Valkyrie destined, p.1
Valkyrie Destined, page 1
VALKYRIE DESTINED
A LEGACY WORLD NOVEL
VALKYRIES RISING
BOOK 1
ALLYSON LINDT
ACELETTE PRESS
This book is a work of fiction.
While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2023 by Allyson Lindt
Cover Art by Romancepremades.com
All Rights Reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
Manufactured in the United States of America
CONTENTS
1. Azzie
2. Zeke
3. Davyn
4. Azzie
5. Zeke
6. Azzie
7. Azzie
8. Zeke
9. Azzie
10. Zeke
11. Azzie
12. Davyn
13. Zeke
14. Azzie
15. Davyn
16. Azzie
17. Zeke
18. Azzie
19. Davyn
20. Zeke
21. Azzie
22. Zeke
23. Davyn
24. Azzie
25. Zeke
26. Davyn
27. Zeke
28. Azzie
29. Davyn
Epilogue - Loki
Other Valkyries Rising Books
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ONE
AZZIE
Forged steel, cheap beer, and sexy romance novels.
These were a few of my favorite things.
I frequently loved a good sparring match, too. I’d been raised on them. Throwing kicks and dodging punches was practically in my blood.
All of that thanks to the man—the Berserker—who refused to give me a good fight now.
Davyn charged me, his shoulder down, driving at me with more agility than a being who could turn into a bear at will should be able to. Despite the leaves under our feet, he made no sound.
It was an obvious attack; the kind of thing he taught me when I was seven. Back then, he moved more slowly on purpose—albeit with reluctance—because I was learning. The fact that he wasn’t running at full speed now, twenty-three years later, was frustrating at best.
I rolled aside at the last second, kicking up dust from the packed ground, and tapped his back in a spot with a move that would have sent him rolling if I’d put my full weight into it.
He pulled up short and spun to face me. “You’re holding back.”
“So are you.” There was no accusation in my voice. In fact, there was no emotion at all in my voice. I was supposed to stay removed and objective during the fight. I squared off against him in the forest clearing, ready for his next move.
“Because my not holding back will hurt you.” Davyn spoke coolly, repeating the line I’d heard hundreds of times before. Sure, he was thousands of years old and made to survive ancient wars, while I was a mortal woman who was barely thirty.
I also wasn’t going to get better if he kept treating me like I was still the kid he aband— stopped teaching, years ago. “What is it you always tell me? Never let personal feelings get in the way.” Not compassion or rage or irritation. “Nothing that will jeopardize my chances of survival.” A light breeze brushed my skin, kissing away the sweat of our afternoon workout, but not cooling my temper any better than my thoughts did.
He clenched his jaw, and his silence spoke louder than any retort. We’d had this conversation enough times that I knew his reply would be, which is why I’m holding back.
I couldn’t actually face a bear—or a man who turned into one—if he were fighting at full strength. I didn’t have the ability to heal in a blink, the way he did. Not yet, anyway.
My mother had visions her entire life. They drove her to insanity in the end, but before that, when she still had her mind and I was young, she was lucid enough to distinguish the difference between the future and the present.
Several of her visions featured me. Even before I was born, she saw my future and that one day I’d become a super-powerful being. A god.
If I’d learned that for the first time as an adult, I suspected it would sound ridiculous to me. But as a child, it was as much a part of my upbringing as learning my ABCs. I’d never questioned it. It wasn’t the kind of information I went around sharing with random people, though.
Mom never questioned it. She’d treated me like a goddess from day one—a goddess of war, who would need to be tough enough to vanquish her enemies, and be kind to those who needed her compassion. She saw massive destruction in my future and had never stopped reminding me of that fact.
Davyn lunged without warning. Or at least, there was no verbal let’s go again. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the subtle twitch of his arms. The way he moved his weight from one leg to another.
I was ready when he pushed off from the ground with a flying kick. I ducked under his leg, and when he dropped his weight mid-kick to catch me, I rolled to the side, struck his ankle, and knocked him aside before he landed.
He caught himself without pause, springing upright again and swinging a fist at me.
I let his arm sail past my head, close enough I felt the air around his punch. Grabbing his forearm, I used his own momentum against him, to throw him.
Davyn growled.
I shrugged. “You’re getting predictable.” Not his fault. He had thousands of years of training ingrained in him, and he’d passed that along to me. Except that I recognized the patterns and refused to get stuck in that rut.
I’d asked him to teach me new things. To introduce me to someone who could. To push me harder, please.
He continued to pull his punches, because after all this time, I was still mortal. Wasn’t a chosen one supposed to ascend in their teens? I’d been shafted.
When Davyn showed up on our doorstep, I was five. A normal mother would have told the big scary man, Don’t touch my daughter, but my mom said, I’ve been expecting you. Come in.
Because she’d seen him in her visions, training me. Protecting me.
They argued a lot, after they thought I was sleeping and couldn’t hear.
Mom wanted Davyn to consider compassion in my training; she insisted I needed to be able to kill but still be kind.
Davyn felt showing me how to be kind was Mom’s job, but he also thought mercy was overrated. He was there to teach me to be a warrior, and that was what he intended to do.
Now, he came from nowhere, catching me mid-flash-to-the-past and tackling me. Heat rushed through me at the feeling of the heavy, strong body pining me to the ground, but I pushed the reaction aside.
Adrenaline and wrestling tended to put me in the mood for other types of physical activities. Fucking was my favorite, but not with Davyn. He was my mentor, but he'd always been more like a big brother than any sort of authority figure. It was never these are the rules it was always don't tell mom, and we can go to the park.
Until he left. Then I told myself he was nothing. The words didn't keep me from feeling abandoned, but they made it so I could pretend I didn't care.
When he found me again, when I was in my early twenties, he wasn't any sort of brother anymore. Okay, maybe the sexy-hot stepbrother from one of my romance novels. But that bond was gone. Fortunately, a lot of men were hot, and that meant I could ignore his looks.
That he had brown hair cut short, but I knew once upon a time had trailed around his neck and shoulders, and down his back. That his tattoos were dotted with combat scars, and both covered his upper body, and dipped lower under the waistband of his trousers. That he was almost a foot taller than my 5’7”, nearly twice as wide as me, and had the kind of abs that put most of the models on said romance novels to shame.
Most of the time I could ignore all of that.
Less and less recently.
Yeah, okay, so I'd been working real hard to fight the I wouldn't mind him jumping my bones vibes I projected on him.
I used my agility and smaller size to twist out of his grip and send him stumbling.
A very fake stumble on his part. He should’ve had me with that attack, but he pulled back.
When I was eleven, he and I had been sparring—a far less graceful activity back then—and he’d given me a concussion. I was out for a few seconds, and that was all it took to panic Mom.
In the hospital, I’d drifted in and out of consciousness, my fuzzy thoughts peppered with and haunted by Davyn and Mom’s argument. She needed him to train me to protect myself, not to be the one who hurt me before I could realize my destiny.
He’d argued that, if he held back, I wouldn’t learn.
Mom said she’d made him leave because he couldn’t protect me. I knew the truth—he’d left because I wasn’t strong enough. Because I couldn’t protect myself. I’d sobbed for a week because my big brother didn’t think I was worth his time to keep training.
“Take this seriously,” Davyn said now.
I raised an eyebrow. “Do you want to hash this out again? The co
“This is as much fight as you get.”
Fucker.
Mom and I were alone for years after he left. I trained on my own—learning from videos, instructors in whatever town we ended up in, and from anyone else who would teach me. The goal was always to be able to protect myself when the prophecies sent my fate after me. When I faced the god who was my equal and opposite. When Loki tried to destroy me. When the end of the world loomed.
No pressure.
And in the back of my head, it was also to prove to Davyn that I was worthwhile, if he ever came back.
I was objectively good. The black belts in multiple disciplines, and competition trophies said so. None of that saved me from being utterly and completely alone when Mom died, though.
I couldn’t throat-punch cancer.
But I could hate destiny for deciding I needed to lose the only person I had, in order to ascend. I fell into a deep, dark hole after her passing. If I wasn’t fucking a random stranger, I was picking a fight with one or more of them.
Because fate couldn’t have me. I was going out on my own terms.
Davyn came back. He said it was to save me, and I hated him for it. I especially hated that he still treated me like the eleven-year-old he’d abandoned. He coddled me like the little girl he might give another concussion to if he handled her too roughly, rather than acknowledging that I was worth sticking with this time.
He and I had gotten past most of the animosity; I needed someone I could trust to have my back each time Loki sent someone else to kill me. Still, part of me wondered—if Davyn didn’t trust me to take care of myself, how long until he left again? Especially since he refused to treat me like the warrior he raised me to be?
My frustration swelled to a bursting point, and I charged him, instead of waiting for him to make a move.
The fighting these days wasn’t to teach me; it was to keep us sharp. To make sure I was always alert.
I couldn’t do that if he didn’t push me, so I was going to push him instead.
I leaped with a kick, and when he moved to counter I dropped to sweep his legs. He saw the move coming. He adapted and waited.
Instead of using a kick to knock him off balance, I shifted my weight at the last second, sprang off his calf so I could jump over him, and threw a knife at the back of his knee.
I hit my target, the lower tendon, and pain lanced his growl.
The move would disable a mortal, but he recovered before he yanked the blade from his flesh. I wouldn’t have made the attack if it would cause him long-term damage, but I needed him to be a part of this fight.
As he whirled on me, I bounced on the balls of my feet. His fury made my pulse race in anticipation. A real fight. Finally.
Davyn met my gaze and tossed the knife at my feet. It stuck firmly in the ground, inches away. “We’re done for the day,” he said.
No, no, no. Fuck that. I picked up the knife. “No, we’re not.” I felt the urge to be childish, to act like that little girl he thought I still was, and I shoved the impulse back. Never let the emotion show. Never make things personal. If he thought I was weak, he’d leave again.
When I threw the knife, he snagged it out of the air. I’d known he would. As for making it personal… He’d already done that.
“Practice. Is. Over.” He repeated.
I stalked up to him, snatched the blade from his hands, and sheathed it. “I’m pretty sure it never started for you. Don’t insult me by pretending you put any effort into today.”
“Azzie.” He had a growl for every flavor of emotion. All three that he was capable of.
I raised my brows. “We’re done. You said so.” I stalked away from the clearing, through the trees, and toward the small town we were staying in.
So many feelings coursed through me, and I shouldn’t be acknowledging any of them. The anger was easiest to see. The lust, that physical need that came with an unsatisfying ending to a fight, was the one that was most dangerous. Most likely to get me in trouble.
But I needed to squash the hurt the most. The idea that Davyn didn’t respect me as a fighter. That I’d been stuck on this step of the quest for so long, it was like I was on a treadmill with no way off.
Even the fact that Loki sent someone to try to kill me every few months had gotten old.
The only good thing about all of this was Zeke.
Damn it, why did I have to think about him? His name knocked the wind from me, and my fight evaporated.
The lust was still there, though.
That was so very bad. Besides Davyn, he was the one person I really shouldn’t feel for. And I definitely shouldn’t have kept up the whole friends-with-benefits thing we had going. I shouldn’t have been friends with him at all, and I shouldn’t miss him when he was gone, the way he had been for the past few months.
Because, when this prophecy stuff started to come to light—when the bad shit started to happen, and it was time for me to step into power—he would be part of it all.
For a little while, anyway.
Because the prophecies said one of us—Zeke or I—would destroy the other.
TWO
ZEKE
It hadn’t been hard to catch up to Azzie and Davyn. He hated to repeat a town, and there were only so many small enough, with surrounding woods, to meet his needs. And she had emailed me from a library computer in Charleston a few days ago.
Besides, my travels over the years had given me a list of contacts who could find people.
Those things got me a vague location. Knowing who I was looking for would get me the rest. It was late afternoon, with the good sunlight almost gone. That meant sparring practice for Azzie and Davyn, and that meant an isolated place, where they were unlikely to run into anyone.
Like the middle of the nearest woods.
The faintest scent drifted on the breeze, and I couldn’t help a smile. It was soapy and flowery and filled my head with images of a goddess with fiery auburn hair, whose basic walk was casual seduction, and whose barely tanned skin, smile, and bright green eyes teased my dreams on a nightly basis. The scent was barely there, because Azzie tried hard not to wear anything perfumed. Too many beings that would hunt her had sharp senses of smell.
But she was getting reckless lately.
We’d both been slipping closer to intentionally careless since… Basically since we met, a couple of years ago. Then again, she was supposed to face a lot of immortals in her life, but she was my only threat. The prophecy that involved both of us said one of us was meant to be a god, but only at the cost of the other’s life.
And she was a massive threat, because the harder I tried to push away from her, the more whiplash I got each time I sprang back. Fate, similar childhood traumas, and great sex kept bringing us together.
These last few weeks were good example. I’d had a feeling an old friend, Diego, was in trouble. I didn’t ignore my instinct when it said something like that. Azzie and I had said goodbye as if I could stay away longer this time. Despite the fact that we’d sworn not to kill each other if the time ever came, we were acutely aware that every moment spent together was another moment we taunted our fate.
When I got to Diego’s, his trouble was nothing big, though my timing was good. He’d needed some welding repairs done, and I had those skills. I tried to stay after. He and I talked about whether I might set up shop there. Get back into gun smithing.
But I couldn’t ignore the insistent, non-stop, nagging feeling that I needed to get back to Azzie.
Which was why I was currently stepping into a small clearing in the middle of the trees. This was what I’d been looking for, and the stomped-down and kicked-up dirt and broken twigs were proof someone had been here. It might not have been Azzie and Davyn, but it almost always was them. They moved differently in a sparring match than people did when walking or hunting, and these patterns were all over the place.
