“I Can’t Bear Children,” She Told Giant Viking — He Grinned, “My Five Sons Already Love You”

Chapter 3

Leif’s fist connected with Anna’s jaw before anyone could stop him.

The blacksmith’s wife crumpled backward into the mud, her scream splitting the night like a blade. For one suspended second, the world seemed to hold its breath — and then chaos erupted. Women rushed forward, grabbing at Leif’s arms, pulling him off. Someone shouted for the blacksmith. Someone else screamed for the constable.

And Brinhild, still frozen in the shadows, watched Hal Stoneback stride into the torchlight like a god descending from the mountains to judge the living.

His voice didn’t rise above the noise. It didn’t need to. The moment he spoke, every throat in the square went silent.

“What,” he said, “is happening here?”

The crowd drew back, revealing the scene in full: Leif, breathing hard, still straining against the hands that held him. Anna Thorson, sprawled in the mud, her lip split and her dignity shattered. And behind them, emerging from the weaving house like vultures scenting blood, the women who’d been gossiping about Brinhild moments before.

“She attacked me!” Anna shrieked, pointing at Leif. “Your savage son attacked me for speaking the truth!”

“The truth?” Leif’s voice cracked with fury. “You called her a barren witch! You said she was cursed! You said she couldn’t be a mother!”

The word *barren* hung in the air like smoke from a funeral pyre.

Hal’s eyes found Brinhild. She saw the moment he registered her presence — saw the shift in his expression from cold authority to something rawer, something that looked almost like pain. He’d heard. He knew what those women had said. And more than that, he knew she’d heard it too.

“Is this true?” he asked, his voice still quiet, still steady.

Anna scrambled to her feet, brushing mud from her dress. “Everyone knows she can’t have children, Stoneback. It’s not gossip — it’s fact. And if you’re looking for a woman to raise your sons, you’d do better to find one who can give you more of your own.”

The silence that followed was absolute.

Hal looked at her for a long moment. Then he turned and walked toward Brinhild, his boots crunching on the frozen ground, his shadow stretching long in the torchlight. He stopped in front of her, close enough that she could smell the leather of his coat and the woodsmoke in his hair.

“Come,” he said. Only that. One word, but it held the weight of a promise.

She followed him because she didn’t know what else to do. Because the alternative was standing in that square, under those eyes, listening to the truth she’d spent seven years trying to accept being used as a weapon against her.

The boys fell into step behind them — Leif still trembling with rage, Eric taking his younger brother’s hand without a word, Bjorn carrying Ulf on his shoulders, Olaf walking close enough to Brinhild that his shoulder brushed hers with every step. They moved as a unit, a small army of wounded hearts, closing ranks around someone who wasn’t theirs.

But felt like she could be.

The cottage was warm when they reached it. The fire was banked, the herbs drying in fragrant bundles from the rafters, the kettle hanging ready over the flames. Brinhild moved automatically — pouring water, reaching for the chamomile, her hands finding their familiar rhythm while her mind raced in circles she couldn’t stop.

*What kind of woman can’t bear children?*

Leif was watching her with guilty eyes, his knuckles already bruising from the fight. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have hit her. Father always says to come find him first.”

“You defended me,” Brinhild said. Her voice came out steadier than she’d expected. “That’s not something to apologize for.”

“She was wrong about you.”

The certainty in his voice made her chest ache. She knelt beside him, taking his hands, examining the swollen knuckles with practiced fingers. “You can’t fight every battle for me, Leif.”

“I can try.”

She looked up and found Hal watching from the doorway, his expression unreadable. The other boys had settled around the fire, their young faces reflecting the flickering light, their silence heavy with everything none of them knew how to say.

“Boys,” Hal said quietly. “Go check on the horses. Give us a moment.”

They filed out reluctantly — Leif casting one last defiant look, Eric touching Brinhild’s shoulder as he passed. The door closed behind them, and the cottage suddenly felt too small, too intimate, too full of everything that had gone unsaid between them.

“You didn’t have to defend me,” she said, before Hal could speak. “In the square. You didn’t owe me that.”

“I know.”

The simplicity of it undid her. He didn’t argue or explain. He simply acknowledged that he understood, and that he’d chosen to act anyway — not out of obligation, but out of something else entirely.

“They’ll talk more now,” she said. “Anna won’t forget this. The whole village will know that Stoneback’s son fought for the barren widow.”

“Let them talk.”

“They’ll say you’ve lost your mind. That a man with five sons needs a proper wife, not a woman who can’t —” She stopped. The word caught in her throat like a fishbone.

“Not a woman who can’t what?”

She met his eyes. “Bear children. That’s what they mean. That’s what they always mean.”

Hal was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was softer than she’d ever heard it.

“I didn’t fall in love with your womb, Brinhild.”

The words hit her like a physical blow. She opened her mouth to respond, but nothing came out. For seven years, she’d defined herself by what she couldn’t do. She’d let her barrenness become her identity, her shame, the wall she hid behind when the world got too close.

And in four words, he’d dismantled the entire structure.

“I fell in love with the woman who held my dying son,” he continued, stepping closer. “The woman who sat with him through the darkest night of my life and refused to give up. The woman who gave him a wooden horse carved by her dead husband’s hands — because she loved him enough to share something precious.”

“How do you —”

“I found him showing it to the other boys that first night. He told me you said your husband would be happy it found the right boy to love it.” Hal’s voice cracked slightly. “That’s the kind of woman you are. Not the kind the village gossips about.”

Tears burned in her throat. She pressed her hand against her mouth, trying to hold them back, but they escaped anyway — seven years of them, seven years of swallowed grief and buried longing, rising up like a tide she could no longer contain.

He crossed the distance between them and took her hand. His fingers were rough with calluses from sword and shield, but his touch was impossibly gentle.

“I know I’m not what you dreamed of,” he said. “I’m a warrior with scars and nightmares and more children than I know what to do with. I have nothing to offer you but chaos and responsibility and a family that will never be easy.”

“That sounds like everything I’ve been afraid to want.”

The words came out before she could stop them — and she realized, as she spoke them, that they were true. She had been afraid. Not of the children, not of the chaos, but of wanting something badly enough that losing it would destroy her.

She was still wearing Aar’s ring. She touched it now, turning it on her finger, feeling the familiar weight of it, the memories embedded in the silver.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” she said quietly. “About Aar. About his death.”