Bride of Grendel 2: Night of the Bear Man: A Viking Lore Erotic Tale (Viking Lore Erotic Tales Book 3) by Gwynn Jones Read Free Book Online Page B

foolish pride, that I sought this glory. Can you never forgive me? Is that why you will not come with me? And now I must pine for you for the rest of my days?"
                  "I have forgiven you already. I cannot come with you because my business here is not yet finished."
                  "Heorot? But I thought you meant to let it fall on its own?"
                  "Not Heorot. This hall. And that passage." She gestured toward the fire. "And this." She nodded at the blue flame that she'd just conjured in her hand. "I don't know who I am, what I am. But I know that I have become this way since coming here. I think maybe my answers lie through there. I have to go see."
                  "But you told me the fire never dies. Do you plan to just walk through the flames? It's too much, too great a blaze."
                  "I have a thought about that."
                  Sigrun remembered the strange effect that her blade had on the fire when she thrust it into the flames in order to cauterize Grendel's wound. She picked up the sword now and carried it to the hearth, thrusting it up to the hilt into the fire. The heat on her hand was intense, but she noticed a blue glow wrapping around her hand and creeping up her wrist. The flames around the blade burst into a ball of white and blue and then parted, creating an opening in the wall of fire. She smiled, withdrawing the sword and letting the flames close in on themselves again. This blade had hung beside the hearth for a reason. It was both a weapon and a key!
                  Turning back to Beowulf, she felt a pang in her chest. The man was extraordinary — perhaps in ways similar to her? They had a special connection, she felt it crackling through her, and yet she knew that for now, at least, they had to part. He may have killed her dear Grendel, but he had also freed her in the process, pushed her further on her own path. Her encounter with Beowulf, this gorgeous, powerful man, had been revelatory — but now she needed to find out what these revelations meant.
                  "Promise me that you will come find me, once you have found the answers you seek." The look in his eyes almost made her falter in her resolve.
                  "I do. I will." Her throat constricted. "Thank you, Beowulf. Thank you for what you have given me. Now bring them Grendel's head, and tell them that you killed me, too. It would be best for both of us if that is what they believe."
                  He swept her into his arms for a last embrace, his skin glowing gold against her silver-white sheen, and she allowed herself to sink into him, to be held for a moment completely enveloped in his strong, steady presence. She would like to have this, to keep this. But that gateway beckoned.
                  "Wait for me," she whispered into his chest, "wait for me, and I will find you again." She said it for herself, the words too soft for his ear to catch. She could not ask this of him, but she could hope it for herself.
     
                  Sigrun helped Beowulf swim back to the surface with Grendel's head, enlisting her favorite sea dragons to help speed him up from the depths with his burden. She did not follow. She was sure that he would be received with great acclaim. She trusted that he would gracefully extricate himself from any further commitments to Hrothgar and Heorot and would return to his home on the other side of the sea. And she had no desire to lay eyes on Heorot ever again, herself. She was done with that place.
                  She looked around the hall. By rights, she supposed, this place and everything within it belonged to her now. She considered her initial plan of flight, how that tiny fraction of the hall's wealth that she'd taken would have enabled her to go anywhere, do anything. She thought again of Beowulf. But then she turned to the