by Nora Ash
Two more hands clasped onto me, and Saga’s magic joined mine while Bjarni offered his fortitude.
There was little damage to Grim’s body, but I still filled him with our essence, willing our combined magic to give him strength.
After a few long moments, Grim wrapped his chilly fingers around my wrist with little more strength than a newborn kitten. “Stop, Annabel. That’s… That’s enough.”
My vision swam when I opened my eyes again, but Grim looked… not well, but better.
“He needs time,” Trud said. “Time and care. But he will heal.”
“He will have all the time and care in the world,” Magni rumbled. He kissed my shoulder and clapped a hand on Grim’s thigh. “Thank you, brother.”
“Thank you,” Saga echoed. Then Bjarni. Then Modi. Then me.
“We did it,” I said softly. The relief of Grim’s survival numbed any joy that should have filled those words. “We killed Odin. We stopped Ragnarök.”
“Of course you did,” Grim whispered. When I clutched his hand, he tightened his fingers around mine ever so slightly. “You are Annabel Turner. Nothing will stop you.”
I choked out a sob and lifted his knuckles to my lips. Four pairs of arms closed around us both, encapsulating us in warmth and light.
We made it. We’d survived.
“There you are!” a loud, male voice boomed from somewhere outside my safe cocoon. “You are the heroes of Asgard! You can’t just run off after such a glorious battle!”
“They are the heroes of all nine realms, Dad,” Trud said. When I peeked out from my shelter of bulky arms and shoulders, I saw the thunder god standing a few yards from Grim’s sprawled body, Mimir’s head tugged under one arm. Behind him, more filed in. I caught a glimpse of Loki before he was lost in a sea of Valkyrie wings.
“Heroes of the nine realms they are, indeed,” a tall, darkhaired woman said. She stepped forward past Thor and looked down at us with an inscrutable expression. “You saved us all. Where we failed, you succeeded. I thought no one would have the strength to kill my husband. I am glad I was wrong.”
Husband?
“Thank you, Frigg,” Modi said, and despite the absolute formality in his voice, I felt a flicker of wariness in our bond.
Frigg. Odin’s wife. I recalled Mimir’s stories about the now-dead god-king. He had occasionally mentioned his wife.
“And you, Frigg? Did you know of Odin’s deceit?” A stern-looking man missing one arm took up stance by Thor’s side.
She turned to them. “We have not shared chambers for centuries, let alone secrets. I fought the Jotunn hordes by your side, Tyr.”
“The god-king acted alone.” Mimir’s voice broke through the throng, pulling everyone’s attention from the queen.
“Odin included no one in his plans—at least no one he didn’t curse to silence. Please, my old friends; we do not have time to bicker. We find ourselves without a king, our walls broken, and Midgard suffering from the ravaging of Ragnarök’s harbingers. The Goddess of Love is dead.
“What we need is to come together and rebuild. We cannot abandon the humans now that their belief in the old ways has been forced alive. We cannot allow Freya’s death to tear every realm apart with war and strife.”
“Freya is dead?” someone gasped from the crowd. Murmurs of sorrow rose and broke like waves through the gathering. “What will we do without her?”
“The loss of Freya cuts deeply, but we have another Goddess of Love.” Trud stood, the gentle billowing of her powers masking her stumble as she found her feet. She looked down at me and gave me a soft smile. “This woman stopped Ragnarök in its tracks—and killed the god-king himself—all through the power of her love for five sons of Asgard. Look at her—sense her power for yourselves. She is one of us.”
“A mortal?” Frigg asked, brow furrowing as she stared at me. I was too exhausted to flinch under her unnerving gaze. “You wish to make a mortal a goddess of Asgard?”
“Mortal-ish,” Mimir said. “Thor’s daughter is right. The essence of Freya lives within this child of Midgard. She may have been born among humans, but she is a mortal no more.”
Frigg stepped toward me, and with a graceful swoop, bent to hold out her hand.
“May I?” she asked.
Reluctantly, I released Grim’s hand to take hers.
Power washed through me. It wasn’t rough or dominating, but it wasn’t gentle. It filled me up and searched out every part of my inner self. Then, just as swiftly, it eased back out of me.
“Truly a wonder,” Frigg murmured. Her eyes crinkled at the corners as she rose again and turned to crowd. “They speak true. The Savior of Asgard carries a kernel of Freya herself. With her aid, we will get through this.”
“About that…” I grimaced as I straightened between my mates. “There is a small matter that needs to be dealt with before I can help you.”
“Oh?” Frigg turned back around to me.
“Speak, child,” the one-armed man said. “We are in your debt. Whatever you need, we will provide.”
I really hoped he was right.
“To escape Hel, I had to make a bargain with the Queen of Death,” I said, steeling myself against the murmurs that erupted anew. “If I do not find a way of letting her walk freely among the realms, she will claim my soul. And without my soul… Freya’s kernel will die too.”
“What? Let Hel go free?” Thor blustered. “Do you know how dangerous she is?”
“Is she more dangerous than a world without a Goddess of Love?” Trud asked.
“We stopped Ragnarök, Father,” Magni reminded him. “We did what no other god could. If you do not let Hel go free, we will all die with our mate. Is that the legacy you wish for your bloodline?”
Thor huffed and clenched his hands by his sides. “Of course not! But… this is Hel we’re talking about.”
“It would appear we have little choice,” Frigg said. She cast me a long look, then nodded once. “We will fulfill your bargain, little one. On the condition that you serve in Freya’s place.”
“I—I will.” It came out as a stutter, because as I looked around the shattered hall of Valhalla, at the gods of myth who all as one nodded their acceptance of me and the five men who had given everything to get me through this, it finally sank in.
“I told you I would make you a goddess,” Grim rasped.
“Holy fuck, I’ll be… a goddess?” I whispered, low enough that only my mates heard me.
“You always were,” Bjarni murmured. He skimmed a hand through my hair, and I leaned against him. “Our golden goddess, born from steel and blood and love.”
Low in my abdomen, where she was curled safely around my yet-unborn daughter, Freya’s soul hummed in agreement.
Epilogue
Grim
“Who’s the cutest little princess? It’s you! Yes, it’s you!”
I rolled my eyes at Bjarni peppering our daughter’s face with kisses in between cooing nonsense praise she was still much too young to understand.
But Astrid gurgled happily in response, her tiny fingers clinging to my brother’s blond beard as if he were the most delightful thing she had ever experienced in her short life.
Annabel had assured me that three months was far too young for her to have picked a favorite.
“If you want time with the baby, you’re gonna have to be forceful about it,” Magni said. He was sprawled on the other end of the large sofa, watching Bjarni babytalk at Astrid with measured patience. “He’s been hogging her for two hours straight.”
“Papa Magni is just cranky because he was on night duty,” Bjarni cooed without shifting his focus off our daughter. “Yes, he is. And someone had a blowout, didn’t they? Yes, they did! Who’s my big girl?”
“For Frigg’s sake, you are melting her tiny brain cells,” I growled, stepping forward to rescue my child.
Bjarni reluctantly let me scoop her out of his arms, but Astrid clung to his beard with more strength than a baby
had any right to. He winced and reached up to gently untangle her fingers from the strands.
“She’s gonna be a warrior, this one,” he said, giving her a loving smile when she squawked at being separated from definitely-not-her-favorite-parent and flailed to reach for him.
“Just like her mother,” Magni agreed with a grin. “She’s about as demanding as well.”
“Don’t let Annabel hear you say that,” Bjarni chuckled. “She’s been prickly all day—threatened Magga that she’d re-murder her. I had to send her out to help Saga and Modi with the fences to blow off some steam.”
“What did Saga and Modi do to warrant such harsh punishment?” I quipped, though most of my focus was on Astrid. She finally stopped reaching for Bjarni and turned her attention to me. As always, her usually so easy smile faded as she looked up at me, her light-blue eyes getting a serious look that she should have been much too young to produce.
Annabel, afraid I would be hurt by my daughter’s lack of easy giggles around me, had told me babies didn’t truly laugh until they were older, and that she was probably just mesmerized by my “gorgeous eyes.” I appreciated the sentiment, but I was reasonably certain that she was wrong on this one. I felt the touch of Astrid’s consciousness when she looked at me like this—with intense concentration, as if she were trying to puzzle out how on Earth she could have been born to me.
I didn’t take offense. I was also a little stunned that I had sired a tiny person this perfect.
“Punishment? What could be sweeter bliss than spending an afternoon in the company of our lovely mate?” Bjarni asked, amusement dripping from every word. “So what if the lazy bastards refused to give me a hand with the sheep this morning? That would never stop me from ensuring they have help with their chores.”
“Especially not if that help comes in the shape of a cranky goddess deeply committed to her non-stop bitching?” Magni asked, eyebrows arched.
“I think you mean a divine goddess whose voice is always a blessing—even when it’s used to curse you into the ground,” Bjarni replied with a grin.
I tore my gaze from Astrid’s, a frown knitting my eyebrows. “Is she all right?”
I hadn’t seen Annabel since I’d snuck out of bed that morning to tend to the horses. Not all of our animals had made it through Ragnarök, but I’d been relieved to find Draugr and twenty more of our flock still alive when we returned to our farm in Iceland. It had been a short discussion. The Thorsson brothers had been keener on staying in Asgard, but Annabel wanted to raise Astrid in the human world. Once Modi and Magni tasted Bjarni’s hot chocolate with marshmallows, they’d decided they could be happy in Midgard.
Bjarni and Magni exchanged a glance.
“Yeah. She’s fine,” my brother said, but that slight hesitance in his voice tipped me off.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “What is it?”
“Well, it’s been three months since she birthed the little one,” Magni said, his voice almost too casual. “And you know how irritable she gets around that time.”
That time. I stiffened as I glanced from him to Bjarni—who only shot me a wry smile.
“You think her heat is coming?” Tension coiled in my gut, reaching down my thighs and up my abdomen. It had been twelve months since we’d managed to stop Ragnarök—a full year since Odin shattered my matebond.
My family had nursed me back to full health, but no matter how many times I made love to Annabel, no matter how full my heart was when I fell asleep in the big bed Saga and Magni had crafted to accommodate us all, I was never complete. Not fully. My soul still reached for where my connection to Annabel had been, and I ached. I missed it. I missed her, even as she lay in my arms at night.
In my darker moments, I even missed them. I would never admit that out loud, of course, but I envied the connectedness they all shared—which had been mine for such a brief moment.
If Annabel was finally coming into heat, that meant I would be able to claim her again. Reestablish our bond.
Bjarni shrugged, and my stare turned harder. I had long since gotten over my fury at sharing her, but a heat was something different. Any alpha who smelled his omega in that state tended to lose his mind, and if any of my brethren tried to get between me and her before I got my mark on her neck, there would be blood.
Before I could snarl a threat, the door banged open and practically blew a snow-covered Annabel inside.
“Hel’s tits!” she snarled. “How is it that we nearly fucking died to end Ragnarök, and it’s still snowing this badly?”
“It’s called ‘winter by the Arctic Circle,’” Saga, who’d followed her in, said. He unwound his own scarf, revealing a tired set to his mouth before he reached for the cranky woman and began unbundling her from her many layers of clothes. “And could you please, please not blaspheme the Queen of the Dead? She might actually hear you, now that she’s roaming around the lands of the living.”
“I’ve got eighteen years until she gets a claim on my magic. I freed her. If she’s insulted by anything I say, I invite her to come tell me in person,” Annabel huffed. She spotted Astrid in my arms and made a beeline toward us, plucking the baby from me with a markedly gentler coo.
“Someone’s feisty,” Magni chuckled.
“You have no idea,” Saga grumbled, eyeballing our mate.
“Why don’t you all just screw off?” Annabel’s harsh words were somewhat softened by the smile still plastered on her lips as she rocked our daughter.
Bjarni and Magni seemed to have a point. I took a step closer to Annabel, slipped an arm around her waist, and bent to breathe her in.
“What the actual fuck are you doing?” Annabel growled. Before I could pull away, she bit my shoulder, making me yank my arm back with a hiss. She gave each of us a glare. “I am not in the mood to be manhandled. Not today.”
We all watched her stomp off to the bedroom, Astrid safely tucked against her chest.
But dramatic exit or not, I knew what I’d smelled. I’d recognize that scent anywhere, even if it was still in the very first stages.
“Her heat is coming,” I said to no one in particular.
There was a small pause. Then Saga said, “You should go to her.”
I looked at him, eyebrows raised.
“Did you expect a fight?” he asked, lips quirking in a small smile. “When she is ready, bring us Astrid. We will join you once we feel your bond reignite.”
I swallowed, my throat tightening as the others nodded their agreement. My brothers. Whether in soul or blood, it didn’t matter—they were my family.
“Thank you,” I said softly.
“Sure thing,” Bjarni said. “But hurry up. Our generosity only goes so far, hmm?”
Fair. I shook my head and turned back to follow Annabel into the master bedroom.
Just as I slipped into the hallway, I heard Magni ask, “Where’s Modi?”
“He’ll be in soon,” Saga said. “He’s still not great with sheep handling. Slagathor got into the feed, and he tried to grab her. He’s currently nursing his balls in the barn. Might be a day or so before he’s ready to join in.”
Bjarni’s rumbling laughter trailed me down the hall.
I didn’t knock as I pushed the door to the bedroom open, and Annabel gave me an irritated look when I stepped fully inside.
She was naked from the waist up and nursing our daughter, which was likely why I didn’t get a scolding.
I climbed into bed, folding my legs under me to sit at the foot. Nothing calmed me like watching Annabel feed Astrid. The others were more inclined to butt in and insist on smearing nipple cream and burping the baby, but I could watch the two of them together for hours—and often did. It was also the reason I got kicked out of nursing sessions a lot less frequently than my four brothers.
“Don’t just sit there and stare,” Annabel grumbled. “I’m so hot. Come cool me down while I feed this insatiable beastling you impregnated me with.”
I knelt up to shrug out
of my shirt and crawled to her, slipping under the covers so I could wrap my arm around Annabel’s torso. Her skin was scorching against mine, and she let out a hum of relief and nuzzled in closer to rest her head on my shoulder.
“Ooh, that’s better.”
Astrid cracked her eyes open to see what had her food source jostling, and shot me a grumpy glare before she pressed her face back into her nipple of choice.
“The nurse says it’s just trapped gas when she does that,” Annabel said, but the delicate frown marring her forehead hinted that she too had some doubts.
I reached out to rub between Annabel’s eyebrows with my free hand. “I am used to the females I love glaring at me. It doesn’t faze me, mate.”
Annabel gave me a scowl that pulled a rumble of laughter from my chest. I leaned in and stole a kiss from her before I looked back to Astrid. She had my dark hair and pale complexion, but her already pretty features suggested she would grow up to be as beautiful as her mother.
“You are such a good mother,” I said quietly without taking my eyes off our baby. “That gentle heart of yours… I always thought it a weakness, but it is not. It is your greatest strength. And I am… so honored that I am the sire of your first child.”
Annabel pressed her lips to my shoulder before she looked up at me. In her eyes, I saw that all-consuming love I had never known before her reflected back at me. My breath hitched in my chest, and I leaned in again to kiss her. My nostrils filled with her slowly blooming scent, and I lost myself to the undertow of everything that was her: my Annabel.
She groaned into my mouth and kissed me back with mounting urgency, small gasps of air brushing against my lips as she let her tongue slip between them.
A sharp cry pulled us apart with a jerk.
I looked down at Astrid, who wailed with fury at being ignored.
“Sorry, baby,” Annabel cooed. She deftly shifted Astrid to her other breast and reclined against the headboard with a small groan. “Seriously, how is it this hot when there’s a damn blizzard rolling in? Is there some other mythological doomsday coming y’all have forgotten to tell me about?”