Page 51 of Alien Viking's Passion

All the girls were there, sitting on the lawn furniture and dangling their legs. The night was balmy and fragrant with evening flowers, and the distant hiss from the surf reached them from the coast.

The girls tried to cheer Aretha up, but it wasn’t working. Her mind was all dark.

“It wasn’t like I expected anything,” she said, drying tears that just kept running. “He could have stayed distant and cold. But he lost his memory and I really liked the way he acted when he was being himself. Damn it.”

“A story as old as time.” Celeste said and took a sip of myod. “The guy is nice and sweet when you’re alone with him, then turns cold when someone else is looking.”

“He brought her to the pyre,” Josie objected. “Holding her hand! He was dead serious about it. Something happened last night, something bad. It’s got to be those priestesses that are alwayshovering around him.”

“Why do you fuckingcare?” Chloe asked with a cold laugh. “He’s an alien abductor. A criminal! With fucking horns growing from his head! Let him go to his shitty island with his damn sailing ship. Good riddance.”

“He didn’t abduct anyone,” Rafaela said calmly. “That was all the Hjalmarheim people. He just saved her life again and again.”

“Nah, they’re in love,” Chen quipped in her direct way. “They’ll both be miserable now. He will, too. His people know it, and they hate it.”

“I asked some of the shieldmaidens,” Celeste said. “Apparently, the princes of Ragnhildros never marry. They always die unmarried. Nobody knows why, and the Ragnhildroses can’t properly explain it.”

“Probably a strategic move,” Chloe drawled. “Keep every princess on planet Gardr hot, each of them hopingshewill be the one he’ll marry. It’s a good way to string people along and get as much out of them as you can. Only smart thing I’ve seen these people do.”

The discussion continued, but none of it did much to cheer Aretha up and chase away the dark clouds that had descended on her life.

Maybe Choe was right. Maybe she was better off without him. Maybe it just made things easier, helping her mentally distance herself from this silly planet and focus on going home to Earth.

Earth and never-ending riches, fame and fortune and pool boys…

It only made her depressed. What kind of a life was that, if there was no horned and horny Viking by her side?

“Thanks, girls,” she said, curling up the soaked piece of fabric and slowly getting to her feet. “I’ll tough it out.” But she knew this was too deep a cut to dismiss like that. Craxon was more than a crush or anything she’d ever felt. He was her first love, and he was a Viking prince who had saved her life many times. It would be impossible to top that.

“I peaked with my first love,” she muttered to herself as she climbed the stairs up to her bedroom, wiping her eyes again. “Now I don’t want another.”

She lay away for hours, fighting sadness and losing, hoping to hear his voice outside her door again.

But nobody came.

16

- Craxon -

Straum rose with its usual flash of light, and Craxon swore. He had not wanted this day to come.

Could he postpone the departure? Claim that the ship wasn’t good enough, that the weather was too rough, the waves too big? Or that he was sick and had to stay?

It was fanciful, he knew. He was a prince, and he was expected to be brave and to do what needed to be done. Hewouldbe setting sail for Ragnhildros today. There was no way around it. It was for his people, for his principality.

He got up and downed a mug of grut. He had no appetite for breakfast, so he walked down to the pier in the bright light from Straum.

“Freyja curse you,” he said, scowling at the sun. “Can’t you calm down and make things less crazy?”

The ship was tied to the pier, it’s wood white and new. It smelled good, he supposed. To Craxon, it smelled of despair.

But his Viking eyes noticed that it was a magnificent ship. He doubted if he had ever seen a better one. It was long and wide. The dragon head in the bow was finely carved, and there were twenty oar holes for each side. The mast was tall and slender, elegant and strong-looking. Of course — Aretha and Eira had found that.

He cursed again. Ofcoursethere had to be something about the ship that would keep reminding him of her at every moment.

It didn’t matter. She would be in his mind anyway. Whenever he closed his eyes, he only saw her face.

Valtyrr came walking down the pier, looking happy. “Soon time to raise sail, Crax. And in a handful of days, we shall be home.”

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