Mastered by the Berserkers (Berserker Brides #8) - Lee Savino Page 0,16

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“Go to sleep, Juliet,” Jarl said. He sounded tired, too. “We will speak more of this in the morning.”

5

Juliet

I knelt on the flagstones before the altar. The stone bit my knees. I’d been kneeling for hours, but I’d kneel a hundred more. The church sanctuary was dark and stank of mold, but I’d always found comfort here. Before me on her pedestal, a statue of the Virgin Mother regarded me, a placid expression on the stone face. I’d often come to the sanctuary to hide from the cruel nuns and contemptuous friar. I look up at the statue and pretend I had a mother. She would be kind. She would care for me. She would never leave me as my own mother had. In my imagination, my mother’s face looked like the Virgin Mother’s, perfectly serene. Tonight, I imagined a touch of pity as I whispered my prayers.

Kyrieeleisonchristoseleison. Pleasepleaseplease—

A knock sounded on the heavy wooden door. The whole sanctuary shook. I crouched lower and prayed faster. But the knock sounded again, and cracks ran down the flagstones. Above my head, the sanctuary roof cracked, letting in the light. Stones fell and dust rained down.

The voices of warriors rose and fell beyond the door. They were coming. They could not be stopped.

Please, I begged the Virgin Mother, but she was silent. The building shook and the door came down. Heavy footsteps sounded, but I could not turn or run. I was frozen like the statue, staring at the Virgin Mother face.

Tears poured from her eyes. Her small stone hand, raised in blessing, cracked and fell. I screamed as the entire statue crumbled.

My eyes snapped open. I lay in a cloud formed from the softest furs, suffocating in the heat. I clawed at the heavy robe, and the fur shifted, fell away. I felt it rumble something in sleep. I pushed at the solid fur wall, then jerked my hand away.

There was a large wolf on the bed. White with flecks of tawny brown.

I twisted and met another slumbering shape of dark fur.

Not one wolf, but two. Sleeping heavily as if enchanted.

I sat up slowly, but they didn’t stir. We were in the large bed, in the new lodge Jarl and Fenrir had built.

In the hearth pit, the fire had died. Along the walls were stacks of firewood. And hung in the doorway was a dead deer. The warriors had spent the night working then, and gone on a hunt. No wonder they were tired.

Inch by inch, I left the blissful warmth and wriggled off the bed. Other than the odd twitching ear, the wolves didn’t stir.

I bit my lip. Slowly I tugged the robe Fenrir had given me, freeing it from under the white wolf’s paws. It was a heavy pelt. Not perfect, but it’d help fend off the cold.

This was my chance to escape. Maybe my last chance.

Outside the sky was slate grey. Snowflakes danced in the air, their fine white powder dusting the ground.

This was foolishness. I could not escape.

My bare toes curled, already stiff from the chilled ground. I would not last a journey in a snowstorm. Even the deer was already frozen, its blood congealed in a pool below its head.

I stared out at the frigid landscape, wishing I had wings to fly away.

Warmth hit my back a second before a tattooed arm curled around my chest. Jarl pulled me against him. His scent surrounded me—smoke and pine and another faint essence, like the smell of the air after a storm. Magic. The strange smell pricked my nose, fading as Jarl nuzzled the back of my neck with his bearded face.

“Come back to bed,” he murmured against my skin.

I was panting as if I’d run up a mountain. “I cannot.”

“You must. You are cold.”

“No,” I protested, but he was already drawing me backward. Somehow, he ended up before me and I turned my face away. Other than his dark tattoos and a piece of leather slung around his hips, he was naked. The cold nor my embarrassment didn’t seem to bother him. He set me on the bed and knelt to examine my feet.

“Woman, you have no boots.” His thumbs brushed the dirt and ash from the balls of my feet. My toes scrunched, first with the cold, then with pleasure as he massaged the tension out of me.

A strange wind lifted my hair, filling the lodge with the scent of rain. Then Fenrir was at my back, pulling me further onto the bed and into his