by Kati Wilde
“Makena,” I say hoarsely and hold out my hand.
She scrambles away from me as fast as she can, putting the solid table between me and her.
Sick pain fills up my gut. Only a minute ago she’d been smelling sweet and soft, sitting next to me with berry juice staining her lips and that hot feminine scent of sexual awareness perfuming the air between us. Now every breath is sour with her fear.
“All right, then. Now that’s settled”—Jonas pulls out his chair and sits—“I’m ready for some of this chicken pie.”
11
Makena
Chicken pie? I glance at my uncle in disbelief—then realize that I took my eyes off Ethan. Fear clenches in my stomach and my gaze darts back to make sure he hasn’t come closer.
To make sure he isn’t…whatever he was before. That thing. With claws and fangs and glowing eyes.
But he looks human. And utterly tormented as he watches me.
“Makena.” His voice is a rough, harsh growl—though not as rough or as harsh as it was a minute ago, when he was telling me not to be afraid, even though he’d roared like an animal and lifted Uncle Jonas straight up off his feet. “Do you want me to leave?”
He sounds so broken as he says it, as if instead of being a huge, powerful monster, he’s as vulnerable as I was when he was caging me in with those teeth and those claws. And his torment sounds so genuine that I have to fight my instinctive “of course not” and work up the words to tell him to go, but Jonas beats me to a response.
“You know damn well you can’t go anywhere, even if she tells you to,” he says, scooping out a large helping of chicken pie. “So instead you tell me why you haven’t already tracked down the fuckers who attacked the herd.”
Tracked down…? Because Ethan can smell things. Really well.
And my uncle is acting like that’s expected. As if he wasn’t just tossed around by our new ranch hand the same way I’d toss around a pillow.
“They didn’t have a scent,” Ethan says roughly, and for the first time looks away from me, focusing in on Jonas. “The same way you don’t.”
My uncle frowns. “You sure they don’t?”
“Yeah. The same way the fuckers who killed my kin don’t.”
Jonas nods thoughtfully. “That’s not so surprising. But it sure is odd that you were noseblind to the ones who attacked the herd, too.”
That’s what’s odd? I stare at my uncle in disbelief, dimly aware of my teeth chattering and my body shaking as adrenaline and terror still make their way out of my system. Because our ranch hand just grew giant fangs and claws after Jonas attacked him…and not having a scent is what’s odd?
“Makena.” Ethan’s voice is low, his eyes dark with concern. “You all right?”
Brows lowered, Jonas glances back at me. “Shock, probably. Pull up a chair and get some warm food into your belly, and it’ll pass.”
Yeah, no. I don’t want any chicken pie. I need something else instead.
I head for the liquor cabinet. We don’t drink much hard stuff around here—usually only when there’s company or a splash to warm up a wintertime drink—but tonight is definitely going to be an exception.
I grab a bottle of whisky and a glass and turn around, leaning back against the counter. No way am I getting closer to Ethan. It doesn’t matter that Jonas seems to be completely comfortable with him. As far as I can tell, the whole world has gone crazy, and that includes my uncle.
“So you know what’s hunting down the kin?” Ethan asks him.
“I’ve got an idea.” Jonas points to the chair across the table. “But it’s a long story, so you might as well settle in.”
Ethan looks to me, sending me another of those tortured glances before nodding. Because he’s been looking for his family’s killers for a long time, and Jonas…
“Hold up.” At my voice, Ethan freezes, but I’m not talking to him. Instead I feel as if my brain is finally catching up. “You might know who killed his family?”
Jonas nods, chewing and swallowing. “Not that I ever met them—either his family or the people who likely killed them. But I’ve got a good idea of who they might be. So maybe it’s best that you have a seat, too.”
With my second sip burning down into my belly, fire moves into my blood. “I don’t think so.”
“Suit yourself.”
“What about that blade?” Ethan’s eyeing Jonas’s knife, which my uncle has owned for as long as I can remember. Then Ethan’s amber gaze moves back to me, settling on my hand. “And those rings? Is that what these people used to make the bullets that killed them?”
“Now you’re jumping ahead,” Jonas tells him. “But the dead aren’t in any rush. And when the living rush, they make mistakes. So you might as well sit.”
I’m happy right here with my bottle. Happy, except that there’s an obvious question that my uncle already seems to know the answer to.
To Ethan, I demand, “What the hell are you?”
His gaze locks on mine again. “We’re called the wolfkin.”
“That’s a new one to me,” Jonas says, and to me he adds, “He’s one of the úlfhéðnar.”
My belly lurches. “They’re not real,” I immediately insist.
Even though…maybe the evidence of that reality is right in front of me, frowning.
“The what?” Ethan asks.
“The úlfhéðnar,” Jonas repeats.
Which probably doesn’t help at all. “Roughly translated, it means wolf coats. Or wolf skins.” Which sounds similar to what he’d called it—wolfkin. Maybe that’s just a shift in the language or something else. “They were berserker warriors. My father was researching them for a novel he was writing about werewolves, and using that mythology as the background story.”
“It’s no myth,” Jonas says. “And he wasn’t writing a novel.”
“But all of his research—”
“Was research. But not for any fiction.”
Not for any fiction. Suddenly I’m dizzy with the fundamental shift that my entire brain is trying to make with this information. My father wasn’t a writer. And the bears that killed my parents…maybe weren’t bears, but berserkers.
And all the stuff that he was researching, all those discussions I had with him were real?
As real as the man sitting at my kitchen table.
“Makena.” Ethan’s voice is soft again, as if he knows exactly how my world is crashing around me.
I shake my head, rejecting the concern in his voice—and rejecting my own impulse to go to him and let him comfort me the way that look in his eyes promises. The look that says he’ll protect me and take care of me.
I force myself to start processing instead. Just one question at a time. That’s the only way to get through this.
“You said you were born?”
“I was.”
“And both your parents were wolfkin—born and not cursed?” At his nod, I ask him, “How far back does your line go?”
“Three generations on my father’s side. Two generations on my mother’s.”
So that’s probably why they don’t know anything about berserkers. They only know what they’ve learned in the few generations since the person in their line was cursed, or from other wolfkin that they meet. Because the curse is passed along with a bite, and while tearing into his victim, a werewolf probably doesn’t stop to pass along a history of lycanthropy, too. Cursed werewolves are mindless beasts during the full moon. Except…
“That’s why you asked me about the gold chain.” I laugh bitterly in my uncle’s direction and take another swig. “Yeah. No worries there.”
“Worries about what?” Ethan asks.
My face heats as I realize exactly what Jonas must have thought the relationship was between me and Ethan. “It doesn’t matter. You were born, so it doesn’t apply. What does matter is that apparently my parents were killed by berserkers, and my uncle killed them in revenge. And somehow that brought you to us.” Finally I grab a chair
next to Jonas and plop down, whisky and glass close at hand, because I’ve got a feeling I’ll need them. “So…?”
Jonas sighs and puts down his fork. “I was fifteen years old when Mikael was born, so we weren’t ever too close. He was at university when first our father passed of heart failure, followed by our mother of cancer a few years later. So although I knew that he was studying sagas and old texts and later was hired as a consultant, he never said much about it on those rare times we did talk.”
I would never have guessed this. My uncle and my father seemed as tight as brothers could be. But although I knew my father had a doctorate, now I can’t remember him ever mentioning a job. “What kind of consulting needs someone proficient in reading runes?”
“I was under the impression that he was consulting for the ministry of culture, going anywhere new construction had to be approved to make certain anything of historical significance wasn’t destroyed. Then, about twenty-nine years ago, he shows up at my door with a pregnant wife and claiming he was in a hell of a mess.”
“You’d never met my mom before that?”
“No.”
“What kind of mess?”
“The kind that I was particularly suited toward getting them out of.” He gives me a wry glance. “I’d spent most of my career cleaning up messes for the government.”
“In Norway?”
“That’s right.” He drags the whisky bottle over—not to pour himself one, I realize, but because I’ve gotten pretty deep into it already. “He and Halima needed to disappear. New names, new passports—all of which I could get for him. But he wouldn’t tell me why. Oh, he spins a story—but it’s about the worst lie I’ve ever heard. Then he says I won’t believe the truth. And maybe if he’d been the one to tell me, I wouldn’t have. But your mother sat me down and laid it out.” Abruptly he laughs. “Much like is what’s happening now.”
At a table. With whisky.
Ethan asks, “What kind of consulting did they do?”
“It was Bjørn—that was my brother’s name before he changed it to Mikael—who did the consulting. Finding ways to kill werewolves for an organzation of hunters.” He looks to me, his face sober. “It was your mother who was one of the hunters.”
I can’t even be surprised. “Okay.”
“Hunters?” Ethan growls.
Jonas nods. “A group formed by the French king after the terror of… Shit, I don’t recall.”
“The Beast of Gévaudan.” My stomach is rolling. “It’s in my father’s research.”
“The organization was only supposed to hunt the cursed ones. Locate them, put them down. Save lives and keep the curse from spreading.”
Ethan jaw. “All right. Even the wolfkin will put down one of the cursed if they won’t agree to being locked up during the full moon or if we can’t contain them. But none of my kin were cursed, and these hunters killed them?”
“That’s part of why my brother and his wife came looking for escape. There was new leadership within the organization who decided that all berserkers pose a threat. That with a few bites they would spread that curse and wipe out humanity.”
“The úlfhéðnar and other berserkers have been around for thousands of years,” I point out. “They haven’t yet.”
“That’s you being logical. And fear is when logic disappears. Plus there was some worry the curse would be weaponized, or made into a virus, or some other shit. So the only solution was complete eradication.” Jonas shakes his head. “I don’t know anything else about what changed in that organization. Only that your mother and father pushed back, and then stole the hunters’ newest, best weapon from them.”
“That silver,” Ethan rasps.
Jonas nods. “The hunters have been using silver since their group first formed. But along the way, they figured out that some silver hurt werewolves a whole lot worse. And that’s one of the things your father was tasked to find out. They figured it was some herb or spell that was affecting the silver, much like the flower that takes away the scent.”
“Aidan’s weed,” I murmur.
“That’s right. Your father was the one who figured that out, too. That’s partially why he was so damn valuable to them.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Ethan’s face is dark with frustration.
“There’s a legend,” I tell him. “About a monk who once saw a stag being chased by a hunters. And he performed a miracle that made the stag invisible to the hunters and saved its life.”
“But it wasn’t a miracle,” Jonas fills in the rest. “Because Mikael started picking apart that story and trying to figure out what really happened. That’s what he did—pick apart legends. This one, he figured out that the stag didn’t become invisible to the hunters, but to the dogs that they were using to track it. And if a local wildflower is eaten or made into a tea, it makes a person’s scent impossible to detect. So the organization started using it to mask themselves from werewolves.”
“And you, too?”
Jonas nods. “Before I went after those berserkers.”
Ethan frowns. “Sam said there were two cubs. You didn’t—”
“No. Those were real black bears that he saw earlier that week—we’ve got plenty of them around here. The berserkers were two adults.”
“And you used that knife?” Ethan eyes the weapon.
“I did.”
“You said your brother stole all the silver. But whoever killed my family had some.”
“Maybe they found more. But they probably don’t have much.”
Ethan nods. “They dig out the bullets to re-use.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.” He gestures to the knife. “We melted that down from all Mikael and Halima had. Except for what went into making their wedding rings.”
I stare at the jewelry, realization pushing through me. I’d pulled Ethan away from my uncle so easily tonight. And this morning, he got sick when I shook his hand. “These…hurt you?”
“They sure doesn’t feel good.” Ethan says softly. “But maybe you’ll feel safer around me if you keep wearing them.”
Maybe. I’m already feeling safer, but I’m not sure if it’s because of the rings. Maybe it’s because I’m drunk as fuck.
But not so drunk that I can’t think. “Dad found the source of that silver, didn’t he?”
“He did,” Jonas confirms.
My throat tightens and my eyes start to burn. “Is that why they were killed? Because of that mine?”
“I don’t think those berserkers ever knew it was there,” Jonas says. “I just think they were afraid.”
“Of my parents?”
“Well, Halima and Mikael put out some enquiries while they were tracking down that mine. You can’t go looking without leaving a small ripple. It’d been twenty years, but…” He looks at Ethan. “Given the timing, I figure now that the berserkers heard of what happened to your kin. And they figured that Mikael and Halima were a part of it.”
My chest a thick knot, I can’t say anything.
Ethan sits back, frowning. “One of the bearkin might have taken that sledgehammer to the herd. Maybe one who found how to mask his scent.”
“Looking for revenge on me after eleven years?”
A humorless laugh escapes Ethan. “Would it matter to you how much time had passed? Because it doesn’t to me. When this is done with, I’ll take what you’ve just given me and go hunt these fuckers down. You don’t have any names?”
Jonas shakes his head. “Even if I did, I suspect they’d be worthless. Organizations that go around killing people—or werewolves—likely don’t keep names that can tracked down.”
“My job would probably have been a hell of a lot easier if they did,” Ethan seems to agree. “Maybe I’d have found one name cropping up around the same places at the time the kin were killed.”
Because the organization is hunting the kin. But something else is hunting us? “Why would a berserker kill the cows instead of us?”
“Maybe he came looking for your uncle but your uncle wasn’t here. And if he had no scent, that might be how he got into the workshop without alerting the dogs.”
Jonas nods. “Might be.”
“Either way, it doesn’t change a damn thing. You’ve got someone coming after you and Makena. So I’ll start watching over your place at night. That work for you?”
He asks Jonas, who it seems to work for just fine. Because this doesn’t change a damn thing, he’d said. Maybe it doesn’t change anything for Ethan. He’d known his family was being hunted—just not who was doing it.
But me…everything has changed.
And somewhere out there might be a berserker bent on revenge. I laugh, but only because a sob is working up my throat and something has to come out. “I wish MDC was still the only problem we had.”
Ethan’s gaze cuts to me. “You think I’m leaving before that’s taken care of, too?”
I can’t breathe again. Not because of grief or fear. But because he’s still leaving. That shouldn’t hit me like this. I should be glad he’s going. Maybe if I was less drunk I could be more logical and build the emotional wall I need. Maybe if I wasn’t so drunk, I could process how my life suddenly upended, how everything I thought was true is a lie, instead of suddenly feeling overwhelmed and on the edge of tears.
But I can’t process any of that. So I get to my feet, grab my bottle, and tell him, “I don’t give a shit what you do.”
And take an empty victory when I’m the one to leave. Not Ethan.
Because really, I’m just running scared.
12
Ethan
“Well”—a door slamming from somewhere deeper in the house interrupts Jonas for the briefest moment—“I fucked that up pretty good.”
Words that could have come straight out of my own fool head. I scared the shit out of her. My chest still aches with the memory of how she looked at me.
I wasn’t even fully transformed. I’m not sure how much I changed. That silver blade fucked me up pretty good. But the pain of feeling myself torn apart still doesn’t compare to the pain of knowing how bad I scared her.
