Her Dragon King (Her Dragon King Duet Book 2): 50 Loving States, North Dakota Pt. 2

by Theodora Taylor

  When Fenrit’s first horn blow had been to ask how Fenris had made past decisions about who to give the orphaned pups the kingdom village received, Fenris had felt struck by a sense of serendipity. He’d believed this wolf pup was meant to solve everything.

  Give Chloe a new beginning. He’d even thought of commanding Randulfsson to bring them any other pups that were delivered to their former kingdom village. Perhaps all three of her children could be replaced. He’d build a larger house, and they’d start a new family. One that would remain with them, this time until the end of their lives. He believed himself a savior.

  But now he could see himself for what he really was. A fool.

  And now, he gave the current fenrir the advice he should have provided him when he first answered his call. “Discuss the matter with your mate. She will give you the best counsel, for the females know each other better than us males ever will know them.”

  “This is true. Listen to our fenrir past,” Fenrit’s mate called out from the other side of the longhouse. The longhouse that used to be his and Chloe’s.

  Their fenrir past… Yes, that was what the line of Fenris was now. This village’s past. And the line of Fenrit was their future.

  Darkness descended on the walk home and his wolf tugged on his mind. Most North Wolves shift while traveling at night, as their wolves stood better chances if they happen upon a bear or a full wolf without any human inside. Hence it was customary to keep extra clothing in the kingdom house for those who journeyed the great distance through the forest or over the mountain to visit.

  But that night Fenris ignored his wolf. That night he made the long journey back to the cabin in the woods with a strange dark hope in his chest. A wish for an animal to attack him. A wish for something he might fight as he could not fight his mate’s heavy spirit.

  Her words hung like a storm cloud over his memory, along with the unspoken things she did not say. I was so happy to come here (but now I’m not)…. We’re in our sixtieth winters and we’re having our first fight about skin color (I wish you had never shown up in my village and taken me for a mate)…. None of them can be replaced (all is lost).

  The cabin was as dark and cold as his spirit when Fenris arrived. He found Chloe upon the bed, lying on top of their furs in her human form, without thought of heat or comfort.

  Or perhaps she wishes for death now, a dark voice suggested inside of him. She has deemed that a better fate than living out the rest of her winters with you.

  Nonetheless, Fenris went over to the hearth and stoked the dead fire back to life. If only he could do the same for his Chloe.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He turned when Chloe’s voice appeared inside his mind. He saw that she continued to lie upon the bed as before, still as a corpse. But her voice was steady and vibrant inside his mind.

  “I tried. I’ve been trying so hard not to be sad, to accept my fate. I was raised to believe in a higher power, and I know He’s got a reason for this, just like He had a reason for sending me to you in the first place. I was grateful during the good times. And it’s only right that I be grateful during the bad too. I just have to figure out how. That’s all.”

  Fenris did not respond. Neither with voice nor mind. For he had no words. Only hate. For the God she clung to even after they had lost everything. And even more hate for Odin, the All father who’d summoned Fenris and his sons the night before their great battle with the serpents…

  Fenris, King of the North Wolves, join your sons and come to me all three so that I might give you counsel. Tell your mate not of where you are going.

  The voice startled Fenris awake inside the tent he was sharing with Chloe.

  “Where you going?” she mumbled over their mate bond when he rose to get up.

  “I should have heeded your warnings about drinking too much mead with our sup.”

  Fenris frowned at the answer that had so easily slipped out of his mouth. The truth but also a lie. And as a matter of personal law, he did not lie to his wife. The one time he had, it had been for just cause but had cost him greatly. And if not for his aunt’s sage advice, he might still be sleeping beside a she-wolf who despised him. Or worse, died in childbirth as his own mother did.

  But he also could not tell her the truth in that moment. Something seized his tongue fast against that notion, as surely as if there was some manner of clamp pinning back the words.

  He found his sons waiting for him outside the tent. This came as no surprise somehow, but the sight of Olafr, fully upright and dressed in pants and furs the same as his brother, FJ startled him yet again. Until the day he arrived on the shore of the village where Fenris had gathered all of the remaining North Wolf warriors, Fenris had known only his youngest progeny as a wolf for many winters prior. Chloe had believed him to have a condition of the mind her future people called by the name of wolf bound.

  In his land, wolves who were not able to return to their human forms were sent to the woods to live as the animals they could not escape. But Chloe had bid him to accept their youngest son into their home as he was. “He will never be a man,” she’d told him, but he will always be our son. God loves all his children, and we should, too.”

  For his Chloe, Fenris had broken with custom. And now he could only rejoice at his decision to bid their village to join her in giving praise to her one sky god. For if he had sent Olafr away, he might never have known this male standing before him.

  Fenris had told his youngest son this oft since he and FJ had arrived by boat to the gathering shore. But tonight Fenris did not clap Olafr upon his shoulder or once again give voice to his joy. In fact, none of them uttered any words at all. They merely turned as three toward the woods and walked in the same direction.

  It was the strangest feeling. As if Fenris knew both exactly where to go and nothing at all. And when they found Odin himself, sitting upon a rock in a small clearing, that strange feeling amplified.

  He had never seen the All father himself, but every North Man, wolf and human knew of him by tale. And his aunt Bera, a sorceress of great renown, had often been visited by him in visions. She had told Fenris of his giant frame and single red glowing eye.

  So Fenris knew exactly who he was as he and his sons approached the rock. Yet he could not bring his tongue to speak in greeting or even express his surprise.

  “There is no need to talk,” Odin said inside his mind, though they shared no mate bond. Odin must have made himself heard to FJ and Olafr as well. For they too stood at rapt attention.

  “I have called you here to tell you how you might win your battle with the serpents.”

  That night Odin instructed them to walk west with their troops to a place where they would find all the serpents who had attacked the North Wolf settlements gathered. The All father also told them the areas on the serpents’ bodies to aim for so that their attack might yield true death. FJ had hit one by accident when he pierced one of the serpents with his sword. But Odin informed FJ that many of the serpents he thought he and his warriors had killed in that battle had only been given debilitating wounds… which had healed within hours of them leaving their bodies to rot.

  The next morning Fenris and his troops followed Odin’s instructions and won the last battle after much combat filled with swords and glory. However, the morning after their victory celebration, Fenris found FJ and Olafr once again waiting for him outside the tent he shared with their mother.

  “Father, we must go.” FJ spoke for the both of them still, even though Olafr was no longer wolf bound.

  Then he told Fenris of the other things Odin had spoken into his and Olafr’s minds. If his sons truly wished to return to their mother’s future land to reunite with their fated mate, they must travel to the farthest east. There they would find a gate he had created himself and a sorceress waiting for them with the spell they would need to return to the mate they had left behind.

  Many answers to their announcement had stormed into their fenrir father’s mind t
hat fateful morn. He’d thought to rage at FJ and demand that he stay here to take his rightful position as the North Wolves’ fenrir next. He thought to guilt Olafr. Had his mother not broken with custom to treat him the same as she would have a non-wolf-bound son nearly his entire life? Olafr owed Chloe more, so much more than leaving before she had the opportunity to properly enjoy the reward for her tender kindness.

  But Fenris already knew what their answer to all his protests would be.

  They were fated mates, just as he had been before their births. When his Chloe had been torn from him, he’d vowed to chant the spell that would bring him back to her-to die chanting it if that was what it took.

  “There was a timeline where you did die,” she’d pointed out the night they were reunited. “In some version of our story you died and your sword ended up in a museum and his sacrifice was the only reason we’re together now.” Chloe had looked up at her mate with tears in her eyes. “You’re my happy ending. And you’re my hero. And I can’t believe you did that for me.”

  Yea, Fenris understood better than any other fenrir just how far a male would go to return to his fated mate’s side. He knew also that there would be no keeping his sons in this land, in this time, no matter what he said.

  In the end, he’d turned his head and swallowed all his protests, saying only, “Do not tell your mother about Odin when you say your goodbyes.”

  Now Olafr stirred. “We will not speak these words,” he assured Fenris in his strange way of speaking. Like a child with uncertain pronunciation, but deep of voice. “We have much love for her and we know she will miss us greatly.”

  “I am not sure we can speak of this to her or anyone else in any case,” FJ added with a lift of one brow. “At the celebration last eve, I found myself unable to speak to anyone of the great help Odin gave us.”

  Fenris never tested FJ’s notion himself in the sad days that came after his and Olafr’s immediate departure to the farthest east. And that was because of how his hate of Odin burned bright from that day. For the All father was not a kind and loving god like the one Chloe gave praise to. He was a god who would chain the Fenrir wolf up, then help the king of its children win a fight against the serpents, but at the cost of his two sons.

  Even if Fenris could have told Chloe what happened the eve before the battle, he would not have been able. The truth was too painful.

  Their life was too painful.

  The fire blazed now within the hearth, warm and alive. Yet, Fenris felt cold and dead as he climbed into the bed to lay with his mate.

  “Tomorrow I’ll be better,” she promised him after he laid down on top of the covers with her and drew her into his arms. Her voice was as solemn as a warrior before battle.

  “Tomorrow I will complete the winter’s hunt,” he answered, his own voice even more somber than hers.

  That was the only answer he could give her. The only promise he could make.

  They lay there together and he recalled the feeling he’d had the morning they watched their sons disappear into the snowy distance. It had seemed to him that they were not just watching their sons walk away but their entire life.

  They lived still, but they both knew the truth even if they were too kind to say it out loud to each other.

  They were dead now. The life they had… the life they thought they would have was over. Melted in their hands like so much snow.

  Yea, there were still those who would claim Fenris the Beardless the most powerful fenrir the North Wolves have ever had. But he felt utterly weak in this moment. For there was absolutely nothing he could do about what ailed them both.

  Chapter Five

  DAMIANOS

  Come to me. You will come to me now and release me from these chains.

  I cast the thought, straining with all my might to reach the North Dakota beta I had god spoken. But just like my similar attempts to summon the latest Colby to my side, I receive no indication that my summons had connected.

  Perhaps this shouldn’t come as a surprise. It can be difficult to god speak people again after your thrall has been compromised or interfered with in some way. Often it requires looking them in the eye and commanding them to forget what has come to pass before.

  I can look at neither Clyde nor Colby, nor the near-drooling members of the Yellow Mountain wolf tribe I god spoke directly in the eye, so it would be understandable that my summons wouldn’t work.

  But this lack of answer strikes me as…different. I’ve lost thralls before, and usually it feels as if I’m being ignored. What I’m sensing now is more like dead silence. None of my summons crackle with the energy that quantum mind control commands.

  It’s as if all the people I god spoke have been released. Did the pretender release them? Release all of them? But why would he have done that?

  To please her.

  The possible answer rolls into my head like an ominous fog.

  Disquieted by that thought, I furrow my brows and close my eyes, redoubling my effort to summon a thrall to me.

  And to my great relief, a few moments later, I hear the sound of a door opening.

  But that elation dies when Ola comes into the room, this time dressed in a silky robe. It is cinched at the waist but I see one of the nightgowns I provided for her to wear at the gatehouse peeking out from its V. She carries two large pots. One hangs empty from her left hand and the other is tucked under her right arm.

  “I made a huge mess of the stew Other You liked so much. Hope it’s enough. Actually this will be a good experiment. Other You acted like everything I made was a gift from heaven, but I know you’ll tell me the truth.”

  My physiology isn’t so unsophisticated that it requires a watering of salivary glands to alert me to my own hunger. But suddenly I understand the meaning of mouthwatering when I catch the muted smell of the stew through my capped tongue.

  The urge to give her great reverence comes over me so strongly, that the words feel like they're banging against my shaved teeth to get out.

  Despite this, I keep my expression neutral and my side of the mate bond numb as I ask, “How am I supposed to feed myself shackled as I am.”

  She sets down the pot and pulls a large spoon with a napkin wrapped around it out of her pocket.

  “Nurse Ola reporting for duty!” she declares. “This is going to take a while, but that’s okay…”

  She climbs onto the bed with the stew pot and grabs a remote control from the nearby table after settling it on her lap. “I set the wall screen to non-holo while you were sleeping, so we can watch a documentary while you eat.”

  For some reason, the thought of Ola feeding me by hand isn’t entirely distasteful. But… “I abhor the flashing pictures you mutated primates refer to as entertainment.”

  “Ugh face emoji. Can’t say I’m happy to hear you slurring all over wolves again. Can’t you just cancel all the name-calling, like Other You?”

  I don’t reply to that question. Given my situation and my ultimate plan, it would be incredibly dangerous, not to mention stupid to answer that question.

  Luckily, Ola does not seem to require answer. “Anyway, Other You thought you hated entertainments, too. Not going to lie, I’m pretty sure you were just gritting your teeth or thinking about sex during the action movies I like. But you’ve got some kind of love for heckling documentaries.”

  “Heckling documentaries?” I repeat.

  “You know, like hate-watching and calling out all the bullshit. You’ll see. I found one about the Gladiators of Ancient Rome. So I’m pretty sure you’re going to love this, considering you used to keep a bunch around just to entertain at dinner parties. But here, eat.”

  It is surprising I do not choke on the spoon of stew she shoves into my mouth. It tastes just as good as it smelled. Rich and chock full of meat. But the delicious stew cannot compensate for all of the alarming things she just told me. About myself.

  While I’m only acquainted with the she-wolf I’d read about in reports and gle
aned from god speaking the minds of her peers, she seems to know me… intimately. There was the comment about sex, not to mention her expert manipulation of my seeders the previous day. She’s made me a dish that instantly becomes my favorite meal within a few bites. And as it turns out, she’s entirely correct about my heretofore unknown passion for heckling documentaries.

  “Come now, gladiators weren’t that tall,” I find myself declaring to the wall screen after only a few minutes. “A few of the Jewish ones nicknamed me Goliath because I dwarfed them in every way!”

  “See, I told you,” she says, her voice smug, as she offers me another bite.

  No, being fed by Ola is not distasteful at all.

  I do not like many things, but I like the way she smiles before pushing the spoon into my mouth, somehow seeming both shy and sly. I also like how she laughs and eggs me on when I point out an inconsistency in the portrayal of gladiators.

  After I’ve eaten all the meat in the stew, she drops the spoon into the large pot and set it aside on the floor. “I know you don’t like the soup part, so we’ll stop here.”

  She knows me quite well. I watch her as she picks up the second empty pot and disappears through a door that must lead to a bathroom. Perhaps better than I know myself.

  Which is why I’m so alarmed when she comes back out with the second pot now filled with soapy water…and one of the Mediterranean sponges I brought with me from Greece.

  But how had she come upon my personal collection? And furthermore…

  “What are you doing?” All previous thoughts blank away when she dips the sponge into the soapy water and extends it toward my body.

  “Giving you a sponge bath like you did to me between heat sessions,” she answers, her voice matter-of-fact as she runs the sponge over my bare chest. “I’ve also got a bedpan waiting outside the room on standby if you need it.”