Weaving Fate - Nora Ash Page 0,92

a single sign of life on our journey through Niflheim so far, but I should still have kept my wits about me. What if something had attacked while I was knot-deep inside her? What if I had let someone hurt her?

Sick dread helped the last of my cock’s swelling to subside. I pulled from her with a grunt of sensation, pushing myself to standing before I refastened my pants. “We need to get back.”

“Sure. Not a problem. Just need my legs to start functioning again,” Annabel muttered. She pushed against the fallen tree, groaning with the effort.

I hesitated for a moment, the weight of her and Bjarni’s accusations coming back now that I was no longer buried inside of her. The agony of our frayed bond returned as a dull, now familiar throb in my chest.

She managed to get upright, a hiss of breath escaping her as she caught her own weight. She limped as she picked up and pulled on her trousers and made her way toward me, making up my mind.

“I have you,” I said, the innate gruffness in my voice softened some by my recent climax. I did not wait for her to respond, scooping her into my arms without looking at her face.

“Thanks,” she said. Her voice was still groggy, and when I began walking us back to our small camp, her head came in to rest against my chest. She did not speak a single word on the way back, but her weight in my arms was a warm, comfortable reminder of her presence. And of our most recent union.

I had never had many thoughts on what my mate would be like, should I ever choose one, but I had had a hazy idea of the family I would create with her: a warm, comforting unit with me as its head. I would protect them, provide for them… and in return, I would be bathed in their love and adoration, be cared for and know I would always have that safe base to call home.

Instead I shared a willful little human with three other alphas—instead of a family unit, I was a small piece of a puzzle. Instead of warmth and adoration, there was pain and confusion.

Still… I could not deny that when I was with her, inside of her, everything was bliss. Everything felt better, warmer, safer than I had ever imagined it could.

In those moments, I loved her.

Annabel was fast asleep when I walked into our small campsite. Bjarni looked up from the fire he had been staring at, eyebrows raised.

I tilted my head toward the tent before I headed in there. I laid Annabel on the furs and tucked her in, taking a moment to look at her relaxed features. She looked so young when she slept. Young and innocent.

It was hard to believe that this tiny human held the fate of the nine worlds in her hands. Her entire lifespan was barely more than a blink in comparison to my own, yet I could no longer deny it. I had felt her power run through me like a current. Felt Bjarni’s strength within her, bolstering my own.

In the end, it did not matter how I felt about it. She was my fate.

I left her to sleep, leaving the tent to rejoin Bjarni by the campfire. Loki was fast asleep on the other side, snoring quietly.

“I see you spared him the sock,” I said, giving the God of Mischief a bitter look before I reached for my abandoned bowl. The food in it was steaming—a kind gesture from Bjarni, I suspected.

Bjarni shrugged. “Not much point when he’s sleeping. I suspect he already said what he wanted to, anyway.”

I narrowed my eyes at the blond giant. “I suspect you are right.”

The corner of Bjarni’s mouth quirked up in a half-smile. “She didn’t fuck the rage fully out of you, then?”

“It takes more than a bit of sex to forget someone accusing your father of treason. I would have thought you were familiar with the concept,” I replied tartly.

Bjarni chuckled. “You could say that, yeah.” He sighed and brushed his hand through his beard, the mirth leaving his eyes as he glanced at the still-snoring Loki. “He was never the best of fathers. Pretty much left us to our mother to raise, stopped by with presents now and then. Had a lot of expectations of us. It didn’t stop me from loving him, y’know? Even now, knowing he’d abandon us without another thought just