Page 2 of Delinquent Dette (Empty Nests #7)

Frikka

The goddess smiled upon Frikka that season and during the running of the Drakes, had caught Sten and claimed him as his prize for his heat to come.

They’d spent a long, lazy spring evening making love on a moss bed by the creek, and from his pouch, Sten had pulled free a pressed blossom, blue in color.

Between the pages of an English book, the pretty thing rested in his hand and gave off a faint, sweet scent. While his human form had thought the treasure an amusing thing, his dragon purred and demanded Sten for his own—for always. And the thought didn’t scare him.

When time came and his father grew wrathful in anger over Frikka’s heat being given to the scourge of their numbers, the gothar, their head priest, had declared it Freya’s demand.

There were two facets to the religion of dragons.

They worshiped none, but held fast to tradition and the demands of the gods and goddesses in many ways.

All things Freya went to Dettes, though, and they were held equal but very different.

They did not fight, but they managed their Drakes’ homes, managed finances, and traded.

They could become jarl if it passed to them, but only if a Drake possessed them.

Frikka? As a whelp, he’d found his magic, had been told he had the power of second sight, and given much praise for his skills.

Also, that he would make an excellent nester and high volur someday.

Because of this, he was allowed to train with the gothar, to be educated by other volur, and spent summertimes with wolves and other shifters to learn their magic.

Frikka could calm the seas and bring soft winds.

He could ask Freya for her power to heal the sick—and could ensure that a silly little egg could hatch.

So, when it came time to mate, he had no fear when he visited the sacred caves and lay with the Drake.

A glorious nine days of basking in bliss and dreams of a clutch of five eggs, ashes, and blood.

So, he was thrilled that in half a season, his prediction had been wrong.

He had six. Six new males for the raiders.

And Frikka would happily give them as the goddess wanted.

No seer had predicted the anglicized Irish dragons and their increasing feud with his father, either. With Frikka being key.

One late summer’s eve, laying with his eggs and sweating gently in a warm spot in his father’s longhouse, the war horns sounded.

The screams came.

The clashing steel.

And in came a foulness to his father’s estate, covered in blood and ready to pillage. “Leave no egg uncrushed. Show Fjallarr how the Bhaldraithe take to having our treasures ruined.”

Frikka, who had always been a mischievous but docile Dette, found a courage in him that hadn’t been there before. He rended the Drake as he shifted. Claw and fang. And the Drake that came after left no much better.

“Father!” Frikka roared as males fought their way into the longhouse, after his precious eggs. After Dettes for their spoils.

No father came. No aid to Frikka.

The third intruder, one of the waning Bhaldraithe family, that came was not as easily turned as the first two. He was large and dominant, his fangs like daggers. He blew flames around Frikka, destroying their home, fire crackling in the rafters and sending embers over his straw nest.

“No!” Frikka stamped out the fire, back turned as he took claws to his flank, the piercing digits cutting deep into the meat of his legs.

Frikka, having never received a strike from a Drake before, grew feral.

No Drake was ever to lay fang or claws to the jarl’s sons.

No Drake had the right to encroach upon a Dette, to disturb their nest or threaten them.

A tail whipped around and threw Frikka against a solid surface, sending him bursting through a stone wall to stare up at smoke-darkened skies.

Screaming. Roaring. Fire. It all paled next to one tiny sound, like wet kindling.

And just as quickly as he realized, the six consciousnesses that linked to his soul turned into five.

My baby.

Frikka roared and screamed. On a broken leg and battered wing, he threw himself into the flames to guard the remaining five eggs. The invading dragon sneered, and Frikka threw his magic into his claws, ripping and tearing with all the force his soul could give.

Sten, hearing Frikka’s cries, rushed into the longhouse and stood guard over the clutch they’d made for the raider horde. A wounded cry eked from his maw, but he didn’t join Frikka in the fight.

Frikka slashed, he bit, he tore flesh from bone. Die. Die in your own flames. I will curse you and all your clan until I hurt no more. I will end every single Bhaldraithe!

Frikka knew he’d hurt forever.

Red. Red, red, red. Fire-ember red, bloodred, bone red, flesh red. All Frikka saw was red and bone. Black as night spilling over fetid green scales.

The babe he had been so willing to give to the horde such a short time ago would never see Valhalla. He would never grow strong or join his brethren. A life ended so soon would never see ultimate paradise.

“Frikka!” Sten’s voice wrenched through his heart. A fleshen voice. Not a dragon form.

The Drake was of no consequence. What mattered was the interloper, the one who needed to die. Frikka clawed and bit, howling in crazed rage, mourning his child, protecting his family.

Frikka! The call picked at his mind, and he turned with a snarl, the red in his sight so bright, covering everything. He’s dead. You have slain your foe, Dette.

He snarled and turned his attention to the Drake that he had been locked into heated battle with… Well, most of him. The rest was on the other side of the longhouse, some outside the building. He’d been dead awhile, but Frikka couldn’t stop.

Fearful eyes all around them stared at Frikka like he was a monster.

They were fucking dragons! Tyr himself would have been proud of what he’d done!

He Killed my baby. I Killed him.

A blanket covered what was left of the crushed egg. Liquid seeped through the woven fibers. My baby…

I know, Dette. I know. Sten had come to visit his young frequently, eager for them to hatch, so he could take them. It was only right to do so. The grief in his voice was pleasantly equal to Frikka’s own. The Drake mourned, too.

When Sten drew Frikka from the burning longhouse, he hushed and preened the Dette with soothing whispers inundated with pure grief.

Why didn’t you defend our eggs? Frikka snarled and snapped at Sten.

I was too late. You were strong enough and needed your revenge while I brought our eggs out of the fire. You deserved your life for a life. Sten nuzzled and cradled Frikka until they shifted and sobbed into one another’s arms.

“Cease your tears and release that bastard raider. One egg of a clutch that should have never been born.” His father, Jarl Fjallarr, waved an unblemished hand at the two.

Rage boiled in Frikka’s gut. His dream had been five eggs and five he had. He stared from his hands, bloody and filthy, to his father. “Father, why are your hands clean?”

Clouds darkened the dimming sky as evening ran in. Smoke from the fires rolled through the air. Jarl Fjallarr said nothing.

“You bear no ash or smoke. Your clothes are clean, Father. Your hands are clean, Father. You scent of fine oils, Father.” Frikka choked when strong arms embraced his midsection, stopping him from lunging.

“A jarl does his fighting from the back! I am a leader, not a blade slinger! It is you that lay with filthy axe-swingers. Look at you, a Dette bloodied guarding a bastard clutch. Tyr did not want those eggs, and it was his curse!”

Thunder trembled in the far distance. “See! Even Thor is angered by this clutch. A jarl’s son does not breed with the impure!”

Impure.

That’s all Sten was. A bastard son borne of the horde for the horde. His Dette father had been a youngling, himself. A second heat given by Freya, sired by another of the horde.

“Have the gothar cleanse you and purify yourself. Leave this behind so the peasant can take your shameful clutch.” Frikka’s father gestured at the five eggs that rested haphazardly on a bearskin. The screams of their fear echoing in Frikka’s head drove madness into his heart.

Frikka stared at the eggs as his father’s words tickled his senses as if they were a mile away from his ears. “No.”

“What did you say?” The low growl in Jarl Fjallarr’s throat rang of threat.

“I said no.” Frikka turned his attention from the five eggs to the one that had silenced itself with a single footstep. He then turned his attention to the remains of the Drake he’d slain. He’d done that. A Dette.

“Frikka, by all the gods I swear, I will cast you out of the clan if you defy me,” the jarl seethed.

Frikka’s gaze snapped to his father. The same blue eyes.

Frikka’s Dette father had soft brown ones, but the Dette was aloof and had little to do with him.

He was a toy for his father’s whims, but free to do as he pleased—until he was needed. Like all his children.

“Sten? As the jarl’s oldest unmated Dette son, I am next in line to be presented to worthy Drakes. Are you worthy of me?” Frikka stared Sten down.

“That is a question with many edges, like the axe I swing.” Sten took Frikka’s hands. The calloused pads of Sten’s large hands were rough, burned, and blistered. Soot caked his fingers and blood smeared his body. Sten would be a warrior fit for Tyr. Sten would fight.

“Then give me your answers.” Frikka held up a hand to silence his frantic father, who was smart enough not to get closer. He was a coward and Frikka had slain a Drake.

“The short answer? That is No . I am not worthy. But it is not by the station of my birth. It is not by station of your birth, either. You are no more special by name than any other Dette. But by heart, you are great. I see power in your eyes. I see strength in you. You are clever and playful. I am not worth a Dette with such character, love, and bloodthirst.” Sten stood tall, chin steeled.

The scruff of his beard streaked with blood flashed in a strike of lightning, his eyes bright and menacing.

“And why did you not avenge your young?” Frikka stepped away from Sten and stared him down.

“Our young had gone by the time I arrived. I saved the remainder while you took your heart’s desire in flesh.

I would never deny you the blood owed.” Sten swallowed hard, and clean trails formed in the filth of his face as tears fell.

Lightning struck again, this time closer.

Shouts rang out as another fire erupted—the storehouse.

“Father. Raiders are permitted only to hold onto a portion of their wages, the rest stored for them, correct?” Frikka stared at the burning storehouse, the smoke thick as rain began to fall, washing away all the blood.

Jarl Fjallarr nodded once, spite growing thick in his eyes.

“Render unto him what is his. Render unto me my dowry. I am Nidhogg no longer.” Frikka didn’t want the dirt on his hands to go away.

He didn’t want the blood to drip off, watered down.

While it was on him, it meant something.

On the ground, washed away, it meant nothing.

His baby was gone, and it meant nothing .

And a sickening voice in the back of his head told him that he was willing to give his baby up for Tyr’s army not a day ago. He was a timid Dette up until he wasn’t anymore.

“If you are Nidhogg no more, you get no dowry.” Jarl Fjallarr spit on the ground. “But the Nielsen may have his share.”

He clenched his fists and took a shaking breath as wet footsteps sloshed up behind him

“And I shall take my share, too.” Erik Nielsen. A brother in arms with Sten joined Frikka’s side.

“And I,” said another. “The cowardice I witnessed from my jarl and the curse brought down today bears not repeating to the rest of the clan, does it, jarl?”

More wet footsteps. Shadows loomed over Frikka’s back as he stared. As the furs over his father’s chest lay flat in the rain and his hair grew sodden, he became more pathetic by the moment. A few errant splutters of protest rang out.

“And give the Dette his due,” Erik said. “Wouldn’t do for the jarl to be known as a coward, a thief, and too poor to support their own young.”

“Fine! But you’ll never darken Nidhogg land again.

” The jarl stomped off and shouted, calling for his attendant.

The slave he kept, Skagg, a fox shifter with a lame leg, came running as best he could.

Even he had the cuts and bruises of battle.

Even a conquered fox with a malformed foot could fight and their jarl couldn’t.

And that night? The jarl and his company ate roast goose, one a tough and bitter old gander, and the other a plump hen.