ChapterThree
Marty did exactly as Nina said she would.She covered Dom’s fear-frozen feet with a blanket from her couch while Wanda helped her sip some herbal tea as though she were a small child with a cold.
Fletcher sat with Nina, balancing on her shoulder in Dom’s favorite puffy chair-and-a-half positioned by the window, snuggling against thevampire’sthick, coal-black hair.
“Are you all right, Miss Acosta?”Harvey asked, sitting across from her atop her coffee table, his hands clasped in a fist in his lap.
“Dom,” she said from stiff lips.“You can call me Dom.I mean, now that we’re acquainted in vampire, we should be on a first-name basis.”
She let out a shuddering breath, gripping handfuls of her fuzzy pink blanket and reminding herself everything was okay.She was breathing, no one died, everything was fine.
“Dom,” Harvey rumbled, eyeing her hesitantly.“Are you all right?I realize that was a harrowing few moments, and this all seems surreal right now.I would have liked to take a softer approach?—”
“Oh, can it, Thor’s weird offspring.It had to be done,” Nina barked.
Thor’s weird offspring.There was a gigantic man sitting on her coffee table, testing its Ikea limits, calling himself the son of the Norse god Thor—with a name like Harvey, of all the names in the history of Norse names—and no one had batted an eye.
“Is there a softer approach than showing me in a symphony of fangs and fur that vampires and werewolves really exist?”she asked, shrinking farther into the couch.
That happened.It happened hard.It happened so hard, Dom was still shaking.
The ladies had given her a bunch of explanations about how they came to be—werewolves and vampires, that is.They’d even had a handy explanation for how they’d found out where she lived.Nina the vampire had found her address from her phone number andsniffed outher location—used her nose to locate Dom like some sort of olfactive GPS.
And the icing on the cake?Harvey claimed he was one ofmanyof Thor’s children.So many.Apparently, Thor got around New Asgard.
That was the place where Thor lived.New Asgard.
But Harvey wasn’t just adescendantof the almighty Thor, God of Thunder.Sort of the way some people brag they’re descendants of historical figures, etc.No, that wasn’t what he was saying at all.He was claiming to be Thor’sactual son.
Which could mean he was centuries old.When, despite her terror and the forceful pounding of her heart, she managed to point that out to him, he nodded in agreement.
Harvey.Harveynodded in agreement.He didn’t confirm or deny, simply nodded.
Ludicrous.Absolutely, positively ludicrous.
As Dom began to absorb the words spoken and the reality-defying feats of body morphing and the shedding of hair she’d witnessed, she licked her very dry lips and asked the one burning question that had troubled her since hearing their explanations.
Pulling the blanket under her chin, she looked to the man who could rival Chris Hemsworth, and that wasn’t an embellishment.No.He was beautiful, sculpted perfection.
“Harvey,” she said in a wooden tone.
He cocked his beautiful head, his green eyes meeting hers.“Yes?”
Dom shook her head.“No… I mean, I wasn’t addressing you.I was wondering about your name.As I recall from history class, you have two brothers named Magni and Modi, and a sister namedThrud.”
“Half-sister,” he corrected with a smile so glorious, it made her eyes tear.
Dom blinked.“Half, three-quarters, whatever.You’re still related.My point is, your name is Harvey.Harvey.It feels a little…um, common, in comparison to all those larger-than-life, unpronounceable names.”She paused a moment, then said, “Yes.That’s it.It feels common and totally out of keeping with the names of your siblings.Who, and I mean this with zero disrespect, names the son of a godHarvey?”
MC barked a laugh.“She’s gonna love this.Go on, tell her the story, Harv.”
Harvey squinted as if he was attempting to keep his patience in check when he looked to Dom.“Magni and Modi are also my half-brothers.Most of my father’s offspring are spread far and wide, despite what James Gunn, Jon Favreau, and the like who’ve made movies about him tell you.He’s had many different mistresses in his time.My mother, Dagny, a skilled weaver and cloth tradeswoman, was but one.Herfather, my grandfather, his name was Havard.But my mother gave it a bit of a modernized update.”
“Don’t forget the part where she did it to spite your father, Harvey,” MC reminded.“If you’re going to tell the story, tell it all.You remember, right?Thor forbade her to name you after her father, and she looked him directly in his eyes and said, ‘I did exactly as you wished.His name isn’t Havard.It’s Harvey.’Then she stuck her tongue out at him.All of Asgard has been having a laugh about it ever since.”
Harvey rolled his tongue around the inside of his cheek.“Yes.That’s true.Thanks for reminding me to overshare our family history with a complete stranger, Mjölnir.”
“She’s not going to be a stranger for long, Harvey,” MC crowed.
