I open my mouth and take him like worship, like ruin, like every prayer I’ve ever carved into a corpse.

He groans, low and guttural, hips snapping with the kind of control that only looks like restraint. He mutters in Old Norse—those lovely blasphemies I adore—like he’s praying while fucking a sacrifice.

The crowd? Gone.

Indie? Gone.

The tent? Gone.

There’s only him. Only us.

His hands are in my hair. My throat burns. I can barely breathe—and I don’t want to.

“You’re mine,” he growls, voice like thunder over a funeral pyre. “Mine to use. Mine to bleed. Mine to feed.”

And then he comes—hard, raw, with a sound that feels like a war cry for the gods.

I take it all. Every drop. Every shiver. Every goddamn thing.

I swallow him like it’s divine.

Because it is.

Then I drag my fingers across my lips, lick them clean, and smile up at him—grinning like a rabid thing finally given a treat.

“Thank you,” I whisper, voice sweet and soaked in sin. “For letting me drink from the gods.”

Bjorn stares down at me with that same look he always gives me when I’m filthy and feral and perfect.

But his gaze drifts back, past me.

To him.

The stranger.

Still standing there. Still watching.

Still calm. Still unmoved.

“What do you think he wants?” I ask, voice low, and sticky with curiosity.

Bjorn’s still catching his breath as his hand flexes once more in my hair.

“I don’t know,” he mutters. “But I think he’s already chosen us.”

chapter six

bjorn

The gods are still hungry.

Their whispers slip through the smoke like teeth, eager and aching, curling around the tent poles and bleeding into my chest. The blood on my hands is drying now—tight across my knuckles, cracked in my lifelines.

But it’s not enough. Not yet.

The next guest is already waiting for me, kneeling on the stone slab in the center of the pit.

He’s branded red.

His wrists are bound behind him with braided sinew. He’s shirtless, shaking from anticipation.

From need.

This one came ready.

He came wanting to be used. Split open and laid bare like meat on a holy altar.

Not just to die, but to be worthy.

To be seen and taken by the gods.

He wants to earn it. Every scream. Every tear and every fucking inch of agony carved into his flesh. He wants to bleed with purpose. To suffer with meaning and to burn until the gods look down and say, “That one belongs to us.”

This isn’t just a death.

This is a sacrifice.

And I intend to make him unforgettable.

When I step into the ring, he looks up at me, eyes wide and brimming with something that looks a lot like madness.