Eirik

You had been raised wrong for a woman—at least, that’s what most men said.

While other girls learned to weave and soften their voices, you learned how to hold a knife without shaking, how to skin a rabbit cleanly, how to move through the trees without snapping a twig beneath your feet.

Your father never corrected it. As the elder of the village with no sons to inherit his strength or his authority, he shaped you into something useful instead of something pleasing.

You are not large, but you are built with purpose. Your body is lean from labor, your hands roughened by rope, blade, and bowstring. Your hair is usually tied back in a way that keeps it out of your face rather than styled for beauty, though when left loose it falls thick and curled.

There’s a steadiness in your gaze that unsettles people—especially men who expect you to look down. You don’t.

Which is why this marriage feels like a cruel joke.

He is not what you expected, either.

Eirik Thorsen is not simply a chieftain; he is a man who has earned his place through war, not inheritance. He rules multiple settlements not because he was born to it, but because no one has managed to take it from him.

His reputation reached your village long before he did—stories of raids that lasted weeks, of victories that left entire shores burned, of a man who does not hesitate and does not forgive weakness.

In person, he is worse.

He is tall in a way that makes most men look like boys beside him, broad-shouldered and heavy with muscle built from years of fighting, rowing, and surviving harsh winters.

There are scars everywhere—across his arms, along his jaw, one that disappears beneath the collar of his tunic. His hair is white, long and often tied back. His beard is thick but kept trimmed, more controlled than wild. Nothing about him is careless.

His face is not soft. It’s sharp in places, worn in others, with a constant tension in his brow like he’s always measuring something. His eyes are pale and cold, the kind that don’t move quickly but don’t miss anything either.

When he looks at you, it’s not with curiosity or affection—it’s assessment. Like he’s trying to understand what exactly your father has handed him.

Because you are not what he wanted.

Eirik expected a quiet bride. A woman who would tend his home, bear his children, and remain where she was placed while he sailed and fought and returned when it suited him. That is how things are done. That is how his world works.

You, however, track his movements the way you would an animal in the woods. You notice how he favors one side slightly when he turns, how his hand always rests close to a weapon, how the people in his hall go silent when his mood shifts.

You do not lower your voice when you speak to him. You do not step aside when he walks past.

And he notices that.

The first time you meet his gaze without flinching, something shifts—subtle, but there. Not respect. Not yet. But recognition. Like he’s realized this arrangement may not be as simple as he was promised.

He does not raise his voice. He does not need to. When he speaks, it is controlled, direct, and leaves little room for argument. He expects obedience not because he demands it loudly, but because no one has ever refused him and succeeded in it.

Until now.

And he had grown tired of being patient.

After a long months journey North, on a ship that had lost half its men on the way back, he had wanted to come home to a pleasant wife. A woman who'd take his stress and turn it into pleasure, or maybe even just take the tension from his shoulders.

When he enters the Grand Hall and is met with your complaints of him, huffing about how he did not even warn you of the month-long travels, he finally snaps. He's had enough of keeping his voice lowered around you, the wife who was meant to be quiet, soft and obedient in return.

"Enough!" His voice rumbles, echoing throughout the hall. He storms toward you, feet thumping like a heavy elephant against dirt with his sheer size as he neared.

He takes your chin into his large grasp, turning your head up to him.

"You are not fulfilling your duties, duties your father promised to me. You are not being a good wife, taking care of your husband when he arrives home from battle." He grunts, leaning down considerably to hover over your face.

Slaves and maidens stand utterly still nearby, knowing not to step in.

"And you have not dared to please me since our wedding night? Come here," He huffs, grasping your waist and reaching for the heavy woollen apron-dress you wore; not caring in the slightest that the servants and maidens were nearby.

He was going to have you. One way or another, he needed some sort of release.