by Eva Chase
I caught sight of Thor’s puzzled face in the fray, twisting with fury a second later. Mjolnir slammed through the crowd, sizzling with fiery light as it toppled every figure in its path.
A hoarse shout rang out somewhere in the depths of the cave. “Retreat! The word is to retreat! Leave him! We’ll make good on this another day.”
The horde surged away from us. A flutter of movement caught my eye. A black form swooped by along the ceiling of the cave. For the briefest moment, the raven’s eye met mine. Then Muninn was bolting away with the rest of the army.
I soared after them, but the moment I reached the cage, my wings faltered. Something in my chest shivered and then stilled at the sight of Odin’s hunched form.
His hand shot out to grip one of the bars. His head raised, just enough for the glint of his single eye to show beneath the wilted brim of his hand.
“Valkyrie,” he rasped, with a voice that seemed to burrow right through me.
“It’s him,” I gasped out, unable to tear my gaze from him. “It’s really Odin.” I knew that down to the smallest bone in my body.
“Father,” Thor said in a voice rough with horror. He bashed Mjolnir into the bars of the cage. They shook and cracked. With another heave, he’d battered the cage right open.
“Well,” Loki said, weary but relieved, as Freya ducked in to throw her arms around her husband, “I have to say I’ve had quite enough of all this. What do you say we really go home this time?”
26
Aria
I woke up feeling as if I’d been asleep for days. For the first few minutes, I couldn’t quite bring myself to even roll over. The plump mattress I was lying on, the soft blanket I was lying under, were just too damned comfortable. My muscles ached, but it was the dull ache of hard work now over with, not the sharp ache of fresh pains. I kind of liked the sensation.
My memories of the last short journey from Muspelheim were hazy. We’d helped Odin out of that cage, flown him up to the top of the cliff, and from there he’d managed to summon forth a shaky bridge up through the clouds that clotted the dark sky. As I’d realized we really were done, all the fighting was over, my eyelids had already been drooping. I had a vague recollection of an arm coming around my back to support some of my weight, eerily familiar stone halls coming into view around a marble-tiled courtyard… and after that I drew a blank.
So, where the hell was I? My heart lurched. I pushed back the blanket and sat up.
The bed was in a plain room, small but with a high ceiling. The stone-block walls told me it was probably one of the Asgardian halls. One of the real ones, that wouldn’t upend me without warning. What looked like morning sunlight spilled across the smooth stone floor from a narrow window. A padded chair stood in one corner, and a low teak dresser sat against the opposite wall. No sound carried from outside the room.
I breathed in deep, and my heightened valkyrie senses caught a faint whiff of a tangy smoky smell. Oh. I was pretty sure I knew whose guest room I’d ended up in.
Cautiously, I slipped out of the bed and padded into the hall. A glance down it resonated with my memories. Yep, this was Hod’s home.
I eased past a couple of doors to one that was only slightly ajar. Nudging it open, I found what had to be the master bedroom, twice as big as the one I’d left with a bed twice as large. Hod was sprawled on it, the blanket tangled around his waist, his lean chest and shoulders bare. In sleep, his face had softened. It was easier to see the resemblance to his twin now.
I hesitated, but the pang inside me pushed me onward. After everything I’d just been through, I didn’t want to sit alone in one of his barely familiar rooms waiting for him to wake up.
After everything we’d been through together, I didn’t think he’d mind the intrusion.
The door squeaked faintly as I ducked inside, but the dark god didn’t stir. I clambered onto the bed and curled up next to him, inhaling his salty smoky smell up close now.
The mattress shifted with my movement, and Hod woke up with a backwards jerk, his body tensing.
Shit. “Hey, it’s just me,” I said, my face flaring. This wasn’t the gentle morning welcome I’d been picturing.
Hod’s shoulders had already come down. “My spare bed wasn’t good enough for you, valkyrie?” he muttered, but he scooted closer at the same time, looping his arm around my waist to tug me to him, back to front. I smiled, nestling into his warmth. This was more like it.
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“Not used to having anyone else in my bed,” Hod said. He tucked his chin over my shoulder, his breath tickling over my hair.
“Is that something you’d like to change?” I murmured suggestively, and felt him smile.
He kissed the corner of my jaw, that tiny gesture sending a flare of heat through me. “I could get used to this, I think.”
“We could try it a few times, just to be sure.”
“Would you want to?”
I paused, reveling in how comfortable lying here with him was, how protected I felt tucked in against him. “Yeah. I think I would.”
“I suppose your other suitors might take issue with you playing favorites,” Hod said.
I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t make any promises about this being the only bed I’d ever share.”
“Huh. Next thing I know, you’ll be wanting to invite them all over.”
“That’s a brilliant idea!” I said brightly. “There’s room for more. Let me go get them right now.”
“Don’t you dare.”
“You going to stop me?”
I made as if to squirm off the bed, biting back a giggle. Hod gave a low growl and grabbed me. He rolled on top of me, his head dipping down as if to claim a kiss, which was exactly what I’d been angling for, but the second I felt his weight pressing down on me, my body went rigid.
He pulled back in an instant. “Ari?”
My pulse had hiccupped, but it was already falling back into its usual steady rhythm. I dragged in a breath. “I’m okay. Just… got a little overconfident. I guess it’d be a little much to hope every bad reaction disappeared in an instant.” I gave a little laugh. “Looks like we both still have crap to get over.”
“Hmm.” He sank back down beside me and stroked the back of his fingers down the side of my face. My throat tightened. I nudged myself closer to him again, turning toward him this time, and leaned my head against his chest.
“We’ve come a long way,” he said after a moment. “Haven’t we?”
“Yeah, I’d say we have.”
“Then we’ll just keep healing. Together.” He brushed his thumb over my cheek. “No tears this time. That’s a definite step in the right direction.”
“Keep talking like that and they’ll come,” I grumbled.
He chuckled and tipped my chin up. This time when he moved to kiss me, no impulse ran through me except the urge to kiss him back.
The heat of his mouth radiated all the way through my body. I let myself linger there, trading breaths and the caress of our lips, until a sharper heat started to pool low in my belly. I slid my hand down Hod’s chest—and the sense of a summons reverberated through my head as if someone had shouted my name.
I sat up, touching my forehead. The sensation came again, like an insistent tug. It echoed down through my chest to the place where I’d felt Odin’s presence before.
“I think Odin is calling for me,” I said. I wasn’t sure I liked this new feature of being a valkyrie—the Allfather having a direct line to my brain.
Hod pushed himself upright beside me with a sigh. “I’d better come too, then. He wasn’t in much of a state last night to discuss what he’d been through. Maybe now he can tell us more about who captured him and why.”
I enjoyed the view as he pulled on more clothes, grimacing when the call came again. “All right, all right,” I said to Odin, who probably couldn’t hear my answer anyway.
Hod led the way out into Asgard, his str
ides smooth and unguarded now that he could trust his home to stay as it was meant to. As we approached the huge hall at the far end of the city, the one with a higher tower rising from its rooftop, uneasiness coiled through my gut. I might not have really met the Allfather properly yet, but I’d seen an awful lot of Odin in the last day. And an awful lot of what I’d seen hadn’t sat quite right.
“It has to be true, right?” I said. “What Loki showed us. Odin told Loki to make trouble, to push back against the gods…”
Hod was silent for a moment. “My father has always kept his own counsel,” he said. “Or at least he did from his sons. But I know there was a lot he knew that gnawed at him—I’ve wondered how long he anticipated Ragnarok’s coming. Whatever he did, whatever he asked Loki to do, it’s because he thought it was best for all of us. I’m sure of that. Whether I agree with him that it was best…”
He couldn’t seem to finish that sentence. No wonder. I couldn’t imagine how much he was grappling with right now. It was his father he’d just had all these revelations about.
I found myself holding my breath as we pushed open the hall’s front door. “In here,” called the low dry voice that was somehow totally familiar even though I’d only heard it once in reality before this moment. After all, it was the same low dry voice that had commanded Loki to be his villain.
Odin sat in a tall, intricately carved chair in a room that felt like a miniature version of Valhalla. Spears and swords decorated the walls. The almost-throne was the only seat other than a few cushions in the corners. Baldur and Freya were poised at the Allfather’s sides, Freya clasping her husband’s hand and Baldur resting his fingers on his father’s forearm.
They must have spent much of the night tending to the king of the gods, because years of fatigue and hurt had shed from Odin’s posture, from his face. He sat straight, his broad shoulders squared, and his single eye twinkled with more energy than I’d have thought he could ever be capable of again after seeing him in that cage. The authority of his presence filled the room. A tremor that was more apprehension than anticipation tickled down my back.
Loki and Thor stood a short distance away. The thunder god shot me a smile, and the trickster gave me a nod and a wink. We were all assembled now before the Allfather.
“My son and my unexpected valkyrie,” Odin said in greeting. He leaned back in his chair. “I wanted you all here while we speak of the battle to come.”
My heart sank, my worries about the god in front of me momentarily pushed aside. “Didn’t we win that battle?” I said.
But even as the words came out, I was remembering the human bodies slumped in the dark elves’ caves, the missing persons signs, the voice calling for yesterday’s army to retreat, promising to fight to the end another day. The dark elves had been doing a lot more than keeping Odin captive. They’d kidnapped humans and killed them and who knew what else or why.
Of course it wasn’t over. There was so much evil we hadn’t even tackled yet.
Odin’s mouth twitched slightly upward. “We won something,” he said. “I am ever grateful for my freedom. I wish I could say it came with peace. But Surt has bigger plans than that.”
The name meant nothing to me, but the gods around me stiffened, even Loki. “What does that bastard have to do with this?” he said.
“He’s the one who ordered my capture,” Odin said. “With the help of my former raven of memory, it seems.” He rubbed his mouth.
“Um… Who is Surt?” I ventured.
“A giant who led an army into Asgard and set the city up in flames,” Freya said, her voice strained. “He killed my brother. He destroyed everything.”
“But the city and we returned,” Odin said, squeezing her hand. “And so did Surt. I shut him away in Muspelheim for his role in that uprising ages ago. It seems he’s been stewing in his resentment of me and the rest of Asgard ever since.”
“We stopped him,” Thor said. “We retrieved you. What is there left that he can do?”
“Oh, there’s plenty.” The Allfather exhaled like a sigh. “Surt has been building his new army for a long time. He’s allied with the dark elves and gathered the stragglers who’ve found their way into Muspelheim. But he knew that wasn’t enough for his ultimate goal. So he’s started summoning draugar to do his bidding too.”
Hod set his hand on my shoulder, gripping tight. “The dead risen back to life,” he said in a haunted tone.
Like that construct of Baldur rising up, lurching and rotten. A zombie. Draug, they’d called it. My stomach twisted.
The bodies I’d seen in the caves—the people they’d stolen—it all made a sudden sick kind of sense. They were building an army of the dead. Of human dead.
“And what does he mean to do with this horde of the undead?” Loki waved toward the doorway. “There’s not that much in Asgard to claim these days.”
“He’d be happy just to see our home torn from us,” Odin said. “But that’s not his only goal. It seems the balance of the nine realms has shifted. Many of them have become unstable. All except for Asgard, because of our power… and Midgard, at the center of it all. He plans to conquer the realm of humankind for his own purposes too.”
A spear of ice jabbed through me at those words. This powerful giant wanted to conquer Midgard. And, what, set my former home up in flames? Turn it into a wasteland like the realm he ruled over now?
Petey was down there, with no one who knew anything to protect him…
My hands clenched. Each of the gods around me had glanced at me as if thinking the same thing.
I couldn’t expect them to care about those lands half as much as I did, but I knew, with a faint whisper of hope under the balling of my gut, that they’d fight just as hard regardless. They’d stand by me, the four lovers who were connected to me in that strange balance of our own.
I stepped forward. “We have to stop him.”
Odin bowed his head. “Yes,” he said. “I agree. Which is why you’re all here. We need to make our mark in this war now.”
He really smiled then: a slow dark smile that curved his lips at a crooked angle. It sent a chill over my skin.
We’d come together. We’d saved Odin. But who was really more dangerous: the giant scheming in the realm of fire or the god we’d just rescued from him?
* * *
Ari and her divine companions have won this battle, but will they survive the war? Find out in Falling for Gods, the third book in the Their Dark Valkyrie series, coming this fall. To be notified when Falling for Gods is available, click here!
Want a glimpse inside the history of Muninn the raven woman? My prequel novella Raven’s Fall shows how the raven of memory came to leave Odin’s side—and it’s available exclusively in the Realms and Rebels paranormal and fantasy reverse harem box set coming this August! Learn more here.
More from the Their Dark Valkyrie world
Realms and Rebels (Featuring the Their Dark Valkyrie companion novella, Raven’s Fall)
Dragons. Shifters. Vampires. Fae. These kickass heroines come in all shapes and sizes…and so do the men at their sides. Dive into this decadent collection of paranormal and fantasy romances-reverse harem style. Yep, that's right. Our heroines are headstrong and rebellious, and they don't take no for an answer. Unlike most romances, they get to keep ALL the guys they want.
And so do you.
For a limited time, pre-order this epic reverse harem collection, and get 22 novellas for the price of one. Featured authors include C.M. Stunich, Amy Sumida, Joely Sue Burkhart, L.C. Hibbett, Jackie May, and Eva Chase.
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Dragon’s Guard excerpt
Did you know I have a reverse harem paranormal romance series full of shifters and steam and mystery? Here’s a sneak peek inside the first book, Dragon’s Guard.
The last dragon shifter meets her four hot alpha mates—and life is about to get dangerous.
DRAGON’S GUARD
1
Ren
; “Are you waiting for someone, honey?” the bartender asked.
It was a reasonable question, considering that I’d been perched on one of the leather-cushioned seats at the bar for ten minutes without ordering anything. If the place had been any busier, he’d probably have pushed me a lot sooner. But there was only one other patron down the counter from me, a grizzled dude who was glued to his beer and the burble of the football game, and a handful of people scattered around the wooden tables in the rest of the room.
I’d picked this bar for exactly that reason. If she came, it’d be somewhere low key, not too noisy or crowded. At least, that had felt like the right idea. It wasn’t as if she’d shown up anyway.
“Not exactly,” I said to the bartender, leaning my elbows on the counter. The smell of wood varnish and booze tickled my nose. “And if you’re going to call me anything, call me Ren.” Most of the times I’d heard “honey” in the last seven years, it’d been followed by a leer and a grope.
The bartender didn’t take offense, just grinned. “No problem, Ren. Can I get you anything, while you’re ‘not exactly’ waiting?”
I was feeling too restless to want a drink for pleasure, but maybe that was why I should have one. It’d take the edge off my nerves. “I’ll have a Bloody Mary.”
“That I can do.” His grin turned apologetic. “I do have to ask for ID. Take it as a compliment?”
I shrugged and pulled out my wallet. When I flashed the card at him, he chuckled. “Birthday girl, huh? It’s an honor to serve your first drink.” He raised an eyebrow. “Or at least your first legal drink.”