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MY SLEEP WAS RUDELY disrupted as I was lifted right out of the bed by my hair. Pain entombed my head as my eyes blinked open to Thor’s angry gaze. Darkness surrounded us except for the halo of lightning surrounding Thor. I grabbed his wrists, digging my fingernails into his skin.
“Let me go!”
His gaze lowered to my naked form still streaked in blood. “What have you done, Kara?” He met my gaze again and narrowed his eyes.
“I have done nothing!” I hissed, still struggling in his grip.
He slammed me against the wall, dazing me. “You murdered the general of the Valkyrie.”
“It was not murder.” Crap. That wasn’t supposed to slip. “It was self-defense. She came here to kill me.” My toes barely hit the floor beneath me, and my scalp screamed. If Thor did not put me down, I was afraid my hair would be ripped out by the roots.
He pulled a clear ball out of his pocket and fog swirled inside it. “You deserve what punishment comes to you.” The magic ball slowly cleared, with a view of Hippocrates and me against the tree the first night. “You defied Odin’s orders and slept with the man you were supposed to bring to Valhalla?” He shook the orb and another scene of me striking down Freya came into view. “You are a traitor to Asgard.”
I knocked the orb out of his hand, where it crashed on the floor and disintegrated. “Hippocrates is an innocent. Valkyrie stand up for what is right, and reaping him is not right.” I could not help the snarl in my voice. “He is a healer, for goodness’ sake!”
“You were given an order.”
His face was so close that the electricity stung my skin.
“An unjust order,” I screamed at him.
He lowered me so I could stand on my own, but his fist still held a handful of my hair. “Just or not...it was an order that you defied.”
The statement sent a rash of gooseflesh over my skin. “You have defied your father,” I pointed out. Thor had gone against his father’s orders and taken matters into his own hands before.
His eyes darkened. “I am the God of Thunder.”
“I am a Valkyrie,” I volleyed back with the same venom and tried to twist out of his grip.
He slammed me harder against the wall, and the stones behind me shifted. Dust puffed around me, and I coughed.
“You cannot run from me, traitor.” His eyes lowered again to my naked form. “You’ve run long enough. Now it’s time to pay for your sins.” Then Thor did the unimaginable. He slammed his lips against mine.
I gasped, and this tongue plundered my mouth. This was not the sweet bliss of Hippocrates’s kiss. This was an arrogant assault from a god who believed he had the right to do anything he pleased.
I tried to push him away, but he yanked my head back farther and pinned me with his body. His free hand squeezed my breast hard enough to leave prints on my skin.
The creak of the door followed, and Thor’s lips curved into a smile as he continued to kiss me. Then he pulled away and smiled at the man with the lantern gawking at us from the doorway.
Bastard.
I swung at him, but he caught my arm and clasped bindings on my wrist. I struggled against him, but he spun me face-first into the wall and linked my wrists together in the bindings.
I screamed my frustration.
“I have always wanted to hear you scream,” he whispered in my ear, just before he hauled me over his shoulder.
“What are you doing?” I continued to struggle as he grabbed Hippocrates with his other arm and then launched through the roof of the house, taking us high enough for the frigid wind to leave me shaking. At least Hippocrates had clothing on, but the thinness of the air rolled his eyes back and he went limp.
I closed my eyes tight as my heart thundered in my chest. “Where are you bringing us?”
“To a place you will never be found.” His voice was as icy as the wind. He streaked across the sky as fast as lightning, and when we finally dropped, it was into a bank of clouds that obstructed my vision.
He brought us into a cavern, and my eyes widened at the chains embedded in the walls near the back. I struggled, but I was no match for Thor. He dumped Hippocrates on the ground and then took me to where the chains were.
I jumped and kicked. My foot landed on Thor’s chest, but he was only sent back a couple of steps. “I wish I could scratch your fucking eyes out!” I tried another kick, but Thor grabbed my leg and twisted, sending me onto the ground with enough force to knock the wind out of me.
Before I could roll and get to my feet, Thor dragged me by the ankle back to the chains and clasped me in. My legs were wide enough for panic to set in, especially considering I didn’t have a stitch of clothing on.
He tugged me up on my knees and pressed against me. I tried to swipe my nails at him, but he grabbed the chain holding my wrist together and yanked upward.
My arms screamed with pain. A cry escaped my mouth, echoing off the walls.
“I should tame you, but that would take more time than I have.”
He hauled me to my feet and circled in front of me. I was at his mercy with my legs bound and my arms clasped behind me.
He gripped my jaw hard enough to bruise. “Would you like to know what it’s like to fuck a god?”
I glared at him. Even though the look in his eyes was deadly, I couldn’t help mouthing off. “Piss off, Thor.”
He sneered at me with his teeth visible, and then he backhanded me.
Stars bloomed behind my eyes as my cheek flared with agony and I listed to the side, stunned by the pain. I shook my head and attempted to twist my arm from his grip, but iron clamped down on my wrist hard enough to pinch. But I still had one arm free, and I punched Thor in the throat.
It wasn’t nearly as hard as the punch I had hit Freya with, but it did send the mighty Thor back a step. I strained against the chains, but they did not budge.
Thor coughed and then snarled before his fist slammed me in the stomach.
I folded as much as I could with the chains, and my other arm was pulled taut and the binding was as painfully tight as the one on my other wrist.
Thor grabbed my hair, pulling my head back, so I had to look at him. “Magic wards the chains, as it does this cavern. If humans are to happen on it, in their eyes, the cave ends near where your lover lays.” He pointed at Hippocrates. “This is your punishment. An eternity chained in isolation.”
He grinned in such an evil way that I began to shake.
As Hippocrates stirred, Thor moved to the space behind me. He pressed his body against mine in a way that turned my blood to ice. His hands roamed to unwanted places, and I tried to jerk away. But the chains restricted my motion, and all it did was push me further into Thor. “Perhaps if you had said yes to me on Asgard, I might have overlooked your treasonous behavior.”
Hippocrates’s head snapped up at Thor’s words.
“Do not touch me,” I hissed, but I was helpless to stop his brutal exploration.
Hippocrates climbed to his feet, taking in the chains holding me in place and the bastard violating me with his hands. “The lady said not to touch her.”
Thor continued to pinch and rub me like I was his toy to play with as he pleased. And he certainly wanted me to squirm. “You fucked the traitor. Was she worth it?”
Hippocrates’s face turned red, and his eyes locked on mine. “Take your hands off her,” he growled, and his fists clenched.
I shook my head to stop him from challenging Thor. That was a recipe for a slow and painful death.
Thor laughed. “And if I don’t?” He forcefully tilted my head to the side and licked the side of my throat.
“I will kill you.” Hippocrates’s tone fell to a hush as if what Thor was doing to me was a sin worth killing for. The doctor I knew was gone, replaced with a feral being that I did not recognize.
Thor’s hands came off my body, and he moved in front of me slowly, like a panther tracking prey.
“Run,” I yelled, but Hippocrates stepped closer, bringing his fists up. He was nearly as tall as Thor but did not have the pure muscle mass of the god. And he certainly didn’t have the strength of a god.
The fool ignored me.
Thor lifted his hands but didn’t fist them, and let Hippocrates play. He bobbed and weaved each punch Hippocrates threw, or easily knocked the punch away as if he swatted a fly.
“Please, Thor...please don’t kill him.” I fell to my knees. My hands rose high in the air and my wings popped into existence. They quivered with the same boiling fear that ran through my veins.
Thor looked my way, and Hippocrates’s fist caught his cheek square. But he didn’t budge. His eyes hardened as he glared at me. And then a sadistic smile surfaced just as he shot out a punch of his own.
His fist caught Hippocrates in the shoulder.
Hippocrates flew into the cave wall with a yelp. He stumbled, dazed by the punch, and then shook his head before he stepped back into fighting form. But he held the arm Thor hit closer to his body, as if protecting it. It looked dislocated from this angle.
Thor toyed with Hippocrates, slowly beating him until he was bloody and broken at my feet. Each punch, each snap of bone, wrenched a gasp and a plea from my lips that Thor ignored. When Hippocrates could no longer lift himself from where he landed, Thor grabbed a handful of Hippocrates’s hair and pulled him to his knees, dragging him to the spot in front of me.
Hot paths slid down my cheeks, splashing on the ground in front of me. “Please don’t,” I whispered, even though I knew it was futile.
“Any last words?” Thor asked and pulled a blade from the sheath on his hip, pressing it against Hippocrates’s throat.
Hippocrates stared at me through swollen eyelids. His once handsome face was distorted with a crushed cheek, and blood dripped from his mouth. “Kara,” he mumbled, sounding in as much pain as he looked.
It broke my heart. “I’ll do anything.” I turned my gaze to Thor’s.
What I saw in his eyes crushed me.
“You will kneel for a human, but not for me?” Thor’s eyes grew colder.
Odin appeared behind Thor. His gaze was even harder than Thor’s. “Kara Mist. You are sentenced to an eternity chained in this cave.” He nodded at Thor.
The blade at Hippocrates’s throat sliced deep into his flesh as Thor dragged it from one side of his neck to the other. Hippocrates’s blood baptized me with heat as my scream rang against the rocks.
His death could have been swift and humane, but Thor beat him to near death before he ended him. And from the glint in the bastard’s eye, he enjoyed the torture and my wailing cries.
Thor held Hippocrates so I had to watch the light fade from his eyes. Once the man I forsook my mission for was dead and gone, Thor scooped up his body and took flight, leaving me shaking and at the mercy of his father.
I sobbed, not caring that Odin studied me as if I were a horrifying bug on his nicely prepared meal. When my tears dried up, Odin crouched to my level.
“Without Hippocrates and others from Earth’s history who were pinnacles in their fields and helped to advance society in ways that were lasting through millennia, Asgard will not have to deal with some nasty scientific discoveries that could devastate the planet. And humans have always been willing to destroy their own home rather than be ruled over.” He smiled, as if that reasoning made any sense.
He stripped this realm of a good man just for his own personal gain?
I glared at him. “You bastard.”
“I am playing a long game of chess, and this was one of many critical pieces. Ragnarök is inevitable, and when it destroys Asgard, we will rule this pitiful realm as the gods we were meant to be.”
“You are a sick fuck,” I hissed. The chilled blood covering me made me shiver. The chains rattled in response.
Odin gave me a frightening smile. “When we return to this realm, you will be nothing but skin stretched over bones. Your mind will be gone. Your eternal torture will be gratifying.” He straightened and regarded me with disgust. “His death seems humane in comparison.” He turned and faded away.
“No!” I screamed until my voice went hoarse. I was left with Hippocrates’s blood painting me and the memory of the light in his eyes dying.