Finaan
Chapter ten
What About You?
“And what about you?” I ask, my mind still flipping through the hazy images my eyes could capture during the last few minutes.
It’s dark in here, but the jotnar carried something that sparked to life when they attacked us, casting a dim glow around them.
I saw the monster Wregen became, his torture of those males as he ate them—the last two very, very slowly.
“You’re the most dangerous creature here,” I remind him. “And you expect me to go with you willingly.”
Wregen’s smile is cold. The flare that had been in his eyes when he swore his foul oath to me blinks out with my words. “Have you learned nothing, my mate?” he murmurs, throwing his voice to belch in my ear. “You’re mine. Nobody touches what’s mine.” He pauses, smirking as he adds, “Except me.”
“I’ve seen what you are. Do you think I’ll ever let you touch me?” I can’t keep the rattle from my tone.
The fact that I’m mated to Wregen punches holes in my gut.
And it is a fact, I realize now. I want to deny it, but I can’t.
When the beast emerged, I knew. My soul recognized Wrath, even knew his name without being told.
He belongs to us, just as Wregen does. Being mated to the most depraved male I’ve ever encountered and the beast that lives within him would tear my sanity to shreds if I let my mind linger on it.
The sole surviving male groans, stopping whatever Wregen might have said.
I don’t need to hear it, though. His response is easy to predict—a claim that he’ll take my body and somehow force this bond, even if I refuse him.
Fuck that. I’m not some wraith, desperate for a dollop of his indulgence.
He doesn’t know shit about me if he thinks I’ll ever accept him.
Wregen stares at me for a few more seconds, the spark returning to his dark gaze, before he shakes his head and turns to his next victim. I’m not bothered by what he’s about to do. The male needs to die. But I won’t be part of it.
Standing, I give Wregen my back and start to stride in the direction we came from. I feel dirty. I need to clean myself, and there’ll be no better time than while Wregen wallows in another kill.
“You don’t want to watch what I do to him?” he asks, his tone as playful as I’ve ever heard it. “Join me, perhaps?”
He’s excited about this, the psychopath.
I can think of nothing I want to see less than that disgusting bastard jerking off over the male he’s about to maim.
Everyone in Helheim knows about his impulses, but I don’t need the reminder that the fates decided I was the perfect female for someone as sick and depraved as him.
Whatever my ancestors did must have seriously angered the gods. Nothing else could explain our family’s hamingja—the guardian who decides an elf’s luck and happiness—fucking me so thoroughly.
“I have to wash this stench off of me,” I mutter as I trudge away. It’s dark and I can’t see shit, but I don’t care. Nothing else will threaten me in these caves after that display.
“Is he sated?” Svend’s words drift toward me, barely reaching my ears, even in the silence of these caverns.
I turn my head to glance toward his voice but it doesn’t help.
“Follow me,” I whisper, pity for this hapless fool softening my heart toward him for a moment.
He’s the reason we’re here, and I should still be angry.
But I’m numb. Even the rage I’ve felt since I realized what he did has faded away, lost to the apathy that’s rolling through me like a river.
Looking straight ahead again, hoping the light starts seeping into this tunnel soon, I plod forward.
Within a few minutes, I can see enough to quicken my steps.
We reach the open cavern where we emerged from the water not long after.
I’ll ask Svend about Wregen soon—try to understand why he submits to the torture—but not now.
I need to clean this body, even if it feels like my soul is perpetually stained.
“I’m going to bathe,” I mutter. “You’ll want to look someplace else, or maybe hide far enough in the cave to be safe. You know better than I do what Wregen will do if he suspects you’ve seen me naked.”
Svend whimpers and I hear him spin and scamper away.
Tugging off my clothes, I drop them to the rock beneath me as I walk and then plod into the water.
I don’t stop until I’m fully submerged. For a moment, I consider staying there, every part of me within the water’s embrace, until I float away.
Probably back to Helheim—as a wraith this time—but you never know. Maybe Freyja would take pity on me.
I’m too stubborn to die, though.
Pushing up from the bottom, I breach the surface and breathe.
It’s cleansing in a way the water couldn’t be.
Sucking in the crisp air in the cavern, I pull up some of the emotions I’d shoved away as Wregen’s beast ate those males.
And I let myself experience each one, desperate to come to terms with all of them.
Fear, because unholy Helheim, that was terrifying.
The rational side of me knows Wrath won’t hurt me.
That its rage and destruction flowed from a need to protect what it views as a possession.
When its gaze landed on me, I recognized more compassion that I ever saw in Wregen’s cruel face.
Focusing on that, I let the knowledge become a feeling.
Wrath protected me, erupting from Wregen because I was in danger.
Even when it threw its fire toward the male holding me, I realized it was holding back.
I was safer in its presence than I was with Wregen in the caves.
Not “it.” “He.” Wrath is a male and as devoted to me as Wregen.
Maybe I’m crazy, but I’m a little less afraid now.
Horror. That one will be hard to work through. Because I’m mated to two monsters.
The water splashes behind me and I spin to see Wregen, naked and covered in blood, stalking toward me.
Throwing my hands over my bare chest, I drop deeper into the waves he’s creating. “What the fuck are you doing here?” I hiss.
He doesn’t stop. Doesn’t even slow. Instead, his cool gaze grows hot as it leaves my face, slowly traveling down my naked body. And this fucking water, that helped me feel clean and hopeful a moment ago, closes in like a shroud, reminding me that I’ve been buried alive with my personal demon.
“What. The. Fuck. Are you doing here?” I demand, drawing his hungry leer back up to my face.
“I found myself bored with the male,” he tells me with a shrug, “knowing that your naked body awaited me here.”
“I’m not waiting for you, you bastard,” I snap. “Go away. Let me bathe in peace.”
He closes the distance between us before I can move out of the way, grasping my wrists and lifting them over my head with one hand as the other clasps the front of my throat, squeezing nearly hard enough to stop my breath.
A spear of pure need shoots from my neck down my body, setting me on fire everywhere it goes. My pussy erupts, demanding attention, because as horrific as this male is, he’s my mate. And the bond wants us to fuck.
Still, I can’t let that unholy connection take me someplace I refuse to go.
I twist, trying to break Wregen’s grip, but his hands are steel clamps, unmoving.
He watches me, eyes sparkling with some emotion that feels like mirth, as I struggle to get away from him.
After a minute or more, a corner of his lips lifts—like he finds my fight amusing—drawing a snarl from me.
He squeezes harder, catching my growl in my throat as he stops my breath.
So I give up. For now.
“You haven’t admitted it yet, even to yourself,” he murmurs when I stop fighting, “but you’re always waiting for me.
My body calls to you, as yours does to me.
You’ll never feel complete, except when I’m by your side.
” I bite my lower lip, some broken part of me desperate for his kiss, and his gaze drops to my mouth as his smile broadens.
“And you’ll crave my touch every single day of your life. ”
With Wregen’s cocky claim still echoing in my thoughts, he releases my neck and plunges that hand down, running his fingers along the pussy that would be dripping wet with my desire if we weren’t surrounded by water.
I snap my teeth shut as I try again to squirm away from him, but I can’t stop the whimper that fills the air between us, louder than any words.
“You want this as much as me, mate,” he mutters as one finger plunges inside me, quickly joined by another.
The smile that consumes his face is somehow cold and hot at the same time.
He’s an emotionless prick, but feeling me for the first time turns the spark in his eyes into an inferno.
It’s almost as fierce as the one blazing inside me.
I want to fight him off. I need to fight him off.
But I can’t.
It only takes a few seconds of his fingers pumping in and out of me for my body to respond, demanding more.
The moan that spills out of me is guttural, full of pain and rage and horror and disgust. Mostly, though, it’s full of lust. It drowns out the other emotions, trapping me in the hunger for him I’ve been trying to ignore—to suffocate—since I first saw him in Helheim.
“Come for me, my ferocious skjaldmaer,” Wregen murmurs into my ear, dragging another whimper from me. “Let me feel your pussy clench around me, claim the hand that belongs to you.”
When he curls his fingers and hits me in just the right spot—like he’s been fucking me for years and knows exactly what to do—I come undone.
The orgasm erupts, twisting my body as he continues to pump, roughly now.
It feels like he’s angry I came, or maybe it’s that I came so quickly.
I’m shivering with a release I needed more than I’ll ever admit even as I squirm away, the pace of his frantic fingers splashing over me like a bucket of snow.