Page 82 of Her Viking Master

This time, the vision came with crystalline clarity, as if the so-called act of civilization had somehow purified my connection to the cosmic tree. I saw the frozen Arctic bay spread out below me, gleaming silver-blue under the pale winter sun. But now, my perspective shifted, soaring higher, encompassing a vaster landscape.

What I had thought was a cathedral—that soaring structure of steel and glass—was something far more extraordinary. It wasn’t a building at all, but the skeletal framework of an enormous spacecraft, a vessel designed not for ocean travel, but for the void between stars. Workers swarmed over its surface like ants, their tiny forms dwarfed by the immensity of what they were creating.

The Pretorian Guard were building a space station there in the frozen wasteland where few would notice, where the harsh conditions provided both secrecy and the perfect testing ground for technology meant to sustain life in the unforgiving emptiness of space.

I understood now what Marmareus had meant about taking humanity to the stars. This wasn’t metaphor or grandiloquence—it was literal truth. The Guard were preparing for exodus, for escape from a world they believed was doomed to collapse into barbarism.

My vision panned outward, following the coastline until I spotted the longship of the Sons of Odin, frozen in the bay. On its deck stood warriors, their forms blurred by distance but their purpose clear. They were coming for me, for Camille, across the ice. Sven was coming.

But something else revealed itself to me, something that made my heart stutter with the weight of its significance. Between the longship and the space-station-in-progress, I saw lines of connection, filaments of possibility stretching like Yggdrasil’s roots between the two seemingly opposed forces.

They needed each other, I realized with sudden, perfect clarity. And I could make it happen, if I could use my power correctly.

“I’m going to give you my seed in your little bottom, now,”LeoMarmareus grunted, above me. “And then you’re going to tell me who Sven Hallstrom really is.”

CHAPTER42

Mary

The vision shattered like ice beneath the weight of Marmareus’ words, sending me crashing back into the brutal reality of my body. I gasped, disoriented by the abrupt transition from the cosmic vastness of Yggdrasil to the confines of the cell, to the burning stretch of my anus around Marmareus’ invading cock.

“No,” I whispered, the word barely audible even to my own ears. “No, you can’t know…”

But he had said Sven’s name. He knew. Somehow, he knew.

Oh, no.It had beenme. I had said Sven’s name myself.

Marmareus laughed, a dark, knowing sound that sent chills racing along my spine. His hips moved with deliberate slowness, pushing his cock deeper into my bottom, claiming that most intimate territory with ruthless efficiency. Each incremental advance sent shockwaves of sensation radiating through my trembling body.

“Your face when you climax is quite revealing, Mary,” he murmured, his breath hot against my ear as he leaned over me. “I’ve seen that same expression—that same mixture of ecstasy and revelation—on the faces of highly trained operatives of the Order of Ostia. NotColumbae—more advanced girls,nuptae,agnae, andcaptaeas we call them.”

My heart stuttered in my chest. He knew of my training. He understood something of what I was.

“I don’t—” I began, but my protest dissolved into a strangled moan as Marmareus seated himself fully inside me, his hips flush against my punished bottom. The fullness was overwhelming, the burn transforming into a strange, insistent pleasure that made me push back against him even in my dismay.

Suddenly, a beep of a kind I hadn’t heard came from above me—from Marmareus’ handheld, I realized. I heard him curse and felt him withdraw from me, the sudden emptiness making me gasp. From behind me came the sound of him zipping up his trousers, the metallic rasp somehow louder than it should have been in the stone cell.

“What is it?” he barked into his handheld, his voice sharp with irritation. “This had better be important.”

I remained frozen in position, my body still bent and bound between the posts, my bottom throbbing from his invasion, my pussy clenching with unfulfilled need. I strained to hear the response from the device, catching only fragments: “…priority alert… surveillance… CDG to JFK…”

Charles de Gaulle to John F. Kennedy. Paris to New York. A flight. Someone was coming.

Marmareus’ tone shifted instantly, his voice dropping to a calmer, more controlled register. “I see. Thank you for the notification. Have a team ready at Terminal One. No, I’ll handle the briefing personally.”

My heart raced as I processed what I’d heard. Someone important was arriving—someone who warranted interrupting Marmareus in the middle of what he’d clearly been enjoying. Someone from Paris. Could it be…?

No, I couldn’t allow myself that hope, despite what I had felt in my journey to the tree. It was too dangerous, too painful if I was wrong.

Marmareus walked into my field of vision, his face composed once more into that mask of calm authority. He looked down at me, still bound and exposed.

“Well, whoever Sven Hallstrom is, he’s about to board a flight from Paris to New York,” he told me, as I did everything in my power to keep my face blank and impassive.

“He and his associate,” Marmareus continued in a grim tone, “did a good job with their forged identification, but we’re just a bit ahead of the encryption they used.”

I stared up at Marmareus, my mind racing frantically. My lips parted, but no sound emerged. The facts of my situation crashed over me like a wave, threatening to drown me in its implications. Sven was coming for me—my true master, myHerra, the man who had opened me to my power as avölva. And Marmareus knew it, even if he didn’t know what it truly meant.

“Tell me about Sven Hallstrom,” Marmareus demanded, his voice deceptively soft. He crouched beside me, his face level with mine, those dark eyes boring into me with an intensity that made me tremble. “Tell me about the organization he clearly belongs to—the one I’m guessing you also belong to,Columba.”

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