Page 35 of Valkyrie Restored

Pushing it all from my mind, I took another deep breath. The clean, fresh air revived me. I felt more me then I’d ever felt which was saying something.

The greenish hue of light in the sky pulled me from the covered front porch. The northern lights. I’d seen pictures of them, saw them on TV, but I’d never seen them before in person inthislife. I walked closer to the edge of the water with my head tilted back in awe. They were in constant motion overhead, creating their own dance. I could almost hear the music they danced to in my head. A slight shift inside me released a sense of power, of connection. Every muscle felt stronger. My heartbeat slowed along with my breathing. It almost felt like I was under a spell except I knew I wasn’t. This wasn’t external to me; it was internal, a part of me.

A soft growl shattered the quiet of the night, dragging my gaze from the sky to my surroundings. A massive polar bear stood on hind legs close by. His—don’t ask me how, but I knew it was a male—black eyes reminded me of Hurrit, but that was where the similarity ended. Instead of warm and welcoming, a sign of safety, these eyes gave me the exact opposite feeling. They were barren and full of malice. And for once, I felt the fear I should have felt when I encountered all the other deadly animals.

He roared again. This time loud enough that it vibrated within me, sending my heart into a frenzy. I couldn’t move. My feet were rooted as my system overloaded with the fight inside me between my need to fight and to flee.

The bear dropped to all fours and charged.

Shit. Fuck. My feet released their hold on the earth.Run it is.

I took off. My feet pumped with all this newfound strength and speed. Or maybe it was just the adrenalin that made me feel like I had a chance. I didn’t look where I was going until I heard the loud crack split the night.

My feet stopped with a suddenness that nearly had me faceplanting in the snow. No. In the ice. Fuck. How could I have been so stupid? I should have headed back to the lodge where strong, wooden walls would have given me safety. Plus Arran and Hurrit would have been there to help me. They would have known what to do with an irate, giant polar bear.

But no, instead of doing that, I’d stupidly run out onto the ice. The very ice that polar bears lived on. I wanted to smack my head, not that it would have helped, but it would have made me feel better. Yet I couldn’t. My life was at stake from two different things that could easily kill me: the polar bear that continued to close in on my position and the ice that continued to crack around me which would drop me into the freezing cold water.

Fuck. What was I supposed to do? None of my research prepared me for this. When I first encountered all those weird animals, I spent time searching how to survive an attack and what I was supposed to do to hopefully save myself, but polar bears and soft ice hadn’t made the giant list I’d created.

The bear roared again.

I jumped… but when my feet should have landed on the ice, they didn’t. Instead I continued down, down through the ice, plunging deep into the icy, black water.

Sound muffled. I could feel my body struggle, to fight against the cold water that wanted to drag me down deeper, but I couldn’t see it or hear it. It was like I’d fallen into a void. Only the achingly cold of the water against the areas of exposed skin and the heavy weight of my water-logged clothes gave me any frame of reference to something outside of me.

I pushed and shoved, using all my strength as my lungs burned.

With a suddenness that had my mouth dropping open, my head burst out of the water for the briefest of moment. I didn’t scream—which should have been the first item on my list. Instead I snatched a quick lungful of air before I was pulled down again.

I struggled and fought. All to no avail. The brief hit of cold air on my wet skin and hair sapped whatever heat my body had produced. I shivered, drawing my limbs closer in an effort to conserve what body heat I had.

I sank further. Quietness engulfed me. Even the shivers stopped as my lungs burned with the need for air. But there wasn’t any to be found.

My mind drifted to Arran and Hurrit. Things had changed tonight when we slept together and became one. I hadn’t been exaggerating earlier when I thought that I contained parts of their soul because I could feel them within me. The only bright, warm spots within my chest.

I loved them.

If the mythological was real, then that had to mean that mates were true or at least some type of soul bonding, no matter what it was called. And they were them. I knew that now. It’s why things never felt casual despite how often I told myself it was. They’d been mine from our first touch. I just hadn’t known it.

And now I’d lost them.

My heart cried out. I could only hope that real fate was kinder to my mates than what the romance books said. I would hate to know that my death caused the deaths of Arran and Hurrit. I wanted them to go on, to live for me. And I’d wait patiently for them to join me in the afterlife, because not even death would be able to separate our love for one another.

I felt sleepy, sluggish. And I knew the end was near.

I wanted to fight, to scream, to rale at the gods and goddesses, at the Fates themselves taking me from my men when I’d just found them, but I didn’t have the energy. It was all gone. The need to breathe overrode everything, yet I knew if I opened my mouth, the end would be all that quicker. Something I didn’t want.

Those twin burning spots in my chest grew, heating and thawing out my body, taking away the pain. And for a split second, I thought I saw something white and something darker than the water stream towards me.

But then I saw nothing.

Nothing but a brilliant flash of light that was so bright I slammed my eyes shut.

So this is what death feels like.

24

Hurrit

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