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I stride with the Valkyrie toward the Forsaken's SUV, climbing through the door he tried to push her through just a few short minutes ago. She doesn't stir or make a sound. Malachi jogs around to the passenger side before climbing in, leaving Adriel to drive.
He slams the door behind him, meeting my gaze in the rearview mirror. He doesn't say anything. For several long moments, no one speaks.
And then Malachi mutters a curse. "Since neither of you want to say it, I will. The Forsaken walk the earth again."
"Ja. And a Valkyrie soul-bound a Fae," Adriel adds softly.
My gaze falls to the woman sleeping in my arms, my heart thudding against my breastbone hard enough that I feel it for the first time in millennia.
"Ja," I whisper. "A Valkyrie soul-bound a Fae."
Chapter Two
Rissa
"Valkyrie.Elskan-ljós."
Something warm drifts down the side of my face, pulling me toward the surface. Except I'm more comfortable than I've ever been in my life, and I don't want to rejoin the land of the living. Not yet. I was having good dreams.
Those don't come often.
Usually, I dream of terrible things that leave me gasping for breath and shivering in the dark. Wars and death and a plague of evil falling over the land. I've had the same dreams since I was a little girl. They used to terrify me. Now, I just wish they'd stop.
"Wake up,elskan-ljós."
I groan, burying my face in my pillow. A rich, masculine scent tickles my nose. It's all over my pillow, as if someone other than me has been sleeping in my bed. Except there hasn't been anyone. There never has been.
At twenty-one, I've never even been kissed. Tragic, I know. But when you grow up the way I did, there are more important things than dating, boys, and losing the V-Card. You know, things like stability, shelter, and survival.
"Elskan-ljós."
Strands of hair shift away from my face as a large, rough hand drifts gently down my cheek.
My eyes pop open on a gasp, my heart slamming against my ribcage as reality rips the last, lingering vestiges of sleep away. I sit upright in the bed, expecting to find myself alone and dreaming in my tiny little room in my tiny apartment in Seattle.
I'm not. There's nothing familiar in the room around me. I've never seen the hand-hewn cedar dresser, nor the thick fur pelts stretched across the gleaming wooden floor. The giant bed beneath me isn't mine. And the massive, fiercely beautiful man standing over me, his hand still raised as if to touch me again, definitely didn't pop out of my miniscule closet.
I scurry away from him across the bed, putting as much distance between us as I can. "Don't touch me," I gasp, brandishing a pillow like a weapon.
Great.I'm sure he's very intimidated by my choice of weaponry. If I ask nicely, maybe he'll even lay still so I can smother him to death with it.
"Easy, Valkyrie. I won't harm you." His voice is a wet dream, deep and deliciously dark. A thread of command compels me to listen and trust him. To believe he means what he says.
But I trust no one. Not anymore. That ship sank in the Mariana Trench a decade ago, right about the time I learned that the worst pain comes most often from those closest to you.
"Don't come any closer."
His brows furrow over arresting green eyes, his expression turning uncertain. "You don't remember me."
Remember him? I've never even seen him before no—
A flicker of memory floats up from the dark recesses of my mind, halting the denial in its tracks. The memory is incomplete, entire sections of it missing. But enough floats free for me to be certain of two things.
One, I have seen this man before. And two, he's already lied to me.
"You kidnapped me from the bar."
"Kidnapped?" His lips purse as if the word tastes sour upon them. "Is that what you believe, Valkyrie?"
