Where the Land Starves, the Wolf Feeds
Part 3: Heir
Main Masterlist | Vikings Masterlist
part 1 | part 1.5 18+ only | part 2 | part 4
Ubbe x Settler!Reader
Fandom: Vikings
Summary: The peace of the night is shattered by an axe through the door. Kjetill Flatnose makes his move to claim the settlement, but he makes a fatal error: he attacks two of the best warriors who knows that the only way to protect a life is to take one.
Angst
Warnings: Assassination attempt, home invasion, graphic violence (beheading, stabbing, blood), not proofread yet
Words: 2.6k
You sit behind him. You drag the bone comb through the salt-tangled mess of the hair. It snags. It pulls. It is a war you are losing. You wince, a small sound.
A hand covers yours.
It is a hand carved from oak and iron, calloused from the oar and scarred from the shield-wall. It is a hand that you have seen crush the life from a man’s throat, yet now, in the dying light of the embers, it covers your fingers with a gentleness that makes the breath hitch in the chest. He stops the war you are fighting against the knots.
"Hush," he rumbles. The sound vibrates deep in his chest, traveling through his back and into your own ribs. "You fight the hair like it is a Saxon shield-wall. You must have patience."
He takes the comb from the fingers that are red with cold.
"Turn."
You turn the back to him. You sit between his knees, the place of safety, surrendering to the weight of him. Ubbe begins to work the bone teeth through the strands. He does not pull; he coaxes. He knows the way of the knots, he knows how to unravel the wind from the gold. He treats the hair like the silk brought from the far lands of the Mediterranean, something precious, something that might break if the hand is too heavy.
The fire pops, a log settling into the ash, sending a shower of sparks up the smoke hole. The shadows dance on the turf walls, long and flickering, like the Norns spinning their threads in the dark.
His knuckles graze the nape of the neck. It is a touch that sends the shivers racing down the spine to curl in the belly—right where the secret lives, fluttering like a bird trapped in a cage. You are quiet. Too quiet for a woman who leads a settlement.
"Your spirit walks in the fog tonight," Ubbe murmurs into the dark. His voice is low, stripping away the Jarl, leaving only the husband. "The thoughts are loud, Y/N. Louder than the wind."
You turn in his arms. You catch his wrist, halting the comb mid-stroke. You look at that hand—the hand that felled trees to build a home, the hand that threw the scales into the fire to feed the hungry, the hand of a killer and a builder.
You guide it down.
You press his heavy palm flat against the stomach. Through the scratchy wool of the dress, through the thin linen shift, down to the skin that feels suddenly too tight, too full.
"The moon has filled and emptied twice, Ubbe." you say. The voice is steady, but the heart hammers a frantic rhythm against the ribs, thunder in a small valley. "And the blood has not come."
Ubbe goes stone still.
The air leaves the room. His hand is heavy and hot against the belly, a brand. He stares at his own fingers, spread wide over the womb as if he can feel the spark through the layers of wool. He does not breathe. Then, the eyes snap up to yours.
The pupils blow wide, swallowing the glacial blue, darkening with a realization that hits him harder than any axe blow he has ever taken. The King vanishes. The warrior vanishes. Only the man is left, stripped bare by a wonder that terrifies him more than death.
"Is this true?" he breathes. His voice is a ruin, cracked and raw, like ice breaking on the fjord. "The Gods... they have done this?"
"I feel it," you whisper. You cover his hand with yours, anchoring him to the truth before he floats away.
Ubbe lets out a sound that tears from his throat—it is half a laugh, half a prayer to Odin.
He slides off the bed. He drops to the knees on the hard earth floor. He sinks down not in defeat, but in worship. He wraps the massive arms around the waist, burying the face in the folds of the dress, pressing the forehead against the life he helped make. He holds you as if you are made of glass and starlight, as if one wrong move will shatter the future.
"A child," he murmurs into the wool, the vibration humming against the skin, shaking with the force of his feeling. "My blood. Your blood."
He looks up at you. The firelight catches the wetness in his eyes—tears that a Viking does not shed for pain, only for fate. The smile that breaks across his face is a blinding, beautiful thing, a sunbreak in the dead of the winter night that promises the spring.
"You carry a saga inside you, Y/N. Greater than any raid. Greater than any crown."
He stands. He kisses you—not with the hunger of the flesh, but with a reverence that shakes you to the marrow of the bones. He lifts you easily, carrying you to the furs as if you are the most precious cargo a longship has ever borne, and lays you down in the warmth, covering you with his own body to shield you from the cold of the world.
Sleep comes, dark and deep, but it is not the wind that steals it back. The wind in this cursed land, it screams always, a lullaby of ice and stone that you have learned to ignore.
No. It is a sound that does not belong.
It is the groan of iron biting into wood. A sharp, violent crack that snaps the spine of the night.
Ubbe wakes before the echo has time to die. He does not gasp. He does not ask the questions. The wolf that lives inside his skin, it sleeps with one eye open always. He rolls from the warm furs, naked and terrible in the dying firelight, and he throws himself between you and the door. He slams his palms against the timber, bracing the shoulder, becoming a living shield of muscle and bone and scar tissue.
"Get behind me!" he roars.
The door explodes inward.
Splinters of pine shower the room like arrows. The cold air rushes in, a physical blow, smelling of unwashed bodies, stale ale, and the sour stink of fear. Three shadows spill into the sanctuary. It is not Kjetill—the Flatnose is a coward who sits in his high seat while others bleed—but these are his dogs. They hold swords that glint with malice in the embers' light.
Ubbe catches the first blade on the heavy iron hinge of the door frame he ripped loose. He shoves back, a sound like a bear tearing from his throat. He is holding the line. He is buying you seconds with his own flesh, unarmed against the steel.
But you... you do not scream. You are not a flower to be trampled. You are a daughter of the shield-wall. You remember the weight of the sword in Lagertha’s hand, the way she moved like water, the way she struck like the viper.
You roll from the bed, the hand darting into the shadows by the hearth. The fingers close around the cold, leather-wrapped haft of the bearded axe. It is heavy. It is familiar. It is perfect.
You move.
You slip under Ubbe’s guard like a wraith in the smoke. The first man, he is focused on the giant blocking his path. He does not see the woman. He does not see the death coming for his knees.
You swing. It is a hideous, wet thud.
The blade shears through the meat of the neck just as the man stumbles forward. Hot, copper rain sprays across the furs—the very furs where you just conceived a life. The head hits the floor with a dull knock, rolling to a stop against the foot of the bed, the eyes staring at nothing. The body collapses like a puppet with the strings cut.
Ubbe sees it. He sees you—the blood on the face, the axe in the hand, the eyes burning with the cold fire of a Valkyrie. He grins, and it is a feral thing, a baring of teeth that promises only death.
He rips the sword from the dead man’s hand and he charges. He drives the remaining two men backward, out of the hut, out of the dark. You follow him, gripping the axe, the bare feet stepping over the threshold into the biting cold.
The moon is full, hanging low and heavy, the snow is blue. The violence is beautiful and terrible.
Settlers pour from the huts, drawn by the noise. They stand in the doorways, the torches sputtering in the wind, watching with wide, terrified eyes. They see the son of Ragnar, naked and steaming in the frost, moving like a dancer of death.
Ubbe parries a strike, spins, and drives the stolen sword through a man’s chest. The man falls without a sound to the Gods; he will not feast in Valhalla tonight.
The last one turns to run. He sees you. He thinks you are the weak link, so he raises his blade. But you don't even blink.
You block the strike with the haft of the axe, the wood groaning. You twist the hips, like the skalds sing of, and you drive the spike of the axe down into his collarbone. He screams—a short, sharp sound. Ubbe is there in a heartbeat, finishing him with a single, brutal slash to the throat.
Silence falls. The snow is painted red.
Ubbe stands over the bodies. His chest is heaving like a bellows. The adrenaline is coursing through him like lightning, making the hands shake. He turns to the darkness where the Longhouse sits, where the coward hides in the shadows.
He raises the bloody sword to the moon.
"Is this all?!" His voice shreds the night. It echoes off the black cliffs, primal and raw, the voice of a King who has forgotten he is a King. "Is this all you have got?! Come! Try again, you cowards!"
He paces, wild-eyed, challenging the darkness. "I am Ubbe! I am the son of Ragnar Lothbrok! The blood of the Allfather runs in these veins! I am not easy to kill!"
He points the blade at the Longhouse. "You have to try better than that! I am waiting for you!"
The settlers shrink back. They have forgotten that a wolf walks among the sheep. They look at him with awe and terror.
You step forward. You reach out, the hand closing over his bicep. His skin is burning hot against the freeze, radiating the heat of the berserker.
"Ubbe," you say. The voice is low, grounding. An anchor in the storm. "Peace, they are dead."
He looks at you and the madness recedes, blinking away, leaving only the man. He lowers the sword, you turn to the settlers and stand tall, blood-spattered and fierce, a Queen in a linen shift.
"All is good now," you tell them. "Go back to the fires. The danger is gone."
They obey you. They always obey you. The doors close. The torches die.
"Inside," you whisper.
You guide him back into the hut. The smell of copper is thick, tasting like old coins on the tongue. The headless body is gone, kicked out, but the head... the head rests near the bed and the furs are soaked in red. Ubbe stops, he looks at the bed, he looks at the blood that stains the place where you sleep.
"No," he rasps, shaking the head violently. "We cannot sleep there. Not in the blood."
He moves with frantic energy. He grabs the bloody furs, the mattress, the pillows, and hurls them into the corner like they are poison. He goes to the stack of trade skins—clean, white reindeer hides—and drags them to the hearth. He piles them on the floor, in the light of the fire, where the shadows cannot reach.
He turns to you. "Y/N."
Ubbe rushes to you. His hands are everywhere—cupping the face, running down the arms, pressing against the ribs, the stomach. He is frantic. He needs to know with the fingers, not just the eyes.
"Did they hurt you?" he demands, his voice cracking like dry wood.
You shake the head. You take his face in the hands, smearing his own blood on his cheek.
"No," you whisper. "It is not my blood."
He lets out a sound that is half-sob, half-breath. He pulls you down onto the new furs. He presses the forehead against yours, the eyes closing, exhaling the terror that the fight could not purge.
"The child is safe," you promise, though the hand trembles on his arm.
Ubbe opens the eyes. They are blue ice. Hard. Unforgiving.
He reaches up and grips his arm, the fingers digging into the gold ring until the knuckles turn white.
"I swear," he whispers. The sound vibrates against the skin, heavy with death. "I swear on this ring. I swear on the ghost of my father."
He kisses the forehead, a seal of doom.
"Kjetill Flatnose... he will not see the sun set again."
You lie there. The fire crackles, a small, defiant sound against the dark. You are tangled in the new furs, the white reindeer skins that smell of salt and curing smoke, but the smell of copper—of blood—it hangs in the back of the throat like a ghost.
You cannot close the eyes. When you blink, you see the flash of the blade. You hear the crack of the door. The wolf is pacing in the chest, scratching at the ribs.
Ubbe is behind you. His back is against the wooden post of the hearth. You are between his legs, his chest a solid wall against your back. He does not sleep. He will not sleep. The muscles in his arms are coiled tight, like ropes under tension.
His hand. The hand that just took a life. It moves to your hair.
It strokes the length of it, over and over. A rhythm. Down. Down. Down. It is the rhythm of the waves lapping at the shore. It is a spell to bind the fear.
"The eyes are open," he murmurs. His voice is a rumble in the chest, vibrating against your spine. "I can feel the lashes against the dark."
"I see them," you whisper, the voice small. "When I close the eyes... I see the shadows."
Ubbe tightens the hold. His arm bands across your chest, avoiding the stomach, but holding you tight enough to bruise. He needs to feel the breath in your lungs to know you are still there.
"Let them come in the dreams," he says. "I will kill them there, too."
He presses a kiss to the top of the head.
"Sleep, Y/N. The body needs the rest. The... the child needs the rest."
"I cannot," you breathe. "If they come back..."
"They will not," Ubbe promises. He shifts, pulling the fur higher up your chin. "I will not close an eye," he swears, his lips against your hair. "Until the sun bleeds into the sky and I can end this... I will not rest."
He strokes the hair again. Gentle. So gentle.
<part 2 part 4>
