“Konungr, are you ready?” one of the men calls out. I pull Liv a bit closer, then take a step back from her.
“Stay here until Gunnar or Hagen come to fetch you. Go with no one else, do you understand me?” I ask her.
She nods, pressing her lips together as her own gaze looks around wildly.
“Aaric?” she calls out after I’ve started to walk away from her.
I stop, turning to look at her from over my shoulder. Her eyes focus on mine and she nods her head once before she lifts it slightly and looks at me from over the top of her nose.
“Be careful, my husband,” she says, proud, strong, and attempting to hide her fear. She feels it too, deep within her, she feels the wariness of this place.
Jerking my chin up, I don’t verbally answer her. There are too many men around for that, instead, I turn and walk away from her.
Exiting the ship, I wade through the water until I’m on the beachy land. It isn’t sand as I expect, instead it’s thick mud. Frowning, I look over to Fiske’s ship. He is marching my way, trudging through the mud with a smile on his face.
“Fiske? What is this place? I have never encountered it before on my journeys.”
His smile widens. “Isolda told me how to get here, she told me of the great riches that await us here to take home to fill our people’s homes, our lands.”
My heart slams against my chest. This is a trap. This is nothing but a trap. Turning toward the Strïth, I open my mouth to call out to tell them to retreat.
A voice cackles somewhere in the distance.
Before I can say a word, everything goes dark.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
LIV
I let out a scream. It’s blood-curdling and I can’t control myself. I watch as Aaric falls down to the ground. Fiske stands above him and that cunt Isolda is just a step behind him. Something isn’t right, it’s really, really wrong.
Isolda turns toward me, her eyes glow in an almost red color. “Oh, fuck,” I snap.
I stand frozen solid. I can’t move, I can’t even breathe. I just stare at this woman’s eyes. Her lips curve up into a slow, evil smile. Fiske turns to look at me, his eyes turn bright red and they glow. They fucking glow.
Hagen wraps his hand around my waist and without even a warning, he roughly pulls me to the bottom of the boat. He lifts his head, his body lying over mine as he shouts out something. Then, as if everything happens in slow motion, there is a dark cloud that appears above us.
Looking around Hagen, I gasp at the sight above me. It’s a motherfucking dragon.
A.
Dragon.
I scream again, this time, Hagen covers my mouth, probably because of the threat to his own hearing or loss of hearing that is. I continue to scream, his hand muffling the sound. Pushing him off of me, I rise to my knees and watch as the dragon lands in front of Aaric’s limp body.
He leans forward. Fiske takes a couple of steps backward, but Isolda stands firm in front of the dragon. She lifts her hands. At the same time, the dragon tilts his head back, he lets out a sound that I’ve never heard before.
It sounds like a roar mixed with a high pitch screech, then without warning, he lowers his head. With his mouth still open, fire comes from his throat, straight toward Isolda. She screams, but the sound dies quickly as her entire body is engulfed in flames.
I open my mouth to scream, but a hand covers me. Looking behind me, I see it’s Gunnar this time. He shakes his head once as if to silence me. I nod my head but don’t pull his hand away from my mouth. Honestly, I don’t know when I’m going to erupt in screams again at this point.
Fiske grows angry, he throws his head back and his own roar erupts from this throat. It doesn’t sound human, not in the slightest. It doesn’t sound anything like his voice.
“Draugr,” Gunnar whispers, as if I know what that shit is supposed to mean.
We’re silent as we watch. Fiske stares down the dragon and I hold my breath. The dragon jerks his long snout, then when I think that he’s going to burn Fiske to a crisp, he doesn’t. Instead, he turns and looks directly at me.
“Gunnar?” I rasp.
He says something that I can’t understand, but if it was an order for someone to do something, it’s too late. The dragon’s wings expand and its body lifts from the ground and heads straight for me.
Without a chance to do anything, to even scream, the dragon’s long claws wrap around my shoulders and I become completely weightless as I’m lifted from the ship. Pinching my eyes closed, I hold my breath for as long as I can, feeling the cool wind against my face.
Slowly, I open my eyes. A gasp escapes my lips as this beast takes me through the clouds. You are safe. I hear a deep voice growl inside of my head.
“Are you talking to me?” I breathe.
He laughs. I am, Liv. You were not safe there. I am taking you to my lair. You will be safe there.
“What about Aaric?” I ask, my body trembling.
He hums. He will be okay, my konungr is strong.
I open my mouth to ask him another question when a huge tower-like mountain appears out of nowhere. The dragon must know this place, it flies straight toward the gigantic opening, then ducks as it glides inside.
He sets me down on my feet as he lands on his own. “Welcome,” he growls.
Slowly, he walks toward a gigantic nest. I watch him step inside of the round nest. Looking around, I try to see if there is a woman dragon here. Biting the corner of my lip, I find myself wondering why I’m not totally freaking the hell out.
It’s because you know you are safe. There is no reason to panic, I will keep you from harm’s way for as long as I need to.
“Why?” I ask.
Talking to a dragon. I don’t know how this is real life, but here I am, and here he is. He curls into a ball, lifting his head to look at me. He snorts and a plume of smoke escapes his nose as he snorts.
You don’t know? he asks.
Shaking my head, I continue to stand across from him, my legs begin to tremble as everything starts to really sink in, what’s happening around me, what has happened to me. He jerks his chin and demands that I walk over near him.
I sink down on the edge of his nest and watch in silence, waiting for him to tell me what the fuck is happening here and what happened to Aaric.
The woman is a witch, and evil sorceress. The place that she took you, it’s an enchanted forest meant to cause nothing but harm and damage to you and to Aaric. He felt it, he reached out to me earlier this morning.
“How?”
Telepathically, just as I am talking to you, Aaric can reach me the same way. He doesn’t like to come to me for help, he thinks the things I ask of him in return are too high a price to pay.
I almost laugh, knowing that it is probably only part of the reason, the other part is that Aaric is nothing short of a typical alpha male. If he were in New York, he wouldn’t even ask for directions, I guarantee that shit.
I came to his aide, just in time. He told me if something were to happen to him, not to kill Fiske, but to instead protect you at all costs. It’s what I’ve done. Though I wanted to kill the possessed man.
“Fiske is possessed?” I gasp.
The dragon nods. The sorceress summoned a demon to enter his body. She’s been controlling him through the demon. However, whoever kills the demon, that gives the entity license to overtake their body. It is very slippery, at least that was how Aaric explained it to me.