AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No.”
“You might not want to do your duty to your people, but I have no choice,” I said tartly. “It’s madness out there. Our species are at each other’s throats.”
“How would you even know what’s going on out there?”
I frowned at him. He should have known the answer to that stupid question. “Freya speaks to me. Witches have been killing your wolves and skinning them, using their parts in rituals! If we don’t stop this, we’ll destroy each other.”
I shoved at his chest and he stumbled backwards, glaring at me with a murderous look in his eyes.
“You think I care what that false god says?” Skarde roared. “If we Spare Freya’s life, the war will still continue. I should just shove my blade between her ribs and be done with it.”
“You do that, and Jovi dies. We all do.”
He blinked. “What?”
“Jovi is your first priority, yes? If Freya dies, our magic goes with her. It’s an essential part of us as witches. We fade without it.”
“Lies,” he insisted and shook his head. “You only want to save your own skin.”
Fool. He was a pathetic fool, pining over a woman he couldn’t have. A self-destructive idiot that would take the world with him if he continued on this way.
“Say whatever you like about me, but it’s the truth. If she dies, we die. Jovi, Sandy, me. All of us. Don’t be an ass.”
“Who sent the Vargr?” he asked, still not looking at me.
“What does it matter?”
“It matters to me. Who sent it?”
“I thought it might have been Freya,” I admitted before shaking my head. “But she would never have sent such a horrible creature to find Jovi, no matter how envious she is.”
“Frigg then? Odin?”
I continued shaking my head. “It was not Frigg, and it was not Odin.”
“Loki?”
“If he found out that both the Aesir and the Vanir have an interest in Freya, it would make sense that he sent one of his abominations to Midgard.”
Skarde stretched his arm out until the light of the moon touched his hand. “It makes sense. Freya is not the only one who commands wolves, after all. It is the children of Loki that chase the moon and the sun. Skol and Hati.”
“Let us not forget Fenrir.”
He tossed his head back and laughed. “Yes, and Fenrir. May he rot in Helheim for eternity.”
“Amen,” I muttered.
“If Loki is responsible for sending the Vargr, what does it mean? What does he stand to gain by doing so?”
“Chaos? It is his way. Perhaps he has an interest in Jovi, as well.”
“It was Frigg who awakened me from Valhalla,” Skarde said quietly. “She sent me here to find Jovi and to convince my brother to return to the Aesir’s favor. How was I to know she had planned a new war?”
“You could have asked,” I replied sharply. “Is it not in your nature to question the gods and their plans? You are also children of Freya. Wolves were created from her power. Just because the blood of Odin twisted you into monsters, doesn’t mean you are not still her beasts.”
Skarde scraped his claws down the tree, shredding through the bark like it was wet paper. He stared at his hand as it sank deeper into the tree’s trunk. It was an unsettling reminder of just how dangerous he was. How powerful. He could shred me as easily as the tree.
“You fear me.”
