Viking Warrior Rebel (11 page)

Punish
, whispered her berserker, startling Astrid so badly she stumbled back.

Ulf's nostrils flared, a sign his berserker was awake and alert. “She's surfaced. Just like I knew she would.” Triumph laced his voice.

Astrid shook herself and raised her sword in front of her, grip steady and feet far enough apart to give her balance but close enough for fast footwork. “My inner warrior is awake and alert, alright.” And the beast was absolutely right. Ulf needed to be punished. He'd manipulated her enough for one fight. Any other time, his verbal challenge would have made her ditch the sword, but not this time. This time, he'd get to know her training sword really well. Especially what it felt like to be hit with it repeatedly.

She feinted left and then sideswiped from the right instead. Hitting his waist with the sharp edge of her sword, she made sure she put extra strength into the cut as she pulled the blade toward her. It would burn his skin even if it didn't draw blood.

Ulf groaned and gripped his side. She quickly struck at his knuckles with the edge of her sword. Although he yelped, the gloves protected his hand and he was quickly back in his fighting stance.

Astrid grinned. “You're such a gentleman. Thank you for allowing a weak girlie like me to keep her weapon. I do enjoy using it. Hopefully I won't break a nail as I kick your ass.”

“Shut up,” he forced out through clenched jaws.

She cocked her head. “You ready for another beating, courtesy of me and my berserker?”

Ulf straightened. “Bring it.”

She raised her sword and lunged as if she'd execute a downward swing. When he raised his fists to block, she adjusted her balance to her back foot, brought back her sword, and instead hook kicked his chin. Ulf fell and landed on his back. Before he could jump back up, she pressed the tip of her blade into his Adam's apple. “Are we done yet?” she asked.

His blue eyes blazed with so much anger it startled her. “Not yet,” he said, gripping her blade with gloved hands. He pushed it sideways away from her, and before she could let go of the hilt, the motion had her off balance. Ulf swiped out with his leg and toppled her.

She landed on her back, the air knocked out of her lungs. As she struggled for breath, Ulf quickly twisted his body so he straddled her hips. He placed his hands on her biceps, pushing them back into the mat and trapping her with his body weight.

Wrong
, the berserker yelled, and Astrid had to close her eyes to shut out the noise in her head. She forced her body to relax.

“I do like sparring with you, Astrid,” Ulf said.

She opened her eyes to find him grinning down at her. She so wanted to wipe that grin off his face. She widened her eyes. “Are we done, then?”

He frowned as if he didn't understand the question, and in his confusion, he eased his grip on her arms.

Astrid bucked her hips, and as he slid forward, she raised her knees and dug her heels into the mat. Using her new leverage, she quickly twisted her body and pressed with her shoulder to throw Ulf off her.

He landed on his side and twisted to raise himself on all fours.

Already on her feet, Astrid kicked him in the stomach as if she were hitting a soccer penalty kick.

Ulf went down again with a loud groan. She pushed on his shoulder with her foot until he was lying on his back, panting with pain. Putting her foot back on the mat, she crouched down beside him and pocked his chest with one gloved finger. “I like sparring with you too, but we're definitely done now.”

He glared at her, shaking his head.

She laughed at his obstinacy, but the sound turned into a curse as Ulf grabbed the back of her neck. She tried to twist free, but he'd startled her and his grip was strong.

Before she could escape, he pulled her face down and pressed his lips to hers. She opened her mouth to protest, and he deepened the kiss. His tongue delved deep inside her mouth, and she pushed against his shoulders, sputtering in outrage.

He quickly released her, a self-satisfied grin on his face. “Now, we're done.”

She almost couldn't hear the words because of the berserker screaming in her head.

No! Wrong!
It repeated over and over again. It clawed at the mental barriers Astrid had quickly raised to keep it from completely taking over her body. She had to exude great willpower to control the inner warrior and calm it enough that she could think clearly again.

Once the berserker stopped screaming, Astrid did what any self-respecting Valkyrie would do. She punched Ulf in the nose and exited the training facility.

Astrid took a deep breath before knocking on the king's office door. She'd taken a quick shower and changed her clothes after her fight with Ulf, but nerves had sweat beading on her skin again.

“Come,” rumbled from inside the office. She grabbed the door handle, squared her shoulders, and entered. This meeting would be hard. She knew she deserved to get punished. But the unknown had her heart beating faster and made her hands clammy.

Leif sat behind his desk, leaning back in the chair with one boot resting on top of the other knee. His six-foot-four body appeared relaxed, but the intense gaze in his ice-blue eyes and his serious face showed he was anything but.

If this was any other meeting, Astrid would have lowered her head in a short bow before taking one of the chairs in front of the desk. But she was in deep shit here. She'd disrespected her king, her queen, and her fellow warriors. There was much atonement to be done. Much guilt to deal with.

She walked around the desk and kneeled in front of her king, touching her forehead to the knuckles of his hand resting on the armrest closest to her. “
Min kung
, I am sorry,” she said.

The hand under her forehead jerked as if startled, and she felt Leif's other hand briefly touching the back of her head. “Stand,” he said. “Go sit.”

She rose but kept her head bowed as she made her way to one of the visitor chairs and sat down. Despair welled in her chest as she anticipated her punishment. Would Leif exile her from the fortress? She'd been a lone soldier in the human realm for a hundred years. Freya and Odin had used her as a scout to look for places where Loki's creatures popped up. When they did, the god and goddess would send a band of warriors to deal with them. Sometimes Astrid would join the warriors, but most often she'd move on to continue her lone mission. And then Freya had sent her to join these Vikings in the early nineteen hundreds.

She hadn't realized how much she needed the fellowship of the others until this very moment, when she might lose not only their camaraderie but, worse, their respect. She swallowed the lump in her throat and raised her head. There were other Viking kings with permanent tribes in the human world, two others in North America. Maybe she could join one of them. It wouldn't be the same though. This tribe had become her family.

She'd expected Leif to look at her with anger or disappointment, maybe even both. Instead, he studied her as if she was a problem he couldn't figure out. He stroked the stubble on his chin. “Let's talk about what happened in Denver.”

His simple request stalled Astrid's brain for a moment. So much had happened in Denver. She didn't know where to begin. She stared wide-eyed at the king.

Leif dropped his leg on the floor with a thud and rested his elbows on the desk. “Just start from the beginning. You got to the clinic…and then what?”

She cleared her throat. “Scott had checked himself out, and because of patient confidentially, Dr. Rosen wouldn't tell me how Scott left the clinic or where he went.”

Leif frowned. “Why in the Allfather's name would Scott not wait for you? He knew someone was coming to get him.”

“He said he saw a wolverine scouting the clinic and thought he was hallucinating. He wanted to spare Naya the pain of watching her brother go crazy.”

“That would have been painful for her, but not knowing why her brother disappeared would have been even more painful.” He scratched his chin again. “Do I need to worry about Scott's mental state?”

Astrid shrugged. “He seemed fine during our drive back here. He slept a lot, but when we talked, I didn't notice anything amiss.”

“Good.” Leif nodded. “Now tell me why you didn't report Scott's disappearance as soon as you found out.”

Astrid folded her hands in her lap and studied the interlaced fingers. “My pride wouldn't let me. The queen gave me a chance to redeem myself by bringing her brother back. I couldn't bear hearing the disappointment in her voice when I told her I screwed up. And I couldn't face my fellow warriors after messing up another mission. They'd never trust me in battle again.”

“Astrid,” the king barked, and she looked up startled. “How did you use your normally smart—yet stubborn—mind to come to the conclusion that Scott checking himself out was your fault?”

She opened her mouth to answer, but no sound came out, so she closed it again. What Leif asked sounded so reasonable now, but back in Denver, it had made perfect sense to go looking for Scott on her own. She'd been so confused, so tired. And her berserker had been so out of control. “I decided to see if I could find him before I reported in.” She leaned forward slightly. “And I did find him.”

The king waved his hand as if to dismiss her claim. “You found him two days later and decided on some harebrained rescue scheme.” His gaze pierced into her eyes. “Without backup.”

“I did have backup,” Astrid mumbled, lowering her gaze back to her lap.

“Who?”

“Luke Holden.”

“Fucking Holden again.” The king cursed some more under his breath. “Tell me everything that happened,” he demanded, “starting from when you left the clinic, and include all the details about how Holden got involved.”

Astrid recited how she'd ended up at the train station and described her fight with the wolverines.

“Hold up,” the king interrupted. “What do you mean, they have accelerated healing and fight like acrobats?”

Astrid thought for a minute. The wolverines the warriors had encountered on their patrols were worthy adversaries but possible to defeat. In the parking garage in Denver, she'd been genuinely scared. The reason she was still alive was because the wolverines had wanted her that way. “It's like they've been enhanced somehow.”

The king cursed again. “Irja is so close to developing an antidote to their poison, but now they've become fucking circus artists.” Leif and Naya had both been poisoned by the wolverines using a chemically altered version of wolfsbane. Although it took a few days, their bodies had purged the poison. “How exactly are they different?” Leif asked.

Astrid had to think again. The fight in the train-station parking garage had become a blur after she was stabbed in the thigh. And she did not plan on telling Leif how close she'd been to not making it back at all. Thanks to Holden—

Mine
, the berserker suddenly whispered in her head.

Astrid took in a deep breath and gripped the armrests of her chair to center herself. Damn her horny internal beast.

She thought she'd calmed the bitch down after she'd gone haywire when Ulf kissed them.

And now she was using female pronouns thanks to Ulf. Damn him too.

Astrid closed her eyes and forced a mental block between herself and the berserker. She had to get it together. She couldn't freak out in front of the king.

“Astrid,” Leif said, concern deepening his tone.

“I'm fine,” she said and opened her eyes.

“I don't think you are.” The king's nostrils flared. “The presence of your berserker is so strong it's almost like having another person in the room with us.”

Astrid's eyes widened. “What does that mean?”

“I don't know.” Leif shook his head. “Your inner warrior has always been close to the surface and quick to enter battle fever. But I can't tell if it's because you've been in the human realm longer than most of us, or just part of your personality.” He smiled. “You're quick to jump into confrontations, whether your berserker has surfaced or not.”

Astrid swallowed the retort on the tip of her tongue. She knew she had a quick temper, but it wasn't a product of her berserker or how long she'd wandered with humans. She'd been born with a short fuse and a quick tongue. She'd basically been in constant trouble from the time she learned to talk. An uppity thrall, especially a female thrall, was not tolerated by most owners. “But now it's different?” Cold trickled down her spine. Should she tell the king her inner warrior sometimes spoke to her? What had changed her berserker's behavior? Had the wolverines slipped her something without her noticing? Had Holden?

“Yes. Naya's berserker's presence is as strong, but this feels different.”

“How?”

“Well, for one, you're not my
själsfrände
.” The king smiled again, but then his face became drawn, tired. “Let's get back to the wolverines. If they're back and stronger than before, we need to know what we're up against.”

Astrid nodded, but his words about his
själsfrände
, his soul mate, stayed with her. She couldn't help envying the connection that the king and queen shared. “Sure,” she said and took a quick peek at Leif's left hand. Although he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, the tip of his snake tattoo could be seen under the cuff. Naya had a completed serpent tattoo as well, although hers were more of an intricate Celtic knot-like design than traced out runes, like the king's and like the snake heads of his warriors. Naya had received her tattoo when Freya claimed her as a Valkyrie.

At least she didn't have to worry about having to complete a soul-mate bond. If she and Holden were destined to be together, the serpent tail would have showed up the first time they hooked up.

Freya, Mother of Valkyries. Why was she obsessed about Holden now? Astrid shook herself and concentrated on the conversation. “I was injured and couldn't concentrate as well as I would have liked, but the wolverines' quick reflexes were mainly what threw me. These creatures reacted and anticipated my moves much quicker than the ones we fought ten months ago. They moved out of the way too quickly for me to do any real damage.”

She and Holden would never be anything more than casual. She didn't do long-term with regular humans. Henri had cured her of that. The berserker stirred again, but Astrid clamped down on her mental shields and forced it back to sleep. Sweat beaded on her forehead from the effort.

Leif gave her a curious look but didn't say anything about her odd behavior. “Go on with the report. What happened after the fight?”

Astrid continued her story, describing how Holden had found her and patched her up before offering to help find Scott. She glossed over the night in the gingerbread house, but she had to look away during that part or she'd have blushed redder than the apple clenched between the jaws of a roasted Yule pig.

The king grunted a few times but kept mostly quiet until she'd finished. “Where are the phones you found?” he asked.

“Ulf is investigating them.” She had to look away again. This time because of anger bubbling up inside her. Why had Ulf kissed her? To show that as a woman, she would always be a sexual object first and a warrior second? She'd punch him harder when she saw him next.

The door flew open, and Naya strode into the room. She gave the king a quick kiss and then perched on the arm of his chair so she too faced Astrid.

The king's face lit up, and he grabbed Naya's hand. The tiredness disappeared from his face, and his eyes filled with love as his gaze caressed her face. That click and hum Astrid always felt when the royal couple was together reverberated through her chest. It was as if the two completed a network and automatically pulled every warrior in their vicinity into that web through their berserkers.

Naya smiled briefly at Leif, the same powerful love mirrored in her own eyes. Then she turned to Astrid, and her gaze hardened. “Scott tells me Luke Holden helped rescue him,” she said in a brisk, businesslike tone.

“Yes.” Astrid nodded. A stab of irritation shot through her. Why was the queen so interested in Holden? Had there been something between the two of them, even though Holden denied it? “He used his resources to track down Scott and offered to be my backup during the rescue.” Her tone came out snippy, and Naya leaned back. Her eyebrows rose toward her hairline.

“Wow. Touchy much?” A small smile played at the corners of Naya's mouth.

Freya's meadow. She'd just insulted her queen. “I'm so sorry,
min drottning
.” Astrid bowed her head. “I meant no disrespect.” Shit. She was here to grovel, not to make the situation worse.

“None taken.” Naya waved her hand in the air. “But why was Holden in Denver?”

“He had some business deal going on.”

Leif snorted. “Likely story. I never trusted that guy.”

“That's because you're both alpha males.” Naya dismissed the king's words with another hand wave. “You don't trust anyone with as much testosterone overload as you. Your brain short-circuits and all you can think of is challenging the other man.” Astrid had to look down again, this time to hide a grin. She glanced up through her lowered lashes. The king frowned at his queen, but all Naya did was blow her fiancé a kiss. “Look, Holden helped save my brother. We owe him.”

Leif grumbled some more. “What do you want me to do? Send him flowers?”

“I want to invite him to the wedding.” Naya dropped her verbal bomb while staring intently at Leif.

“Not possible,” the king barked. “Put that idea out of your head right now.”

Naya turned to Astrid as if she hadn't heard her fiancé's command. “And I want Astrid to invite him for me.”

“Not going to happen,” Astrid and Leif said in unison.

Naya just smiled serenely. “He helped save my brother. I want him at the wedding. Plus, Scott wants Holden there. It will make him feel better if there's another familiar face.”

Astrid shook her head. “This is not a good idea.” She was one of the bridesmaids and on display throughout the ceremony and reception. It would be impossible to avoid Holden.

“Listen to her,
älskling
,” Leif said. “Having humans at the wedding is not a good idea.”

Naya whirled around to look at her fiancé. “I'm human.”