Page 126 of The Serpent’s Shadow

Grim pulled at his beard, as if thinking hard, slightly nervous. Sven cradled his sharp chin in his palm, watching me, eyes narrowing.

The wolf said, “So you came to Vikingrune to kill . . . us?”

I bowed my head in shame, nodding. Waiting for the vitriol, the hate, the damnation. Perhaps even the violence of them working together to end me, now that the secret was out.

I should have given my mates more credit.

Sven laughed. Helaughed.

My head whipped up, confusion furrowing my brow.

“Well fuck me on a barrow mound,” he said through his laughter, shaking his head incredulously. “The Norns really do weave the strangest fates, don’t they?”

“Stranger than fiction, surely,” Grim added, smiling at Sven as he stood to his full height and reached a hand down to help me stand from the bank.

I took his hand, utterly confounded, and came to my feet. “What in Hel is so funny?” I croaked.

“Let me ask you, little menace. Do you still plan to assassinate us?” Sven raised a single brow.

I blushed, scratching my cheek. “Well, no. Of course not.”

He threw his arms out. “Then I don’t see the issue.”

“W-What—”

“Don’t you see, love?” Grim interjected. “We are yours. You are ours. The past has no hold over us, or you. If I could repair the damage my family has done to yours, surely I would. Butuntil I figure out a way to do that . . . I can only work to be different than my ancestors. To heal and repair, rather than destroy and subjugate.”

“Rightly said,” Sven grunted with a firm nod, hands on his hips.

“You agree, son of Salos Torfen?” I asked, tilting my head. I said Sven’s father’s name because he was a notorious leader, holding absolute sway over his family and their motives.

“I’ve been veering further and further from old pa’s light with every passing day I’ve known you, Ravinica Linmyrr. You are my guiding star now, not my pack.”

My head reeled, shocked at his admission.

Sven shrugged. “In fact, you and these other shitheels mightbemy pack.”

My face broke out into a crooked, silly grin.

Hope filled my veins, replacing the doubt and fear in me—doubt and fear that had been so deep, so visceral, and which they had so easily shrugged aside.

Grim said, “You must understand, Vini, you have given me purpose. The thing I’ve been searching for all my life, since the death of my fathers. Somewhere to belong, and someone to belongto.”

Sven piled on. “You’ve given me anewlife. A new outlook, if I can say it. How could I let past history from people long dead take that away from me?”

I gawked, at a loss for words. Grim was trying to change his past, Sven was trying to change his future. Both of them, so different, yet two sides of the same coin.

The convergence, where they met in the middle, wasme.

“The answer is, I can’t. Iwon’t. The bear said it right: If you can trust us, given what has happened to your bloodline, that it all we can ask for. I will cherish that trust, work to earn it, anddo what I can to make amends for the acts of my family against yours. Deal?”

Who in Hel is this man and what has he done with Sven Torfen?

Blinking back tears, chin trembling, I nodded firmly, and smiled. “Deal.”

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