by Ruby Dixon
Bound to the Battle God
A Fantasy Romance
Ruby Dixon
Copyright © 2019 by Ruby Dixon
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover Art - Kati Wilde
Edits - Aquila Editing
Created with Vellum
I like to think that every creator stands on the backs of those that inspired her. This particular project was inspired by a few people that deserve mentioning.
For Kristen Ashley, who reminded me that I’m not the only one out there that still loves portal fantasy.
For Mariana Zapata, who reminded me that a slow burn can be utterly delicious.
For R. Lee Smith, who reminded me that a plot can be utterly wild, and if it’s told with conviction, it can be amazing.
For Kati Wilde, who is confidante, cheerleader, girl-crush and quite possibly the world’s nicest and most gifted person. You’re amazing. Have I said that today?
For my husband, Mr. Ruby, who supports me, eats leftovers so I can write, made me this incredible map and encouraged me to swing for the fences again. <3
Contents
BOUND TO THE BATTLE GOD
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Epilogue
Author’s Note
The Pantheon of Aos
More books, you say?
Want More?
BOUND TO THE BATTLE GOD
When I went to my neighbor's apartment to investigate strange sounds, I never expected to fall through a portal into another world. Yet here I am, a stranger in an even stranger land...and I'm stranded. In this world, might makes right, men carry swords, and gods walk the earth. Within minutes of arriving, I’m enslaved.
Fun place.
How do I get home? GREAT question. Wish I had an answer.
The one person that might be able to help me is also the one person I want to throttle most. Aron, Lord of Storms, Butcher God of Battle, is my new companion. Or rather, I'm his. As Aron's anchor to the mortal realm, I'm the one that's supposed to be guiding him through his exile in the mortal world.
Ha. Joke's on him. I know nothing about this place.
But Aron and I have a common goal - get home. And we're bonded - anchor and god - with a bond unlike any other. So we travel together. We bicker. We bathe together. We fight our many, many enemies together. And sure, he’s a god, but he’s also an arrogant jerk. Brawny, smoking hot, irresistible jerk. I should want nothing to do with him. I certainly shouldn’t want to do things to him.
Mortals and gods don’t mix. We stick to the plan and ignore our attraction. Focused, with one goal in mind.
One task. One goal.
Focused.
I—oh heck, I’m going to end up kissing him again, aren’t I?
1
I’m just sitting down with a pint of Häagen-Dazs to watch some reality TV when I hear a voice through the wall.
I frown, spoon halfway to my mouth, and turn off the television.
It’s late. It’s a week night. I have to be up early but I can’t sleep, so I’m stuffing my face with ice cream. And for the neighbor in the next apartment to be shouting? That’s just rude. I scowl at the wall for a moment longer, and when all is quiet, reach for the remote again
A man laughs. Loud and strong, on the other side of the wall.
I take a bite of ice cream, listening like the nosy neighbor I am. The man keeps talking, his voice rich and smooth…and impossible to make out. He’s loud, but I can’t understand what he’s saying. The walls muffle it. Or rather, it’s like those Charlie Brown cartoons, where people talk but none of it makes sense.
I can’t hear any other voices either, just his.
After a few moments of this, the man’s sexy voice turns angry. Harsh. He’s no longer laughing. He’s arguing with someone—a silent someone.
Loudly.
I cringe when I hear a thump against the wall, like a fist is hitting it, and swallow my butter pecan quickly. I pull out my cell phone and record a few moments of the shouting, then decide to call the super.
Three rings later, the super picks up. “What?” His voice is impatient.
“Hi,” I say cheerily. “It’s Faith Gordon in 5B? Whoever you rented 6B out to is causing a disturbance. He keeps shouting at the top of his lungs and I’m pretty sure he just hit the wall.”
The super groans. “Lady—”
I hate it when men call me “lady.” It’s never a good “lady,” it’s always a bad “lady.”
“—there’s no one in that apartment.”
I stare at the wall next to my couch, where I distinctly heard a man yelling. “Yes there is.”
“No. It’s been empty since January. I have to fix it up before I can rent it again and that’s lower on the list.”
I knew my neighbor had moved out a few months ago but… “No one else has moved in?”
“No.”
“Okay, thanks,” I say, and hang up. I’m confused. I put my ear to the wall to listen again, but whatever—whoever—it was has stopped.
It's dreadfully quiet for a long moment, and then I hear the voice again. The angry man with the beautiful voice. He sounds frustrated. Cold. Ominous.
Frightening.
Creeped out, I get off the couch and peer through the peep hole into the hall. It’s silent and
empty. I take a deep breath, open my door, and approach the door down the hall from mine. 6B.
All is quiet.
I think for a moment, then race back into my apartment and grab my keys. I head down to my car on the street despite the fact that I’m in pajamas, and lean against it, staring up at the windows of the building. There’s my apartment, with the lights on and the half-dead fern on the stoop that I really need to water. To the right of it should be 6B.
The windows are black, the blinds down.
I head back to my apartment, confused. The moment I shut the door again, the voice starts up once more. Angry. Irritated. Superior. Argumentative.
A squatter, maybe? But who’s he arguing with in the dark? I get up and head into the hall again, to the door. I knock.
It’s silent.
I put my ear to the door.
Silence.
I carefully test the door knob. Locked.
Frowning, I go back inside my apartment and look at the window. We’re four floors up, and the only window in the apartment is facing outside. There’s not enough of a ledge out there for a bird, much less for someone to break in.
Even as I consider this, the voice on the other side of the wall starts again.
I grit my teeth, sit down on the sofa and pull my laptop onto my legs, firing up my browser. I google, "Symptoms of schizophrenia."
And then google, "I hear conversations no one else does."
And then google, "Am I being haunted?"
And finally search, "Sleep disorders causing waking dreams."
But none of it seems to match what I'm experiencing. I don't know what to do.
It’s late, Faith, I remind myself. Maybe he got pissed and shut the lights off and went to bed, and you’re imagining things.
I slap my laptop shut.
The voice wakes me up twice that night.
Both times, it's angry. Furious. Raging at something I can't hear or understand. The second time, just before dawn, it turns into a shout so loud and heartbroken that I clamp my pillow over my face and ears to muffle the sound of it.
It dies away and leaves a silence so profound it feels heavy.
What the hell is going on? I stare up at the ceiling and wonder what made my invisible “friend” so sad.
"It can't be that bad, buddy," I whisper to my empty room. "At least you're not hearing voices."
There's no response to my lame joke.
"Faith, I'm worried about you," Sherry tells me over lunch the next day. She clutches her egg salad sandwich tightly in her hands and gives me a dramatic look. "This isn't normal."
"I promise, I'm fine." I offer her a bright smile and wish she’d be quiet. She’s a good friend, but god, she loves the drama.
Sherry shakes her head solemnly, and it’s clear she doesn't buy it. "If everything's fine, why are you so distracted today?"
"Distracted? Me?” How does she know? I thought I'd been hiding it pretty well. I'm wearing my dressiest suit, I gave a customer service presentation a half hour ago that went over decently, and I'm having a good hair day. I thought I looked rather together. "How so?"
"Well for one, you're wearing black shoes with a navy suit."
Erk. Well, they already think I’m strange here at the office. No big deal. “That's not so weird—"
"And you're eating peanut butter and baloney on that sandwich." Her nostrils flare with horror.
I glance down at the sandwich I'm eating. Well, more like I'm “holding” it instead of eating. I haven’t been hungry lately, and I seem to be going through the motions for most of the day. I just can’t focus on anything but those odd voices.
Sherry’s not wrong, though. A quick look at my sandwich shows me one half is peanut butter, and one half is baloney. Ick. I guess I got sidetracked when making my lunch this morning. Maybe the birds outside will eat it. I set it on my paper lunch sack and shrug. “I read online that it was a good combination.”
“That’s called ‘trolling,’ honey.”
“Good one, huh? You want to try it?” I hold my sandwich out.
“Absolutely not.” She doesn’t share my amusement.
“Your loss,” I tell her brightly and decide to show her that I know what I’m doing. I pick up my sandwich and take a huge bite out of it…and it’s every bit as gross as I thought it would be. Oh god. It takes every muscle in my body to make my throat swallow the mess. I gulp my water to wash the taste out of my mouth.
Sherry gives me a stern look. ”Are you sure you’re okay? I worry about you.”
“I’m fine. I promise. I just…heard something last night and it kept me up.”
“Heard something? Like what?”
I get out my phone and pull up the video. “Listen to this. The apartment next to mine? It’s empty, according to the super. But I heard this last night.”
I hit “play” and…there’s not a single sound. Other than the rustling of my clothing, it’s all quiet.
She frowns at me again.
“I must have messed up the video,” I say quickly, stopping it and picking up my sandwich again so she doesn’t see how freaked out I am. I know I heard something. I know I did. “Maybe…maybe it was the guy in 4B. He does have a new dog.”
She makes a noise of sympathy in her throat, as if that solves everything. “Talk to him—”
“And my coffee maker's broken,” I add, because I need the lie to be convincing. Why not make it a dog pile of things? “And I was worried about the client retention report I was going to present today, which, spoiler, it turned out great.”
Sherry doesn’t care about my report. She’s not here to climb the corporate ladder. She’s here to socialize and bring home a paycheck for as little effort as possible. But I’ve spoken her language because she’s wearing a look of horror on her face. "No coffee? I'd die!"
"Right?" At least now we're in safe territory. I’ve thwarted her concerns for the day by lamenting about caffeine. She gets up and turns on the break room coffee pot, determined to help me with my beverage troubles, and as she does, she launches into a story about her son Julian and how he broke her Keurig by shoving wooden blocks into the K-Cup tray. I smile and laugh at the appropriate pauses, but my mind is wandering back to that voice.
A voice that only I can hear. Why me?
For two days, there's nothing. Not a peep, not a sound, not a sigh. Everything is completely silent, like it should be.
It weirds me out.
I pass by the apartment several times and knock, intending to be the busybody neighbor who introduces herself, but no one ever answers. I hang out on the street after dark with binoculars, waiting to see if a light goes on.
All is normal…which I’m pretty sure is bullshit.
I heard that guy. I heard him clear as day. So if someone’s not living there, does that mean there are squatters in the building? Is it unsafe?
By the time Friday rolls around, I’m a sleep-deprived mess. Between meetings, I rub my eyes at work and yawn, trying to stay focused.
"Still can't sleep?" Sherry leans over my cube and gives me a perky look that should be outlawed. “Or still haven’t gotten a replacement for that coffee pot?”
"Just a bit of insomnia," I tell her. "Nothing big. And my coffee pot’s being shipped. Should get here tomorrow.” Man, I am getting so good at lying.
She waves a hand as if my troubles are too irritating for her to focus on. “Well, caffeinate up and go to lunch with me today. I have to run to the post office and then we can grab tacos."
Even though I don't feel like moving—much less walking anywhere—I have to admit it'd be nice to get out of the office for an hour. Plus, tacos. Beats what I ate last night, which was oh, nothing. I’ve been too distracted to go to the grocery store. “Tacos it is."
As we head out for lunch, Sherry tries to keep the conversation going for both of us to make up for my quiet. She talks in line at the post office, tells me all about her kid while we grab tacos from a street vendor and I chug an e
nergy drink. Sherry continues to yak about the horrors of finding a babysitter as we head back. We stop at a red light and wait to cross the street, tacos steaming up the paper bag I’m holding. I try to pay attention as Sherry goes on and on about her kid, I really do, but I'm so busy straining to hear the nonexistent voice in my head that I almost miss what I'm staring directly at.
There's a neon red palm blinking in the window across the street, with an eye in the center. TAROT. PSYCHIC READINGS.
Oh my god.
Of course.
This makes a ridiculous amount of sense. No one can give me a real answer, so maybe a supernatural answer is what I’m looking for.
I grab Sherry's arm. "How much time do we have before we need to be back?"