NORSE

LEIF

Can this woman be any sexier? Her fair complexion entices me to reach over and stroke her flesh, watching her mouth part as she pants.

My hands itch to slip into her ashy white locks, yank her head back, and devour her throat.

I can also picture her sage-colored gaze peering up at me as she takes my entire cock in her mouth, making me fucking harder than I’ve ever been before.

But I can’t do any of these things to her. Not until we know for sure.

If she turns out not to be our queen, I’d still like to fuck her. Erik probably won’t let me touch her though; being a man-whore isn’t getting us anywhere.

I’ve literally slept with every woman with white as snow hair in a thousand-mile radius—sharing with them sometimes—but the number of times I’ve fucked behind their backs? Far too many to count.

It’s just upsetting that not one of them has been our queen. I’m starting to think the sorcerer is getting a good laugh out of this, wherever that fucker is.

“So, where are you from?” I ask, trying to keep the questions light for now. Erik will want answers when I return, and I know how much he enjoys the small talk.

“New England. Well, Maine. It’s a state in—”

“North America,” I cut her off. “I’m familiar.”

We’ve been to the shores of North America a time or two, but it didn’t seem plausible that our queen would be there.

Why would the sorcerer ban our beloved to a country we’ve never been to before?

Or maybe that’s the sick part of his curse—he wants us to exhaust ourselves trying to find her, but never looking in the right places.

“Sorry,” she says softly. “Where are you from?”

I smirk. I could tell her the truth about how I was born in 927 AD in this very area, but let’s be honest…she’d only laugh. So instead, I give her the answer I give all women of this century.

“I was born in Oslo but studied archeology in the UK.”

It’s complete bullshit, but I can’t very well go running around telling people I’m an ancient Viking who’s well over a thousand years old, now, can I?

“I haven’t learned your name yet,” I say instead.

“Runa. Runa Liv.”

My heart pulses. Runa Liv. Why does that name seem so familiar to me? It’s right on the tip of my tongue. Backward, it would be…

Vilanur.

Fuck. A breakthrough. A slice of hope I’ve not felt in many centuries. Vilanur was the surname of our beloved.

“Where did you get that name?” I inquire, hoping she doesn’t hear the excitement in my tone.

“My grandmother named me after one of my favorite bedtime stories.” She laughs, tucking a strand of her white hair behind her ear.

I can’t take my eyes off her. It’s been far too long since we’ve had this kind of breakthrough. The last time was in 1867 when we traveled west, reaching the shores of North America.

Though she didn’t have hair white as snow, she was the closest we’d gotten to finding our queen in over a hundred years.

She checked off everything on our list besides the hair, but we soon learned she was just another letdown. She wasn’t our queen, and we were back to square one. Again.

But this time? This time there are too many coincidences for it not to be her. But if I’m wrong and she isn’t our queen, we might all lose our minds.

There are only so many times we can go through letdown after letdown. We need to be thrown a bone here—literally.

“So, tell me, Runa…do you have a boyfriend? Girlfriend? Married? Tell me more about yourself,” I urge.

She giggles and it’s music to my ears. “None of the above, I’m afraid. I’ve been going solo at life for years. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like being with men. Or women.

“I mean, I’m not gay, but I’m not not gay? Okay, that sounds weird, and I should probably shut up.”

Now I’m the one chuckling. She’s a magnificent woman, and I can’t wait to introduce her to Erik and Torsten. They’re going to be as pleased with her as I am.

“I like when you talk,” I tell her truthfully. “There’s something about your voice that’s very calming to me. Tell me more, Runa Liv.”

She visibly gulps, slowly nodding. “Okay, um— What do you want me to say exactly? I sometimes have plenty to say but I’m not entirely sure how to say it.

“People find that I can be quite annoying, and others find me entertaining. So, what is it, Leif? Annoying or entertaining?”

I can’t help but chuckle again, shaking my head. “Why don’t you entertain me?”

As she begins telling a story I’m not entirely paying attention to, my mind drifts elsewhere.

Erik once told me he read a passage in the only surviving piece of history that came with us—a carved stone with a few passages regarding our curse and how to determine if we’ve found our queen.

We haven’t had the chance to try it out since figuring it out, but now I have the chance to do so.

“And because I stubbed my toe, I created a ton of new curse words, and not once did my grandma yell at me for it.

“Do you have any idea how painful it is to slam your pinkie toe on a metal rod? It’s the most painful thing in—”

“Minn dróttning,” I rasp out in our native tongue—old Norse.

She immediately stops speaking mid-sentence as a glaze sweeps over her unblinking eyes. Her shoulders square and her expression turns to stone. Un-fucking-believable.

I walk around her, intently taking in what I’ve just witnessed. All I said was My Queen in our old language and she froze like a statue. Can it be? Can this mean she ~is~ our queen?

Waving my hand in front of her face, I let out a chuckle when she doesn’t blink or move a muscle. I’ve frozen her with two simple words.

Words that mean absolutely everything to us.

But honestly, I didn’t think this was possible. The stone tablet said our queen would go into a momentary comatose state after those words were spoken, and here we are. I’m completely flabbergasted.

She doesn’t seem to know what’s going on. She has no idea that I’ve done this to her, does she?

I haven’t been this excited in years. This is it. This is fucking it. We’ve found her.

Snapping my fingers in front of her face, she rapidly blinks and starts off exactly where she left off.

“The world, Leif. I thought I broke that little guy. It turned black and blue and stayed that way for months. It’s never looked the same since.

“Do you want to see?” she asks, pointing down at her boot-covered foot.

But I shake my head, only thinking about one thing.

“I’m sorry to leave you, Runa, but I must return to the cabin. Something very pressing has come up. You should return back to work, okay?” I scratch the back of my neck, unsure what to do.

We don’t exactly have a protocol in place for this.

Whenever we thought we found our queen in the past, we carried her to our bed like the warriors we are. But I have a feeling Runa won’t take kindly to that kind of behavior.

The women of this generation are unlike any we’ve seen before.

Erik will know what to do, I’m sure of it.

Turning to walk away from her, I steal one final glance in her direction and hold my breath. I can’t believe I might have just found our beloved queen.