Ragnarök Rising Read online

  Angrily, I scrubbed at my forehead with both hands, trying to focus my scattered mind. “Why do you call me an omega, when I’ve told you I’m not?”

  “Because you are, pet. Because I can smell your heat approaching.” He stood in a fluid motion, rolling his shoulders as if to ease the tension in them. But all I could do was stare at the huge bulge in his pants in my line of sight. I couldn’t tear my eyes from it, and the heat in my body rushed south, gathering down low in a molten ball of fire. My pulse drummed hard in every tissue in my body.

  “It’s why the Lokissons lured you to their farm. They knew their presence and foul magic would trigger your body to finally Present.” He looked at me, and the dark seriousness on his face made me swallow thickly when the conversation I’d overheard back at the farm came back to me. What they’d said… it wasn’t murder they’d planned.

  “I... I heard them talking. That’s why I left. I thought they were going to kill me.”

  Magni chuffed through his nose. “No, pet. No alpha in his right mind would end your life when you smell so sweetly. But they would have taken you, one after the other, until you were too weak to fight them.”

  I shuddered, even as my clit panged with the thoughts Magni’s words conjured. To be taken by three brutal alphas, held down and forced to submit again and again… The hazy fantasy I’d shamefully brought myself off to the night before came back to me in vivid detail, and I shook my head angrily to get rid of it. “I don’t... I don’t understand what’s happening to me.”

  “I know, Annabel.” There was kindness in Magni’s voice, and I clung to it like a drowning man would a lifeboat. “I know you’re scared. I know you didn’t expect this, that you don’t know what will happen next. But I promise you, you are safe with me. All I want to do, all I can do, is make you feel better. Stop fighting against your body and start listening to it. It’ll tell you what you need.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense!” My protest came out as a whimper, because just then the molten lava in my abdomen melted into a liquid that drenched my panties and trickled down my thighs, soaking through my pants.

  Magni’s nostrils flared wide, the unmistakable hunger in his eyes intensifying.

  I stared at the pool of liquid on the furs below me. Thick and clear and slick. Like the lubrication an omega produced for her alpha to ease their coupling.

  “How is this possible?” I whispered, touching the soaked pelt. I didn’t want to believe him, but it was getting harder and harder to refute what my body was so adamantly trying to prove to be true. “How?”

  “The ‘how’ doesn’t matter.” Magni flexed his hands and knelt back down in front of me again. He reached for my face, and instead of flinching away, I pressed my cheek into his wonderfully cool palm. My body thrummed at the contact, and I became hyperaware of the way my tight nipples pushed against my shirt and the wet fabric pressing delicately against my swollen clit. It was too much stimulation, and at the same time not enough.

  Magni drew me to him then, cradling my face against the side of his neck. I sucked in greedy lungfuls of his mouthwatering scent, and groaned when my sex expelled more of the clear liquid it wasn’t supposed to be able to produce. He smelled like the wilderness, like the sky during a thunderstorm, and wild, earthy musk. He smelled like life. I pressed my nose against the side of his neck and sniffed him, shuddering for every breath.

  The alpha groaned and clutched me tighter. “That’s it,” he rasped. “Smell me. Know me.”

  I needed him.

  The confusion of what was happening to me, the horror and denial of knowing that I was suddenly something other than I’d thought my whole life melted away in Magni’s arms, until all that was left was the bone deep knowledge that I needed him. My body thrummed, like a too-tightly strung violin, and I could no longer deny it. I wasn’t sick. This wasn’t a fever.

  I was in heat.

  And the only thing that would cure me, the only thing that would relieve the ache in my very blood, and return some semblance of normality to my life, was the alpha holding me so wonderfully tight against his strong body.

  “Help me,” I croaked against his neck. “Please. Help me.”

  Magni buried his face in my hair, a deep, rich growl rumbling from his throat in response. He nipped at my neck, sending tremors through my body as his hands moved down. He unzipped my coat and pushed it off my shoulders with ease, not pausing before he pulled my top off as well.

  I sighed with relief at losing the constricting fabric, basking in the relative coolness of the air against my naked skin. But when Magni followed suit, shrugging out of his sweater and tunic, my focus quickly shifted.

  He was broad in the chest and shoulders and narrow in the hips, but what had me staring was the definition of his brawn. He looked like a freaking god, all hard planes and row upon row of bulging muscles.

  I whimpered without meaning to, and his soft lips quirked up in a knowing smirk. Then, he raised up and pushed down his pants, leaving his entire body bare in two smooth moves.

  I stared.

  His cock was flushed and veiny, with a blunt, purple head and thick rim. Precum leaked from the tip, and the musky scent of it had my tongue darting out to wet my suddenly dry lips without my conscious knowledge. But the size of it….

  I swallowed thickly, the rational part of my mind screeching in horror even as my sex softened and my clit thrummed. “I… I don’t think that’ll fit.”

  Magni laughed again, a rich rumble that did nothing to easy my blood’s heated throbbing. “You’re an omega, pet,” he said, leaning in to kiss my jaw. His bulging body mercifully blocked the view of his terrifying cock, and the stab of fear I’d felt at the sight of it disappeared in the rush of excitement his lips sparked. “You were born to fuck.”

  I groaned unintelligibly as he pushed me down on my back, still kissing and nibbling at my jawline. Huge hands easily unsnapped my bra, and I pushed up against his touch as he cupped my breasts. My nipples scratched against his rough palms, sending shocks of pleasure to my clit.

  “More!” I didn’t mean to snap, but it came out like an angry growl.

  Magni chuckled against my jaw and pushed his hands farther down. When he reached the button of my pants his lips moved to my left nipple. I groaned as he sucked it into the hot cavern of his mouth, and again when he undid my trousers and shoved a hand between my legs. Without preamble, he found my tight clit and rubbed it just right—and I melted.

  Slick gushed from my pussy in hot rivulets as electric zings of pleasure danced up my spine and down my thighs.

  I whimpered and moaned and bucked underneath him, mindless that my writhing made his ministrations harder. Everything from my hazed mind to my pulsing body sang with pure, unadulterated pleasure, but all it did was make the ache between my legs grow to a roaring hunger.

  “Magni, more! Give me fucking more!” I snarled and tore at his shoulders with my nails, tried to force from him what I instinctively knew he was withholding, even if I didn’t fully understand what it was. I just knew that I needed more—more of him, more of his body, until the burning ache was finally quelled. I was dying. I was fucking dying, and he was the only cure.

  “Now!”

  Magni growled, pinching my clit harshly until my snarling died to a pathetic whimper. But as much as it hurt, it eased my body’s desperation just a little.

  “I’m your first alpha,” he said, voice rough with his own blatant desire. “I have to prepare you, or it’ll hurt.”

  “I don’t care!” I hissed. “God, make it fucking hurt! Just make it stop! Please, make it stop!”

  He stared down at me for a moment, lip curled up in a silent snarl, and for the first time I realized what it’d taken for him to hold back so far. His face was drawn with tension, eyes wild with dark lust, and his broad shoulders trembled with restrain. He wanted this as badly as I did, needed it just as much, and yet he’d held himself back to ensure my readiness.

  I felt a pang of gra
titude somewhere deep in the fog of my mind, then instincts swarmed my brain, blotting out everything but bone-deep need for relief. I bared my teeth at him and dug my nails into his shoulders, deep enough to draw blood. “Fuck. Me!”

  The alpha snarled, fury flashing in his green eyes. He grabbed me by the hips and flipped me over rough enough that I didn’t have time to brace. Hands yanked at my trousers and panties, pulling them down my thighs to pool around my knees.

  I struggled against the sudden aggression, fighting him even as my legs spread as wide as my trousers would allow, pushing my ass up and out in invitation.

  Magni growled, yanking hard on my hips again until I was facedown ass-up in front of him.

  Electric currents ricocheted through my blood, my heart hammering in my chest as my pussy softened and gushed in instinctive response to the submissive position. Yes, this was right, this was how it was meant to be—

  Hard flesh pressed against my weeping opening, and I gasped hard at the feel of his blunt cockhead catching in the mouth of my pussy. He was so thick, my entrance resisted the intrusion despite how wet and open I was, but I needed him! I gritted my teeth and pushed back against him.

  The tip of his cock shoved through my resistance, kissing my pink inners, but my relieved moan died on a shriek as hot pain bloomed from my overstretched flesh.

  “Ow! Fuck! Wait!” I slapped my hands against the pelt beneath me, caught between wanting to escape the brutal stretch and knowing I needed him all the way inside to ever quell the desperate yearning.

  Magni made the decision for me.

  Large hands clamped around my hips, stopping my tormented bucking. And then he drove home.

  I screamed, unable to form words as my pussy was wrenched open much too wide and all the way to my very core. His heavy balls slapped against my wide-splayed lips and forcefully bared clit before he stilled, mercifully allowing my body a moment to adjust.

  I was no virgin, but nothing and no one had ever made me feel like this—so completely conquered, so invaded. It hurt so goddamn much I struggled to breathe, but at the same time, this was exactly what my body needed. My blood sang with relief even as my poor sex spasmed and drooled in its futile attempt at expelling the brutal cock lodged all the way up to my womb. For every shuddering breath I felt his thick cockhead kiss my pulsing cervix, an unyielding reminder of what lay ahead.

  Magni moaned brokenly behind me, his ragged breath panting against the back of my neck as he leaned in over my shaking body, encapsulating me from the inside out. I could feel his pleasure as a physical manifestation, could hear it in his strained voice. There was no pain for him.

  White-hot fury at the injustice of it penetrated my hazy mind.

  Snarling like a wild beast I turned to rake my nails at whatever exposed skin I could get to, but Magni was faster. He clamped a hand around the back of my neck and forced my head back down into the furs. He let out a furious growl, an alpha’s anger at being challenged, and then he showed me exactly who was in charge.

  The first thrust through my painfully dilated pussy made me screech, hands flailing back to press against his rock-hard abs in a desperate attempt to ease the brutal penetration. I may as well have tried to resist a mountain.

  He barreled into me with all his might, filling me to the brim in rough, fast thrusts over and over and over again. It hurt so much, white dots danced for my vision every time my pussy was forced open all the way up, but the wet, lewd squelches when he bottomed out in me betrayed the other part. Because even through my wails of agony and the stream of tears wetting my cheeks, there was no denying the mind-numbing pleasure rocking through my pelvis as he fucked me with everything he had. In his size and in his ruthlessness, even in the forced position of submission he had me in with his hand clamped around the back of my neck, something deep in the very core of my being found exactly what I’d needed for so long.

  I was born for this—born to take every inch this brutal alpha, until the burning need that’d taken over my very being would finally be quelled. Mind-numbing pleasure mixed with pain for every thrust, until I could no longer tell them apart. My world consisted of nothing but the deepest of burns pulsing through the bones of my pelvis, driving me closer and closer toward a peak I didn’t know if my mind could take without shattering.

  Magni didn’t give me any choice. He drove me toward that cliff with relentless brutality, pushing me closer and closer to the edge of insanity as he fucked me so hard and fast I could no longer tell where I ended and he began. I clawed at the furs underneath us to free myself from the brutal fucking, begging and pleading for mercy even as every muscle in my body ached for the release my instincts told me was coming. He didn’t listen, his own groans of pleasure a constant rumble underlining my pained wails and the wet thwacks his hips drummed against my upturned ass, his hand keeping me pinned beneath him with no way to escape.

  And then, it happened.

  Without warning, every muscle in my body locked up tight, and I came.

  I tumbled over the cliff and into a black void of madness as my pussy pulsed and quivered on his hard length, ecstasy stabbing through my pelvis, up my spine and down my thighs in hard, rhythmic jolts. I lost all sense of time, all understanding of reality as pleasure so intense stole my senses away ravaged my body and broke my mind.

  But he was there with me. He pulled me up against him, molding my fitfully spasming body against his as he wrapped his arms around my waist and clutched me to him. Fucked me through the torment and bliss, and held me so tight I knew he would never, ever let me go. I came and I sobbed and I rode his unyielding cock through it all, until finally, several eternities later, my climax ebbed.

  I sagged in Magni’s arms, still sobbing and heaving for breath. Raw to the very depths of my soul. But I’d forgotten what came next—what it meant to submit to an alpha.

  A hard stretch at my already gaping opening made me whimper and look down to where we were still connected, and the sight made a stab of panic snake its way through my numbed-out bliss.

  The bottom of his cock was swelling fast, its expanding girth forcing my tormented flesh to stretch as he tried to force it into my swollen sex.

  His knot. He was going to knot me!

  “No! No, no, no-oow! Fuck!” I wailed in agony as he finally pushed through my body’s desperate resistance, the thick knot popping inside of me, forcing my pelvis to yawn open as he seated it smoothly behind my pelvic bone.

  Blinding pain pulsed through my sex for every frantic beat of my heart as I thrashed and fought to escape, but he was having none of it. With a growl that rattled my bones he clamped his teeth down where my right shoulder met my neck. Teeth pierced my skin, and hot pain lanced through the fresh wound, drowning out the agony from my gaping pussy.

  I mewled, every muscle in my body going lax despite my brain screaming at me to get away.

  But it was too late.

  Magni moaned against my shoulder, hot spurts of his seeds coating my cervix as he bit down viciously on my shoulder, ensuring his Mate Claim would forever be carved into my flesh.

  7

  Saga

  They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but I begged to differ—hell hath no fury like an alpha forced to chase down an uppity little omega in the middle of a snowstorm.

  And not just any snowstorm, either. This was the beginning of the Fimbulwinter, a herald of Ragnarök. I hadn’t planned on seeing it come to pass—the way Arni and Magga had told it, the girl would be a sure thing from the start—but I should have known better, really. Modern women were pains in the ass. How long had it taken madam to get her sweet behind to Iceland? Oh, just a fucking decade!

  Her parents had hemmed and hawed, unwilling to send their daughter to us even though the goddamn contract was binding. A thousand years it’d been since Arni and Magga secured an oath from the family foreseen to produce an omega who would secure the survival of the bloodline who claimed her. A thousand years, and with Ragnarök—the literal
end of the goddamn world—finally on our doorstep, the key to our very existence was too fucking busy getting an education and discovering herself to get on a plane and do her duty.

  It was only when the signs of the end were finally indisputable that they caved and sent her to us. And what was the result of this long wait? Oh, just a stubborn and willful woman who didn’t even realize she was an omega.

  It was another sign of Ragnarök’s coming—the lack of Presenting omegas. Normally, an omega would Present shortly after hitting puberty, but the shift in the fabric of the world had dampened the strength of most human alphas. With less powerful pheromones surrounding the young females, few had the biological push their bodies needed to Present. And so, they lived their lives in ignorance of their true nature, believing themselves to be betas.

  Until they met an alpha strong enough to awaken them.

  Despite the cold and my sizzling anger, my cock gave an achy spasm at the memory of Annabel’s beautiful scent. She’d blossomed the moment we touched, like a flower eagerly stretching toward its first meeting with the sun. And she hadn’t known.

  It’d been perfect. The plan had been to isolate her on the farm, inducing her first heat as swiftly as possible so we could all claim her and secure our bloodline before Ragnarök truly gripped the world. Had she come to us ten years ago we could have eased her into it, but now there was no time. We’d even resorted to planting a fertility idol under her bed to hurry things along, and she’d found it.

  I didn’t know what she thought it was, knew she hadn’t been raised with the knowledge of magic existing, but it’d apparently been enough to scare her into the wilderness. Into the grips of the fucking Fimbulwinter.

  “You should’ve just been upfront with her,” Grim said as we followed her tracks through the forest. “I told you as much, but you insisted it’d be easier if we trick her. Does this seem easier, brother?”