“He didn’t want the destruction of anyone.” She began to shake again. “He only wanted to live in peace and quiet in our house by the bay. He didn’t want to hurt anyone.”

  The Ulfen looked skeptical. “He was a Huntsman and a soldier,” he said. “I doubt he didn’t want to hurt people.”

  “Just because he was good at it doesn’t mean that he loved it. He was actually very kind.”

  “To his own kind.”

  “To everyone.”

  He took a step backward, and the moonlight shimmered over him again, obscuring him like a cloak. “Get out of the forest, Rune Master. Go home.” The magical camouflage completely hid him, leaving only his voice. “I am sorry for your grief…but go home.”

  She heard him leaving through the woods, and she dropped to her knees, her head hanging as she cried.

  ***

  He woke to raging thirst and a pounding head. His eyes were hot, as if coals and not irises lurked behind his eyelids. He put his hands over his face, and the effort of moving his arms was immense. He was so very weak.

  Erik could hear water against wood, and he was rocking slightly. He had been a Viking long enough to know what waking on a ship felt like. He tried to sit up, but his head struck wood very quickly, and the hard rap to the head helped to clear his senses.

  He was in a wooden box. It was just large enough for him to lie in stretched out, and beneath him was a layer of pine boughs and furs. He pushed up against the wooden plank above his head, and it would not budge. He pushed out against the sides of the box, but to no avail. He was just too weak to break through, and something in the pine boughs was keeping him rooted in place. He couldn’t even turn onto his side.

  His throat was parched, and his lips were cracked. He was desperate for blood. His belly twisted on itself in its emptiness, and he felt hollow.

  It was the hollowness that helped him to remember. He remembered the fight in Snake Eyes, and Magda’s hands above his heart, and the shattering of the Chosen bond. The pain of that breakage still echoed in his chest now, and he pressed his hand to the hurting place within his chest.

  Why? He was unable to form any more of the thought, but that seemed to cover the subject of his focus well enough.

  The ship pitched, and his box slid a few inches in the direction of his feet. He remembered high seas in the drekars of his youth, the pitching and rolling that sent most of his raiding companions to the edge to empty their stomachs into the water. He closed his eyes, and for a moment, he was back in those long-ago ships, heading for Scotland or to Spain. The memory of those raids and the pleasure of conquest stirred in his mind, and he smiled. Those had been good days.

  He thought that he should have been taking a dimmer view of these memories, but he could not remember why. His mind was fuzzy, and he was confused. Something was missing, but in his addled state, he could not say what it was. It was something precious, though, and despite the fact that he could not name it, he ached for its absence.

  The pine bough scent rose around him, and he inhaled the fragrance deeply. It was the smell of the old days, of fir trees and forest hunts. Within him, Vidar stirred, and the two of them, god and vessel, united in dreams of hunts and horseback rides through meadows of high grass and brushwood.

  ***

  Lars found Nika on the forest path, lying on her side with her knees drawn up to her chest, staring ahead in utter despondence. He crouched beside her and put a hand on her shoulder. She did not respond.

  “Nika,” he said. “Come on. You have to come in. Erik wouldn’t want this.”

  At the sound of her lover’s name, her green eyes shifted to look up at Lars. They filled with tears. “I miss him,” she said.

  He gathered her into his arms and held her. “I do, too. But the ones who did this are going to pay, I promise you.”

  She sat like a stone in his embrace for a long moment, then finally returned the hug, clinging to his neck for comfort like a child. He stroked her back and held her tightly.

  They stayed that way for a long while, and finally he rose, picking her up in his arms. Without a word, he carried her back to the cabin.

  He brought her to her bedroom and put her on the bed, where she resumed her fetal position. He put his hands on his hips and considered her for a long moment.

  “Nika.” He could not get her to look at him, and he sighed. “Nika, I know you’re hurting, but this isn’t going to help anything. Giving up isn’t going to bring Erik back. You haven’t fed in days. Let me get you something to drink.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want any.”

  He sat beside her. “I know it hurts to lose him. Erik wouldn’t want this. He would want you to continue to live, to be happy...you have to know that.”

  She turned away from him. He gave up and went downstairs.

  Sif looked up when he entered the living room. “How is the princess?”

  “She wants to die, I think.”

  “I’m not surprised. She was his Chosen.”

  He shook his head. “So?”

  “When the Chosen bond is broken when one of the partners dies, the survivor pines away. She’s not going to survive him for long.” She turned a page in the magazine she was reading. “They can reunite in their next incarnations and try again.”

  Lars looked at her, aghast. “You’re just - we have to do something. We can’t just let her go.”

  “There’s nothing to do,” Magda said, strolling out of the kitchen with a glass of dreyri. She handed it to Sif. “The Chosen bond is very powerful, and the damage caused by its loss is just as great.”

  He frowned, looking at the drink in her hand. “Where did that come from? The keg went missing.”

  “I reserved it,” she said, sitting beside Sif. “I didn’t want to share any longer.”

  “You reserved it,” he echoed, shaking his head. “Wow.”

  He went into the kitchen and found that the keg had been returned to its former place on the counter. His distrust of Magda skipped up another notch. With a sour expression on his face, he filled two glasses, one for himself and one for Nika. He took them both upstairs.

  Nika was still lying on the bed when he came in. He sat beside her and nudged her. “Get up.” She did not respond, so he repeated the light shove and spoke again, this time more stridently. “Get up.”

  Reluctantly, she obeyed. He trusted that the scent of the dreyri would pique her interest, but she seemed immune to its delights. He pushed one of the glasses into her hand.

  “Drink this, or I’ll force it down your throat.”

  She finally reacted. Her face creased in an angry glare, and her eyes flashed green. “You wouldn’t dare!”

  “Wouldn’t I?”

  They stared at each other for a long moment, and she finally took him at his word. She swallowed the enchanted blood, then put the glass aside. “Happy now?”

  “Immensely.” He drained his own glass, then said, “The keg is back on the counter. You have two choices. You can feed yourself, either from the dreyri or by hunting, or I will force feed you. Understand?”

  She turned away from him. “You’re not very nice.”

  “I don’t have to be nice. I just have to keep you alive.”

  “Why? Why do you have to do that?” She looked back at him, and tears were standing in her eyes again. “Why can’t you just let me go?”

  “Because I promised Erik that I would keep you safe, no matter what.” He picked up her empty glass. “I mean to keep that promise, even if you fight me.”

  Her voice quavered as she said, “I hate you.”

  “Go right ahead.”

  He took the empty glasses back down into the kitchen, heavy-hearted but determined.

  ***

  Dominic found his father in their pack’s den, lounging with his mate. Ardrik was half-asleep, and he barely noticed when his third son rejoined them. His mate, though, the lovely Ardella, looked up and flipped her blonde hair out of her eyes, smiling.

  “Hello, Dom,” she said.

  “I met the Rune Master.”

  That was enough to shake Ardrik out of his contentment. He sat up straight, unseating Ardella from using his chest as a pillow. “Did you kill her?”

  Dominic hesitated. “No.”

  His father’s eyes narrowed. “No?”

  “She was despondent. She wanted to die.” He realized now how stupid it sounded, and how displaced his notion of honor was in the view of his pack. His father was going to murder him. “It didn’t seem right.”

  Ardrik rose, towering over Dominic. He was intimidating, and Dominic had always been afraid of him. He took a step back.

  “It didn’t seem right?” his alpha echoed.

  “No, sir.”

  Ardella tried to salvage the situation. “Why was she despondent?”

  Dominic looked at her, then back to his father. “She said that the last Huntsman was dead, killed by the rest of the First in Stockholm.”

  “Why would they kill him?” Ardrik asked, dubious.

  “I don’t know. She didn’t say.”

  His alpha nodded. “This is good news. This is very good news. I will take this to our contact.” He shifted into his full wolf form and raced out of the den.

  Ardella rose and slinked over the Dominic, putting her hands on his chest, rubbing them beneath the open folds of his unzipped jacket. “You’ve done well, my dear,” she said. “If the Huntsman is dead and the Rune Master is in mourning, our job is that much easier.” She buried her hands in the black hair at the nape of his neck, and she smiled up into his eyes. “Maybe I can reward you.”

  He took a step away from her, disentangling himself from her touch. “You are my alpha’s mate,” he said.

  “So? He’s not here, and I’m not your mother.”

  “It’s wrong.” He took another step back. “And my father would kill me if he found out. I’m already out of his favor. I don’t want to make things worse.”

  Ardella laughed airily and shrugged one slender shoulder. “Suit yourself. This was your one chance.”

  One corner of his mouth turned down. “I’ll learn to live with that.”

  She laughed again and strolled toward the back of the den where the rest of the pack were resting. She found Alaric, his older brother, who was sleeping in his wolf form. Ardella shifted into the four-legged version of herself and curled up against Alaric’s side. His brother did not wake.

  Dominic sat at the mouth of the den, knowing he was not welcome to lie with the rest of the pack. He turned his back on the pile of Ulfen and looked out the den opening, waiting for his father to return.

  Chapter Eight

  He dreamed of a woman with red hair and woke with a deep pain in his chest, as if he had been stabbed. He put a hand to his heart and opened his eyes.

  He was no longer in the wooden box, and the rolling of the sea had been replaced by the solidity of the earth. He was lying in a bed covered with furs, warm and comfortable even though his head was muddy. The room he was in was dark, but he could make out the wooden plank walls and the heavily-curtained windows. A fire was burning brightly in a fireplace on the other side of the room. There was one door, and it was tightly closed.

  Erik sat up slowly, and his head decried the motion in the strongest possible terms. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and let his feet hit the floor and stay there for a moment, helping him focus on what was real. Reality, it turned out, was nauseatingly fluid, and he felt disoriented and ill. He gripped the edges of the bed and tried to will his head to stop spinning.

  The door to the room opened, and Bjorn walked in, a canteen in his hand. He grinned when he saw Erik. “It lives!” he said jovially. He held out the canteen. “Hair of the dog?”

  Erik accepted the canteen suspiciously. When he opened the stopper, the scent of powerful dreyri filled his nose, and his stomach lurched in response. He burned for blood, and despite the nausea, he gulped the elixir greedily. Bjorn watched in approving satisfaction.

  When he had consumed the entire canteen, he handed it back to Bjorn and asked, “This is a stupid thing to say, but where am I?”

  Bjorn laughed. “In my house,” he said.

  Erik put a hand to his aching head. “What happened to me?” His hand moved to his chest, hovering over his heart. “What hurt me?”

  “Too much dreyri,” the other Draugr answered. “Magda uncovered some potent ancient vintage and you drank it like it was water. You’re going to be hungover for days.”

  He knew that young Draugr could be overcome by drinking dreyri that was too strong for them, but he was one of the First. There should have been no blood too powerful for him to drink. He rubbed his hand over his face. “I don’t remember anything.”

  Bjorn beamed. “Well, why don’t you join us out in the living room so we can fill you in?”

  Erik rose unsteadily, and his companion put an arm around his shoulders to support him. “I feel terrible.”

  “It’ll pass,” Bjorn assured. “Just need to drink a little bit more dreyri, and you’ll be right as rain.”

  They made their slow way into the main room of the house. The room was bright, the decor overwhelmingly white and chrome, and the rest of the First sat together as if they’d been having a conference. They looked up in surprise, and Dag’s expression was guarded as Bjorn cheerily announced, “Look who’s up?”

  Agnar moved from the chair he’d been occupying so that Erik could sit there instead, and he took the offered seat gratefully.

  Kjeld put his phone away. “How are you feeling, Erik?”

  “Like someone dropped a mountain on me.”

  “That’s what you get,” Dag said, “for drinking linnorm dreyri.”

  Erik frowned, confused. He had no memory of such a thing. “Linnorm blood?”

  A young woman with vivid red hair came into the room, joining them from another room down a short hallway. She looked familiar, but he could not say when they had met before. He should have known who she was. The woman had a shallow dish in her hand, and a pile of herbs smoldered there, the smoke dark and gray. She brought it toward him, her green eyes sparkling. A tattoo of the rune Hagalaz graced the inside of her left wrist, woad-blue against the white of her skin.

  “You’re Valtaeigr,” he said, stating the obvious.

  “Yes. You may call me Mia. I am the vessel of Lofn.” She raised the smoke toward him. “Breathe deeply. It will help to clear your head.”

  He could sense the divine energy within her, proof of her claim of vessel-dom. That, combined with her Valtaeigr bloodline, convinced him to trust her. He took the dish from her hand and inhaled the smoke, pulling it in as deeply as he could. The smell of pine and the hint of less wholesome ingredients filled him, and instead of clearing his head, it made it fuzzier. He handed the dish back to her.

  “No,” he said. “Not working.”

  Mia made him meet her eyes. When she spoke, her voice held a timber that trapped him and drilled directly into his mind. He could not have looked away if he had tried. “You are Erik Thorvald, leader of the First, and you are here with your brothers planning a raid on the faery of Finland. You have been their leader for centuries, and you lead them with an absolute hand. There is no violence that is beyond you, and nothing that you will not do for the greater glory of your band.”

  She smiled and sat back, and he blinked. The spell was broken, but the suggestion had been planted. He looked at the assembled First.

  “When do we raid?”

  ***

  Nika woke to a sky full of moonlight. The clouds shimmered like pearls across the face of the moon, and the forest beneath her window was bathed in silver. It was impossibly pretty, and she hated it.

  She sat on the edge of the bed and stared out the window, watching the trees sway in the light wind coming in off of the water. She thought of the house she shared with Erik, the way she’d been so excited to move in and make it theirs. Now it was standing empty, and she wasn’t sure she could ever go back.

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Lars was right. This was now how Erik would want her to be. He would want her to live, even if that meant living without him. He had been strong and had waited for her to be reborn across a hundred lifetimes. She owed it to him to do the same now.

  She wondered if it had hurt him as much as it hurt her now.

  A huge wolf emerged from the forest and sat just beneath the trees, its face turned up toward their cabin. She could almost sense its amber eyes boring into hers even through the window glass. She wondered if this was Dominic, the Ulfen she had met in the wood, but something told her that it was not.

  She rose and went closer to the window. The wolf looked directly at her, and then it shifted into a young man with reddish blond hair and a tight dancer’s build. He was fully dressed when he assumed his human guise, and she wondered where his clothing went when he became a wolf. The palm of her right hand tingled, and she glanced down to see a tiny, glowing rune there - Algiz, standing for protection. She shook the rune away and let its energy dissipate into the air.

  That was a warning, a voice whispered in her head. It was the quiet voice of Ithunn, the goddess in her pocket. Be careful whom you trust.

  She hesitated, momentarily forgetting the wolf outside the window. Do you know what happened to Erik?

  You will see him again, the goddess told her. It was no answer, but Nika could feel Ithunn fading back into her mind, going back to the quiet place where she sat and waited. Nika had no idea what she was waiting for, or why it still mattered all these years later, but she was sometimes grateful for the gentle presence in her head. This was one of those times.

  She looked back out the window, and the wolf was gone. She opened the window and leaned out, listening to the night sounds. There were the sounds of people at the hotel and in the town surrounding it, the rustling of the wind in the trees, and the quiet shuffling sounds of the nocturnal creatures moving through the brush. She suddenly wanted to be down there. She wanted to touch something alive and hold it in her hands.