fingertips like the physical display of my grief was puzzling to him. “There was a time you would have done anything to be free of your Fate. Given anything—maybe even your life. Perhaps with time, you will come to see your new existence as freedom. Perhaps not. But it is your reality, Annabel. The sooner you come to accept it, the less you will suffer.”
I screamed in his face. It came out as a hollow wail—a sound as devoid of power as I felt, bound and trapped in Hel.
Dead. I was dead.
There was supposed to be peace after you died. I hadn’t thought much about any afterlife before I was kidnapped by Viking gods and sucked into living myth, but I’d had this hazy knowledge that once I took my last breath on Earth, there would be peace.
But this? This was anything but peaceful. This was agony, despair—rage and sorrow. I felt too much, hurt too much. How could this be death? How could this be the end when my body and soul still reverberated with emotion as powerfully as when I’d been alive?
Flashes of last night blazed through my mind, of the waves of lust and love I’d felt in the arms of my mates. So strong. So… unbreakable. At least, that was what it had felt like. Unending. Unyielding.
But I’d been wrong. Verdandi had been wrong when she wove my thread with my mates’. One of the men destined to claim me had chosen another path, and this was the result.
At least the Norn had been right about that part. Any diversion from our Fate and there would be nothing but misery for me.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered, my voice breaking with the grief still thick in my throat. “Why not let us try? Fate chose us for a reason. If you’d felt what it was like when we faced Loki and Nidhug… the strength of our combined power… That is why Verdandi believed in us, Grim. We… We could have won. We could have saved the world, but you chose… this. You’ve chosen death. Destruction. Ragnarök! You think your brothers want this? That they’ll be happy in a world of nothingness? Matebond or not, you’ve doomed them. You did that.”
Grim rose to his full height. Even through this world’s lack of colors, I could see his eyes glowing as he stared down at me. “You are wrong. You did not have the power to withstand what is to come, and you did not have the power to protect my brothers. You may rage against me if you wish, Omega. You may curse me, and you may refuse to accept your fate. It changes nothing.
“Once Ragnarök has eaten the world, I will break your bonds to my kin and the ties to your old life will be gone. Eventually you will succumb to the numbness of death. You won’t yearn any longer. You will just… be. Here. For eternity.
“There is no point in arguing. There is no point in asking me why. You are never leaving Hel, Annabel. Never. And your so-called mates are better for it.”
Two
Magni
Pain.
I cried out as my chest cavity split in two, and my eyes flew open while I desperately tried to fill my collapsed lungs with air. I expected to see an enemy above me and a blade in my chest, but there was nothing but the ceiling slashed with ribbons of light.
Roars of agony mixed with my own, and through the haze of torment I sensed them—my brothers in soul.
I tried to reach for them, to come to their aid, but I only managed to roll onto my side before the hole in my chest sent me sprawling with another agonized sob. I reached for my ribs, some half-coherent instinct urging me to stem the bleeding, but my fingers met nothing but my skin. There was no gaping wound, no blood, and no weapon embedded in my flesh.
“Anna!” Modi’s broken cry sliced through my confusion and rendered me ice-cold. Annabel.
I searched inward through the painful hole to that place where my bond to my mate had anchored me since I clamped my teeth on her neck during her first heat. Nothing.
“Annabel!” My roar mixed with my brethren’s as I forced my body to move and my eyes to focus. I let my panicked gaze sweep the room, but all I saw was Modi, Saga, and Bjarni on the floor, grasping their own chests and crying out for our mate.