“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask Viking as he sits next to me.
Ms. Steinbeck procured this old farmhouse for us to use as our home base, and I can’t help but thank Odin that part of her duties in helping us transition is to make sure houses are fully furnished and stocked with food and drink.
“It means that you were so against this assignment, and then you go off and kill a guy over this chick.”
“He had a knife to her throat.”
“Which woulda been a very easy way out of all this for you,” Inferno adds as he sits in the chair across from us.
“I may be a lot of things, but I’m not an idiot,” I snap. “Odin would’ve had my ass if I’d let her die.”
“And it doesn’t hurt that she’s easy on the eyes,” Grump says as hands us each a beer.
I chuckle. “Easy on the eyes is an understatement. Kyra’s fucking?—”
“Fuckable,” Demo comments with a smirk.
My unopened beer bottle shatters on the floor after bouncing off Demo’s head. My brothers laugh at me, and I wish I had more bottles to toss.
“Regardless of how she looks,” I begin. “She’s an assignment, nothing more.”
“Yeah,” Viking says. “So was Makayla.”
“Emmy, too,” Inferno states.
“Kyra comes with a bit more baggage than they did,” I remind them, an image of her twins popping into my mind.
“It’s not like you’re unfamiliar with kids,” Acid reminds me.
“Wait a second,” Grump interrupts the conversation. “You had kids?”
The twins' image shifts to one of my Paul and Erica, and anguish twists my gut. “Two,” I admit. “Boy and a girl.”
“How did I not know this?” my newest brother asks.
“Because it’s up to each of us how much we share about our human lives,” Viking explains. “And we definitely don’t share details with prospects. Gotta earn the patch to earn the info.”
“And I have the patch.”
I shake my head. “Paul and Erica are off limits,” I bark. “Forget you even know about them.”
“But th?—”
“No!” I shout, standing and storming out of the room.
I have no clue which bedroom Viking wants to claim, but right now, I don’t give a damn. I enter the first one I come to and slam the door.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved my children. But thinking about them now only causes invisible pain, and I can’t afford to let what I can’t see rule my afterlife. I miss Paul and Erica every single day, and I will for all eternity. Nothing is going to change that.
I simply don’t have the luxury of factoring that love in anymore. When I died, they might as well have, too. Pretending that they don’t exist, that they aren’t still out there somewhere, is the only way I can go on.
So, I shoved my memories of them into a tiny box at the back of my brain and locked it up tight as soon as I accepted the reality of my situation after arriving in Valhalla. It was damn near impossible, but I did it.
Fuck, I miss them.
Striding into the attached bathroom, I strip out of my clothes and take a shower. It does little to stem the flow of intrusive thoughts, and I rush through the motions of getting clean. When I’m done, I wrap a towel around my waist and return to the bedroom, only to freeze when I see Viking sitting on the bed.
“Thought you could use your bag,” he says, nodding at my duffel that’s now sitting next to the dresser. “Put some clothes on so I can talk to you.”
