“Are you not listening to me, like, at all?” she asked. “I didn’t ask you to honor our vows. I wanted you to let me go. And you lied to me. What happened to ‘we can say fare thee well?’”
“Nay, I did not lie. I spake that mates could say fare thee well. I never promised to leave you behind. In addition, it is in the manner of the spell that I could not say it alone and be able to return to my time without you.”
“And somehow it all comes down to you, right? Who cares what I want?”
He honestly looked confused now. “I do not comprehend your meaning. What I want should be what you want. You are after all, my mate.”
She balled her hands into fists. “My meaning is I’m somebody, too. I have wants and needs and a soul and desires just like you. And maybe I don’t want to live in one of the coldest places on Earth, raising pups in a house that doesn’t even have running water.”
He stepped toward her. “I do understand because I appeared in your village with few clothes and only my sword to recommend me you may think you have mated with a pauper king. But I assure you I have much treasure, and you will have every comfort in my home. Any other she-wolf would thank the gods for their good fortune if they were to be chosen as my lifelong mate.”
“Any other woman from this time you mean.” She pointed to the ground. “Because really, what you need to be doing right now is thanking my God I’m a Christian, or I would kill you in your sleep for doing this to me.”
“You would threaten me after what you attempted to do this morntide? You would threaten me when you are the one who should be about an apology for your actions?”
“The only thing I’m sorry about is that I didn’t floor the gas when our stupid sheriff showed up,” she grumbled, folding her arms.
“Again, I do not comprehend your meaning.”
“I mean you’re used to a certain kind of she-wolf, just lying down and taking whatever you male wolves choose to dole out. But the she-wolves from my time, we don’t play that.”
He opened his mouth, but she held up a hand before he could tell her he didn’t understand her again. “We have a saying in the wolf community: ‘Wolves mate for life, so decide how you want your life to go and treat your she-wolf accordingly.’ You obviously want to be miserable.”
Now he folded arms. “Be aware you are not the only one who has cause to be not pleased with this union. I would not have had the fated mates spell cross my lips if not for being in great need of an escape. It was either the spell or my own slaying at the hands of enemy wolves. And I especially would not have uttered the incantation if I had but known the depth of your talent for treachery.”
She held up a hand, “Wait a minute, are you trying to tell me the only reason you came back in time and ruined my entire life was not because you were looking for true love or anything, but because it was the nuclear option in some fight?”
“I do not comprehend ‘nuclear option,’ but if by this you mean—”
He suddenly cut off, his head turning sharply to the side as he sniffed the air.
And though she was angrier than she had ever been about anything in her life, including the time she was left at the side of the road by her own parents, she went quiet, sensing the danger as he did, and even more scary, the scent of five different wolves in the trees surrounding the stone cabin.
He moved to pick up his sword, which was still lying in the snow near the portal. “Stay here,” he said.
And that was all he said before he called out something in Old Norse, his eyes glittering with a new kind of anger.
Whatever is was, it smoked out four of the men hiding in the trees. They came charging toward him from all directions, hollering with axes raised high.
Fenris stood his ground, the only indication he was prepared to engage them, a slight baring of his teeth. And then the next thing she knew, he was plunging his sword through the stomach of the first man to reach him, then raising his foot to kick the man, whose belly was now smoking, backwards off his sword. He freed it just in time to duck and catch a axe, which had been hurled at his head, by its wooden handle.
For a moment he had two weapons, until he swung the axe himself, catching his second attacker right between the eyes, before raising his sword with his other arm and swinging it at a third guy. His biceps flexed hard with the effort it must have taken to decapitate the guy with one hand and with one blow.
As the now smoking head rolled through the snow, Chloe couldn’t help but be impress with Fenris’s obviously superior fighting skills. But then she saw the forth wolf behind Fenris, drawing back his arm to bring his axe down on Fenris’s head.
“Look out behind you!” she yelled into his mind.
But a thrown axe lodged in the back of the would-be killer’s head at the same time Fenris turned around, quick as a whip, and plunged his sword into the guy’s heart.
Chloe looked in the direction the last axe had flown from to see the gatekeeper grinning over his co-authored kill.
He turned to Chloe and said something in Old Norse, which Fenris mind-translated for her.
“He does apologize for his delay. His mate died many years ago, and he did have some trouble finding her pelt.”
And before Chloe could ask why he was looking for his dead wife’s pelt, the gatekeeper settled what looked like a red fox with its head still attached around her shoulders.
If not for the insane amount of much-needed warmth it provided, Chloe would have flung the animal skin from her shoulders and made a donation to the World Wild Life Fund just for coming into visual contact with the thing.
As it was, she closed her eyes and let her poor body revel in its warmth before mind-asking Fenris, “How do you say thank you in Old Norse?”
“’Tis current Norse to us,” he said inside her mind before saying out loud, “Pakka fyrir.”
“Pakka fyrir,” she said.
The gatekeeper nodded before turning to Fenris and presenting him with what looked like a cloak made of various animal’s fur scraps—but at least there weren’t any heads still attached.
“Upon our return to the village you will be given clothing and a fur befitting your station,” Fenris said a few minutes later as they walked away from the gatekeeper’s house.
“So is that guy going to bury those bodies all by himself?” she asked, struggling to keep up with him, but soon falling behind. He had a much longer stride, and didn’t seem all that interested in slowing down so she could walk beside as opposed to behind him.
“Nay, they are in a pile. So he would burn them.”
“Were those the guys who were trying to kill you before you used the spell for your quick getaway?”
“Yea.”
“You’re a pretty good fighter.” That was an understatement, but Chloe wasn’t in a compliment-giving mood. “I’m not getting why you didn’t just take them out like you did at the gatekeeper’s place as opposed to coming back in time for a fated mate you didn’t even want.”
“I had little choice. There were five wolves who would have my head, and unlike now, I was then weakened from an arduous hunt. Even I could not have taken five wolves on by myself. Also, then I did not have the pup inside your belly to protect. For the next Fenris would I be victor this day as I was not three moons ago.”
Chloe was finding it hard to believe only three days had passed since Fenris came crashing into her life, like a human tornado, dead set on destroying everything she held dear. “Well, congratulations on the big vanquish. That means you can send me home now, right?”
“My enemies were not vanquished in full this day. Their leader, my cousin. who I also did smell, ran as a rabbit would when he did see his first three followers fall under my sword.” He adjusted the animal cloak at his shoulders. “Also, though I am not pleased with you this day, I would not be without a mate or my pup in the winters to follow, so you will stay.”
She shook her head. Though the fox fur was now protecting her against the cold, she could feel her heart icing ove
r. “Fine, misery it is then.”
If he got that this was a reference back to the quote about keeping his she-wolf happy if he wanted to be happy, he didn’t acknowledge it. And they walked the rest of way down the mountain in a silence even colder than the harsh winter air.
Chapter 14
WHEN they descended from the mountain into his small village, his people spilled out of their pit houses, longhouses, and shops to watch them make their way down the village’s main thoroughfare to Fenris’s own longhouse.
It was much the way he had envisioned it when he had still been well pleased with Chloe. Men and women alike beheld her with great awe, and a few of the children came forward to touch her skin, as if to check if it were covered in paint that might come off. North people were traders by their very nature, and thus, the man who returned from abroad with the most exotic treasure, was the one they talked about when it came time to tell stories around the fire.
He could tell just by seeing the looks on the faces of his villagers that many stories would be told around many fires this night about the new queen.
Many called out to them, and a few even followed behind them, not wishing their story of beholding the Fenris enter the village with his new queen to end just yet. But only his fastest friend and beta wolf, Randulfr, fell into step beside them.
Even though Randulfr was a head shorter than Fenris, his old friend looked more the king than he at the moment, with his red hair freshly combed and dressed as he was in a cloak made of a brown bear they felled two winters ago, as opposed to the gatekeeper’s scraps which Fenris now wore on his own back.
“So ‘twas true you did avail yourself of the fated mates spell as your aunt did say when we wondered after your disappearance. I will confess I did not believe the sorceress’s words to be true and was set to organize a search if you were not returned within two moons.”
“You would not have found me, as I had been taken away to a land very far from this one.” Fenris had already decided on the trip down the mountain not to talk of his adventures through time, lest his followers would seek the spell for themselves, if only to see, too, the wonders of which he spoke.
“However, treachery was involved in my invoking the spell. While preparing to wash in the lake, I was set upon by Vidar and four followers, three of which I had banished from this place previously. I did use the spell to escape their planned beheading. However, when I did return through the gate, they once again would attack me. This time I felled four of them with my sword and the help of a battle axe well-thrown from the gatekeeper’s hand, but my cousin did escape.”
“I shall gather a group to scour the mountain now.”
“You are well-thanked. Now will I introduce you to my queen.”
Chloe received his beta’s formal greeting with a distant smile. It was one Fenris would come to know well over the course of the day. She gave it to everyone who greeted her directly, including his family members outside his longhouse.
His aunt was especially happy to meet with his new mate, drawing her into her arms as if they were friends of long past, before directing Fenris to pick her up and carry her over the threshold.
“I must carry you through the doorway so you would not trip and bring misfortune upon our house,” he told her, all of sudden feeling awkward with the vacantly smiling Chloe. “’Tis our custom.”
Her answer to this was to lift her arms in the air so he could easily pick her up. But still, she did not speak to him in his mind or with her tongue. And despite his still simmering anger, to suddenly lose her voice in his head felt unnatural and wrong.
But silent she remained, giving but the briefest of glances to the interior of his longhouse, which was not only the largest of its kind in the northern wolf territories, but also well-adorned with bright tapestries along its walls and many bearskins on the floor, so that it was soft nearly every place a wolf might set his foot.
A look of gratitude passed over her face when his mother’s sister, Esja, presented her with his own mother’s winter dress, a long wool tunic dyed the bright blue favored by her father’s people and a silk hangerok of red that had most likely hung loose on his mother, but fit about Chloe’s curves in a way that made his manhood swell inside his trousers.
However, he could not smell a similar arousal emanating from her own person. Also, her eyes did not light, as a she-wolf’s were wont to do, when one of Esja’s daughters secured the hangerok’s front with two bronze wolf brooches, and then hung between them glass beads and thin chains of gold.
A polite, “Pakka fyrir” were the only words from her tongue after her clothing was so adorned.
A pig was slaughtered and set upon his long table for a small feast, to which the local merchants were invited. But there came a point in the night when Olafr, the husband of his mother’s sister, noted his queen had not touched her drinking horn of honey wine.
“They wonder why you do not drink,” he pushed into her mind. “As do I.”
“Women in my time do not drink any liquor when they’re pregnant,” she answered.
A strange custom indeed, but when he asked her the reason why, she would not give him any further answer.
So he told his family of this strange custom and a drinking horn of goat’s milk was set before her by one of the servants, for which she thanked the servant in Norse.
He lingered at the feast, if only to hear her protest that she was tired and wished to return to his bed. But she said nothing more after receiving the milk, merely sitting there with the same distant smile, which never reached her eyes. And the night pressed on with the people around the table filling up with food and honey wine before eventually calling her forth for a song.
“They would have you sing a song or tell a tale. ‘Tis the custom of both humans and wolves with new friends.”
He thought to this she might not answer, but verily she stood and sang a song rendered in a voice so clear and true, that even though her words could not be comprehended, it was understood by all at the table to be one of heartbreaking sadness.
A somber silence descended over the feast after she took her seat.
“I would have you sing a happier song the next time you are called forth or not sing at all,” he said.
Again she did not give him a mind-answer, but reached for the drinking horn of goat’s milk in a manner that clearly conveyed there would be no next time.
Finally he gave in and announced that they would retire. This announcement caused every wolf at the table to depart, welcoming Chloe to their village and calling out good tidings as they did so. When they were gone from the house, he showed her to his bed closet and opened its tall doors to reveal the large, free standing oak bed inside. It was covered in furs, and to his mind, seemingly designed to the purpose of holding them within its confines.
“Vikings do not live alone as your people do. We will be given one night of privacy. It is traditionally five, but you are already with pup, so one is all that is required. I would have us lie together now and forget the anger of this morntide.”
He moved closer to her, hoping their close proximity might ease the chasm between them at least for this night. He felt warm with all the mead and food he had consumed and she remained the most beautiful wolf he had ever laid eyes on, the mother of his child, and the woman he was fated to spend the rest of his life with.
But as soon as he cupped her breasts over her hangerok with his two hands, she said, “I’ll sleep in your bed, but I’m never going to mate with you ever again. So unless you’re one of those guys who has no problem forcing himself on a she-wolf, you can remove your hands now.”
“We have staunch laws against such things in my land. For the humans it may be practice, but for wolves, I find allowing such causes too much fighting between males who would protect their daughters and claimed mates.”
“So we’re clear then.”
“I will not force myself on you, but if I spoke as you, I would not let my mouth make promises my
body might hold not.”
She took his hands and physically removed them from her bosom as if dealing with two leeches. “Oh, my body’s in full agreement.”
And thus, the silence returned. She took off the clothes she had been gifted and slept in the dress she had arrived in, which he had no doubt had been made by her own hand. And the next day she stayed shut in the bed closet, only coming out to relieve herself and to eat the large meal with his family and servants in the main room.
For the first days of her stay, her silence was of such a hostile nature he did wonder if she would do him harm in the night as she had spoken in the forest. But on the morntide of her third day in the village, he encountered his mate for the first time outside of the longhouse since their arrival.
He was deciding a dispute between two wolves over a goat. One had been invited to the other’s longhouse to enjoy drink. But in the eventide, the host had promised his guest his best goat if he could do as simple a thing as walk in a straight line to the door. The guest could, though he very nearly fell over a few times before reaching the door. But when the guest attempted to take the goat upon his leave, the host said it was but a jest and sought to take back the goat’s lead. Thusly, all three, host, guest, and goat appeared before him now seeking judgment.
He awarded the goat to the guest and then reminded the sullen host that promises made were promises made even if deep in his cups. That was when he caught the scent of his queen and felt her gaze on him.
He looked up and found her still in her Colorado smock with the fox pelt around her shoulder. She had re-braided her hair, and it now lie in one tail down her back. But what he found most interesting was the curiosity in her gaze before she realized he was now watching him watch her.
““You have finally decided to leave our bed?” he said to her mind.
After he said this, she looked away and continued on to the toilet pit that sat behind their house. He might have followed to try to mind talk with her more, but that was when Randulfr arrived at his house with the news that they had not been able to find Vidar in the mountains.
Her Scottish Wolf (Howls Romance): Loving World Page 21
