If not for her need to get out of this cage and fast, she would have begged him for his forgiveness as opposed to saying, “You realize that me running away isn’t a crime though, right? You don’t actually have any grounds to hold me here, under arrest.” Chloe had to swallow in a deep breath of bravery to say this next thing: “And just because you’re the alpha doesn’t mean I have to explain myself to you or that you can treat me however you want. There’s no law that says I can’t go anywhere I want any time I choose. But the time the Viking is trying to force me to go to doesn’t have protections like that. That’s why I ran away.”
Dale’s face went from disappointed to angry again as he took a step closer to the cage. “Forgive me if after watching my son moon over you and let better prospects mate with other wolves for seven years, I don’t feel all that sorry for you.”
“And forgive me if I don’t think your anger is a good enough reason to travel a thousand years back in the past with someone I barely even know.”
“He’s your mate,” he said, shaking his head. “I know you modern she-wolves are all about your rights this and your rights that. But back in my day, a good she-wolf knew how follow.”
She folded her arms and sat down on the bench, not caring how insulting an action like this was to her alpha king. She was so sick of alpha kings from both the past and present trying to tell her what to do. Also, he had lost any right to her deference when he had the sheriff haul her into this cage like a common criminal.
“Well, I guess I’m not a good she-wolf then,” she said. “Now either charge me with something or risk me suing you, Dale, and this entire town for wrongful imprisonment in the human courts. You know how the North American Lupine Council hates to see us in the human news. They’d probably make you settle out of court and send the Viking back through the portal yourself.”
The way Dale’s face twisted with annoyance let Chloe know she was right, and though it was agonizing for her to talk this way to the man she had hoped would one day become her father-in-law, she pressed on. “Release me,” she demanded. “Release me now, or I’ll make you pay.”
He sighed. “You know, I like you, Clo, I always have, from the moment we opened our home to you. But when my boy started talking about proposing to you, I had a bad feeling about it. Not just because you were odd with all that alternative stuff you’re into, but also because I looked at you two and I didn’t see lovers like Lacey and me, but two four-year-olds who didn’t want to stop being friends. I tried to tell Rafe that you weren’t a match, and Lacey also had her doubts but she loved you too much to back me up with Rafe. Now look what’s happened. You’ve wasted seven years of our boy’s life and you’re sitting here demanding that we all bend over backwards to accommodate you.”
He all but spat the words at her, and Chloe couldn’t mask the hurt they caused her. She had been so looking forward to joining their happy family, and thought Rafe’s parents felt the same. But apparently Dale had never wanted her to be with Rafe in the first place. And if what he was saying ways true, his wife, Lacey, who she’d loved like a second mother, had also had her doubts from the start.
But she couldn’t let her hurt feelings take her off course. She had to get out of this cage and out of town before the Viking woke up.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Dale. “I know you don’t believe me, but I’m truly sorry for all the hurt I’ve caused. And I’d give anything for things to have worked out differently. But I can’t go back in time to Norway. That’s insane. I have got to get out of here and you’ve got to help me—”
From upstairs came the sound of a door opening and closing and the king gave her a sad smile. “You know, my people still believe in the fated mates spell. We don’t question it or try to fight like you’re doing right now. So I know you’re not going to believe me either, but I am trying to help you.”
Just a few moments later, down the stairs came Professor Henley, who had apparently decided to stay on in town after the full moon... and right behind him, dressed in the leather pants she had washed for him, the Wolf Springs T-shirt she had bought him, and a pair of hiking boots he’d gotten from God knew where, was the Viking wolf.
“Oh, crap,” she said. It was too late.
It took everything within Fenris to keep his face neutral when he came down the stairs and found his mate, as the tutor had heralded she would be, jailed in the cage he had occupied just a few moons ago.
She visibly trembled upon laying eyes on him, but that small salve was erased when she jutted her chin into the air and said something to her king in their tongue.
The king merely looked toward Fenris as if awaiting his words.
And Fenris asked through the tutor-translator that he and his fated mate be left alone. He kept his words simple enough, so the thin wolf would have no need to look within the pages of his bound manuscript to relay his words.
But the king shook his head, and the tutor-translator relayed the Colorado king’s concern about the sword in his hand.
“I give you my king’s word I will do her no violence, and if you allow this, when you are returned to this place, all will be resolved.”
After the tutor-translator gave him this message, the king pondered his request for many moments. Fenris understood his dilemma. The “king’s word” was ever-binding, as good as a spoken contract and meant to be accepted without reservation especially by a fellow king. However, Fenris’s mate was also this king’s subject, and it was a king’s sworn duty to protect even the mated she-wolves in his village from any harm.
But in the end, the Colorado king conceded and said through the translator that he would give Fenris a short while with Chloe, with the further warning that they were both in the room up the stairs.
“You may talk to me now,” he said to her mind, once the king and tutor were gone.
She clasped her hands at her stomach and stared down at her feet for a rather long and awkward time before answering. “I don’t know what to say.”
“It appears you would bid me farewell,” he said, putting as much softness into his voice as he possibly could, given their circumstances.
Then did she look up at him with what might have been sincere regret in her eyes. For her betrayal or her failure to hie away without his knowing, he could not be sure.
“I know in your time fated mates are supposed to be this big deal, iron-clad thing. And I can’t say I don’t feel connected to you, especially after what we did, and as... ah... many times as we did it. But culturally we’re just too different. I couldn’t possibly go back to your time. And you don’t seem to want to stay here. And also, you kept on insisting on killing my ex-fiancé , which is pretty psycho, even by werewolf standards. I just can’t see me living like that or raising children with someone who wants me to defer to his every whim.”
“You would rather have the man you chose before fate mated us,” he said.
She shook her head. “You’re trying to take this some kind of insult, but that’s not what I’m saying. I’m trying to tell you we’re just not culturally compatible. In your time, marriages are mostly about male wolves claiming she-wolves or getting fated. In my time, you rarely hear about fated mates. Rarely. Seriously, I had kind of thought it was a myth before you came back for me. And wolves can’t just go around claiming any she-wolf they want anymore. We get to choose. And I chose Rafe for a reason.”
Again, he kept his face as neutral and his tone as even as he could when he said, “I understand.”
She raised her eyes to him, real hope in them for the first time. “You do?”
“I do,” he said. “And mayhap there be some manner of things you do not understand about the wolves of our time. Mates are allowed to bid fare thee well. We have only to say these special words: I to thee which I am bound do seek to go back.”
“I to thee which I’m bound do seek to go back.” She repeated the words, as if tasting them as she spoke.
“But for the purposes of two wolves parting,
we must say the words together while holding our hands fast, and in my tongue.”
“So all I have to do is say these words with you in Old Norse, and we’re over?” she asked, with such hope in her eyes, he found himself in need of a many moments to tamp down his rage.
“If you say these words with me now, I will go back to my time,” he eventually answered. He took his medallion from around his neck and once again used it to open her cage. “Will we then join our hands around my sword?” He held up The King Maker with his own hands clasped around its grip.
This of all things seemed to give her pause. And he realized why when she hesitantly placed her hands over his own. He, too, felt the immediate tug between them, like a tether, connecting his soul to hers, commanding they be together as fate intended. In this moment, it became hard for him to ignore these feelings fate had placed between them, and he realized it must be hard for her to and mayhap the reason for her first hesitation.
“Okay,” she said. “Give me the words.”
He gave them to her once, then once again, repeating them slowly, so she might grasp all of the syllables.
“Okay, I’ve got them,” she said in his mind. “Now tell me how to say ‘one, two, three’ in Old Norse.”
He did, and could not help but admire her cleverness when she then said to him in his mind, “Let’s do it on Norse three then, so we say it together. Do you want to count down or should I?”
“This I will do,” he answered.
“Okay,” she said. “But before you do, I just... I just want to thank you for understanding why I can’t go back in time with you. And I want you to know I admire how loyal you are to your people. And since this is really the last time we’re ever going to see each other, I also want to say even if the circumstances around us coming together were completely messed up, I don’t regret these last few days. I’ve always wanted to be a mother, and you made me feel...” she paused, seeming to root around inside her head for the right words. “You made me feel beautiful.”
A part of him felt tempted to say she was beautiful, the most beautiful woman he had ever beheld, and that he had but only put name to it. However, he had already vowed to never again compliment her in the fashion of the besotted wolf he had allowed himself to become over the past three days.
That morntide he had awoken in the manner of a man who had drunk to much honey wine the eve before. At that time, he had regretted his words from the preceding night, and he had resolved to give his fated mate the days she would need to feel more at ease in returning to his land with him.
But that had been before he had stood up from the bed and found her disappeared. Before the tutor had knocked on her door and informed him his “beauty” had been caught by one of their wheeled steeds, attempting to leave her village, and him, behind. And before she confessed she loved another more than he, not seeming to care at all that she was his mate and carried his pup.
No, he vowed, now moving his hands so they covered hers around the sword. He would never again call her “beauty.” The only name he would put to her henceforth was “mine.”
“At three,” he said, as if her last few sentences had not been spoken.
He counted aloud to three and they did speak the words together.
In truth, they may not have needed to hold hands for the incantation to work, but Fenris did not have trust or complete knowledge of the spell’s wind, and he did not wish to lose her, the pup, or The King Maker to another time and place in the spell’s black tunnel.
She didn’t see the gate open behind them, and confusion crossed her face when she attempted to pull her hands from the sword. Yet he held her fast. “What—?”
The gate sucked them in and sent them through its black tunnel before spitting them out through his village’s own mountain gate, one that had not seen use in all the years of his rule. His aunt rarely gave the fated mates spell, and when she did, it was to she-wolves who had not returned from wherever it took them to meet with their fated mates.
This time when he saw the ground coming up, he tossed the sword aside and drew Chloe tight against him. They rolled into the crash, with him letting his own back take the majority of the hit. And then they rolled over each other four or five times, before coming to a rest outside the door of the gatekeeper’s cabin.
Considering the wolf assigned to the cabin was in the position of guarding a gate that saw rare use and therefore did not require true diligence, Fenris was rather proud when a burly wolf showed himself at the door of the cabin with his battle axe raised.
“Lower your weapon,” he said, coming to his feet. “’Tis your Fenris.”
The gatekeeper, in truth, had only ever seen the Fenris on the occasion when every wolf was invited into the Fenris’s great hall to celebrate and be merry. This was always at eve, and truth be told, not very often, as unlike his father, Fenris had seen no reason to spend the kingdom’s coffers for such dubious reasons as the return of one of their long boats from sea, or a feast to pay tribute to the god for their harvest, or one to mark the passing of late winter—the Norse wolves could come up with all manner of reasons for these types of festivities.
The gatekeeper squinted now and said, “King Fenris, ‘tis truly you?”
“Yea, and I bid thee lower your axe.”
The wolf did as he was told, “My Fenris, I did not recognize you without your beard. I bid thee great apology.”
“None needed,” he answered, “You have well-served your Fenris here today and shall be given reward the next time you come down the mountain.”
“How come you to travel through the gate?” he asked. He now turned his squint to the shirt Fenris wore. “And what manner of clothing is this upon your form?”
That question reminded Fenris of the traitorous she-wolf he had left lying on the ground. But before his eyes could find her, a thick boot kicked him in his groin area and he saw stars. The pain was so great it brought him to his knees.
And when his vision cleared, he found his fated mate on her feet and breathing hard with the exertion it must have taken to kick him in such a fashion.
It would seem she had recovered from their trip through the time gate and put together what had been done. And was she angry with him in the extreme.
Chapter 13
ONE moment Chloe was standing there with Fenris, having just agreed to go their separate ways and the next, she was getting sucked through some kind of pitch-black vacuum, which dumped her back on the snow-covered plateau outside the Wolf Mountain portal. At least she thought it was her portal, until she and Fenris rolled to a stop in front of a small house. Jeb’s cabin didn’t sit right next to the portal. And furthermore, his cabin was an actual log cabin, made out of pine logs, with insulated windows and a roof also constructed from logs.
The house that sat before them seemed to be made of stones and dirt with a roof made out of what looked like packed in dirt and bright green turf. And then there was the cold. Shivers ran up and down her body. Werewolves tended to live in places like Colorado and Alaska, places with cold weather where their higher body temperatures wouldn’t cause them undue discomfort during the summer. But this place—she had never known a cold like this. It couldn’t have been more than ten degrees. The harsh mountain wind cut right through her sweater and prairie dress, covering her in what felt like needle pricks and making it hard for her to breathe for a few minutes.
However, all thoughts of her own discomfort flew out of her head, when a stocky, bearded man dressed in loose, rough-hewn trousers and a brown tunic opened the door with some kind of axe raised in the air. It only took Chloe witnessing a few back and forth exchanges between the Viking and this man for her to figure out what had happened, everything that had happened.
Which is how she came to find herself kicking the Viking squarely in his crotch and not regretting it at all when he sank to ground, momentarily undone by the pain she had caused him.
That is, she didn’t feel any regret until the short guy st
arted toward her, axe once again raised, hollering in Old Norse.
Chloe’s eyes widened and she started to turn tail and run, but Fenris yelled something that stopped the man in his tracks. Fenris said a few more words, and to her surprise, the short man laughed and lowered the axe again before disappearing back inside the windowless stone cabin.
As soon as he was gone, Fenris came staggering to his feet, the look on his face almost murderous with rage. “You will never do that again,” he said. “It is considered the gravest of insults for a she-wolf to strike her mate, especially in front of another as you did. ‘Tis fortunate I was able to convince him you made a show only because your mind is so addled by the cold.”
“I give less than two fucks if I embarrassed you in front of your friend,” she answered, coming to stand toe-to-toe with him. “You lied to me!”
“I did as I must after you did try to abscond with my pup in your belly,” he yelled back.
“I wasn’t trying to abscond with anything. I was trying to get away from you, you time-traveling psycho.”
“I know not the meaning of psycho, but understand this word to be insulting in its nature, and as I said, I will bide no more insults from you, Chloe.”
“Oh, you think that was an insult? That was nothing. Check this out,” she said before she unleashed a tide of every curse word she had ever learned and few she managed to make up right there on the spot at him. Then she tried to kick him again, but this time, he easily deflected her foot.
“Try that again, and I will—”
“What will you do?” she yelled, holding her arms out at her sides. “Drag me to some time and place, away from everyone and everything I know and love, where I am literally the only black person for hundreds of miles? Because I can’t really think of anything worse than what you’ve already done.”
“Calm yourself,” he said. “You are fortunate I have chosen to honor our lot as chosen mates after what you attempted.”
Her Scottish Wolf (Howls Romance): Loving World Page 20
