Page 1 of Berserker Devotion

CHAPTER 1

Despite the four-wheel-drive mode, the rented SUV’s wheels slipped in the deep snow that covered the forest road. Ulf Stenrik swore as the vehicle lost traction and slid off the road. The car tilted at a steep angle, with the hood lower than the rest of the vehicle. He’d hit a ditch. If the other Norse warriors found out about this, he’d be the laughingstock for a long, long while. Who’d ever heard of a Viking who couldn’t navigate in snow?! Truth be told, though, he’d been lucky to make it this far without getting stuck in a trench. The many snowfalls that had hit the region filled out the hollows and made the whole landscape look even. He couldn’t see where the edge of the road ended, and the ditch began.

At least he knew where that boundary was now. The big clue being that the back of the car faced the sky while the hood burrowed deep into snow.“

He pulled on his knit cap, zipped up the down jacket, and slipped on gloves. Leaving the engine running and the gear in neutral, Ulf opened the door and scrambled out. He landed in knee-deep snow that immediately slid inside his boots.

And that was before he had to step deeper into the ditch.

Cursing again, he steeled himself against more coldness and wetness filling his footwear as he navigated around the vehicle until he'd reached the front of the car.

The blanketed landscape muffled all sound, and the only thing he could hear was the rumble of the engine. Not even the birds chirped. The effect would have been spooky if it wasn't for the bright overhead sun reflecting off every snow-covered pine tree and the road itself. The glittering mess hurt his eyes despite the dark sunglasses he wore. Squinting, he crouched down and gripped the frame below the front bumper of the SUV.

Even for an immortal Viking like him, lifting the vehicle's engine block—which probably weighed about five hundred pounds—took a lot of effort. Sweating and grunting, he maneuvered the car back onto the road, but even there, the snow was too deep to continue driving. He must have arrived at the border between a maintained paved road and a dirt road that the county didn’t plow.

“Jävlar, helvetes, skit,” he swore out loud in Swedish.

A bird thrilled in response to his outburst, and soon a choir of feathered creatures joined in.

Apparently, nature had woken up, and on any other day at any other place, the sunshine, the snow-sparkling forest, and the cheerful birdsong would have cheered up Ulf. Here and now, it just felt like the fucking birds were laughing at him. Like they'd kept quiet while watching him struggle with the car and now found his predicament hilarious.

He was stuck deep in a national forest in the California Sierra Mountains in December.

And his feet were cold. And wet.

The worst part was that he'd volunteered for this stupid trip. King Leif wanted a particular bear sculpture from a particular woodcarver, and since Ulf still needed to build up some goodwill among his immortal Norse battle brothers and sisters, he'd volunteered. He wasn't exactly in the dog house anymore, but his tribe still remembered how he’d acted like an arrogant jackass for several months. Ulf could explain his behavior. Maybe nobody else would find the explanation justifiable, but he had reasons for why he acted like he did.

Some might call those reasons childish and immature, but that was not the point. The point was, he needed to rebuild a lot of trust.

He looked down what he assumed was the road. Its pristine snow cover mocked him in its glittering beauty. So did the enthusiastic birdsong, which sounded even louder now.

The fucking woodcarver lived in a remote cabin way further up the mountain. Why couldn't he sell his sculptures on the internet like most people? The guy didn't even have a website. The king had read about him in some obscure magazine. Ulf turned off the car's engine. No reason to keep it on since he was obviously not driving any further.

His cellphone chimed and vibrated in his pocket. When he dug it out, he saw the king’s name on the screen and swallowed a sigh before clicking the button to receive the call.

"Are you there yet?" Leif asked without a greeting.

"No, I'm still about fifteen kilometers away."

The king sighed loudly. "What's taking you so long?

Considering Ulf had flown from Washington State to Nevada, picked up the rental SUV, and then driven across the state line into California and the eastern part of the Sierra Mountains, he'd actually made very good time. However, the king had never had much patience—and his sense of humor had disappeared since he became obsessed with giving his queen a perfect holiday gift—so Ulf refrained from explaining how travel actually worked. "I've hit a bit of a snag," he said instead.

"What?" Leif exclaimed loudly.

Ulf’s berserker, his inner warrior spirit, perked up, responding to the urgency in the king’s voice. Ulf mentally commanded it to stand down. "Don't worry," he blurted. "Everything is under control. It’s just that the road has too much snow for the car to drive through."

"Well, put it in four-wheel-drive." The king's voice was still over-the-top loud. But the poor guy had been overreacting to pretty much everything ever since he’d been told he couldn’t leave the fortress to buy his queen this perfect Yuletide gift he’d read about in the magazine. The bond between the king and his human själsfrände, his true love was the first any of the Vikings had heard about in millennia. Although Queen Naya was no ordinary human. Rogue government-sponsored scientists had genetically engineered her into an ultimate soldier. One other of their tribe’s warriors had found her själsfrände, but Ulf didn’t want to think about that. Astrid meeting Luke had triggered the asshole behavior for which he now had to atone.

"Min Kung," Ulf said in as calm of a voice he could manage, "the SUV has been in four-wheel drive for several miles. But the snow is knee-deep and wet and heavy. I would need a sled or a snowmobile to get through this."

"Well, get one of those, then. The Norse bear carving is the perfect Julgåva for Naya. She has her heart set on it."

Ulf could barely keep his sigh contained. Queen Naya didn't even know she was getting a wooden bear for Christmas. He doubted the queen even liked woodcarvings, but the king had been obsessed with the thing ever since he saw the article. "Driving back down the mountain to the closest town will take too long." Ulf refrained from mentioning that the word "town" was generous for the small cluster of houses nestled against the foot of the mountain. There had been no rental shop or any kind of a commercial building that he'd seen. The most he could probably hope for was to knock on someone's house and ask to borrow their personal snowshoes or skis. "I'll lose the daylight if I go back, and I doubt I'll have enough cell signal to navigate to the guy's cabin in the dark."

The king muttered something. It sounded like youngsters being lazy and weak. The king had died only three years older than Ulf was when he passed away on the battlefield and took his seat in Valhalla, Odin's afterlife beer hall. So, it was a bit much for the king to call him a youngster. But then again, Odin sent Leif back to Midgard forty years before Ulf had joined the band of immortal Norse warriors in the human realm, so maybe the king considered himself more mature. Newsflash, his obsession with this fucking carved bear showed he wasn’t.

Ulf ignored the king's words and instead assured him he would continue on foot and be back at the tribe's mansion in a few days with the carved bear.

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