The Unyielding

  Don’t miss any of Shelly Laurenston’s PRIDE series

  The Mane Event

  The Beast in Him

  The Mane Attraction

  The Mane Squeeze

  Beast Behaving Badly

  Big Bad Beast

  Bear Meets Girl

  Howl for It

  Wolf with Benefits

  Bite Me

  Also in the CALL OF CROWS series

  The Unleashing

  The Undoing

  THE UNYIELDING

  SHELLY LAURENSTON

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  EPILOGUE

  BRING THE HEAT

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2017 Shelly Laurensten

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  KENSINGTON and the K logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-1-6177-3513-4

  First Trade Paperback Printing: April 2017

  First Electronic Edition: April 2017

  ISBN-13: 978-1-61773-514-1

  ISBN-10: 1-61773-514-0

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  So many thanks to Kody Cushman. The best, most amazing tattoo artist this side of the Pacific. Not only for your invaluable knowledge about art and life and tattooing, but for giving me what I waited twenty years to get—my magnificent dragons and crows.

  You are the absolute best, Kody. Thank you!

  And big thanks to my editor, Alicia Condon, who has the patience of a saint. So I’ve decided to rename you Saint Alicia of the Kensington. Heh.

  PROLOGUE

  “Up. Now.”

  Harvold immediately woke at his mother’s words. She already held the baby. His sister who could barely walk. And she roused his younger brother with the same words.

  She led him and his brother to the secret exit at the back of the house. It was there in case of raids. It was the middle of winter. Who would raid now?

  “Go,” she ordered, pushing his sister into his arms. “Go and don’t look back.”

  “But—”

  “Do not ask questions!” It was her biggest complaint about him. He asked too many questions. He needed to know “too much.”

  But he was nearly thirteen years. He was almost a man. It was time he received answers.

  “Just go.” She suddenly hugged him, tight, his sister trapped between them.

  It was a fierce, terrified hug. Then she hugged his brother the same.

  “Go, Harvold. Protect your brother and sister. And don’t look back.”

  The latch was unhitched and he and his brother snuck out of the house and ran through the forest and up the hill, their sister in his arms. But Harvold stopped. He would look back. He always did.

  “Harvold!” his brother whispered.

  Harvold ignored the desperate plea and instead found a place for his siblings to safely hide. A large boulder would do the trick and he planted them there.

  The hiding place was perfect. Big enough to keep them out of sight, but located so that he had a perfect view of the village.

  After handing their sister to his younger brother, Harvold eased around the boulder and looked down on the village that had been the home of him, his father, his father’s father, and back and back for generations.

  Those he’d known all his life were forced into the center of the village square, their elders and warriors shoved to the ground by men he’d never seen before. Large men. Harvold had never seen people such a size before. The women and children were kept from leaving, the entire village encircled by these large, terrifying men.

  One of those terrifying men stepped forward, glaring down at Eindride the Patient. The stranger had long hair and a big beard so that all Harvold could see, even from this safe distance, was his fierce eyes.

  “Tell me,” the large man growled. His words, although low, carried on the crisp winter wind so that it was as if Harvold stood next to them. “Where is it?”

  “I told you before . . . we don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  The big man crouched in front of Eindride, one arm resting on his knee. “Do you know who I am?” he asked.

  Eindride glared up at the man, because even crouching, he still towered. “You are Holfi Rundstöm.”

  Harvold’s brother gasped at the name and Harvold quickly covered the boy’s mouth with his hand.

  Even though his brother was only nine, he’d heard of the Rundstöms. Everyone had. Their reputation went back for generations and they were feared for good reason.

  “Yes, I am Holfi Rundstöm.” The big man stood, lifted his blade and brought it down at a brutal angle. Not on Eindride, but across the neck of his oldest daughter.

  Poor Eindride cried out in rage. He had seven daughters and he adored them all.

  Rundstöm must have known this. Harvold guessed it was no accident he’d killed Eindride’s eldest.

  Rundstöm grabbed the next eldest of Eindride’s girls and pressed his blood-covered blade against her throat. “I will ask one more time, old man,” he growled. “Tell me where—owwwww!”

  The hammer seemed to come out of nowhere, ramming into Rundstöm’s giant head and forcing him to release Eindride’s daughter and stumble back several feet.

  It shocked Harvold that Rundstöm didn’t fall to the ground dead. Because that was not a normal Warhammer. Its head was a thousand times bigger than anything Harvold had seen before from any blacksmith. Who had that much iron to work with and put into a single weapon?

  Rundstöm’s men, who appeared unarmed, grabbed nearby weapons from the blacksmith’s stall, and snatching up anything available. Like a chopping axe. r />
  “You dare come here, Holfi Rundstöm?” a bare-chested man demanded as he walked from the woods. He wore fur pants and boots but no shirt. The image of the large hammer he wielded was branded on his chest, a gold torc around his thick neck. “This town is under my god’s protection.”

  “Fuck your god,” Rundstöm growled back. “Fuck you.”

  Another hammer was tossed to the leader and he swung it a few times as he walked. The head on the weapon was so large, Harvold had no idea how he managed not to beat himself in the face with it.

  As those with hammers approached, Rundstöm and his men jerked their shoulders back, big black wings exploding from their flesh. Like the wings of Odin’s ravens, Huginn and Muninn, except much larger.

  “It’s true,” Harvold couldn’t help but whisper over the panicked screams of his neighbors. “It’s all true.”

  “What is?” his brother asked. “What’s happening?”

  Harvold motioned to his brother to stay in place, while he continued to watch.

  He’d heard the old women of his village talking about this, but few had believed them. The stories of warriors chosen by one god to represent him or her in this world. To do his or her bidding. His parents worshipped any god they needed at any time, but these men, they only had one god they listened to, whose orders they followed, whose power they worshipped.

  Those with the hammers must belong to Thor. And the men with the wings . . . their god had to be Odin.

  Harvold felt his very bones grow cold. Odin. So feared, his parents rarely called on him for anything except during a time of war. And something told Harvold that the men Odin chose to wear his wings would be no better. Reason and talk would mean nothing to those who worshipped at the blood-soaked feet of Odin.

  “Hold your weapons, ridiculous men,” a woman called out. She wore long robes, and a hood covered her face. There were others with her, all women, Harvold thought, based on the way they moved. They came from the east. They had no weapons of their own from what he could see, but they also showed no fear as they strode toward the male warriors.

  “Holde’s Maids,” the hammer wielder snarled. “What are you heinous bitches doing here?”

  “Hold your tongue, Giant Killer, or I’ll tear it from your mouth with my teeth.”

  “He’s right, Alvilda,” Rundstöm cut in. “Why are you here?”

  The hooded woman stopped and stared beyond the men, toward the lake of the village. “Perhaps that is a question we should all ask,” she said, waving her hand toward the water.

  From the cold depths of the lake they appeared, naked and beautiful. Men and women, swords at the ready.

  A woman led them, her hair in thick braids down her back. She gazed at the different groups, wide blue eyes slowly blinking. Even though she was naked and soaking wet, with snow under her feet, she didn’t seem the least bit cold.

  “What’s going on?” the naked woman asked.

  The two male leaders began to speak, but the hooded woman cut them off with a quick swipe of both her arms. “Why are you here, Eerika?” she asked.

  “We heard you and the Ravens were planning an attack on our god’s temple, not too far from here.”

  “Why would we ever bother attacking your god’s fish-covered temple?”

  From the north, bursting down from the nearby mountain, came another group. This one also all women. They cut through the snow easily by using long sticks attached to their feet and pushing with long poles held in their hands.

  They each jumped from the high mountain ledge, some of them easily flipping in midair, before landing near the other groups.

  And from the northern woods charged a pack of white wolves. They growled and snarled and bit at each other until they stopped near the others and turned from animal to human. Easily, with no more than a thought.

  The six groups stared at each other for several long moments.

  “I don’t understand,” Holfi Rundstöm said to them. “Why are we all here? At the same time?”

  “We’ve been lured here, idiot,” the Holde’s Maid snapped from behind her hood.

  “Who would do that?”

  “The Silent aren’t here,” another of the winged warriors suggested.

  Holfi sneered. “They wouldn’t dare.”

  “And Loki’s Wolves are no longer part of the Nine,” one of the Maids said.

  “But we should be,” a man who’d been a wolf laughingly suggested.

  “But you aren’t.”

  The leader of the Maids raised her hands to silence everyone and practically yelled, “Then why are we here?”

  Harvold was wondering the same thing when another woman—a very different woman—silently landed on the boulder he and his siblings hid behind.

  He looked up at her, knowing instantly she had not been born in these lands. Her skin was brown, as if she’d been in the sun for a thousand years, her eyes almost black. She still had the brand of her master on her arm. Harvold remembered her. She’d been hanged from a tree by her master for trying to escape. She’d been a slave. She still had the scars from where her master had beaten her. He’d left her still-bleeding corpse hanging from the tree near his hall, but it had suddenly disappeared.

  Most of the villagers assumed a necromancer had taken her for his dark works. But if a necromancer had brought her back, he’d have brought back a corpse that would have continued to rot for however long it roamed the land.

  But the woman who now stood over him and his siblings . . . she was young, healthy, and well-armed.

  She was alive.

  She glanced down at Harvold, studying him closely. She was sizing him up, judging whether he was a threat to her. Much to his relief, she finally raised her finger and pressed it to her lips. “Shhhh.”

  Harvold shrank back and nodded.

  Smiling, she raised her bow, nocked an arrow, and aimed. After a few seconds, she let the arrow fly. It struck Rundstöm through the neck, the huge man looking shocked before he fell to the ground.

  More arrows flew from the trees and mountains surrounding Harvold’s village, tearing into warrior and villager alike. Once the rain of arrows stopped, the woman on the boulder dropped her head back and unleashed a war cry that tore across the land.

  “Crows!” one of the gods’ warriors screamed out in warning and the slave women seemed to appear from everywhere. Women not born of these lands, some still wearing the brands of their masters on their arms or faces, bursting from trees, leaping from the mountain ledges, or just dropping down into the middle of the village.

  Women with large black wings and a rune branded on their necks or right on their faces.

  Harvold recognized that rune. It represented Skuld, one of the Fates his grandmother had been talking about lately.

  “Treat your slaves well, my young Harvold,” his grandmother would often say, “for if they die poorly at your hand, Skuld may send them back to tear you apart.”

  He thought she spoke of something rising from the grave. Something decayed and desolate, to reap revenge before being swallowed back into the hole it had sprung from.

  But he’d been wrong.

  These thriving, angry foreign women attacked without hesitation. Some lashing out with long, thin blades, impaling necks, thighs, and spines. Others wielded swords and shields, using crushing blows to decapitate, dismember. Battling anyone who would take their challenge.

  Many of the villagers were struck down as they tried to escape, unable to avoid the battle that had exploded around them.

  It was a brutal thing, no one spared. Even the winged women had suffered heavy casualties. But those who still breathed had no pity. They walked among the bodies, killing those—whether gods’ warrior or innocent villager—they felt might still survive, slashing throats with their thin weapons.

  One large, very brown winged woman grabbed one of Odin’s warriors by the back of his throat, lifting him so he sat up a bit. He’d lost one of his wings and a leg below the knee during the
battle, but still he breathed.

  “Why?” he asked the woman. “Why have you done this?”

  “Did you think the Crows would ever forget what you and the others did? That you killed our sisters? You cut them down while they slept. All of you attacking at once.”

  “That was—”

  “Ten winters ago. Yes. And we did not forget, Raven.” She leaned in. “We never forget.”

  She rammed her thin but strong edged weapon into the warrior’s eye, forcing it in deep, and yelling over his screams, “And now you can be like your god!”

  When the warrior’s screams died off, the slave women raised their blood-covered weapons and roared in triumph.

  Harvold didn’t realize he was crying until he was forced to wipe his face. The entire village gone . . . even his parents.

  His brother was resting on the boulder with him, also watching. Also crying. Harvold didn’t make him look away. No point in protecting him anymore. Then Harvold remembered their sister.

  “Where is she?” he asked, looking where she should have been, but wasn’t.

  The brothers scrambled from the rock and turned, both halting in surprise.

  Men stood behind them. Men with wings. Not the black wings of Odin’s warriors but large white wings. And the rune of Tyr burned into their biceps. They gazed down at Harvold’s sister as she reached up to them with her fat arms.

  “No!” his brother snapped, but Harvold covered the boy’s mouth with his hand to silence him.

  As one, the men looked at them. They had large eyes that didn’t move. Just their heads moved and they blinked at Harvold. Like owls. Their heads and eyes moved like owls.