881 AD — Wōdenléah, a growing Saxon burh within the Kingdom of Wessex, clings to a brittle peace in a country divided between Saxon and Viking rule.
Osric, the widowed thegn of Wōdenléah and protector of its church-held lands, and Æfre, a healer and one of the last pagans in Wōdenléah, are involved in a passionate affair.
Æfre finds herself caught in the crosshairs of Wōdenléah’s Bishop Æthelwod, a ruthless clergyman obsessed with eradicating 'heathen' presence while increasing his holdings and influence. Æfre’s association with Osric gives Æthelwod the leverage he needs to tighten his chokehold on the region, threatening Æfre’s wellbeing in the process.
Jarl Torvald Ironsight is a Viking chieftain who presides over the trading camp just outside Wōdenléah. Torvald harbors an unspoken affection for Æfre, yet finds he must join forces with her lover Osric to derail a plot that could destroy the fragile peace between their people.
Together, they must navigate treachery, betrayal, and the landscape of their own hearts to stop Æthelwod before both Wōdenléah and Æfre pay the price.
Readers who love immersive historical fiction with a strong, central romance will do well here. This story does not have an HEA or HFN ending.
881 AD — Wōdenléah, a growing Saxon burh within the Kingdom of Wessex, clings to a brittle peace in a country divided between Saxon and Viking rule.
Osric, the widowed thegn of Wōdenléah and protector of its church-held lands, and Æfre, a healer and one of the last pagans in Wōdenléah, are involved in a passionate affair.
Æfre finds herself caught in the crosshairs of Wōdenléah’s Bishop Æthelwod, a ruthless clergyman obsessed with eradicating 'heathen' presence while increasing his holdings and influence. Æfre’s association with Osric gives Æthelwod the leverage he needs to tighten his chokehold on the region, threatening Æfre’s wellbeing in the process.
Jarl Torvald Ironsight is a Viking chieftain who presides over the trading camp just outside Wōdenléah. Torvald harbors an unspoken affection for Æfre, yet finds he must join forces with her lover Osric to derail a plot that could destroy the fragile peace between their people.
Together, they must navigate treachery, betrayal, and the landscape of their own hearts to stop Æthelwod before both Wōdenléah and Æfre pay the price.
Readers who love immersive historical fiction with a strong, central romance will do well here. This story does not have an HEA or HFN ending.
The familiar voice boomed, cutting through the quiet of the hut.
“She stirs at last!”
Æfre groaned in faux protest. This was their game—she feigning a wish to languish in sleep, and he pressing her to observe his mischief before he slipped away in the discreet, pre-dawn hours, before the burh stirred and anyone marked the absence of the thegn of Wōdenléah.
She was secretly glad that today she’d awakened in time to enjoy it before he took his leave. Not that she planned on giving him the satisfaction of hearing her say it, mind you. That, too, was part of their game.
She blinked the sleep from her eyes, noting that the first light of dawn had not yet appeared at the edges of the hut’s window coverings.
“By what sorcery are you awake, Osric?” She asked, yawning.
“A thegn such as I, Æfre,” Osric bloviated, “is forged of hardier stuff than the mere sleep and softness of you floral-scented womenfolk.”
He winked at her, shirtless and preening as he poked the previous night’s embers, thoroughly amused with himself.
“Indeed, we are splendid specimens who sleep little and rise before the sun,” he continued, enjoying his own theatrics, “yet we still look as if carved by the hand of the Almighty himself.”
“Big words, my lord,” Æfre snorted, rubbing her eyes and stretching as she rolled onto her back, “but I believe it is we, the ‘floral scented-womenfolk’ who are the ones to measure the truth of that claim.”
Æfre grabbed the nearest weapon available to her—the pillow from his side of the bed. She hurled it, striking him squarely on the side of the head.
“How dare you?” Osric laughed, his voice heavy with mock indignation. “Such reckless behavior!” He leaned down and retrieved the pillow, dusting it off, “and such accuracy—”
Æfre squealed and hid under the coverlet as the pillow she’d thrown came sailing back at her, hitting its target with satisfying accuracy. For his benefit, she let out an exaggerated, battlefield-worthy groan which quickly dissolved into a fit of giggles.
Emerging from under the covers, Æfre yawned again—like a contented cat, then reached blindly towards the chest at her bedside. The familiar comfort of her leechbook should have been there, but instead, her hand met nothing but cool, empty wood. She lifted her head off the pillow to check, even peered over the edge of the bed—certain she’d left it there—she’d been working with it just yesterday and had set it there to allow the ink to dry.
“Is it this you reach for?” Osric held something in the air.
Ah. My leechbook.
Propping herself up on her elbow, she narrowed her eyes, her voice warm with faux accusation as she raked her fingers through her hair.
“Lord Osric! Have I just caught the thegn in an act of thievery?”
He glanced up at her, unbothered and unrepentant. He tilted her leechbook slightly—showing it off before brazenly resuming paging through it.
“For mercy’s sake, Osric, just don’t set it alight!” Æfre laughed, unable to stop her own grin as she flopped back down onto the feather-filled mattress and snuggled in.
By the Gods, that is a beautiful man, she thought, taking full advantage of his distraction and allowing her gaze to linger on him, peering at him through a gap she had fashioned in the coverlet.
His tunic lay draped over his knee, as if forgotten halfway through the process of dressing. A pair of well-worn boots waited patiently at his feet, like two obedient little dogs lying in wait for their master. He looked like a man with no intention of leaving, which suited her just fine.
Her eyes traced the diagonal scar that wrapped around his left flank—a jagged reminder of the blade of a determined Northman, a near-miss during the Battle of Edington. He rarely spoke of it, deflecting her questions with a vague smile, but she knew the weight it carried. She’d felt it in the terrors that sometimes gripped him during the night, when his dreams dragged him back into the conflict. She was a witness to the price he’d paid for his distinction in battle, yet she knew it was something he would only ever speak of with a few of his closest brothers in arms.
Her gaze moved to the powerful lines of his jaw, the way his unruly, wavy hair always fell slightly out of place no matter what he did, and then down to his hands—rugged and calloused by work and battle. Yet those same hands had moved over her with such care the night before—she could still feel the lingering echoes of his touch.
The vividness of the recollection flooded her, bringing a bashful warmth to her cheeks and spreading like fire under her skin, her stomach fluttering with a mix of desire and amusement. A giggle escaped her before she could stop it—a quiet, breathy snort as she curled her toes reflexively under the coverlet.
“What’s this laughter for then?” Osric asked dryly without looking up, the corner of his mouth quirking into a wary smile as he continued to study her leechbook.
Æfre pressed her hands to her flushed cheeks—a futile attempt to contain the blush. “The noise we made…” she managed, her voice trailing off into a sheepish laugh as the memory surged to the forefront of her mind. Her skin was still burning with the vividness of it.
Osric’s brows arched in exaggerated innocence, though the glint in his eyes betrayed him. “I know not of what you speak,” he replied, his tone thick with exaggerated solemnity as he casually flipped another page of the leechbook.
“Do you not?” Æfre mused, “Just as well, my lord, since it likely made its way into every ear between the burh and the trading camp!” Her laughter spilled over as she covered her face with her hands.
Setting the journal aside, Osric rose from his chair, shifting it slightly backwards and unsettling the rushes covering the earthen floor beneath him.
Æfre peeked at him from behind her fingers, her breath catching as she watched his every step.
When he reached her, he leaned down, his hands gently wrapping around hers, easing them away from her face. He kissed her deeply, lingering just long enough to completely melt any resolve she might have had left.
And just as quickly, it was over.
“Good,” he declared, his voice definitive. “Let us hope they heard well.”
Æfre blinked, reeling as he reached out and lightly ran the back of his fingers down her cheek. Before she could gather her thoughts or summon a witty retort, he was already walking back to his chair, where he plopped himself back down and reclaimed her leechbook.
She actually found it rather infuriating, perhaps even alarming, how easily he could disarm her.
Æfre pulled the coverlet back over her head and re-fashioned the small opening to peer through. Cozy in its familiar, cavernous warmth, she allowed her gaze to drift around the hut, noting the scattered state of things. She sighed, vowing to herself to set aside time later that day to put things right.
The hut was a simple, one-room wattle-and-daub structure with a timber frame and a thatched roof, warmed by a raised hearth at its center. At the far end stood a stout hardwood table with two benches, and along the walls, shelves were cleverly fitted into the timber frame. Each shelf held rows of clay jars, packed with herbs, dried roots—nature’s tools—remnants of the healing craft passed down through generations. Æfre’s mother had used them, and her grandmother too. Now it was her turn, though often she still felt like a child playing at her mother’s work.
The air inside was heavily scented with various herbs mingled with hearth smoke—ever present, always faintly clinging to Æfre’s skin and hair. On this particular morning, it was a heady mixture of dried lavender and sage with an additional note of the previous night’s stew, all rising gently to the rafters with the smoke and warmth from the hearth.
Everything in the hut was spare and serviceable.
With one exception—the bed.
It was a striking piece—a monument to Æfre’s father’s Danish heritage. It was a bed too large for the space and too fine for its surroundings. Her father had made and carved it himself as a gift for her mother.
A Dane by birth and a renowned craftsman and woodcarver by trade, he had shaped the thick wood into something fit for nobility; dragons coiled snarling along the headboard, and two curled at the tops of the bedposts. It was a piece drawn from his memory of the first longship he’d sailed on to cross the sea. It looked out of place in the modest hut, but it had always stood there, a quiet monument to something wilder than the life they all shared within the walls of the hut.
Both gone many winters now, Æfre thought as she snuggled herself deeper into the bed fit for a queen. She continued to gaze around the hut, pausing as her eyes again came to rest on the wooden table at the other end of the hearth.
That table.
That table had been their first time, she and Osric—over a year ago now. He’d lifted her tall frame up onto its wooden surface like it was nothing—an unrestrained wildness flowing through them both as bits of dried herbs tangled in her long, pale hair; a symphony of bowls and spoons clattering across the floor, displaced by their enthusiasm.
She wasn’t sure how long she’d drifted in that memory when Osric’s voice cut through the silence.
“Æfre—these pages in your leechbook…the script—this is Latin!” Osric rose from the bench, eyes alight with surprise and no small measure of wonder.
“You’re learned in the language of scholars!?” He stepped closer, holding the leechbook as though it were some holy relic unearthed from the tomb of a saint. “Since when?” An incredulous smile spread across his face. “What else do you keep hidden behind that mischievous gaze? I know plenty of high-born nobles who couldn’t do this,” Osric marveled. “Truly—no one in Wōdenléah, save Bishop Æthelwod, could put their hand to such work!”
Osric continued to flip through the delicate pages of Æfre’s leechbook with a heightened curiosity, tracing his finger lightly over her intricate drawings of the roots and herbs that were the backbone of her practice.
“It was my father,” Æfre said, sitting up in bed as she gathered the surrounding coverlet. “He learned it during the summers he spent traveling for commissions.”
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood, wrapping herself in the coverlet. “He’d visit the monasteries—or at least try to—the ones willing to open their doors to a Dane.”
She gathered up the coverlet so she could walk, then continued.
“I can imagine it was no small task, convincing the monks he wasn’t a threat. But I guess his skill as an artisan won them over. He would trade craft for knowledge.”
Æfre had never hidden her literacy or her heritage, but equally she had always kept these things in quiet reserve; a layer of protection against those who might judge her for not having adopted Christian beliefs, for being a woman, a half Dane, for possessing knowledge, or for any number of other reasons people found to castigate a woman for existing beyond expectation.
“Fair work for a heathen, don’t you agree?” She smiled wryly.
“And a half-breed Dane at that!” Osric exclaimed, feigning horror.
Despite Osric’s experiences with the fierce Danelaw occupiers on the battlefield, Æfre knew that Osric understood well enough that Saxon and Dane blood had become inextricably intertwined long ago, the moment the first longship had come ashore and onto their soil.
It was one of the things she admired most about him—his grasp of this often uneasy balance. Complicated and messy alliances with ever-changing boundaries called for the skillful navigation of a changing landscape. One moment, two people are enemies and invaders; the next, kin by marriage, partners in trade, and neighbors raising their children side by side.
As a product of one such complex alliance, Æfre deeply admired Osric’s ability to hold two such truths in the same hand.
“Two worlds etched into me, yet I belong fully to neither,” she mumbled.
The words slipped from her before she could stop them. She hadn’t meant to utter them aloud—she rarely let such things rise to the surface. When she glanced up, Osric was no longer reading. He had lowered the leechbook, his gaze steady, yet warm and thoughtful, as if seeing something he hadn’t noticed before.
Barefoot and still haphazardly wrapped in the coverlet, Æfre shuffled closer, her pale, bed-rumpled hair tickling his nose as she pressed in closer, guiding his hands back up so she could see her leechbook.
“See the plants in these pages,” she said, “the names in Latin—you know this, I suppose, but these are the names the learned men use—the true names, written as the monks do in their great books.”
She tapped the margin with her fingertip, then pointed to the first image. “This here is Camemillan, see? There are two kinds.”
Æfre pointed to a detailed drawing.
“This is Anthemis nobilis—that’s the Roman sort, the kind in the garden. And this one—”
Her finger moved across the page to a second drawing.
“Matricaria chamomilla.”
She glanced up at Osric, who stood listening, brows furrowed in interest. A small smile tugged at her lips as she continued.
“My father brought the seed from one of his summer journeys. There was a kind monk, fond of spreading knowledge—he gave him many cuttings, too. Said the garden is as important a place for study as any scriptorium.”
She looked up to find Osric’s eyes locked on her, filled with wonderment as if watching some rare specimen perform some unimaginable feat.
“Forgive me—I prattle like a hen in the thatch once I start speaking of plants…”
But she saw the look in his eyes before she could finish—how he listened intently. Osric’s gaze was unwavering.
“Go on, Æfre,” he said gently. “I’d hear the rest.”
She hesitated, suddenly aware of the warmth in her cheeks. Then, with a shy smile, she reached over and guided Osric’s hands to close the leechbook.
“That’s all, really. These pages… they’re plants I use—mostly for healing, although a few are there simply because they interest me; the way they grow, their scent, or their properties that I have yet to learn to make use of.”
She paused, then looked him dead in the eyes.
“Of course, some may be turned to poison as well… so you’d best not anger me, my lord.”
Osric grinned widely, then dropped the leechbook and recoiled, clutching his chest as if stricken, staggering backwards with a gasp.
“I am undone!” he cried, and with a sudden motion grabbed Æfre by the waist and pulled her down with him into the chair by the hearth.
“It was the stew!” Æfre squealed.
“The stew!! Aiii!” Osric arched his back, sputtering. “My world grows dark!! Farewell!!”
Æfre dissolved into a fit of giggles as she struggled to keep the coverlet wrapped around her. She could tell that the warmth of her closeness was having an effect on him. She liked having that effect on him.
Yet as dawn closed in on them, so did the demands of Osric’s station. The Bishop would come seeking him first thing, as he always did, before the first labors of the day began. Osric should have been gone already. But this morning, she was not ready to let him go. Not yet.
And by the look in his eyes—dark, fixed, and growing hungrier by the moment—she could clearly see that he wasn’t ready either.
Osric suddenly rebounded from the throes of death and swept her into his arms, moving towards the bed.
“Osric, we mustn’t. Your time is short,” she said, though she still tilted her head, baring the pale curve of her neck to him, knowing full well he needed no such encouragement.
He leaned in and kissed her, his beard prickling the exquisitely sensitive area as he murmured against her neck, “Just a moment longer.”
Then his lips found the spot beneath her ear—that same spot that had rendered her helpless against his charms that very first time—and her fingers released the coverlet. It slipped to the floor, pooling at their feet like water from an overflowing basin.
“As you wish. Perhaps just a moment…” Æfre said, pretending to let go of a resolve to deny him that she’d never had to begin with.
In Heart of the Wild Gods, Kendall Brooks immerses readers in a world where faith, politics, and desire collide. It's a world vividly rendered through meticulous research and evocative prose.
The novel’s greatest triumph lies in its world-building. Brooks paints Viking-Age Wessex with striking authenticity: the burh’s timbered halls, the looming shadow of the church, and the raw pragmatism of a Viking trading camp. Every detail, from healing herbs to the cadence of speech, feels lived-in, transporting readers to a time when survival was a daily negotiation. This immersive setting shapes every choice the characters make.
At the heart of the story is Aefre, a pagan healer whose strength and complexity drive the narrative. She's principled and resilient, and fully aware of the cost of defiance in a world increasingly turning Christian. Her forbidden love with Osric, a Saxon thegn bound to church lands, burns with aching tenderness. It's like a fragile flame against the cold wind of zeal. The triangle deepens with Jarl Torvald Ironsight, a Viking leader whose quiet care adds nuance without melodrama.
Brooks excels at portraying the heart-rending pull of forbidden love. The tension between desire and duty feels organic, never forced. When Bishop Æthelwod enters the scene, determined to purge pagan practices, the stakes escalate beyond romance into survival. The rescue sequence is bloody, desperate, and costly, and it shows the novel’s refusal to romanticize history. Choices have consequences, and Brooks doesn’t flinch from showing them.
But the book isn't without its challenges. The pacing in the middle falters when political maneuvering takes center stage, which may test the patience of readers who want constant momentum. Also note that sensitive readers may find the violence and torture descriptions disturbing. And most importantly, even though Brooks has mentioned that the book does not have a HEA ending, it's still somewhat disappointing for readers who love a neat conclusion.
Overall, it's a story of faith and identity, of love that defies boundaries but has to bow to reality. If you crave a story with morally complex characters, high-stakes romance, and old gods clashing with new ones, this is a gripping book that will pull you in and then break your heart in the best possible way.