I tried my best to do as he instructed, but I didn’t understand what he meant by closer. As a result, the golden light within me rose in a sharp wave, the careful threads Modi had pulled from it washed away in an instant.
“Odin’s beard!” Impatience turned to frustration. “Like this!”
The heat around me intensified, and suddenly red light wrapped around the gold and I felt him.
I’d felt him before too—his presence; his impatience; his strength as he'd guided me; but not like this. This was… intimate. This was his essence inside of me, his innermost core opened for me.
Curious, I followed the flow of red magic back to its source, and there he was. Warmth glowed against me as bright as the sun and as gentle as the softest caress. It radiated all around me, swept me up, and hugged me close in the most tender of embraces. And finally, I understood.
It was him. Modi’s very spirit.
“What in Hel’s name are you doing?” The not-a-voice echoed with anger, and something shoved at me, pushing me away from the light and back into myself.
It was such a shock my eyes snapped open, taking me back to the alley in Oslo between the alphas, one of whom was breathing rapidly, his chest heaving as if he’d just come off a battlefield.
“W-What was that?” I croaked, staring wide-eyed at Modi’s furious face. “Was that… Did I see… you?”
“Don’t ever do that again!” he snarled, teeth bared and eyes wild. “Ever!”
“What happened?” Bjarni’s voice was calm, but he placed a warning hand on Modi’s shoulder, bracing him.
If Modi registered his enemy’s touch, he didn’t show it. He only stared down at me, and in the depths of his blue eyes I saw the pure shock he was hiding behind his anger. He hadn’t known that could happen. If he had, I was absolutely certain he’d have never bared his innermost self, least of all to me.
“Nothing,” I said without taking my eyes off Modi, the overbearing alpha with a core as soft and gentle as a summer breeze. “I had a little... hiccup. Let’s try again. For Magni.”
He didn’t move for a long breath. But then he wrapped his hand back around my neck, and I closed my eyes just as his magic barreled through my veins.
I gritted my teeth as he forced my power to obey his command, no longer showing me what to do. It was still unbearably intimate, his presence inside of me, his aggression forcing my innermost to submit, but I didn’t fight him. I’d glimpsed something that, should the world know what I’d seen, he’d be done for. There was no room for softness in Asgard, least of all for the thunder god’s son. And right now, he had to assert his dominance over me to ensure I knew my place.
Had he been any other alpha, he’d have pushed me to my knees and fucked me until I begged for mercy, so a little magical ravaging? I’d take it, and be grateful too.
It was as if he sensed my submission, because at my lack of fight his presence in me became less painful. The red light bending my golden magic exerted less pressure, its roughness easing with every passing breath.
By the end he eased out of me almost gently, the sensation as his presence withdrew almost one of loss.
He released the back of my neck and I opened my eyes once more.
Three blue passports and a credit card lay in my hands where the junk food wrappers had been before.
“You okay, sweetie?” Bjarni rumbled behind me, the press of his strong body comforting as he supported my weight. Only then did I feel my lightheadedness and weakened knees. “You’re shaking.”
“Her magic is low,” Modi answered for me, drawing my attention back to his face. “I won’t deny she is powerful, but she burns out fast. Too fast.”
“Luckily we know how to fix that,” Bjarni said, unconcerned with the tension in the air between me and Modi. He brushed his lips against the top of my head, and once again I thought how easy my life could have been if he’d been the only alpha woven with my own life thread.
Staring up at Modi, I wondered what it would be like if he truly was my fifth like Magni seemed to take for granted.
There was gentleness in both Saga and Magni, that much I knew from the tender connection we shared, but I also understood that it was reserved for me. To the rest of the world they were your typical alphas—rough, domineering, and ruthless.
Modi… Modi was different. The anger still flickering in his blue eyes as he glared down at me ran deep, and it wasn’t grounded in run-of-the-mill sexism as I’d first assumed. What kind of damage had been done to him before he built his shield of arrogance and fury around that soft core?
I pressed in closer against Bjarni, closing my eyes to steady my mind as much as my weakened body. For now, it didn’t matter—only Saga and Magni’s lives did.
“Let’s get moving,” I said, straightening with a determined breath. “We’ve got to get some appropriate clothes and then get on that plane.”
Twelve
Modi
Human garments had changed a lot since I last visited Earth.
I hadn’t noticed how the humans had stared at us when we entered the large settlement of Oslo; my focus had been on shielding the omega from the harsh weather and not getting run over by the metal carriages that seemed to be everywhere.
It was only when we entered an establishment carrying articles of clothing and the female shopkeeper stared open-mouthed at the three of us that I begrudgingly had to agree with Annabel’s point. We needed new garments in order to blend in.
I glanced at my brother’s mate out the corner of my eye and scowled at the way my gut clenched. I could still feel the shiver of sensation in the very core of my magic from where she’d touched me in her uninvited explorations. She’d violated my most inner self, watched me laid completely bare, and the knowledge that she might have seen all my secrets, all my shameful weaknesses, filled me with rage. I didn’t know how much she’d observed, how much she’d understood, but that look in her eyes after…
A shiver traveled up my spine, and I gritted my teeth against the gentlest brush of pleasure in it.
No. Nothing about it had felt good!
Not even after, when she submitted so beautifully to my fury it had my dick throbbing as I forced her magic to bend for my will.
“Hi there!” Annabel’s chirpy voice drew my attention from my once-again rising cock as she approached the girl behind the counter.
“Sorry for the crazy outfits—we were doing some Viking LARPing at a meet outside of town, and someone apparently thought it was funny to steal our clothes. Long story short, do you have anything that can fit those two?” She indicated me and Bjarni with a jut of her chin.
The shopkeeper smiled, a friendly expression crossing her features. “Americans?” she said, slipping into English with very little hesitation. “Yes, we have a good selection of alpha clothes, and something for you too. I’m sorry someone stole from you. That’s not how we usually like to treat visitors.”
“I’m sure it’s just someone taking a prank a bit too far,” Annabel said with a wave of her hand as she made her way to the racks of garments. “But with the weather as it is, it’d be nice not to miss our plane. Who knows when they’re shutting down the airports? They haven’t yet, right? We’ve been without Wi-Fi for a few days.”