The king waved a dismissive hand. “Ah, forget about what happened with Rafe. I’ve never doubted you were a great gal. I just had a feeling from the beginning that you and him weren’t meant to be. My grandma had a little of the future reckoning in her. Maybe I inherited it from her.”
“Maybe.”
“But don’t bother yourself too much about Rafe. He’ll get over it. Eventually. Maybe. Okay, probably not. He’s pretty bitter. But you got bigger things than him to worry about right now. We’ll talk some more when you pick up little wolf for breakfast.”
He saluted her and walked out.
Just then, the Viking began to stir. At first he looked around confused, his tangled red hair whipping across his face as his hand automatically went for the sword at his back. But then he saw her, and smiled. The most beautiful smile she had ever seen. It reached all the way into his eyes and seemed to emanate from his very soul.
“Beauty,” he said. And he pulled her onto the bed with him, hugging her tight and strong. “Beauty.”
She would find out later that after his aunt shifted back into human form, she told him there was a reunion spell that would deliver him again to his fated mate, but that it was almost impossible to cast, because it was necessary for both mates to say the words at the same time. Only after a full moon’s worth of the most explosive grief of his life, because it looked like he would never make it back to his mate, did he remember what she told him about seeing his sword on the “internet.” So he had the spell engraved in the sword, and from that moment forward, he ensconced himself in his bed closet, saying the words over and over again, barely pausing to eat or drink and only sleeping when it forcibly overtook him. For the rest of his life, his family would teasingly refer to him as Fenris the Chanting, for his actions over the weeks it took before the black tunnel opened and brought him back to her.
And he wouldn’t care.
“It is you,” he said bringing her hands to his chest with tears in his eyes. “The pup?” he asked, obviously fearing the worst because he wasn’t present.
“Oh, he’s good. He’s great,” she assured, tears also brimming in her eyes. “The Colorado king and queen are babysitting him tonight, and we’re scheduled to see him first thing in the morning. He’s, like, besties with the king now. It’s kind of weird.”
From the confused look on his face, he obviously didn’t understand much of anything she said past, “He’s great.” But eventually his smile returned and he said, “Then it is us.”
And this time tears spilled as she nodded. “Yes, it’s us.”
“We are not able to go to our son until the morn.”
He continued to stroke her face, his own full of fondness. “And your medicine man has made it so your wounds have fully healed.”
“Yes, I got the stitches out a few weeks ago, and I’m healed up pretty nicely.”
“You are fully healed even though three full moons have yet to past?
“Yes, but what does that have to do with anything—”
Without further ado, he flipped her onto her back and was soon reminding her of when she told him in her time, she-wolves weren’t allowed to have sex again until three full moons had passed after the birth of their pup.
She did think to protest. It had only been two months. And they were in a hospital bed with him attached to an IV. But then he yanked the IV needle out of his hand, and bit into her breast, just hard enough to get her attention. And just like that, she felt herself creaming down below as the scent of her arousal rose up in the air and any reservations about having sex with her fated mate flew out of her head.
His own scent, all forest, and longhouse, and burning fires filled her nose as he covered her with his body, before driving himself into her. He then lowered his head to her shoulder and began moving on top of her, almost frantic with his thrusts, as if he were trying to bury himself inside of her, so that they may never be parted again.
And maybe he achieved his aim. A climax rose quickly rose within her and she exploded just as he began to groan his release. For a glorious few moments, they were joined as one, locked together in both space and time in a starburst of pleasure beyond anything either of them had ever known.
And as she came down from the stars, breathing hard, she knew this time they would get it right. They were fated mates, and from this moment on, they would be together always.
Epilogue
THIS past February, a Viking alpha king showed up in the shifter town of Wolf Springs and claimed the she-wolf then engaged to Colorado’s alpha prince, as his fated mate. She reportedly did not want to honor the claim and still planned to mate with the alpha prince as soon as she went into heat. But then she unexpectedly went into heat on the night of a full moon, which kept her in human form. For reasons, still not quite understood, the Viking alpha king also didn’t shift and he somehow found his way to her.
By sunrise the next morning, the entire town knew by the sounds coming from the house that the alpha prince’s fiancée was now mated to another. The alpha prince left town, and once the she-wolf came out of a mating frenzy, she also attempted to leave town and the Viking behind. No one is quite sure where she was planning to go, but the sheriff caught her and dragged her back for a reason that still hasn’t been fully explained—this historian is also fairly sure it wasn’t legal. The Viking was permitted to visit her, but when they came back to the clinic’s cage to fetch him, both the Viking king and the she-wolf had disappeared.
This was thought to be the end of it, but then seven months later, the she-wolf came back through the portal, wounded and in labor with a son, who was delivered by the Colorado alpha king and his queen themselves. The woman stayed on for two months, waiting to be reunited with her mate. Then she left her newborn with the royals in order to visit one Professor Henley. It is not known what they talked about, as the professor refuses to meet with me, but according to other sources, during their visit a flash was seen in Wolf Springs and reportedly the Viking came back through the gate.
He spent a mere forty-eight hours in Wolf Springs. During which he recovered from an undisclosed illness and met his son for the first time. An eyewitness, who happened to be in the room at the time, said it was a very touching scene to see the Viking meet his son for the first time.
Then reportedly Chloe Adams drove into Denver to pick up two period costumes, one for an adult and one for an infant, which she paid for in cash. Shortly after that, all three family members disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again.
And this report would be a whole lot longer if Rafe Nightwolf wasn’t such a selfish, entitled, jerky douchebag!!!!!!!
Alisha Ataneq punched this last sentence in with particular force, since her recent visit to Wolf Springs had been such a bust. Her big mistake had been waiting until the end of the fall semester to make it. By that time, Rafe Nightwolf had finally returned to Wolf Springs and accepted the alpha king title, which he’d gotten ostensibly because his father was ready to retire, but more so, in Alisha’s opinion, because he was a spoiled brat and his overly indulgent parents wanted to give him some kind of consolation prize for losing his fiancée to a time-traveling Viking.
But as a result, not many people had been willing talk to her about what had really happened to Chloe Adams.
A knock on her open door interrupted her thoughts and she looked up to see Matt, one of the other wolf post-docs at the University of Alaska-Juneau, standing at the entrance to her office. He was one of the few other wolves she knew her age who hadn’t gone into heat yet, and she halfway suspected that, ensconced among humans as they were, they were probably both destined to either go unmated for life or mate with each other.
But if she did go into heat, she wouldn’t mind doing so with Matt. He was cute in a string-bean nerd sort of way, and at least he was also in the humanities. She already knew her mom wouldn’t approve though. Since Alisha was the second daughter of the Alaska alpha king, her mom preferred she marry some ridiculous but r
ich jerk like Rafe Nightwolf, not a fellow academic like herself. However, her mother’s snobbery only made a guy like Matt that much more attractive to her.
“You busy?” he asked.
She threw him a friendly smile. “I can make myself un-busy. What’s up?”
He edged himself into one of her guest chairs. “Well, I have some good news and some bad news and some possibly good news.”
Before she could ask to hear the bad news first he said. “The good news is I think I might have found those diaries you asked me to keep a look out for.”
Ever since she had all but abandoned her research on she-wolves in post-colonial Alaska, she had started putting most of her time and energy into finding out as much about the Vikings as she possibly could. She’d asked Matt, who did his work study in the wolf wing, a secret section of the library built under the cloak of night back in 1972, when the university was first established, to look for a few things for her, including the diaries of an Arab diplomat named Ibn Fadlan.
According to the annals of history, he had traveled around Norway, meeting many Vikings and journaling his experiences. But many of those manuscript pages had now “disappeared.” As a Lupine History post-doc, she knew whenever a set of ancient records were found with a few missing pieces, that usually meant the wolves had gotten to them. The North American Lupine Council was near fanatical about keeping evidence of their existence out of the human purview, and very few universities even dared to keep a secret wolf collection. When they did, it was usually in fairly libertarian places like Alaska, South Dakota, and New Hampshire, states that liked their freedoms and weren’t as scared of the North American Lupine Council as others.
“You found them,” she said, leaning forward.
“I think so. Or at least a few manuscript pages that one of our wolves smuggled out of the secret collection at the University of Baghdad back in the nineties before the first Gulf war. My Arabic isn’t that great, but I scanned it and put it through a translator and this passage caught my eye. If the translation program is working right, he talks about coming upon the village of King Fenris the Serious, which he finds puzzling, because the king is quite jovial. He is only received because the villagers think their queen, who he describes as ‘a beauty, dark of skin,’ might be interested in talking with him, because he also has darker skin. She speaks Old Norse, but in a dialect that is often hard for him to understand, and she won’t tell him where she came from. And she is said to have three children, but he only meets two of them, a boy and a younger girl. But he says she also has a rather large wolf puppy, who stays crouched at the queen’s feet and seems to be afraid of humans. The king and queen, who he describes as ‘happy with each other in every way’ receive him for three nights. But then the queen tells him that though she’s enjoyed his company, it is best he move on before the next full moon. She tells him it is very important he and the Vikings he is with sail in a different direction than they originally planned, saying something to the effect of though they themselves are tame, she cannot be so sure about village to the north of them that calls no man king. They take her advice, but later on, one of the Vikings manning the ship Ibn is on says he suspects the foreign queen, the king, and their entire village are creatures of legend, ones who transform from human to animal in the light of the full moon.”
Alisha’s eyes widened and she took the translated pages from him. “That’s her. I’m sure of it. I’m getting closer. How could there possibly be any bad news?”
“I was hoping you’d see it that way.” He grimaced. “The bad news is the funding for your fellowship here has just been pulled and as of next semester, you’ll no longer be employed by the University of Alaska.”
“What!?”
He raised his hands. “The only reason I’m here telling you this is because I thought it should come from a friend as opposed to the head of the department, who’s still pissed at you for pissing off the new king of Colorado.
Her eyes narrowed. “Tell me this sudden defunding doesn’t have anything to do with Rafe Nightwolf.”
Matt lifted his shoulders up and down. “What did you expect, Chloe? His family is one of the richest wolf dynasties in the United States. He has a seat on the council and the Nightwolf trust gives millions of dollars to the wolf residency program so shifters can attend state colleges all over the U.S. and enroll in wolf-based classes. He’s not a guy you want to piss off. And you basically announced that you plan to write an entire book about the woman who left him for a Viking.”
She shook her head. “How is no one understanding the impact Chloe Adams might have had on our own history? For all we know, she’s influenced facets of our culture we don’t even know about. How can you all stay so busy bowing and scraping to this jerk that you can be totally okay with not finding out what happened to her? Where’s your curiosity?”
He gave her a sad smile. “Believe me, Alisha. I’m not happy about this situation either. It sometimes feels like the Council only funds us so they can keep us in check. But that brings me to the possibly good news. Now that you don’t have a class load next semester, you can dedicate more time to solving the mystery of what happened to your friend.”
She was still fuming, but she realized Matt was right. Rafe Nightwolf truly was an asshole for getting her fired, but that was about to blow up in his face. He thought he was shutting her down, but he had only fueled her determination to get to the bottom of this mystery. She would find out what happened to her friend, she vowed. And she wasn’t going to let anyone, especially not Rafe Nightwolf, stop her.
The Saga Continues with
The Alaska Princess Trilogy
and
Her Viking Wolves
Wolf and Punishment
Wolf and Prejudice
Wolf and Soul
Her Viking Wolves
About the Author
Theodora Taylor writes hot books with heart. When not reading, writing, or reviewing, she enjoys spending time with her amazing family, going on date nights with her wonderful husband, and attending parties thrown by others. She now lives in Los Angles, California, and she LOVES to hear from readers. So drop her a line or friend her on Facebook. And, if you love Interracial Romance as much as she does, sign up for her IR Weekly Bestsellers newsletter!
Also by Theodora Taylor
HOT PARANORMALS WITH HEART
Her Viking Wolf
Wolf and Punishment
(The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 1)
Wolf and Prejudice
(The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 2)
Wolf and Soul
(The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 3)
Her Viking Wolves
Her Dragon Everlasting
NAGO: His Mississippi Queen
HOT SOUTHERN GUYS WITH HEART
His One and Only
His for Keeps
His Forbidden Bride
His to Own
HOT CONTEMPORARIES WITH HEART
The Owner of His Heart
The Wild One
Her Perfect Gift
His for the Summer
His Pretend Baby
His Revenge Baby
HOT RUSSIANS WITH HEART
Her Russian Billionaire
Her Russian Surrender
Her Russian Beast
Her Russian Brute
HOT HARLEQUINS WITH HEART
Vegas Baby
Love’s Gamble
HOT SUPERNATURAL WITH HEART
His Everlasting Love
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Her Scottish Wolf (Howls Romance): Loving World Page 29
