aksel stepped over the longboat’s side with an easy long-limbed movement, barely jostled by my resistance.
The ancient wood creaked beneath his weight as he carried me to one of the rowing benches.
He laid me down on the smooth wood, on my front, with a care that suggested not his regard for my feelings but his appreciation of my value to him.
Then his hands went to work, producing rope from somewhere I couldn’t see.
“Please,” I gasped, without any knowledge of what kind of plea to make. My wrists were already bound to the bench’s support beam, the rope soft but unyielding. He worked with an engineer’s efficiency, testing each knot with precise tugs.
“Your resistance requires correction,” he said, stepping back to survey his work. I pulled against the bonds, acutely aware of how the position left me exposed, vulnerable, my breasts thrust forward and my legs spread on either side of the bench.
From beneath another bench, he retrieved something that made my stomach clench with dread. The strap was thick leather, darker with age, its surface worn smooth by what I didn’t want to imagine. Nordic runes were burned into the handle.
“A Viking strap,” Aksel said, running his hand along its length. “Used for centuries to discipline wayward women. Three strokes for your resistance.”
Before I could protest, he moved behind me.
I heard the whistle of leather through air a split second before fire exploded across my already tender bottom.
The crack echoed through the chamber, followed immediately by my scream.
This was nothing like his hand—this was pure, focused agony that seemed to reach into my very bones.
The second stroke landed just below the first, and I sobbed openly, biting down on my lip so hard I tasted blood.
The third stroke caught the tender spot where my bottom met my thighs, and my vision went white with pain.
I sagged against the bonds, my entire body trembling, tears streaming down my face to splash on the ancient wood beneath me.
“There,” Aksel said, his voice carrying that same measured tone, as if he’d just completed a routine maintenance task. “Your correction is complete.”