by Holley Trent
“We’ll fix this,” the second guy said.
“How?”
“Our energy—our magic, I guess you’d call it—will keep his at bay until the two parts of him are back in sync.” As he’d said, he arced the long way around and approached Mary from the rear.
Andreas was so busy watching him that he didn’t pay attention to the guy with the eye patch.
He grabbed Andreas around the neck and forced him to the floor.
“Please!” Mary shouted.
“It’s all right,” the other guy said. “Anton’s not gonna hurt him, and trust me, we’re not going to tell anyone about this except my dad.”
“Your dad?”
He grunted and extended a hand to Mary to shake. “I’m Vic Carbone. Adam’s my father.”
“Oh!” She shook his hand and then turned her attention back to the scuffle nearby.
Anton was working very hard not to hurt Andreas, but Andreas wasn’t giving him any such courtesy. He was trying to nip and claw at the man—trying to wrest himself free of his grip—but Anton had obviously had practice.”
“You’ve done this before?” she asked Vic.
He nodded. “A few times.”
“What’ll happen afterward?”
“That’s up to you, I guess. My father thought the best course of action would be for us to bundle him up and take him back to Norseton with us until he’s better able to control himself, but we’re not going to force him to do anything.”
“He’s not in a good place to be making decisions. I mean, look at him.” She indicated toward the snarling beast, who was meaner, angrier, than Andreas on two legs would ever be. He might have been antisocial and reclusive, but he wasn’t violent.
“You can decide,” Vic said. “If you trust us to help him, we’ll help him, and we’ll take our lumps later on if he’s pissed. If you don’t trust us to take him, we’ll go.”
“You’re not taking him.”
Vic grimaced, then nodded.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she said, body coiled tight with fear at the still-raging scuffle, “I want you to help him, but I’m not going to let you take him alone. I’m going, too.”
“To Norseton?”
“I was going to go anyway. Maybe not so soon, but now’s as good a time as any. If you can help him, take him. And please…” She gestured to the fight. “Can’t you stop this? Can you help?”
“Yeah. I can help. Close your eyes.”
“What?”
Vic was already heeling off his boots and peeling off his shirt. “Close your eyes. That way, your man won’t get pissed at me for you having seen me in my birthday suit. If you were a wolf, he probably wouldn’t care, but I’m not gonna take the chance. I’m going to shift. Forcing his magic back will be easier if we’re in the same form.”
“Oh.” She jammed her eyes shut and then turned her back for good measure.
Mary wanted to watch, though. She felt like she needed to see the thing she had put into motion so she wouldn’t allow herself to plead ignorance later, but she was going to trust Anton and Vic to do what they said. She didn’t have a choice. She wasn’t a wolf. She didn’t understand wolf impulses or know how to soothe them, but she could make decisions on the fly. Every day, she did that at work—in every interview she conducted and every investigation she completed. She knew how to get shit done, even when she couldn’t do it all herself.
The noise behind her quieted.
Holding her breath, she turned, slowly, afraid to see to fallout—afraid to see Andreas hurt.
He was on his belly in his human form. His breathing was ragged, and his cheeks and jaw a bit scraped, but otherwise calm.
Gods. She put her hand to her heaving breast like some kind of delicate maiden.
Anton had his hands on Andreas’s shoulders and turned his head to sight her with his good eye.
“Is he…”
Still in his fur, Vic sat nearby and looked down at his “victim.”
“Is Andreas okay?” she asked.
Anton waved her over. “Come on. Your touch will do him some good, probably.”
She moved slowly to him, watching his face for signs of anger or betrayal, but he just looked tired. She knelt next to him and put her cheek against his, sighing. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m just trying to get you help. We’re going to go with them.”
“G-go where?” His voice was halting, as if he were having trouble getting his throat to work properly.
“To Norseton. We’re going to go to Norseton until you’re better. I’ll stay with you until you’re stable.”
He swallowed audibly. “And then what?”
“And then…” She passed her fingers through his messy hair and stilled them at the base of his neck. “Then we’ll figure out what to do with ourselves, I imagine. We need to clear out of here before the locals figure out where we’re defecting to.”
He sighed. “They’re going to vandalize my building, aren’t they?”
She sighed, too. “Probably. You might want to move up your timeline of getting this stuff catalogued.”
Grimacing, he closed his eyes. “It’s a lot of stuff.”
CHAPTER TEN
Even after seeing the woman almost daily for weeks, Mary didn’t think she’d ever get used to the fact that the matriarch of the Afótama clan, a woman of at least seventy, wore holey T-shirts and Air Jordans.
“Why do you always look at me like that?” Muriel asked as she pushed her bifocals up her nose. With Maggie peering over her shoulder, she stood in the open doorway of Mary’s temporary apartment in Norseton, holding a plant that had been tied with a festive bow.
Andreas, curled on the sofa with his eyes closed, chuckled.
“Sorry.” Mary cringed. “It’s the shoes, I think.”
Muriel looked down at them. “Oh. Well, the thing is, I’m a creature of habit. Five years ago, I’d ordered something else from an online shoe store and they sent me a pair of these instead, and I was too lazy to send them back. They ended up being comfortable. Lots of room for my wide, grandma feet.”
“I should try them,” Maggie muttered.
“Better than those gods-awful orthopedics some people wear,” Andreas said.
“Hey, damn right.” Muriel set the plant on the cluttered table by the door. “Figured we’d bring you a welcome gift. I know you’ve been here for a bit, but things get busy at the mansion.”
“I’m sure. I imagine I can speak for both Mary and myself when I say that we take no offense.”
“Well, good. I wanted to invite you to dinner tonight, too, so you can eat off your donated plates.”
Maggie sat on the sliver of unoccupied sofa cushion in front of him and put a hand to his forehead. “You feeling up to it, wolf man?”
“No.” He let out a long, ragged breath that sounded like exhaling hurt him, and it probably did. His body was still adapting to the wolf magic. Some days were easy. Most were filled with joint, muscle, or other kinds of pain.
Mary had opted to not go immediately to work at Sheldon’s office. She and Andreas needed time to adapt to Norseton, and to each other.
“But I’ll endure,” he told Maggie.
“That’s the spirit. This might make you feel better, though. I think Adam and his missus’ll be around.”
“That does make me feel better. At least we know if my tethers come loose and the wolf spills out of me, there’ll be people there who can save me from my shame.”
Muriel waved a dismissive hand at him. “You’ll get better at it.”
He scoffed and sat up, cringing.
“You all right?” Mary whispered.
He nodded slowly. His blood pressure had been incredibly low since they’d moved to Norseton. Sudden movements often made him faint. Adam said his systems would adjust in time.
He swallowed. “This isn’t normal.”
“Not supposed to be,” Maggie said. “You’re not like the other wolves. I mean, you’re made o
f the same stuff, probably, but their magic has been more or less consistent since their lines originated. They were born with theirs already waiting to be switched on. Yours was way more dormant.”
“I know you’re just trying to make me feel better.”
He smirked charmingly and she wondered how it was he’d managed to be on his own for so long. Some woman should have tried to tie him down.
“Because that’s what you do here, right? Keep people from going off the deep end?”
“I swear, I don’t know how I ever got such a reputation for bloodlust.” She shook her head and clucked her tongue. “Anyhow, don’t be ashamed of what you can’t do yet. Tess is still in the learning curve, too, as are her chieftains. We’re all still figuring out what we can do. Some of us are just more surprised than others. You’re in the right place.”
Mary sat next on the sofa arm and squeezed his hand. “I think so, too.”
“No more guilt about selling your father’s house?”
“Not guilt. Not regret. Just…a bit of melancholy. But, he’s not there. The house is just a house, and I have everything of his that’s important.”
He leaned in and brushed the side of her face with his lips, ever so gently. Not beastly at all.
Muriel clasped her hands in front of her and smiled. “Aw. I love a happy ending.”
“No,” Mary whispered and gave Andreas’s cold hands a squeeze. “A happy beginning.”
Mary appears again in the Norseton Wolves story SEER.
Turn the page to see the full list of stories set in the Afótama world.
SERIES ORDER
Dear Readers,
The Afótama Legacy, Norseton Wolves, and Hearth Motel series timelines all intertwine. Although there is character overlap, each series stands on its own. You’ll have a fuller reading experience if you read them all on the prescribed timeline, however. (FYI: Surrendering Saul and The Viking’s Witch are set approximately at the same time.)
Reading Order:
The Viking Queen’s Men (The Afótama Legacy #1)
The Chieftain’s Daughter (The Afótama Legacy #2)
Prince in Leather (Hearth Motel #1)
Unwrapping Mr. Roth (Hearth Motel #1.5)
Viking’s Pride (The Afótama Legacy #2.5)
Viking Flame (The Afótama Legacy #3)
Knight in Leather (Hearth Motel #2)
Surrendering Saul (Hearth Motel #3)
The Viking’s Witch (The Afótama Legacy #4)
Norseton Wolves
Beast
Loner
Idler
Scion
Maker
Elder
Scout
Seer
Angel
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COPYRIGHT AND CREDITS
BEAUTY & THE VIKING
Copyright © 2017 by Holley Trent
First published in the Taming the Beast anthology. This edition is identical.
All rights reserved. Reproduction of any part of this book in any format, except for reviewing purposes, is allowed only with prior consent of the author.
BEAUTY & THE VIKING is a work of fiction. Names, places, entities, and scenarios in this book are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
Cover stock from Adobe Stock, copyright © Lorenzo Gulino.
