Perfekt Control (The Ære Saga Book 2)
Read Perfekt Control (The Ære Saga Book 2) Online
Authors: S.T. Bende
Tags: #urban fantasy, #coming of age, #paranormal romance, #fantasy, #young adult teen, #asgard odin thor superhero
The Ære Saga: Book Two
by
The Ære Saga
Perfekt Control
Copyright © 2015, S.T. Bende
Edited by: Lauren McKellar
Cover Art by: Cora Graphics
All rights reserved. Except as permitted
under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication
may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by
any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the
prior written permission of the author.
This book or any portion thereof may not be
reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any
information storage system without the express written permission
of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book
review.
First publication: 2016, S.T. Bende
This book is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents either are products of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely
coincidental.
Perfekt Control
“The perfect blend of action, mythology, and
romance that will have you reading late into the night. Perfekt
Control is simply unputdownable.”
-Karen Lynch, USA TODAY Bestselling Author of
the
Relentless
trilogy
“Perfekt Control is humor, fun, edge of your
seat action, and romance all rolled up into one. Doesn't get much
better than that.”
-Quinn Loftis, USA TODAY Bestselling Author
of
The Grey Wolves Series
Henrik’s
Swedish Pancake Recipe
Rule the realms.
Brynn Aksel is a valkyrie—a battle goddess
tasked with protecting both the God of War and the future of
Asgard. She fends off giants and dark elves with an iron fist, a
glossy smile, and no less than
perfekt
control. She’s
focused one hundred percent on rising through the valkyrie ranks,
and not at all on her lifelong crush on Henrik Andersson—the one
guy in all the realms who could be her undoing.
Henrik serves as War’s other bodyguard, and
he’s too focused on protecting their shared charge to realize that
Brynn’s a girl. When an unprecedented surge of darkness abducts the
Goddess of Love, Brynn’s already-steely focus is singularly
directed on her new assignment—accompany Henrik to recover the
realms’ source of light before the cosmos descends into chaos.
While battling demons, dragons, and the
not-quite dead, it becomes clear that immortality does not equal
invincibility. And when Hel herself puts a hit on Brynn, the
valkyrie has to decide if staying in control is worth losing
everything for… or if it’s time to rule the realms.
To my
perfekt
gentlemen. I thank God
for you.
An eternity of gratitude to my handsome
husband, for being my absolutely
perfekt
teammate.
Jeg
elsker deg.
Tusen takk
to our biggest little
blessings, whose brilliant hearts illuminate what truly matters
each and every day. We thank God for you.
Takk
to my editor Lauren McKellar,
for keeping the
Ære
crew on the straight and narrow, and for
keeping me laughing, and to my proofreader Sara Meadows.
Mange takk
to my authorial
Asgardians, Stacey Nash and Kristie Cook, for your friendship, and
for always making my stories so very much richer. To my real-life
Unifiers—Heather Brandt and Lorna Richmond,
takk
for
captaining our teams and for taking on
all the things
so I
can spend more time with our Norse crew. I’m so grateful you share
your gifts with me.
Thank you to my RagnaRockstars and our
Valkyrie Team for your tireless enthusiasm and support. Gunnar may
be funner, but y’all give him a run for his money.
Tusen
takk
to every single reader who’s taken a chance on these
stories. YOU are the reason I get to keep on dreaming across the
realms, and I am so very grateful for the privilege. Thank you for
choosing to share your reading time with me.
And to MorMorMa, for sharing your pancake
recipe and your world with me.
Tusen takk
, from the bottom
of my heart.
“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none; be
able for thine enemy rather in power than use, and keep thy friend
under thy own life’s key.”
-Countess of Rousillon,
All’s Well That
Ends Well
ONE
“
STUFF IT, BRYNN,” TYR
muttered as he
pulled a smoking pan from the oven. The God of War stood in our
open kitchen. His girlfriend’s frilly pink apron popped against his
standard uniform of jeans and a Henley. He glared at me as he
dumped the blackened contents of the pan into the sink, where it
blended with a sea of similarly situated peers. Our kitchen had
morphed into a veritable cake graveyard.
“I didn’t say anything.” I held up my
hands.
“Didn’t have to.” Tyr threw the empty cake
pans at the stovetop, where they clattered loudly in protest. “Your
obnoxious little laugh speaks volumes.”
I forced my face into a neutral position and
tilted my head at the lacy fabric tied around Tyr’s waist. “Your
cooking attire took me by surprise. That’s all.”
Tyr pulled the oven mitts from his hands and
threw them at me. Hard. My fingertips stung as I plucked them from
the air.
“Was that really necessary?” I asked.
“Was cackling like a caffeinated hyena
necessary?” Tyr countered with an eyebrow raise.
Harrumph
.
“The apron’s Mia’s. I thought if I wore it
while I cooked, maybe this time I wouldn’t burn her
förbaskat
birthday cake.”
I waited in silence while Tyr scrubbed the
big silver bowl clean, pulled a box of cake mix out of the
cupboard, and turned to me. With his narrowed eyes and tight-lipped
frown, he was the picture of resignation. “Apparently, this apron’s
not the reason my girlfriend’s such a great cook.”
“No, it’s not.” I bounded across the kitchen
to rescue the cake box from Tyr’s hand. He was squeezing it so
hard, I thought it might need saving. “Fred’s going to make the
packet explode,” I pointed out.
Tyr clung tighter to the box with his
prosthetic right arm. Mia, Henrik and I had developed it under the
guise of an Engineering project, and it had saved his life when the
homicidal wolf Fenrir bit his original arm clean off. Now, Fred
served proudly as Tyr’s right forearm, attached by biomechanical
medicine, Asgardian magic, and just a touch of fairy dust.
When poor Mia discovered her freshman lab
project was actually the saving grace for an Asgardian deity, she
thought we’d led her straight to the psych ward. But crazy was the
name of the game when you were tasked with protecting the God of
War.
Apparently, diplomacy was the name of the
game when you were trying to help him bake.
“Okay, fine. Kill the poor mix.” My tone
softened when Tyr’s shoulders drooped. “Look, Mia’s a great cook
because she loves it. She likes taking care of us. She especially
likes taking care of
you
. And the last thing she’d want on
her birthday is for you to beat yourself up over something as silly
as a birthday cake. You can always order one from the bakery. Want
me to call them?”
“No, Brynn. I’m making my girlfriend a
förbaskat
cake. If you’re not going to help, then get out of
my kitchen.”
“I share kitchen custody, you know.” I
elbowed past him and opened the refrigerator. I pulled out the
carton of eggs and set them on the counter, then closed the door
behind me. “When Mia started spending weekends here, her bodyguard
did, too. Remember?”
When Asgard’s resident war god fell for
Redwood State University Engineering undergrad Mia Ahlström, I’d
been reassigned from my valkyrie post to protect the sweetest
mortal this side of Midgard. And when the wolf Fenrir made a hit on
Tyr’s life, Mia and her newly christened bodyguard started spending
a lot more time at War’s impeccably decorated cabin in Arcata,
California. Instead of collecting fallen soldiers for Odin and
Freya as I’d done as a battle valkyrie, these days I attended
Engineering classes, workouts, and study sessions with my charge. I
also got to weekend with the uber-uptight war god, and the hottest
bodyguard in the history of the realms, Henrik Andersson.
Immortal life was looking good.
“
Ja
, you stay here sometimes
.
”
Tyr ran his hands through his dark blond hair. The normally tousled
strands now looked downright disheveled. “But you’re useless in the
kitchen. I need someone who can fix this. Where’s
my
bodyguard?”
As if he’d heard Tyr’s summons, the front
door slammed, and Henrik’s footsteps sounded in the hall. A moment
later, the tall frame of the guy I’d had the hots for since
kindergarten filled the kitchen doorway. I bounced on my toes—the
movement usually distracted me from the unavoidable stomach
flutters I got whenever I looked at Henrik’s wavy hair, easy smile,
and thick, muscled arms. But there was no avoiding the twinkle in
his grey-blue eyes as he looked around the kitchen.
He grinned at the brooding war god stewing
over the stove. “Having trouble, mate?”
Tyr let out a growl that echoed across the
cavernous kitchen.
“He’s trying to make a birthday cake for
Mia.” I pointed to the sink, now overflowing with blackened
culinary rejects. “But it’s not going so well.”
“Well, did you offer to help him?” Henrik
asked.
“We all know Brynn can’t cook,” Tyr
retorted.
“I can too cook!” I threw a nearby dishtowel
at Tyr. He plucked it out of the air before it could smack him in
his surly face.
“She can cook,” Henrik agreed. He walked
around the big island in the center of the room and slung an easy
arm around my shoulders. An army of angsty butterflies took flight
somewhere beneath abs two and three. If I hadn’t had
my whole
entire life
to get used to hiding my emotions, I probably would
have giggled.