I wanted to kill them. Every cell in my body throbbed with red-hot fire as the four alphas pawed at my mate, kissed her and murmured possessive words of devotion. Only Annabel’s unwavering hold on my hand kept me grounded enough to remember my vow: I would give anything to undo what I had done—the future I had doomed our daughter to.
Even allowing these men to touch her.
The purring… helped. A little. As much as I fantasized about ripping Magni’s fingers off one by one as he curved them around one of Annabel’s breasts, it was as smidge easier to resist with the unwavering rumble vibrating through my body, even if I wasn’t its creator. I wasn’t even sure if I could purr. I’d never had the inclination, not even with Annabel in my arms, but my instincts responded to its promise of peace and comfort.
My brain… not so much.
Annabel, on the other hand, was a blissed-out puddle. She gave me a somewhat dazed smile that pulled on that soft, fragile thing she’d planted in my chest when we mated. See? her eyes seemed to say. You can do this.
I still hadn’t unclenched my fists, and I doubted I would for a very long time. But yes, I… I could do this. For her. If only because it was so obvious that she was truly happy now—that even the moments of joy she had shared with me had been incomplete without them.
I wanted her happy. I could do this. Somehow.
It took well over an hour before the purring softened and then, one by one, quieted.
“We should get back,” Saga said, even as he continued to stare at Annabel with a soft, goofy smile that made my fists itch to make contact with his face. “We can continue this when we are safe.”
The way he said this, and that gleam in his eyes as he said it, made a warning snarl rumble again from my chest.
My brother only gave a me a patient look before he gazed across the meadow.
“Magga and Arni didn’t say what you needed from us to get home, sweetling. Do you know the way? Is it close?”
“Oh.” Annabel grimaced, and from the flustered look on her face, I suspected she was blushing. “It’s… um… We all need to… Freya said I need to, uh, join with all of you. To be strong enough.”
Magni broke into a wide grin. “I adore that woman and her take on magic.” Then his smile faded. “It is true, then? The Goddess of Love has been taken to Hel? Trud suggested as much, but…”
“We will bring her back with us,” Modi said, steel in his voice. “We are not leaving one of our own in this place. And she may be able to help us capture Loki.”
Annabel gave me a long look, and some of my fury softened as shame welled from that festering place in my gut. Apparently Arni and Magga hadn’t told them everything that had happened here.
“Freya is gone,” Annabel said. Even though her voice was soft, every one of her mates jerked their heads to stare at her.
“What do you mean gone?” Bjarni asked.
She shook her head and drew a deep breath. “She died, and her soul got sucked into… that thing.” She gestured toward the siphon in the sky.
All four alphas hissed.
“No!”
“How?”
“She is the Goddess of Love! She can’t be gone!”
I tensed my shoulders, preparing for the weight of their disgust, but Annabel shook her head.
“She is, and nothing we can do will change that. We can only attempt to honor her sacrifice by escaping this damned place so we can stop Ragnarök.”
“How did she die?” Bjarni asked.
“I can’t talk about that,” Annabel said softly, brushing the hand she wasn’t holding mine with through his beard. “Please don’t ask me to tell you. Not… Not yet.”
He nodded and pressed his cheek against her palm, closing his eyes at the sensation of her touch. “As you wish, my sweet one.”
“Thank you,” she murmured, a small smile tugging on her lips at his obvious tenderness. Bjarni had always been open with his emotions, and that hadn’t changed with Annabel’s arrival. He loved her so easily and so openly, I wasn’t surprised at the devotion in my mate’s eyes as she looked at him.
Jealousy seethed like a poison in my veins.
As if she sensed it despite the wall I’d slammed back in place between us, Annabel squeezed my fingers, a silent reminder that she loved me too.
My heart pulsed, and I closed my eyes to control the maelstrom of emotions threatening to tear me open again. I wasn’t sure if she refused to talk about what happened to Freya to protect me, or to protect the union she needed between the six of us to have a chance to free herself from Hel. Perhaps it was both. But one day, they would learn the truth of what I’d done—to the goddess and to Annabel.
“So,” Saga said, visibly steeling himself against the devastation Freya’s death had brought them all. “She told you that to flee from Hel, we need to channel our magic together like we did when we healed Magni?”
Magni huffed and glared at my brother. Bjarni gave me a slanted grin—one I didn’t return. He was endlessly amused by the predicament we had found Saga and Magni in when we’d arrived in Freya’s hall, locked in a far more intimate embrace than either would have ever voluntarily shared. For me, though, the memory of them sharing my mate so roughly only made the fury resurface.
“Will someone tell me what happened?” Modi asked, irritation lacing his words. “It can’t be worse than what we all did in Valhalla.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Annabel snapped, embarrassment making her tone curt. “I’m sure we don’t need to do that. But… Well, we all know what she meant by joining. It’s the only way for me to meld our powers and make us strong enough to face down Hel.”
“I’m sorry, pet—I could have sworn you said face down Hel?” Magni asked. His eyebrows rose nearly to his hairline. “But you are not insane, so I must have misheard.”
“It is the only remaining way,” Mimir said.
We all turned to him—we’d entirely forgotten him in the midst of the reunion. He didn’t so much as glance at me as he continued. “We have exhausted all other avenues. To save your mate from the depths of Hel, the Queen of Death will have to release her.”
“That’s why I needed you here,” Annabel said as the four of them blinked in stunned silence. “If I am not strong enough, she will just…” She trailed off with a glance at the churning funnel cloud.
A shudder went through the four and echoed through my bones. The thought of Annabel’s soul lost to Hel’s siphon was sickening.
“Once we are out of this place, I am going to find Loki and murder him,” Modi growled.
“Loki isn’t behind this,” Annabel said, finally ready to divulge the identity of the Betrayer. “It is… someone else. I don’t know who, but it’s not Loki.”
“How can you be so sure, then?” Saga asked with a frown. “He disappeared when you and Grim did. We all assumed he took you when you went to free him.”
Annabel glanced at me before she looked to Mimir. “Whoever is behind my kidnapping took Mimir too. Before me. He is under some sort of binding spell, but… It is not Loki, that much they have been able to confirm.”
“They?” Bjarni asked.
“He,” Annabel corrected with a small grimace. “Right, prophet?”
“I am afraid I cannot provide further detail,” Mimir agreed.
“It’s not important. Not now,” I interjected. “Nothing else matters until we have escaped this place.”
Saga gave me a long, evaluating look that I pretended I didn’t see before he returned his focus to Annabel. “Right. So if there is but one path, there is no point in arguing or delaying. Do you know of a safe location? I don’t want to be surprised by whatever creatures roam these lands while I’m knot-deep in my mate.”
“Aren’t you romantic?” Annabel grumbled, earning a chuckle from Bjarni.
“Freya’s glade is half a day from here. It is… as safe a place as can exist here.” It took everything I had to get the words out. The thought of what would have to happen once there filled my veins with acid and my gut with lead. I had no idea how I would survive watching them with her—how they would survive. But I had to find a way.
“It will also take us closer to Hel’s residence,” Mimir agreed. “Very well. Back to Freya’s glade.”
Modi swooped in and placed a kiss on Annabel’s lips. He lingered for a moment, and I saw the heat in his eyes before he turned away to grab Mimir. “Lead the way, prophet.”
We fell in behind Thor’s youngest son, but before we’d walked many paces, Saga tapped me on the shoulder and jerked his head at me.
I hesitated, my fingers as reluctant to release Annabel’s as my heart was to leave her side. But the seriousness in my brother’s gaze made me let go and fall back with him. Bjarni immediately swooped in and looped his arm around Annabel’s shoulder, crowding her against Magni on her other side.
“What?” I snapped, the view of my mate giggling between the two alphas doing nothing to ease the churn of jealousy.
“You have been gone for some time, brother. I wish to know all that has happened,” he said, a careful note to his voice. “How you came to this place.”
“I can only tell you so much,” I said, forcing the pounding rage in my temples down. “I too am under a binding spell.”
“You… You know who did this to you? Who is behind it?”
I nodded, the threatening swell in my throat from the blasted spell keeping me silent.
Saga was quiet for a long while, and I felt his gaze on me as he mulled over his next question.
“Do we have a chance, brother?” he finally asked, quietly enough that the others wouldn’t hear. “I felt the strength of whoever it is. During the trials to pass through to Asgard from Jotunheim, it was… like facing off against the cosmos. I have never seen anything so powerful. I know Annabel is strong, and that the prophecy claims we can, but… I worry.”
I closed my eyes to steel myself. No. We did not have a chance; I had made my bargain because I understood as much. But it didn’t matter anymore.
“We will succeed,” I said quietly. “Because if we don’t, Annabel will die. And this place… It is not for her.”
Saga nodded, and from the draw of his mouth, I knew he understood both that what we would face was too powerful to overcome, but that we had to do it regardless. For her. “And you? Will you be able to do what must be done?”
I gave him a glare.
“Don’t look at me like that. I don’t question your strength,” he said, raising both hands.
“Then what do you question?”
“Your ability to share her.” He nodded toward Annabel. “I don’t know what you’re doing to your pair bond to keep it muted from us, but you really don’t need to. It’s written all over your face. You want her for yourself. But this prophecy—we have to share her, willingly, or we don’t stand a chance.”
I gritted my teeth against the reemerging throbbing in my temple. “Willingly? Is that how you share her with the Thorssons?”
Saga chuckled. “Well—now, yes, though perhaps not at first. But there is… peace in surrendering to this fate of ours. A brotherhood. Love. I want that for you, Grim. I know you were never keen on claiming her in the first place. Frankly, I was expecting to have to lock you in a room with her during her heat and just hope your instincts would kick in.
“But you’ve claimed her now. You know how deep this bond goes. How all-consuming it is. That is what we all share, this unexpected and volatile thing. You are not alone with it. We are here with you. The sooner you surrender to our connection, the sooner you’ll stop picturing our heads smashed in.”
I scoffed. Surrender. He had no idea. I had surrendered, or I wouldn’t just be picturing their heads bashed in and their lifeless corpses littering the ground. I had surrendered everything I was and everything I ever would be, for her.
“When did you know you loved her?” he asked softly.
I pressed my lips into a thin line and kept my eyes on Annabel.
“Grim. You have to open up, or this won’t work. You can’t keep shielding yourself like this. No one is going to make fun of you. We all love her the same,” Saga sighed. He clapped a hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze that was possibly meant to be comforting.
I jerked away from his touch and swiveled toward him. My brother, the man I had given everything to save—as I looked at him now, every muscle in my body ached to grab my daggers and slice his throat open. Judging from his wide-eyed stare, my thoughts were painted clearly on my face.
“No. We do not love her the same,” I hissed, low enough not to draw the others’ attention. “She is my soul, Saga. I do not fear mockery. I am not a child. And I do not simply picture your heads smashed in. I am fighting with everything I have not to rip the four of you to shreds. Do I make myself clear? I want you dead. All of you. Every time you touch her, I want to snap you into bloody, broken pieces, because she is mine.
“Do not question me, brother. Do not push me. You do not want to see what I am keeping from you, why I am muting my pair-bond. I will do what I must to save her, but I will not be part of your brotherhood. I cannot.”
Without another look at my stunned brother, I stalked up ahead, past Magni, Bjarni, and Annabel, then past Modi and Mimir, taking up the lead.
None of them would ever understand. Their love for Annabel was easy and bright. Mine was dark. Possessive. Brutal.
And I had no idea how I was going to survive watching them take her.