“No it didn’t. The metal has changed because we, well I…” He nervously pauses to meet my stare, struggling to find words that won’t diminish what we did.
“Your blood. Giving yourself to me. It was the final piece of the ritual. Now our bond is infused in the link, which will seal our fate as one.”
Watching him pour the shimmering liquid into the mold, I reply, “That’s why you held out for all these weeks. So I was ready to accept the bond.” I wrap my arm around my stomach and sit back on the bed, feeling a trickle of our come between my thighs.
“Mhmm. If you are worried about me finishing inside you, I can’t make a child with anyone but my bonded partner, and it has to be under certain celestial conditions.” He explains what I had been far too lost in the throws of my orgasm to think about until now.
“I would like to imagine we would be good parents.” I beam at the thought of teaching a little girl how to be a Viking.
“One day.” He puts another log on the fire, keeping the clay mold safely cooling to the side, and crawls back into bed with me. “First, we need to find the reindeer with the star map. It will tell us the location for our ascendance into the Vanheim. I know Bjorn thought it showed the path to the herd, but the herd is ever changing.”
“They will be coming after us. Bjorn is riding as we speak to tell Harald that I am alive.” Talking it out makes it real, which scares me. Harald will try to kill us again, simply out of spite. Shaw covers us with the blankets, letting me cuddle against his ribs. Resting my head on his shoulder, I can hear our hearts beating in unison and feel the profound flow of power connecting us.
“Rasha.” Shaw’s quiet voice is soothing. “I don’t want people to suffer any more than you do. We can take as many as we can into the mountain pass, but I don’t want to make a promise I can’t keep.”
“I know. I don’t know if we can keep them safe either,” I murmur as sleep washes over me.
“Hope lies in rebalancing the realms,” Shaw whispers, holding me close while our bodies fall into a peaceful rhythm of rest.
33
SHAW
Rasha releases a hunger so insatiable from within me that I part her legs in the lilac-colored dawn, unable to wait till we are fully awake. Her drowsy, pouted lips open in a soft moan when I drag my cock through her wet entrance. Taking her gently from behind, I feel her grind her ass into my hips as I drink in her perfection.
After, we are sitting up in bed with the mold in her lap and the chain laying across my thighs. She asks about the links, and if I made them all alone. I tell her about the first few I crafted when I lived every day in dark despair then about the links I created when I started helping the clans make weapons.
“Why did you keep smithing all these years if you didn’t believe you’d find your way back home?” She trails her fingers from the last section to the end where her link is attached.
“I gave up for years. Long stretches of time passed, and I put the mold away, thinking eventually I’d die like a mortal, but death never came for me. Something would push me to keep going after a while like Aslaug or the beauty of Spring. The thought that Vidarr, Vali, and my sister are waiting kept me searching for a way home. And then the stars led me to you.”
“Would you believe me if I told you I never wanted a husband.” She slides me a gaze that could melt an iceberg.
“Am I your husband, my lady?” I tease, tucking a section of her crimson locks behind her ear so I can shamelessly kiss her soft shoulder.
“Do you like hearing me exalt you?” She chuckles.
“Of course, husband, King, god whatever you call out when you’re coming is what I want to hear.”
Throwing her leg over my waist, she mounts me like she is destined to be on top of me for the rest of time. The mold between us unmistakably pulses, emitting from the link inside.
“Ready?” I ask, trying to not stare at the swell of her breasts near my eye level.
Rasha nods, and I cover her hands with mine so we crack the top of the mold together. I don’t need it anymore. The thought that this is my fate, to have her at my side, makes the bond smolder in contentment between us.
Rasha breaks off the rest of the mold, and the last link comes into view.
I honestly don’t care what it looks like. I only care about the person who gave up everything to be with me. Caressing my hands across her cheeks, my lips crash into hers, offering her kiss after kiss, having no words to describe my thanks.
“Look, Shaw. Just for a moment.” Coming up for air, she brings the small link between us and sits back in my lap. Her center glides over my hard cock with nothing but a blanket between our skin.
The link is different from any link I have ever made. It’s different from the one Rasha made before we had sex and before she traveled to the edge of the Vanheim.
“It’s already engraved with your runes and whatever these ones say?” Her voice catches in hesitation, thinking that something is wrong. A habit of self doubt I fully intend on breaking once we are safely home.
“These are your runes.” I run my finger over the unpolished metal. She looks at the tiny markings and elegant loops in the link with disbelief in her big blue eyes.
“I have runes?”
