“Drake and Cowan,” Gunnar said.
I frowned in their general direction, the tension in my shoulders lessening significantly. I knew those two. Gunnar’s very own Geri and Freki—trusted lieutenants for his pack of werewolves. Drake was the shorter, scrappier figure, and Cowan was the taller, stronger, silent type.
Both were deadly and competent; their unique skill sets a perfect complement to each other. I snorted, breaking the tension. “At least smile or something, guys. I can’t see anything in here.”
Drake, surprisingly, burst out laughing. Then he shouldered the much taller Cowan in a teasing manner. And I suddenly remembered that Cowan’s skin was practically the color of charcoal.
I winced, abruptly realizing how my words had come across. “No. Wait,” I stammered. “That’s not what I—”
“It’s okay,” Cowan said in an incredibly low, baritone. “It’s technically true…pasty fairy,” he said in an amused, rumbling grumble. And I thought I caught a glimpse of his pearly whites as he flashed me a disarming grin.
I felt a smile tug at my cheeks—relieved to hear that I hadn’t offended him—but I was even more grateful he had teased me back. Like a double reassurance that he’d found my ignorant—and entirely innocent—comment funny rather than incendiary, which was rare these days. I turned back to Ashley, shaking my head. This whole situation was bizarre, and I couldn’t understand how the pieces fit together.
“Can one of you finally tell me why we’re hanging out in the dark?” I asked, exasperated. When no one immediately answered me, I decided to force the issue, speaking in an exaggerated, theatrical voice. “In the beginning, Nate said, ‘LET THERE BE LIGHT’—”
“No!” Gunnar barked, recoiling.
I froze in the act of dramatically lifting my hand to make a ball of fire. Ashley had turned to shove her face into a pillow and Gunnar had immediately averted his gaze. Drake and Cowan looked suddenly tense, but they hadn’t turned their eyes from me. Interesting.
“Okay…no light,” I said calmingly. Their reactions had told me the answer to my question. Gunnar and Ashley were blind to some extent, or at least had a newfound aversion to light. Drake and Cowan, on the other hand, were unaffected. I cleared my throat. “I need answers. Now.”
Ashley hesitantly peeled her face away from the pillow as if to make sure it was still dark. Then, instead of answering my question, she let out a harsh sob and lashed out with one skeletal hand to grasp mine in an unbreakable iron grip.
Before I could speak, she tugged me closer with surprising strength. Not wanting to risk dog-piling her on top of the cot, I dropped to my knees instead, the tops of my thighs slamming into the bed frame hard enough to shake the whole thing.
But I didn’t feel any pain because she had firmly pressed my hand down over her bare, pregnant belly.
My heart fluttered wildly, and all I could manage to do was stare at my hand touching her feverish skin.
And everything else in the world simply ceased to matter in a single, never-ending moment as it hit me—really hit me.
Ashley was pregnant with my best friend’s kids.
Even though it was obvious that she was in severe danger, her health rapidly deteriorating—
I felt two forceful kicks thump against the pads of my fingers, and my heart instantly disintegrated before the resulting dust fell down into my stomach, making me severely light-headed all of a sudden.
I sucked in a shaky, involuntary breath, struggling to blink through a stubborn film of tears. If I had been standing, I would have fallen down. No question about it.
Ashley laughed, squeezing my hand tighter, but I couldn’t peel my eyes away from her belly, silently praying that I would feel another kick or two.
Instead, I felt two imagined, steel wires whipping out like lassos to ensnare my heart, eternally binding me to the precious children just beneath the surface.
I was touching Calvin and Makayla.
Gunnar and Ashley’s twins—named after my parents—were still alive.
For now.
And I had felt them!
“My babes need you, Nate,” Ashley whispered, her voice breaking with emotion. This time, I managed to slowly peel my eyes from her belly, but there was no way I was retracting my hand. Ashley stared down at me, and although I couldn’t make much out in the darkness…
Her eyes were twin orbs of white-hot flame—of impotent fury that she was stuck in this bed.
“They need their godfather,” she growled, and she may as well have punched me in the nose, because my fingers tightened ever so slightly on her belly like I was swearing an oath on a Bible to protect and to serve.
No. Something much stronger than that.
These two little furballs had me by my very soul, and I hadn’t even gazed into their eyes yet.
I slowly, but resolutely, nodded back at the deadly mother wolf, no words necessary between us.
“Thor hit her,” Gunnar said from directly behind me, in probably the coldest voice I’d ever heard. And his words struck me like a bolt of lightning out of a clear blue sky. “She fell on her stomach…”
My vision flashed red and I heard a roaring sound in my ears, followed by a splintering, cracking sound, and then pained curses from the werewolves.
I winced at a sudden source of nearby light, remembering how afraid Gunnar and Ashley had been of any illumination. I traced the source, and found that I was squinting down at my own forearm. My sleeve had bunched up at some point, and golden light flared from beneath my skin—thankfully, my flesh dampened it somewhat—illuminating my veins with molten gold like a glowing root system for a tree. I was panting in confusion because I also realized that I wasn’t kneeling beside the cot anymore, but facing a stone wall instead.
I didn’t remember moving. Not at all.
And I couldn’t see my hand—my arm simply ended at the wrist where my glowing-veined arm touched the wall.
A huge, dark hand hesitantly reached out and settled over my forearm as if to shield some of the light. I frowned down at it, wondering why the hand was still dark with the light pulsing from my skin.
I followed the arm up to see Cowan staring down at me. His eyes were wide with concern as he gave me a slow, calming nod. Then he very gently began pulling my forearm away from the wall.
I turned to watch my arm, confused by his gesture, and I blinked to see my fist slowly emerging from beyond the rock wall, along with a cascade of grit and gravel and dust. Understanding finally dawned on me. I’d punched a hole in the wall, and I didn’t even recall doing it. Nor had I felt it.
I’d mentally snapped upon hearing what Thor had done. And I could have really hurt someone. Hurt Ashley…
My shoulders began to shake violently at the thought.
But the imagined horror was abruptly replaced by a deeper, anchoring fantasy. Of Thor roasting alive before me, screaming and begging for forgiveness.
And me smiling as I watched that hope for mercy burn out of his eyes.
Thor…
Although I had no real proof, I was fairly certain Thor had been behind the lightning bolt attacks on my mountain in Fae—however short-lived his petty assault had lasted.
He’d done fucked up, son.
He hadn’t simply crossed a line. He’d flown so far beyond the line that he wouldn’t be able to see it if he looked back over his shoulder.
Thor…had hit Ashley—a pregnant woman. The mother of my godchildren. My family.
And I’d punched a hole through solid rock upon hearing it. I slowly turned to look up at Cowan, shakily dipping my head in gratitude for his help. He was still gently gripping my forearm—but I could sense the tension in his hold, like he was ready to physically hurl me back outside if I snapped again.
“I’m…okay now,” I managed in a thready whisper. He held onto my forearm for a few more moments as if to discern for himself whether I was mentally stable enough to remain by his charge, Ashley. Finally, he released his grip, staring down
at my glowing skin with awed trepidation.
I turned to see Gunnar and Ashley both facing away from me, averting their gazes from my glowing veins. I shoved my sleeve back down, blocking out the light and plunging the room back into relative darkness.
“I didn’t want him to know, Gunnar,” Ashley said tiredly, cautiously peering over her shoulder to make sure the light was extinguished.
“He needed to know,” Gunnar growled, sounding as if he was on the edge of shifting. “Everyone needs to know. Because we need the Nate Temple who reacts like that!” he growled, violently pointing his armored finger at the large hole in the wall.
Ashley shot me a concerned look, sighing. And I suddenly understood. She’d known how unstable I had become, how easy it was for strong emotions to trigger me. That was why she’d tried to reassure me that her pups were alright by placing my hand against her belly.
And Gunnar had done the opposite, slapping me upside the head with an emotional uppercut.
Good cop, bad cop.
And it had fucking worked, alright.
Even now, I could imagine those two tiny sets of paws pressing into the meat of my fingers as they gave their godfather his first double-werewolf puppy fives.
Ashley had been right, of course. I was on edge. Still, something like this…
Yeah. Gunnar also had a point. This situation needed some of that savage, uncontrollable emotion that I had been bottling up for…
One year, apparently.
Passion could fuel magic, empowering it exponentially. But twelve months of abstinence was a long enough dry spell to make any predictions on the impending magical fallout from my first foray back into the game more akin to a reckless gamble than any kind of calculable probability.
“Perhaps my husband is now cool-headed enough to explain it all to his best friend—before I fall back asleep,” Ashley said with an undertone of warning, even though she sounded like she was about to pass out.
Gunnar grimaced guiltily, nodding. “Of course.”
He let out a deep breath to gather his thoughts, plunging the room into a tense, fragile silence.
Which was more restraint than I would have ever been able to achieve in his shoes. Hell, I wouldn’t even be coherent if our roles were reversed. My friends would have had to lock me up somewhere that I couldn’t hurt anyone—
Somewhere exactly like Niflheim. Huh.
I was suddenly very curious how they had ended up here—who, exactly, had chosen this remote destination and why.
Gunnar interrupted my observation, speaking in clipped, precise sentences—as if attempting to keep his own emotions in check. But the rage and utter disgust for the creature who had dared to harm his wife—and possibly his unborn children—was obvious to anyone who knew him well. Probably even to those who didn’t.
Gunnar was often a perfect portrait of a balanced life. But right now, he was clenching his fists so tightly that I heard his knuckles cracking and his metal gauntlets creaking. He was alarmingly close to losing his shit and pulling a Nate Temple.
“Like I said,” he began, “Thor came to St. Louis a few weeks after Stonehenge, and he wasted no time in threatening or beating down anyone who might know where you, Odin, Alex, or his hammer might be hiding. No one had any real answers, but enough people mentioned Asgard and Fae that he left for a time.”
Drake cleared his throat. “We had to physically stop Gunnar from hunting you down in Fae to warn you.”
Cowan nodded somberly.
I frowned, thinking back through the foggy haze of my time in Fae. Finally, I shrugged. “There was a brief period where lightning bolts kept striking our camp out of a clear blue sky, but it really wasn’t much of an issue. I don’t think he ever actually set foot on my mountain,” I told them, frowning to myself.
Because…why hadn’t he? Sure, I’d been playing with some heavy-duty power, but if Thor was so notoriously, dangerously powerful, shouldn’t he have embraced that kind of a challenge? Wasn’t that one of his most notable tendencies in the old stories? To react first and think later?
I made a mental note to brush up on my Norse mythology before confronting him. It would only take an hour or less to get the necessary information, and that would likely be invaluable in our upcoming fight.
Because I’d decided there was definitely going to be a fight. No. An execution.
Gunnar looked pensive, as if he’d hoped for an answer that better explained whatever he had endured. “Thor soon returned to St. Louis even angrier than before. He was blood-crazed, seeming half-drunk with his desire to kill you. And since he’d apparently been unsuccessful in Fae, he started hunting down your known associates, terrorizing anyone who might have something on you that he could use to lure you back to St. Louis.”
Gunnar grew silent, his breathing rapidly increasing.
“Faster than I would have thought, his investigation led to me, your old childhood friend.”
I leaned closer, clenching my own fists. I didn’t need any further motivation to want to kill Thor, but I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to make sure I noted every single crime he’d committed, so I could punish him for each of them.
Anything else simply wouldn’t do.
I was about to teach the world an abject lesson in judgment—letting the gods learn that their capacity for petty violence was nothing compared to the infernal rage of a pissed off godfather named Nate Temple.
I realized that I didn’t even care if Thor had friends who might strongly object to my decision. I had enough fury to annihilate a whole fucking pantheon of godlets right now. If any of them had a problem with that…
Line ‘em the fuck up.
“I was forced to flee my pack in order to keep them safe,” Gunnar growled. “Otherwise Thor would have killed them all in his search for me. I made a grand announcement where everyone in the supernatural community could see, relinquishing my Alpha status. Then I staged a fight with one of my top wolves so that everyone knew I was gone for good. After I let him win, I walked away, giving up my pack to the new alpha.”
My eyes almost popped out of my head at that, and part of my soul crumpled up into a corner, dying slowly. Gunnar had given up his crown for his wife. Even though it had only been a charade, a way to protect as many as possible…wow.
The werewolf king was without a pack.
And I realized that my capacity for violence still had some room to grow.
Chapter 15
Gunnar continued. “We couldn’t risk staying at Falco either. Not with Thor knowing Odin had lived there for decades. Too many people use it for sanctuary these days. Falco keeps them safe, but Thor seemed content to hunt us to the ends of the earth since he couldn’t find any of your other friends. Achilles has closed his bar—I heard he now lives exclusively at the Dueling Grounds. In a tent.” I arched a brow, stunned. “Raego’s mansion was destroyed by a freak lightning storm—everything within the property lines, and not an inch more. The weatherman couldn’t shut up about it for weeks. Luckily, Raego managed to flee overseas with his dragons first, abandoning St. Louis entirely,” Gunnar said in a flat, clinical tone. “So I wasn’t about to let a similar bunker buster lock onto Falco.”
I realized I was panting, but Gunnar didn’t pull any punches and kept right on going.
“Those are just the highlights. They barely scratch the surface of how bad things really are back home,” he added. He grew guarded, holding something back. And as much as I wanted to know what that was, it was blatantly obvious that now wasn’t the time to pile on more headaches that weren’t directly related to his wife and pups.
“We spent months living like refugees, running from hiding spot to hiding spot, but eventually, we ran out of places to go. And that, of course, is when Thor found us.”
I winced. He was right. I’d made so many enemies over the years that I was surprised to hear anyone would risk taking him in—even without Thor banging at their door.
As much guilt as I felt for his story,
an insistent part of me continued to repeat another name over and over again in a rhythmic chant.
Odin. Odin. Odin…
Because…this was technically all his fault for stealing—and then hiding—Mjölnir in the first place. Then, in order to keep Excalibur a secret, it had been disguised as a War Hammer that looked suspiciously like Mjölnir—enough to start rumors and draw Thor out to hunt me down.
All without giving me any warning.
In Thor’s estimation, I’d stolen not just his hammer, but his father, too. And then I had destroyed the Bifröst. And then his father had chosen to side with me over his son—in front of witnesses.
And the whole goat thing hadn’t helped. Damn it, Alex.
Then, when he’d come at me in Fae, I’d shrugged him off so casually that he may as well have thrown glitter at me.
I knew that no amount of reasoning was going to get through to the God of Thunder. He’d been a crazy bastard before all of this, so I was betting he was now functioning with a few less screws than usual.
“Despite the obvious dangers and numerous enemies in Fae, they were safer than risking a direct confrontation with Thor. We still had three months before Ashley was due, and Fae could buy us some time—as long as we found you before someone else found us.”
I could sense the frustration in Gunnar’s voice. Not just at the situation, but at his inability to hulk out and smash Thor with his bare hands. Not while he was trying to play defense at the same time, keeping Ashley safe. Jesus.
Gunnar lifted his hand to scratch at his beard, drawing attention to his gauntlets. I’d almost forgotten about them, so wrapped up in his story. With a surprised grunt, I realized I recognized them. The armor had belonged to Sir Geraint, the Knightmare who had killed Gunnar and Talon. After I’d brought them back to life, they’d returned the favor, claiming the set of impenetrable armor as a trophy.
Gunnar sensed my attention and nodded proudly, flexing his fist dramatically. I wasn’t about to tell him that I’d learned the Knight’s name, or how Alex now felt about the whole—
Knightmare: Nate Temple Series Book 12 Page 9
