Page 122 of The Last Valkyrie

What, did this serial rapist just go around impregnating random powerful women, hoping for the best? Shadowing their minds so they never learn the truth? Waiting for his offspring to come out with pointy ears, silver hair, and for our powers to “manifest” eventually?

If that was the truth, then there was no telling how many others had been impacted by this dangerous man. How many bog-blood half-elves were out there, wondering where they came from.

Yet my dream couldn’t lie . . . and Korvan had said I was the last one standing.

My teeth snapped together, so hard it jarred my brain. I thought they would crack with how intensely I clenched them. “Let. My. Mother. Go!”

He smiled, his mask finally cracking and showing the purple, devilish lips of his true form.

“I will,Ser’karioth.You only need to do what’s right.”

“Right.”

As the words tapered off in my head, I jolted upright in bed. I was covered in a layer of sweat, dripping from my hair, soiling the covers around me.

My bed was empty. I’d overslept, and my mates were gone.

Creeping up from my bed, naked and lost and afraid, I found a handwritten note sitting in plain sight.

My heart hammered, hand trembling as I slowly reached out and expected the worst.

I unfolded the note.

Maple or blueberry syrup on your waffles? Can’t remember.

See you soon, fox.

A great heave blew past my lips, all the nervous, scared energy expunging from my body in one go. The note was unsigned, but I knew the handwriting, and only one of my mates called me “little fox.”

I laughed at myself, scratching the back of my neck. Amused that I’d been so paranoid, when Arne and the others had simply left to get breakfast and bring it back to me in bed.

My nervous chuckling dwindled within seconds as my mind rewound, filtering back and trying to grasp the dream before it could dissipate like all dreams eventually did.

A gasp wrenched through me and I dropped the letter.

Urd, Verdandi, Skuld.

In the present, in reality, it made so much more sense than when I’d been there in my dream.

Somehow, Korvan had visited my sleeping mind, and I didn’t even want totrytackling how he managed that.

The important part was the section of my dream that remained—not about the disgusting invitation for incest, or the crude remarks about Astrid, or Korvan’s diabolical schemes.

“The location,” I hissed.

I knew where I needed to go.

Yet my feet dragged, one steps . . . two steps.

Sorrow filled me as I stared at the door of my longhouse.

“I’m so sorry, guys.”

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