Page 97 of Her Viking Master

TheLeotapped the screen. He held the device to his ear.

“Did you get that?” he said. “Good… Yes, I think we have a new ally. Keep me posted.”

EPILOGUE

Mary

A week later I stood beside Camille, my bare feet warm on the polished stone floor of the vast underground cavern—just as they had felt in the New York Mithraeum, but now I knew why. The eternal flame blazed even here, above the Arctic Circle. The space was enormous—cathedral-like in its proportions, with a ceiling that soared at least a hundred feet above us. Deep though we were beneath the frozen tundra of the coast of Hudson Bay, the air felt pleasantly warm against my naked skin, the geothermal heat pumps working silently to maintain a comfortable temperature throughout the sprawling facility. The heavy coats we had worn aboard the ship, and then the helicopter that had brought us here, seemed a distant memory.

“And this,” Matthew said, gesturing toward the center of the cavern where workers in white jumpsuits moved with purposeful efficiency around a skeletal framework of gleaming metal, “is where we’re constructing the primary habitation module for Athena.”

I gazed in wonder at the beginnings of humanity’s salvation. The structure reminded me a little of pictures I’d seen of the abandoned International Space Station, but on a much grander scale—curved segments, their compartments and corridors clearly designed to house hundreds, perhaps thousands of people. The metal gleamed under the powerful lights suspended from the cavern ceiling, the workers appearing almost ant-like in comparison to the massive scale of what they were building.

“It’s incredible,” I whispered, my voice hushed with genuine awe. “How long have you been working on this?”

“The Pretorian Guard began planning Athena nearly seventy years ago,” Matthew replied, his big hand coming to rest lightly on the small of my back. The casual possessiveness of the touch made me shiver, a reminder of my new status as a possession shared between two dominant men and their clandestine organizations. “The excavation of this facility began at the end of the last century, under the guise of a classified military installation.”

I nodded, conscious of Sven’s watchful gaze. Since the Sons of Odin’s agreement with the Pretorian Guard, I had become Matthew’s property as well as Sven’s—a living embodiment of the alliance between the two ancient orders. My body served as both the seal on their pact and, at times, even the conduit through which information flowed between them. It still seemed a strange arrangement, one that would have terrified me mere months ago. It also felt strangely right, after all that had happened—as if I had found my true purpose in the service of not one but two powerful men.

“Have you heard about Yvette and Amélie?” Camille asked suddenly, her voice bright with excitement as she turned to me. “Erik got a message from Aksel yesterday.”

I smiled, grateful for the momentary distraction from the weight of what we were witnessing. “Yes! Sven showed me the message. They’rebothpregnant!” I couldn’t keep the note of wistful longing from my voice. Despite the enormity of our mission, despite the looming collapse of civilization as we knew it, something in me yearned for that most fundamental of female experiences.

“I can’t believe they’re going to be mothers,” Camille said, her dark eyes dancing with delight. “Do you think they’ll have girls or boys?”

“The Sons of Odin tend to father sons,” Erik said, his hand coming to rest on Camille’s back just as Matthew’s had on mine. I looked over my shoulder at Sven, feeling my brow cloud as I beamed my plea into his eyes. Smiling, my firstHerrastepped forward and rubbed my neck the way only he knew how.

Camille turned toward Erik, her eyes shining with something that made my heart catch in my throat—a yearning so primal, so feminine that it transcended our bizarre circumstances.

“Are you going to put a baby in me,Herra?” she asked, her voice soft but direct, the question hanging in the air like a fragile offering.

Erik’s weathered face softened, creases appearing at the corners of his eyes as a rare, genuine smile transformed his usually stern expression. He drew Camille against his side, his large hand spanning her narrow waist with casual possessiveness.

“I’d like to do that as soon as possible,lille en,” he said, his deep voice carrying a tenderness I hadn’t often heard from him. “The Sons of Odin value children above all else. They are our future, our legacy.”

Heat flooded my cheeks as Sven’s hand moved from my neck to my bottom, his palm warm and firm against my bare flesh. He squeezed gently, the pressure both reassuring and unmistakably possessive. The unspoken message in his touch was clear: I, too, would carry his child when he decided the time was right. The thought sent a confusing mixture of emotions swirling through me—terror at bringing a child into a world on the brink of collapse, yet also a deep, primal yearning to create life with this man who had claimed me so completely that he could even share me with his erstwhile enemy.

My pussy clenched involuntarily at the thought, and I knew Sven felt the subtle shift in my body. His ice-blue eyes darkened with knowing amusement, his fingers tracing small, maddening circles on the curve of my bottom. The intimacy of the gesture, performed so casually in front of the others, made my blush deepen further.

Desperate to redirect the conversation away from my body’s mortifying responses, I gestured toward the skeletal framework of the space station rising before us.

“When do you think it will actually be launched?” I asked, my voice slightly higher than normal. “It looks like there’s still so much work to be done.”

Matthew’s expression grew somber, the momentary lightness fading from his face. He led us toward a raised observation platform at the edge of the cavern, where digital displays showed various aspects of the project in meticulous detail.

“The economic collapse has entered an unpredictable phase,” he said, his tone shifting to that of the analyst, the strategist, rather than the dominant male who had claimed shared ownership of my body. “Our models suggest things will eventually become very bad—worse than most people can imagine.”

He activated one of the displays with a wave of his hand, bringing up a map of North America overlaid with pulsing red zones and arrows indicating movement patterns.

“The United States as we know it will cease to exist,” he continued, his voice matter-of-fact though his words sounded frankly apocalyptic. “The country will fracture into territories governed by warlords—some corporate, some military, some religious. Through it all, even if we must abandon the New York Mithraeum, as it seems will be necessary, this facility will remain as a beacon of civilization’s highest aspirations, especially with the assistance of the new alliance between the Guard and the Sons of Odin.”

I studied the shifting patterns on the display, the reality of what we faced hitting me with renewed force. The virus that Georgy had planned to unleash on Paris’ power grid had been only the beginning—a test run for what would become widespread chaos as society’s foundations crumbled. Thanks to the information I’d provided, the Guard had been able to neutralize that specific threat, but the larger collapse remained inevitable.

“The Guard’s analysts estimate it will be between fifty and a hundred years before we can safely launch station Athena without interference from a government able to stop the effort,” Matthew continued, his fingers tracing the trajectory lines on another display. “In the meantime, we will work together to make life livable for as many people as we can.”

I nodded, understanding the enormity of what he was saying. The space station wouldn’t save everyone—couldn’t save everyone. But it represented hope, a seed of civilization that might one day blossom anew, either in orbit or upon a healed Earth. Until then, our task was to preserve what we could of humanity’s knowledge, its culture, its highest achievements.

“Mary,” Sven said, his voice drawing my attention away from the displays, “you have a special role to play as the possession both of me and of Matthew.”

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