The whetstone slid along the axe blade with a slow, practiced rhythm. Harald’s hands were broad and scarred, his knuckles split from last week’s brawl. He didn’t look up when the door creaked open, didn’t pause when the cold wind rushed in. Winter had teeth here, and the longhouse always smelled of smoke and damp fur.
“Your axe will be sharper than your wits if you keep at it,” Yrsa said, leaning against the doorframe. The fur lining her hood brushed her cheeks, pale from the cold outside. She’d been chopping firewood until her palms burned, but the ache was nothing compared to the heat that coiled low in her belly whenever she watched Harald like this—focused, silent, utterly unaware of her standing there.
The first frost had come late this year, but it came hungry. Outside, the last stubborn leaves clung to the birch branches, rattling like bone charms in a wind that carried the promise of worse to come. Yrsa could already feel it—the way the air bit deeper now, the way the ground groaned underfoot, hardening like old bread left too long in the cold. Soon, the fjord would lock itself under ice, and the long nights would stretch even longer.
The shout came rough and sudden, cutting through the wind’s howl—Gunnar’s voice, thick with mead and authority. “Hunters! To me!” It wasn’t a request. Yrsa straightened, her fingers tightening around the doorframe as Harald finally lifted his head, his gaze sharpening like the blade in his hands. The longhouse firelight flickered across his face, catching the scar that split his brow—a trophy from the raid last summer, when he’d come back with his beard matted in blood and her imagination wild with what he might’ve done to earn it.
The hunters shifted, their breath clouding in the dim light as Gunnar’s words sank in. He stood by the hearth, his shadow stretching across the packed-earth floor like a war banner. “The snow comes early or late,” he growled, “but it always comes hungry. We need meat before it pins us like a wolf with its teeth in a hare’s neck.” His gaze swept the room, lingering on the younger men—those who hadn’t yet learned how silence could be louder than a war cry.
“Vestgir, you will take your party to the North, Thror, you will take yours East, and my daughter Yrsa you will take yours South.” He ordered without any hesitation.
Yrsa’s brothers didn’t glance her way when Gunnar finished speaking—Vestgir was already shrugging into his wolfskin cloak, Thror tightening the straps on his bracers as if the southbound party was an afterthought. They’d both been blooded young, their first kills notched into their belt buckles before Yrsa could even nock an arrow straight. But she’d spent every winter since learning how to make the wind listen, how to read the snow like a map. Let them smirk into their beards; she’d bring back more than just meat.
Yrsa’s fingers twitched against the worn leather of her belt—half from the cold, half from the way Harald’s shoulder brushed hers as they trudged through the first thin crust of snow. The hunting party moved in loose formation, Bjorn and Lief scouting ahead with the quiet efficiency of men who’d spent too many winters starving not to take it seriously. Hera and Vy lingered at the rear, their breath curling white in the air, axes loose in their grips. But it was Harald’s presence that burned against Yrsa’s side like a brand, his silence louder than the crunch of frost underfoot.
The wind carved between the trees like a thief, stealing warmth from any exposed skin. Yrsa flexed her fingers inside her gloves—stiff leather lined with hare fur—and nodded toward the denser thicket where the snow lay in undisturbed drifts. “Bjorn and Lief take the eastern ridge,” she said, her breath curling in the air. “Hera and Vy, follow the creekbed. The deer won’t stray far from water, not with the frost tightening its grip.” The others moved without question, their footsteps crunching faintly before the forest swallowed them whole.
Harald followed close behind Yrsa, his bear-fur cloak brushing against her thigh with each step. The scent of him—iron and pine resin, the musk of old sweat trapped in fur—made her swallow hard. His breath warmed the back of her neck when he leaned in to murmur, “You’re leading us into the wolf’s jaws, girl.” His voice was rough, amused, but his fingers grazed the small of her back as he adjusted his grip on his spear—a touch that lingered just a heartbeat too long to be accidental.
The elk stood like a specter in the clearing—antlers branching black against the steel-gray sky, its breath pluming in slow, steady bursts. Snow clung to its flank where the wind hadn’t scraped it bare, and its ears twitched at every creak of the trees. Yrsa froze, her pulse hammering against her ribs. This wasn’t just meat; this was a winter’s worth of it.
Yrsa knocked an arrow, the motion as fluid as the snowmelt that would come in spring—if they lived to see it. The bowstring bit into her fingers, the same way hunger bit at their bellies when the game grew scarce. She exhaled slowly, watching the elk’s breath plume in the cold air, counting the seconds between its movements. Harald’s presence behind her was a furnace at her back, his silence a weight heavier than any armor.
The arrow flew silent as a shadow slipping between trees. The elk jerked once—a shudder that rippled through its massive shoulders—before its legs folded like a dropped cloak. The snow swallowed its collapse with a muffled thump. Yrsa lowered her bow slowly, her breath held tight in her lungs until she saw the dark spill of blood melt into the frost. A clean kill. A perfect shot.
“Harald, can you carry it?” Yrsa’s voice was steady, but her fingers curled into her palms when his gaze slid from the dead elk to her face. The beast was massive—its antlers alone would’ve dwarfed her—and the snow around its body was already darkening with heat and blood. She could gut it here, quarter it, but that would waste time they didn’t have. The light was fading fast, and shadows pooled between the trees like spilled ink.
Harald’s muscles strained as he crouched, his breath clouding in ragged bursts while he worked his hands under the elk’s bulk. The beast was still warm, its blood steaming where it seeped into the snow. With a grunt that sounded more like a growl, he heaved it up, the antlers scraping against his back as the weight settled across his shoulders. Yrsa watched the tendons in his neck stand out like rigging on a longships’ sail—taut, precise, capable of weathering any storm. She bit the inside of her cheek when his gaze flicked to her, a challenge glinting there beneath the sweat and snowmelt dripping from his brow.
The sky bruised above them, purpling at the edges like a wound left too long untended. What little sunlight had clawed through the clouds earlier now bled away, swallowed by the thickening veil of snowfall. Flakes hissed against Yrsa’s cheeks, sharp as needle pricks, and the wind coiled around them like a living thing—testing, probing for weakness. Harald’s breath came in ragged bursts, his boots sinking deeper with each step under the elk’s dead weight.
The wind howled through the pines like a wounded beast, stripping the warmth from their skin with each gust. Snowflakes no longer fell—they drove sideways, stinging Yrsa’s eyes as she squinted through the whiteout. What had been a manageable trek moments ago now felt like wading through a river of ice, each step heavier than the last. Harald’s silhouette behind her blurred at the edges, the elk’s antlers catching the storm’s fury like a ship’s prow in a squall.
Yrsa’s words vanished into the storm’s throat before they’d fully left her lips. The wind snatched them away, greedy, as if it too knew the danger of stopping—of admitting defeat. She turned, her hood ripped back by a sudden gust, and saw Harald’s face half-buried in the elk’s fur, his eyes slitted against the blizzard’s teeth. Blood from the carcass had frozen in dark streaks down his temple, and his nostrils flared with each labored breath. He didn’t nod. Didn’t need to.
The cave mouth yawned black against the whirling snow, a jagged crack in the mountainside that might as well have been the gods’ own teeth. Yrsa spotted it just as the wind howled loud enough to drown thought—a flicker of darkness where the storm hadn’t yet clawed its way in. She grabbed Harald’s wrist without thinking, her fingers closing over the pulse hammering beneath his skin, and jerked her chin toward the shelter. His gaze followed hers, sharp as a hawk’s even through the blizzard’s veil, and for a heartbeat, she thought he might argue. Then the elk’s antlers groaned against his shoulders, and he gave a single, curt nod.
The cave’s mouth exhaled damp, stale air—older than the sagas, older than the gods their ancestors had carved into runestones. Yrsa stumbled inside first, her boots slipping on the frost-slick rock, and for a breathless moment, the storm’s howl vanished as if swallowed by the earth itself. The darkness was thick, velvet-black, but the relief of stillness made her knees nearly buckle. Behind her, Harald’s grunt echoed off the walls as he heaved the elk’s carcass over the threshold, its antlers screeching against stone like nails on a shield.
“Wait here, I’ll be right back.” Yrsa’s words barely carried over the storm’s howl as she vanished into the whiteout, her silhouette swallowed whole before Harald could snarl a protest. The cave exhaled cold breath against her back as she pushed forward, each step a gamble against the wind’s teeth. She knew these slopes like the scars on her father’s knuckles—knew where the birch grove huddled close enough to offer brittle branches for kindling, where the overhangs kept dry tinder sheltered from the worst of the snow. Her gloves were stiff with frost, fingers numb past aching, but the memory of Harald’s pulse beneath her touch burned hotter than any fire.
Yrsa’s teeth chattered louder than the branches she snapped over her knee—dry, brittle things that cracked like old bones. The wind stole her breath each time she straightened, turning her lungs to ice. She stuffed the tinder into the folds of her cloak with fingers that felt like dead meat, already stiffening into claws. The thought of Harald waiting in the cave’s black maw kept her moving when her legs begged to fold.
The wind stole Yrsa’s breath as she staggered back toward the cave, her arms clutched around the bundle of kindling like it was a dying man. Snow crusted her eyelashes, her hood, the gaps between her fingers where the cold gnawed deepest. Each step felt like wading through a river of shattered glass, the wind’s howl a living thing that wrapped around her throat and squeezed. The cave mouth loomed ahead—a slash of black in the whiteout—and she nearly sobbed with relief when her numb feet finally found the uneven rock of the threshold.
Yrsa stumbled into the cave like a half-drowned thing, her breath coming in ragged bursts that fogged the air between them. The firewood clattered to the stone floor as her fingers—blue-tipped and shaking—finally lost their grip. She didn’t notice when the bundled branches scattered, didn’t feel the last stubborn snowflakes melting against her flushed cheeks. The cold had sunk its teeth too deep; her body burned with it, every muscle trembling like a plucked bowstring.
Harald swore under his breath—a low, guttural sound that echoed off the cave walls—as Yrsa swayed where she stood, her lips tinged blue. Before her knees could buckle, he shrugged out of his bear-fur cloak and flung it over her shoulders, the weight of it nearly knocking her sideways. The thick pelt still held his warmth, the scent of pine resin and sweat enveloping her as he jerked the edges tight around her trembling frame. “Stubborn as a damned goat,” he muttered, but his hands lingered a heartbeat too long on her shoulders, fingers pressing into her collarbones like he needed proof she was still solid beneath the fur.
Harald’s cloak draped over Yrsa like a second skin, heavy with the musk of old campfires and the sharp tang of frozen sweat. She sank into its warmth as if drowning, her fingers clawing instinctively at the fur lining while her body trembled beneath it. The fire caught faster than it had any right to—dry tinder snapping under Harald’s flint strikes, sparks leaping like startled insects—but his hands never slowed, never hesitated. The flames licked up, casting jagged shadows across the cave walls where their breath still hung in ragged clouds between them.
Harald slipped under the cloak with the quiet efficiency of a man who’d spent too many winters not knowing warmth. His fingers worked the buckles of his leather vest with stiff, deliberate movements—not from the cold, but from the way Yrsa’s breath hitched when the first strap came loose. The firelight caught the sweat still drying along his collarbone, tracing the old scar that split his pectoral like a river fork. His chest rose faster than it had any right to for a man pretending not to notice how Yrsa’s gaze burned hotter than the flames between them.
“Remove yours quickly.” Harald’s voice was gravel and embers, a command that brooked no argument. Yrsa hesitated, her fingers hovering over the damp laces of her tunic—not from reluctance, but from the sudden, gut-deep awareness that this moment had teeth. The firelight flickered across Harald’s face, turning his scars into molten gold, his gaze holding hers with the same unyielding intensity as when he’d shouldered the elk’s carcass through the storm.
Yrsa’s fingers fumbled at her tunic laces—half-frozen, half-fevered—until the damp leather gave way. The cold air hit her bare skin like a slap, but before she could gasp, Harald was there. His chest met hers with a heat that seared through the numbness, his body a furnace against her trembling frame. His hands—rough from years of axe-hafts and sword grips—slid up her ribs, pressing her flush against him until the fur-lined cloak trapped their shared breath between them. Every scar on his torso mapped against her skin like runes she couldn’t read but understood in her marrow.
They remained pressed together until Yrsa’s shivering subsided, her skin warming beneath the shared heat of their bodies and the heavy fur cloak. The cave’s chill receded in slow degrees, like a tide pulling back from shore, until all she felt was the steady thrum of Harald’s heartbeat against her ribs. His breath stirred the loose strands of her hair where they’d escaped her braid—each exhale carrying the faint scent of juniper berries and iron, familiar as the notches on her bow.
Yrsa looked up into his eyes—not the way she’d done a hundred times before, across mead halls and training yards, but like she was seeing the shape of his soul laid bare. The firelight caught the gold flecks in Harald’s irises, turning them molten, the same way forge heat made iron pliable. His pupils were wide enough to drown in, black as the cave’s deepest shadows, and for a heartbeat, she forgot how to breathe.
The impulse struck like lightning—no thought, no hesitation. Yrsa surged upward, her chilled fingers gripping Harald’s shoulders for balance as her mouth crashed against his. The kiss tasted of snowmelt and iron, his beard rough against her chin, his breath hot where it caught against her lips. For a heartbeat, he froze beneath her, muscles locking tight as if braced for battle—then his hands slid from her ribs to her lower back, dragging her flush against him with a growl that vibrated through her chest.
Their want for each other had been simmering for months—a slow, maddening burn that flared every time their hands brushed during weapon drills, every time she caught him watching her across the mead hall with a gaze that stripped her armor bare. But there had always been someone watching—her brothers sharpening blades by the fire, the village elders muttering over winter stores, the endless press of bodies in the longhouse where privacy was as scarce as fresh meat in deep winter. Now, in this cave’s hushed dark, with the storm howling like a scorned lover outside, they were finally, utterly alone.
The fire hissed and spat like a cornered animal, its flames clawing at the damp cave air. Shadows leapt along the walls—twisting, merging—as if the very rock breathed around them. Yrsa barely noticed. Harald’s hands were molten iron against her hips, his grip firm enough to bruise, and she arched into it with a hunger that startled even her. The fur cloak slid from her shoulders, forgotten, pooling at their feet like a slain beast.
The cloak lay on the ground like a makeshift bed—bear fur dark against the cave’s stone, its edges still damp from melted snow. Yrsa barely registered the cold bite of rock beneath her knees as Harald’s hands tightened on her hips, his calloused thumbs pressing into the hollows above her hipbones with a possessiveness that left her breathless. The firelight painted his shoulders in gold and shadow, flickering across the old scars that mapped his torso like runes of survival. She traced them with her tongue, tasting salt and pine smoke, and felt the shudder that ripped through him when her teeth grazed the ridge of his collarbone.
Yrsa pushed Harald onto the fur cloak with a strength that surprised them both—her palms flat against his chest, her knees bracketing his hips before he could draw another ragged breath. The firelight danced across her bare skin, turning the sweat-slick curves of her breasts into molten gold, her nipples pebbled tight from the cold and something far hotter. Harald’s gaze burned as it raked over her, his hands rising to grip her thighs as if she might vanish like mist at dawn.
Yrsa’s fingers found the worn leather of Harald’s belt with the same practiced ease she’d used to string her bow—quick, efficient, inevitable. The buckle gave way with a soft click, the sound swallowed by the cave’s hungry silence. His breath hitched as she peeled the damp layers down his hips, revealing skin that had seen too much sun and wind, muscle corded from winters spent hauling carcasses through snowdrifts. The firelight licked at the trail of dark hair leading downward, catching the tension in his stomach when her nails grazed the inside of his thigh.
His erection sprang free, thick and rigid against his stomach, the firelight glinting off the bead of moisture already gathering at the tip. Yrsa’s breath caught—she’d seen men pissing by the mead hall’s outskirts, had glimpsed warriors bathing in the river come spring, but none of that prepared her for the sheer presence of Harald’s arousal. His length was long enough that her fingers would barely meet when she wrapped them around it, the veins standing proud beneath flushed skin. She watched, transfixed, as it twitched against his belly, as if straining toward her like a hound on a leash.
Yrsa shifted, peeking off her own pants with a quick twist of her hips—the movement sending a draft of cold air up her bare thighs before Harald’s hands replaced it, searing against her skin. Her leggings caught on her boots for a heartbeat, the damp wool resisting until she kicked free, leaving them tangled near the fire like a discarded second skin. The cave’s chill licked at her exposed flesh, but Harald’s gaze burned hotter, tracing the dip of her waist, the flare of her hips, the dark blonde curls between her thighs that glinted copper in the firelight.
Yrsa looked down into his dark eyes—black as the cave’s deepest crevices, yet burning with a heat that threatened to melt the snow still clinging to her lashes. She kissed him again, slower this time, her tongue tracing the seam of his lips until they parted with a groan. Her fingers, still chilled from the storm, wrapped around his length, guiding him to her entrance with a certainty that belied her inexperience. The first press of him against her sent a shudder through her ribs—not from cold, but from the sheer impossibility of how much she wanted this, how long she’d imagined it in stolen moments between chores and hunts.
The moment stretched between them like a bowstring pulled taut—Yrsa poised above him, the slick heat of her pressed against his tip, both of them trembling not from cold now but from the unbearable tension of waiting. She exhaled sharply through her nose, her fingers digging into his shoulders as she sank down onto him in one slow, deliberate motion. The stretch burned—a bright, searing pain that made her gasp—but beneath it thrummed a deeper ache, the kind that settled in her bones like the first frost of winter. Harald’s grip on her thighs tightened to the point of pain, his jaw clenched so hard she heard his teeth grind, but he didn’t move, didn’t thrust. His restraint was its own torment.
The pain crested like a wave breaking over a longship’s prow—sharp, inevitable, then ebbing into something warmer. Yrsa went utterly still, her thighs trembling where they straddled Harald’s hips, her breath trapped somewhere between her ribs and the cave’s cold ceiling. She could feel him inside her like a brand, every ridge and pulse of him mapped against her flesh with impossible clarity. The firelight painted sweat down his sternum, catching on the old scar that split his chest—she’d traced it with her tongue moments ago, and now it glistened as if she’d left part of herself there.
Yrsa sank down until their hips met with a wet slap of skin—until she felt him so deep it stole her breath. The fullness was almost too much, her body stretched tight around him, every inch of her trembling with the effort to take him. Harald’s groan vibrated against her lips where they still clung to his, his hands sliding from her thighs to grip her ass, fingers digging into the soft flesh there as if he could press her even closer. She felt him twitch inside her, the hot pulse of him stirring something primal low in her belly.
Yrsa peered down and noticed a small pool of blood soaking into the cloak beneath them—dark as crushed elderberries against the bear fur. It took her a frozen heartbeat to realize it was hers, the proof of innocence lost seeping into leather and pelt with the same inevitability as snow melting against skin. The sight made her throat tighten strangely—not with regret, but with a fierce, sudden pride. She’d chosen this, fought for it with teeth and nails through endless winters of stolen glances.
Harald’s grip slackened for a split second—just long enough for Yrsa to see the flicker of hesitation in his eyes as he registered the blood. Then his hands were everywhere again, calloused palms skating up her ribs to cup her breasts, thumbs brushing her nipples in rough circles that sent sparks arcing down her spine. “Look at me,” he growled, his voice raw with something deeper than lust. When she obeyed, his pupils were black holes swallowing the firelight whole.
The question hung between them in the firelit air—not voiced, but etched into every ragged breath, every twitch of muscle beneath sweat-slick skin. Harald’s hands stilled on Yrsa’s hips, his thumbs pressing into the delicate bones there with a tension that spoke louder than any oath. His eyes, dark as the cave’s deepest shadows, held hers with a intensity that made her ribs ache. She answered by rolling her hips—slow, deliberate—feeling him twitch inside her like a bowstring freshly released. His nostrils flared, his grip tightening in warning, but she did it again, harder this time, her nails scoring his chest in red crescent moons.
The moment was passionate, like fireworks exploding—not the tame sparks of a hearth fire, but the wild, consuming kind that sears itself into memory. Yrsa’s hips moved with a rhythm older than the sagas, each roll grinding Harald deeper into her, their sweat-slick skin catching the firelight until they gleamed like molten bronze. His hands, rough from winters of axe-work, gripped her waist hard enough to leave marks—marks she would wear proudly, like battle scars earned in the heat of conquest. The cave’s cold air couldn’t touch them now; their shared heat was a living thing, pulsing between them with every ragged breath.
Harald’s palm slid up Yrsa’s spine with deliberate slowness, his calloused fingers tracing the fresh tattoos inked tyat tannalomg her spine. The skin was still raised slightly, the black lines tender under his touch, and she arched into him with a shiver that had nothing to do with the cave’s chill.
Yrsa felt her orgasm flying toward her like a bolt of thunder from Thor—inevitable, deafening, cracking her open from the inside out. Her hips stuttered against Harald’s, her thighs clamping around him as if she could fuse them together permanently. The sensation built like a storm surge, relentless and terrifying in its power, until her vision whited out at the edges. She gasped his name into the hollow of his throat, her voice breaking on the second syllable as her body arched like a drawn bowstring, taut and quivering.
“Oh fuck, Harald! I’m cumming!” The words tore from Yrsa’s throat raw and unbidden, her voice cracking like thin ice underfoot. Her body arched violently, her fingers scrabbling against Harald’s chest as if she could claw her way inside him. The world narrowed to the white-hot pulse between her thighs—a sensation like being split open by lightning, every nerve alight with a pleasure so sharp it bordered on pain. Harald’s growl vibrated through her ribs where they were pressed flush together, his hands locking around her hips to keep her from bucking away as the tremors wracked her.
Harald’s hips jerked upward with a force that knocked the breath from Yrsa’s lungs—his release hitting her like a war hammer to the ribs, hot and sudden. A guttural growl tore from his throat, half-snarl, half-prayer, as his fingers dug into the soft flesh of her thighs hard enough to leave crescent moons blooming beneath her skin. The cave echoed with the wet slap of their bodies meeting, over and over, until his thrusts slowed to shallow pulses, his seed spilling into her with each twitch of his cock.
The warmth spread through her, chasing away any chill that dared linger in the cave’s shadowed corners. Yrsa slumped forward, her forehead pressing against Harald’s collarbone as her body trembled with the aftershocks, her breath coming in ragged bursts that fogged the air between them. His hands, still gripping her hips, gentled into something almost reverent—calloused thumbs tracing slow circles against her skin as if memorizing the shape of her. The fire crackled nearby, casting flickering light across their tangled limbs, the bear fur beneath them now rumpled and damp with sweat, blood, and something far more intimate.
Harald remained buried in her even as he began to soften, their sweat-slick bodies still fused together like two halves of a broken shield. Yrsa collapsed against his chest with a bone-deep exhaustion, her heartbeat thudding against his ribs in time with his own. The cave’s cold air crept back into awareness, raising gooseflesh along her bare shoulders where Harald’s hands now rested—not gripping, not demanding, just holding her there as if she might dissolve into the firelight without his touch.
Harald’s arm shifted beneath Yrsa, the movement stirring the musk of sweat and pine resin clinging to his cloak as he dragged the heavy pelt over them both. The fur settled like snowfall—uneven at first, then molding to their bodies with a weight that pinned her against the heat of him. Yrsa exhaled against his collarbone, her breath warming the hollow where his pulse still throbbed visibly beneath the skin. The cloak’s lining scratched at her bare thighs, but she didn’t flinch; every sensation felt magnified, from the rasp of Harald’s beard against her temple to the slow drip of meltwater echoing somewhere deeper in the cave.
Harald’s fingers traced idle patterns down Yrsa’s spine—not the impatient clawing of before, but slow, drowsy sweeps that raised gooseflesh in their wake. The cave’s shadows stretched longer now, the fire reduced to embers that pulsed like a heartbeat against the stone. She could feel him softening inside her, their bodies still joined in the reluctant way of tide pools clinging to shore, neither willing to be the first to pull away. His breath warmed the part in her hair where her braid had unraveled, his exhales syncing with the drip of meltwater somewhere in the dark.
The howling wind died abruptly, replaced by a muffled thud that shook the cave walls. Yrsa lifted her head from Harald’s chest to see the entrance entirely blocked by a fresh avalanche—a solid wall of packed snow glinting faintly in the firelight, sealing them in with the quiet finality of a tomb door. Harald’s hand stilled on her spine, his fingers twitching once against her skin as they both registered the implications: no going back now, even if they wanted to.
