Chapter 25
Drak
Why the fuck were the Exile’s arms around my wife?
I buried my fingernails into my palms and resisted every urge to plant my fist across his face. If Lux didn’t want Kayn touching her, she could easily whip out her pendant or use the stake against him.
“I’m here now,” he said with a glance at me. Baring my fangs, I narrowed my eyes at him. Was he suggesting that he was here to save her from me? Little did he know, she’d just been on her hands and knees, crawling to me, and that I’d had her long before he did. Centuries before.
Except, according to Kayn, he’d been a vampire for that long.
I’d never given it much thought before, but he was the first—Myrah’s undead vessel, created by her experimental power, as recorded in the sagas. Unless he’d also left Valhalla, or Folkvangr, or wherever he’d spent the afterlife, he’d always been here.
The sagas never mentioned Kayn being destroyed, and of course, he couldn’t be, unless someone fashioned a stake from Yggdrasil and drove it through his heart. My mother hadn’t been a successful huntress, and as far as we know from history, nobody else had either.
That meant Kayn had always been here. While I’d just learned of our past lives, he always knew. He knew exactly who I was—who Lux was.
Who he was.
I gritted my teeth, letting my fangs protrude and bite into my bottom lip. Even knowing Lux was Myrah, he was willing to sacrifice her to his cause to please the gods.
Maybe I should have paid more attention to Kayn, but from what I knew of him from The Blood Council, he was an abomination of a vampire, one who foolishly worshiped the gods who despised us.
I gave him little consideration, except where Lux was concerned.
I wanted to believe he was nothing but a drop in her ocean, but his presence here was about as tumultuous as Drukna Sea.
Lux’s braids tumbled over his arms as she craned her neck. He wasn’t letting go.
“You’re really free this time?” she asked, her breath still quickened from the effort of taking my cock down her throat.
When Kayn’s dark eyes dropped to her, he conjured a weak smile. “I’m really free.” He brushed a palm over her hair and it took everything within me not to break his fucking fingers.
I ripped my gaze away from them, twisting my neck to stare at Freya’s feet. Just beyond her stood the ruins of the temple where I’d vowed to follow Lux into every life.
Unfortunately, Kayn was part of her life now, and no matter how much I hated it, she had chosen him before. Although it was from the influence of the gods and Kayn’s lies that led her there, but I couldn’t deny that it was my actions that pushed her into his arms too.
I had to play the Blood Council’s game. I’d wanted so badly—too desperately—to convince her to give up her powers and bind herself to me. That desperation made me impulsive and stupid, and I never should have threatened her.
Knots tangled in my chest, heavy and thick around my heart and throat. All at once, I remembered the truth of Kayn’s past, about who he was…my choices in this life had inadvertently led Lux to my best friend.
“Fuck,” I whispered.
The smash of the phantom axe shattered the bones in my chest again. Even though these memories came quick and easy now, the pain still occasionally accompanied them. At least whenever the memory of that last battle resurfaced.
Agony parched my throat, and I saw Kayn as he had been hundreds of years ago. Kayn, covered in blood, barely alive, lay only a few feet away from where I had died. Back then, his hair was long and clotted with fabric woven through the thick tail of blond.
Even close to death, his dark eyes maintained their stare on Lux—Myrah. He watched her crawl to me. He winced when she dragged me into her lap and looked away when her tears splashed over the crusted blood on my cheekbones.
Just as I’d looked away when he embraced her centuries later.
Clarity revealed everything about the last moments of his life before Myrah used the touch of a Valkyrie on him and turned him from near-dead to undead. I didn’t have to be alive to know he’d been a willing participant.
Kayn had always loved her. He’d coveted my wife long before we exchanged official vows. Nearly brothers, we’d grown up together.
Flickers of Rune’s childhood lifted the pain of the axe as the memories shifted. I was no longer at the Battle of Sundered Sky, but in this part of Vylheim where I’d lived as a young boy, as Rune.
A frail blond boy, Kayn, sat in a hay cart at the base of Freya’s stone statue, watching the others play at war.
My father stood behind the boy and his wagon, shouting at me that he would return from fishing soon.
A cleft split his top lip, and he was identical to Erik. Erik. My father in this life…
Somehow, my father in my past life was the same man as my father in this life.
Heavy sorrow buried deep between my ribs. I had the strange sense that this was the last time I saw Erik as a young boy. As Rune.
And as Drak, I’d suffered the same fate, only knowing my father for a short time before death took him from me. He was a good man. In both lives, I suspected, he was a good man.
Before I could make sense of this, he turned away, and my attention fell to the other children around me.
The others and I, two boys and three girls, swung sticks at one another in mock battle.
Snowflakes drifted around us in a soft dance, nothing like the brutal storms that plague Vylheim now.
Nearby, two men marched past, discussing the construction of ships.
A woman tugged several sheep along with a rope.
In step beside her, their thick wool seemed to rock side to side like the ships the men spoke of on an unruly sea.
The frail boy shouted at us to pull him closer so that he could watch our fight.
I jumped as another boy, taller and thicker than me and with a knot of hair at the back of his head, swung his stick at my face.
Barely dodging it, I sucked in a breath before I laughed at him.
He’d come so close to landing his blow, but he’d missed.
That only twisted his mouth. He came at me with all his force, barreling toward me like a wild and angry horse.
He was easily three or four years older than me, and with age came size.
Ducking, I spun around, but before I could swing at him, a rock struck his shoulder.
He turned toward a boy and two girls who were giggling furiously.
Another whine came from Kayn, claiming he could not see the fight from where his wagon was by the blacksmith’s building.
Rune! Rune! His cries echoed in the surrounding air.
Winded, I blew out a puff of white air among the crystalline flakes and turned to him.
My shoes crunched on the freshly fallen snow as I ran to him.
I grabbed the handle of the wagon he sat in and pulled as hard as I could.
It rolled over ruts in the uneven ground; the wood grinding and the wheels squeaking as I brought him closer to where we played.
“Here,” I said as I thrust a stick at him. Turning it over, he stared at the branch as if it were gold. “Come on, Kayn.” I whacked my stick against his weapon. “Fight me.”
His wide, dark eyes fell to his leg. Strips of cloth fastened the splint to his thigh and knee, and ankle so that he could not bend his leg. Until the broken bones healed, he was bound to the wagon, but that did not mean he couldn’t fight.
I slammed against his stick again. “So the ice made you fall. Do you think a warrior would let that stop him?” His bottom lip thrust out for a moment as he pondered this, but I would not let him pout or give up.
Clashing my weapon against his, I ripped his attention to me.
“Your arms still work, don’t they?” When he finally scrunched his nose and growled like a wild animal, I smirked.
The older boy marched up to the wagon and kicked the wheel. “I doubt it,” he said.
I hissed at him as if I, too, were one of the beasts we hunted in the woods. “Do you have eyes?” I waved the stick in his face.
Where his thick brow protruded over his eyes, a wrinkle formed, deeper and deeper as his brow furrowed. Like the hogs penned up on our farm, he grunted. His scowl worsened, if that were even possible, and a shadow cast over his deep-set, beetle’s eyes.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he spat.
I stepped up to him. “It means you should be able to see that his arms work perfectly fine.”
“Doesn’t mean he’s a warrior.”
“Then what does?” I challenged.
His only response was to bend at the waist and grip the edges of the wagon. Before I realized what was happening, he flipped the wagon, and Kayn tumbled out. A pained groan came from Kayn, and the older boy released a chuckle laced with venom.
Rage bloomed hot in the center of my chest. I threw the stick aside and lunged at the bully, gripping the back of his tunic as fury surged through me and sharpened my strength.
In that moment, I understood the tales of warriors who lost all fear in the heat of battle.
Berserkers fought wildly and without abandon, as this loss of senses gave them inhuman strength.
I channeled the energy of every story I’d heard my mother and the other men and women tell of berserkers, throwing myself at this bastard.
I yanked him toward me with one hand while planting my fist into the side of his face. The meaty thwack left an angry red mark in the shape of my fist by his hairy ear.
The impact only fueled his rage. When I ducked away from his swing, I grabbed the stick and jabbed the end into his gut.
It wasn’t until Kayn’s cries pulled me from the fight that I allowed the bully to land a hit.
Once he did, I knew he’d leave. All he wanted was to appear victorious and walk away with his twisted sense of dignity.
So I let him smash his fist into my stomach, knocking the air from me, before I scrambled for Kayn.