Viking Heart (The MacLomain Series: Viking Ancestors Book 3) (27 page)

Three years ago.

In a small fisherman’s bar in Winter Harbor, Maine.

“Jesus, he’s alive,” Amber whispered and relaxed her hand, barely seeing the stone and cylinder that rolled onto the bar until Dayna’s hand clamped over them.

Just like they did back then, Sean's eyes flickered from the TV for a moment and caught with hers.

That
moment had been their beginning.

Terrified by the unusualness of the moment, the absolute feeling of déjà vu, she couldn’t rip her eyes from Sean’s face. Was she going insane? What was happening? Then someone slid onto the bar stool on her other side and a warm hand closed over her fist. “This is the moment it all began, Amber.”

Breathing became impossible as she tore her eyes from Sean and looked at the man beside her.

Kjar
.

Not disguised in the least, he was every inch a Viking as the room froze around them. The people. The laughter. All of it.

Except for Dayna.

It was clear based on their brief greeting that this wasn't the first time her cousin and the demi-god had met.

Her eyes locked on Kjar. “How are you
here
?” Then she looked between him and Dayna, heart slamming. “Why is everything frozen? Is Kol okay? Did he make it?” She kept shaking her head and tried not to have a full-blown anxiety attack. “And
how
do you know one another?”

Kjar kept his warm hand over hers, voice calm. “Remember how I spoke of freezing or splitting time for a moment? That space and time become singular?”

“Right. Einstein talk.” Amber frowned, voice shaky. “When I mentioned the odds of me loving Kol. That it’d be as likely as having the planet stop spinning.”

“Ironic, that,” Kjar murmured but continued talking before she could. “As to your other questions. I cannot say if Kol made it.” His eyes went to Dayna. “And I know your cousin because she has been very helpful in my quest to see everything go as planned. To see the love connections flourish and, of course, to help save Sean.”

Her eyes shot to Dayna. “H-how did you help? I don’t get it.”

“Let’s just say like you, I have special gifts. Some might call me a bit of a doppelgänger. I was recruited to make sure the stones found you and your sisters and that you met Sean.”

Doppelgänger?
Wasn’t that supposedly a look-alike of a living person? Supposedly just a paranormal phenomenon? But she figured if demi-gods, dragon shifters and the planet literally not turning were possible, she shouldn’t be surprised.

“Because I’m a demi-god, I have access not only to Bifröst but the power of the Web of Wyrd,” Kjar continued. “Not for all things but enough so to keep an eye on my bloodline. On Sean. That means I could see the lifespans of all my descendants. And the stones were always going to end up in this era and near Sean.”

“Your descendants,” Amber murmured. Sean descended from Kjar? Chills went through her. “So Sean’s a demi-god too?”

“No.” Kjar shook his head. “Too many generations removed. For the most part, the godliness has trickled away. But because of our blood connection and the Web of Wyrd, I was able to perhaps help both Sean and Kol.”

Amber shook her head, confused and quite frankly, out of it. “I don’t understand.”

Kjar snorted. “I didn’t either at first.”

Dayna nodded at Sean, frozen in time as he was. “Amber, do you see the woman next to him. Do you recognize her?”

Her eyes fell to the petite redhead by his side. The one looking at Sean with adoration. “Yes, that’s Jules. I haven’t seen her in eons.”

“That’s right. Your cousin, Julie,” Dayna confirmed. “Did you know she’d been crushing on Sean months before his accident?”

Amber shrugged, trying her best to settle into the sub-reality in which she’d been thrust. “No, I didn’t. What’s that got to do with anything?” She grabbed Kjar’s arm. “Again, what’s going on with Kol…with my sisters?”

“Sean was half in love with Julie before he nearly drowned but afterward, he remembered none of it. All he could see was you,” Kjar continued, not answering her questions.

Amber had no idea what the point of this was. “
Okay
. And?”

“There’s a reason for that.” Kjar’s eyes went from her to Sean. “There’s a reason you two were so drawn to one another.”

“Well, he's pretty damn good looking,” she pointed out, trying to normalize the crazy situation.

“There was far more to it than that,” Kjar said. “A very specific reason actually.”

He squeezed her hand. “Having seen Sean’s accident on his lifeline, I used a very rare and old form of magic to save him. One that required not only some of my essence but that of another’s. A way to bridge a gap across time and hopefully keep my brethren safe.”

On the verge of understanding what he might be getting at, nausea swamped her and she braced her head in her palms. “Whose essence?”

“Someone who loves you so strongly that his feelings, your feelings, repeat themselves lifetime after lifetime,” Kjar said softly. “Someone who would have wanted me to do such a thing. Someone who would have done anything to reconnect with you.”

Amber struggled for breath and whispered, “It was Kol, wasn’t it?"

Kjar nodded once. “It was.”

Her mind was going in circles trying to come to grips with what he was saying. As she thought back over the events of the past week, things were rapidly starting to click into place. “So you, Sean and Kol were interconnected because of this.”

Her eyes went to him as understanding dawned. “Is that why I heard and saw Sean when I looked at Kol that first night? When I thought I was losing my mind.” Her eyes widened then narrowed. “Is that why you desired me? Because you’d somehow mixed your essence in with Sean’s and even Kol’s?”

He nodded.

Dayna’s voice sounded a little curt. “This was never strictly about saving Sean but always about saving them both and protecting three loves found through time.”

Amber shook her head and murmured, “That’s why Kol reminds Megan so much of Sean. Why he called her Sea Siren.”

Then what Dayna had said earlier broke through her reverie and her heart leapt in her chest. “So if Sean survived that means Kol did too?”

“Kol is not saved,” Kjar said, scowling. “Not yet.”

“And neither is Sean for that matter,” Dayna said softly. “After all, his boat is lost at sea.”

That’s right. Before she could continue questioning them, Kjar said, “Sean soaked up my energy when I helped save him from drowning years ago.” He touched his eye. “It changed his eye color, even his personality.” He half sighed, half growled. “And not for the better.”

He shook his head. “Because of what I did, Kol has slowly but surely started to feel his connection to Sean. It's why he has been staring out at the sea so much lately. Why he lost his desire for other women. Without realizing it, he was remembering someone he had forgotten.
You.
It’s also why he and Sean were having headaches. The thin tie between them was creating pressure across the centuries.” He sighed. “It’s a tricky thing mingling essences. Very trying on the soul.”

“That sounds awful,” she whispered. But she needed to stay focused so she swung her eyes between them before they landed on Dayna. “And again, how is it that you know Kjar, a demi-god that lived over eleven hundred years ago?”

“That doesn’t matter right now,” Dayna murmured.

Kjar wrapped Amber's hand around not only the cylinder but her stone before he tilted her chin, affectionate eyes meeting hers. “Know that you have touched us all and we love you. Now you must follow your heart. It will always take care of you if you let it…if you trust it.”

“Wha—” she started, but the room once more burst with activity and everything was as it had been before. Sort of.

Kjar was no longer there.

She glanced to her left. Neither was Dayna.

Then her eyes shot to where Sean had been.

He was gone too.

Amber blinked, baffled, before her eyes focused on the date scrolling across the bottom of the news on TV. It was February 16
th
, 2015.

Two days after Sean's fishing boat went missing.

The bartender plunked down a small notepad and pencil in front of her, slid a locally brewed beer her way and winked. “Here ya go, beautiful. This one’s on the guy at the end of the bar. He said you liked to draw and that you’d probably like your beer warm so I grabbed one from the back.”

Warm beer? The only place she ever drank that was in… Her eyes widened and she peered in the direction the bartender had nodded but didn’t see anyone she recognized. “What guy?”

He glanced at the end of the bar and shrugged. “Dunno where he went.”

She frowned. “What’d he look like?”

The bartender continued to make a mixed drink for another customer. “Big guy. Accent.”

Chills rippled up her spine. “Scottish maybe?”

He shrugged. “Dunno.”

“Yeah, thick brogue,” an older woman said from a few stools down. “Real good lookin’.” She nodded at the door. “Saw him head that way. If you hurry, you might catch up with him, honey.” Then she winked. “Don’t want a man like that getting away.”

Amber couldn’t agree more. Because she would bet about anything it was Grant MacLomain. Yet when she got outside, there was nobody there. Nothing but cars, snow and silence.

Deep down inside she knew he was gone.

But that beer wasn’t and he had sent it her way for a reason.

Returning to the bar, she slid onto her stool.

“Don’t worry, Sweetheart,” the bartender said, a crooked grin on his face. “Some things just aren’t meant to be.”

Another little chill raced over her. Only Sean called her Sweetheart. But he wasn’t Sean. Not at all. Yet his words were meant for her. Amber took a long swig of beer and set the cylinder and stone on the bar in front of her. Besides the older woman, a few fishermen further down and a handful of partiers in the corner, she had the place to herself.

Brushing her thumb back and forth over the cylinder, she thought about what Dayna and Kjar had shared. Who exactly
was
her cousin? How did she and Kjar know one another?

Yet what she mulled over most, what made her chest tight and heart hammer into her throat, was what they said about Kol. That they had loved one another lifetime after lifetime. It brought her thoughts back to what Kjar said about reincarnation. Could it really be true?

She remembered what Kol had said about loving her…

“But now that I’ve said it, I feel…different, better…somehow freer than before. You say it when and if you ever feel the same. No sooner. Because trust me, when you feel this for the first time you won’t be able to say anything else.”

Then she thought of what he said so soon before he met his death…

“The Web of Wyrd is upon us, woman. Destiny. Everything that happens is meant to be and will affect many outcomes.”

Amber eyed the Web of Wyrd stave on the stone then flipped it and confronted the symbol that had always given her a sense of foreboding. The Valknut. The Knot of the Slain. She thought of Kol pulling her against him, protecting her against the wave. She remembered the way he said,
“I love you, Amber.”

Then he had been slain protecting that love.

He had given his life for it.

Amber wiped away a tear.
Tears
. Something she was no longer immune to. And as she feared, they had once more meant the end.

Or had they?

Adlin’s words came rushing back to her.
“I will do my best to protect ye, lass but in the end ye must know your own heart, aye?”

Her heart. Something she had protected for so long. Frightened it would be broken like her mother’s had been. As hers had been. Scared of all the things that could go wrong when two people fell in love. How much they risked when they entrusted their hearts to each other. Then she realized that Kol had done just that. As stunted by his past as she was by hers, in the end he gave her everything.

His heart.

A
Viking
heart.

One made of strength and perseverance. One given unconditionally. As if in response, her own heart felt as though it squeezed tight in her chest. Amber put a hand over her mouth and bit back a sob.

God, had she given her heart to Kol as well?

Memories flickered through her mind. The moment he swept her up into his arms at the beginning and declared to all he was carrying her off to bed. The lusty look in his eyes and the wide smile on his face. The way he made her laugh. How he always seemed eager to put a smile on her face. The way he worried about her...protected her.

The warmth she had felt on and off since she met him blossomed and spread throughout. This time it didn’t vanish because he wasn’t near. Not at all. Now it had become part of her because she knew he was with her no matter what…in this lifetime or the next.

Sounds started to permeate her deep thoughts as she stared at the cylinder. Deep whistles. Notes. The exact same music that had been created in the cave before she and Kol had made love for the first time.

One that told a haunted story. One of passion. Sadness. Loss.

Her eyes shot to the bartender. “Where’s that sound coming from?”

“Hell,” he muttered and whacked at something above the empty antique bottles lining the top shelf behind him. “The wind kicks up just right out of the northeast and a flap loosens, lets the wind whistle right down and plays these old bottles like a flute.”

She eyed the bottles with a small smile. “They look real old.”

“Yeah.” Apparently he gave up on shutting the flap because he tossed a rag over his shoulder, leaned against the counter and shook his head at the bottles. “Grandpappy brought 'em back from Norway in the forties. Said they were his Scandinavian beer buddies.” He quirked his lips. “He had to try all the brews they had to offer.” He shook his head. “Just haven’t had the heart to toss ‘em yet.” He arched his brows in resignation. “I think they give the bar character.”

“Definitely,” she agreed. “I don’t think you should toss away anything that speaks to your heart.”

All she could think of was what spoke to her heart, better yet
who
. And there was only one man.

Kol.

Kjar and Dayna had made it sound like perhaps Kol and Sean had somehow kept one another alive with the help of godly intervention. So that meant there was still hope. Had to be. She didn’t give it another thought but twisted the top off her cylinder.

It was time to go home.

Back to Scandinavia.

Amber carefully pulled the contents of the cylinder out. It was a tiny scroll that felt like photograph paper. She unrolled it, not sure what she was looking at. Black and white, it was a loosely pixilated image. It took a few moments of staring at it before she realized what it was. Little feet, hands, toes, a head…even tiny wings!

An ultrasound picture.

Of a dragon-shifter baby.

A smile came to her lips as she remembered Veronica telling her about getting an ultrasound when she and Megan returned to the future. Though she had no memory of it, Amber had been there too. Maybe it was her gift at work, but she suddenly realized that her unborn nephew had forged a connection with her then. That the little dragon would be very much a part of bringing his family back together.

There was no date on the picture, just a few typed words along the bottom.
Matthew. A soul returned.

Tiny tingles started to spread over her tattoo. The Web of Wyrd. Destiny. She itched to draw. To sketch things as they could have been.
Should
  have been.

Pulling the pad of paper closer, she started to sketch as she stared at the picture of Matthew.

Amber recalled looking at his tiny face when Kol held him. How she and Kol’s eyes had met. How she had envisioned what their child might look like. A boy. Strong, fierce, with his father’s dark brown eyes and an inclination toward creativity and laughter. He would take the best of both her and him. Then maybe there would be a girl too. A little hellion to be sure. Determined to fight like a warrior. A woman no man reckoned with.

Then her mind flittered around and she flipped the page, hand still sketching furiously.

Sean lived. He was soon to reconnect with Jules and find the happiness he deserved.

She flipped the page, pencil flying over the paper though her eyes never left the ultrasound image.

Sean had met Megan and Veronica. He had even met her. Except this time they stayed friends, never lovers. She never put him through the heartache. When her sisters vanished, maybe even her, he knew everything would be okay…that they were okay.

“This is something else. Did you catch this earlier?” The bartender turned up the news and shook his head. “O’Conner’s kid, Sean. One lucky son of a bitch. Almost died at sea years ago and it looks like he and his crew dodged it a second time. News said they radioed in at 3:09 this afternoon. Alive and well.”

“Vanished for days but the good Lord sent ‘em home.” The older woman raised her beer. “To our boys. Might the sea take ‘em when it’s their time but might she send ‘em home if she’s not quite ready.”

The few left in the bar, diehard fishermen all, raised their drinks and cheered.

3:09? Imagine that. Amber smiled as the camera zoomed in on Sean’s boat tied safely to the dock. She stared at the ultrasound, her hand never stopping as she continued to sketch. Then, though the hour might be late, the bar door swung open and several more fishermen walked in.

And there was Sean.

Sure, seeing him standing here earlier was strange enough but now she knew that had just been magic, a look into her past. This time it was the real deal as he patted a few guys on the back before his eyes locked on hers.

A wide smile blossomed on his face. “Amber. What are you doing here, Sweetheart?”

He was different. Happier. Some might say it was because his boat made its way out of the blizzard of the century, but she knew better. Now he was exactly who he was supposed to be. Who he had been three years ago before his boat had gone down and he’d nearly died.

She grinned when he pulled her off the bar stool and gave her a big hug. There was nothing sensual about it. Just warm and friendly before he joined her at the bar. The bartender slid him a beer and raised his voice. “Drinks are on the house, boys. Welcome home.”

Everyone cheered and laughed, but her gaze was on Sean. His eyes were no longer golden-flecked green but more of a cedar brown. The sternness that had hovered around them for so long was gone. In fact, there was a fun-loving edge to his voice as he eyed her. “So, what gives? When’d you get into town and why are you hanging out here at this hour?”

Amber said what made sense. “It made the news about your boat getting lost in the storm so I headed this way.” She glanced around. “And I always did enjoy hanging out at this place.”

Sean nodded and wiped his brow. “Still not sure what the hell we were doing out there.” Then he shrugged. “Doesn’t much matter now because we’re home safe.”

Amber tapped her beer against his. “Here’s to that, my friend.”

“Where are your sisters?” He shook his head. “I wanted to thank Megan again for selling me her house so cheap. Hell of a bargain.”

Amber grinned. So he still ended up with the house somehow. Awesome. She shrugged and shook her head, eying him. Though the situation was odd, it felt so damn right. All those feelings she’d had for him seemed like they had happened a very long time ago. Like when you think of a guy you dated a decade before and though it was hard to let him go, you did. And that was okay. Because the feelings you had then couldn’t compare to what you felt now for the man you ended up with.

Kol.

Had she loved Sean? Yes. But now she knew it had always been the parts of him that were Kol. Had Sean loved her? Maybe. But again, he had likely been influenced by Kol’s feelings.

Sean nudged his shoulder against hers. “You with me?”

She nodded and snapped out of her reverie.

“Your sisters?” he reminded.

Amber waved away his words and chuckled. “Busy with their men. But happy as hell.”

Sean nodded and took another long swig. “They deserve it. They’re good women.”

“They think the world of you, too.”

His eyes fell to her notepad. “Hey, she looks familiar.”

Her eyes fell to the paper and she kept surprise at bay. She had drawn a remarkably beautiful picture of Julie. Amber tore it off, wrote Julie’s first and last name on it and handed it over. “This is my cousin Jules. You met her a few years ago, but things got busy after that.”

He couldn’t seem to look away from the picture as he murmured, “Did I?”

“You did.” She patted him on the shoulder. “Look her up. I’d bet anything she’d love to hear from you.”

“Yeah?” His eyes were still on the picture.

Amber kept smiling. “Yeah.”

Her eyes went back to the notepad, determined to close it, but instead she froze. She’d sketched a replica of the original drawing of her and Kol standing on the end of the dock, of him protecting her. Tears welled. She missed him so much, wanted to be back with him, wanted to share a life with him. And
only
him. At that moment, she knew with absolute certainty and without any doubt.