41
Except it wasn’t okay. Funny that it took people not thinking she was crazy, for Fensa to finally feel really and truly like she was going crazy.
Things went bad within three months of her return to the Upper Peninsula Kingdom House, the place where her father, Fenris—FJ for short, and the King of Detroit—preferred to conduct business during the summer months.
Her fathers had been kind enough. Sweeping her up in great big hugs when all the confusion was cleared up, and welcoming her back into the Michigan pack’s original kingdom house to convalesce.
But Other Fensa noticed there was no longer talk of her apprenticing for the kingdom as Ola had done for two years in preparation to take over their uncle’s North Dakota throne. Fensa was twenty-seven. The perfect age for it. But unlike the many harassing ells Other Fensa had gotten before disappearing from this timeline six weeks ago, her parents hadn’t even brought it up.
Nor had the usual celebrations been thrown on Eos’s birthday, even though he technically would be the one to inherit the throne when Fensa retired from the post.
Again, her fathers said nothing about any of it. Had only expressed how happy they were to have her back from…wherever she’d been.
Yet, whenever she tried to talk to them about where she’d been. Tell them about the dragon she met who might have had a hand in this timeline’s alternate layout—they’d gone silent, and either her mother or Ola, who was staying on in her old kingdom room while Fensa recovered, changed the subject.
As happy as they claimed to be to have her back with her family “where she belonged,” both her fathers seemed to have trouble looking her in the eye at dinner. And even worse, they also changed the subject whenever it turned to that of their three unexpected grandchildren.
Fensa was happy to be back. Grateful to have not only her papa, but also an additional father, and a much happier version of her game designer mother, in her life. But living here began to feel like she’d signed not only herself, but her children, up for minefield sweeping duty.
Which was why she probably shouldn’t have been surprised when one night a bomb finally went off beneath the dinner table.
It all started with an innocent question from Eos, who had turned five the week before, but looked and spoke like a boy of at least 12 or 13. “Why aren’t Golden Ssssissssters allowed to eat with ussss?”
Golden Sisters. That’s what he called the twins, so sure was he that they were girls. Actually, they might find out if he was right sooner rather than later. The twins appeared to be growing even faster than their brother, who’d had to get by with a diet that consisted of only proteins and veggies with the occasional handful of berries thrown in as dessert. They were only three months old but were already standing in their cribs. Cribs that didn’t exactly work as designed, since their wings allowed them to go anywhere they wanted in the room at any time.
In fact, even though it was past their bedtime, she had no doubt they were probably whizzing around the bedroom. Cooing and giggling the way only human babies three times their age should.
But as it always did whenever Eos dared to talk in his dragon-accented English in his grandfathers’ presence, everyone went deathly quiet. And tension rose like an invisible storm cloud over the table.
Fensa hated it. Hated that even her mother, who claimed to love her three new grandbabies—even if they didn’t know the gender of two them—went still whenever Eos dared to speak in his hissing accent at the dinner table. As if a live mine might go off every time he said, “Passss the peassss, pleassssse.”
But she did her best to act as if the sudden quiet wasn’t as unnatural as it felt. Keeping her face as neutral as she could, she answered Eos, “Because it’s past their bedtime, and they’re still breastfeeding.”.
“But we alwaysss ate around the ssssame fire in old Arizona.”
“Well, we didn’t exactly have rooms in the cave, did we?” she answered.
“Ssssooo it isssss not becausssse the Kingssss of Michigan hate usssssss?”
“No of course not!” She’d been telling the truth about the twins not needing to be up past their seven o’clock bedtime to have dinner with them.
But when she looked toward her fathers, they merely sat there. Stony-faced. Not saying anything, not denying anything. Forcing her to speak for them. “Your grandfathers don’t hate you. They just don’t know you yet. And they have…history. Bad history with your father’s kind. A group of dragons attacked their village when they were young men.”
“Our entire land actually—every village that hosted a gate,” her father corrected, finally adding his words to the conversation.
At that, Eos turned his unblinking stare upon FJ and gave him what had to seem to all gathered around the table a rather dramatic bow of his head. “My father did disssshonor you. For thissss, I apologize.”
“No need to apologize,” Fensa rushed in to say. “Your father wasn’t involved in the dragon attack.”
“That we know of,” came a quiet voice.
And Fensa’s eyes flew to Olafr. The papa who’d never been anything but gentle and kind to her. Other Fensa could still remember meeting him for the first time in this timeline. Five years after her birth. The way his large arms had completely enveloped her small body when he picked her up. The salt of his tears as he whispered Old Norse words she couldn’t understand into her ear.
And instead of the sweet memory it used to be for Other Fensa, it now turned her stomach sour. “Actually, Papa,” she said between clenched teeth. “I can say for certain he wasn’t one of the dragons. He promised me—”
“Oh, he promised you, you say,” FJ interrupted, his much more sophisticated Old Norse accent laced through with scathing sarcasm. “Well, then we should believe him, since serpents are so honorable. So honorable they attack innocent villages without warning. They slaughtered half my soldiers with their fiery breath before we could so much as raise sword.”
“But I’m sure he wasn’t there,” she insisted. “And if you’d just sit down and talk to me about what’s happened, maybe you’d understand—”
“Oh, you have wish for me to understand?” FJ cut her off with a rise to his feet, so abrupt it knocked his chair back. “Understand why you have not only lain with our greatest enemy but also born its hissing spawn?”
“FJ!” her mother gasped.
But the Alpha of Michigan turned on her. “No, Varra. I have done everything you asked of me. Kept my counsel. Even let her bring her serpent’s spawn into my home. This I cannot abide.”
“Our home,” Tiara reminded her husband, rising from her chair. “And you’re not exactly keeping your mouth closed right now.”
“Because she forced his hand,” Olafr shot back, standing up, too. “She would have us believe this boy is not half-demon, to declare what we know not to be so. We lost our sister for so very long. And now that we have her back, it feels as if we have lost our daughter—”
Ola, as usual, jumped to her sister’s defense even before Fensa could. “Oh, God, Papa. She’s sitting right there. With your grandson, who is only a child. An innocent child. I can’t fucking believe you two! You basically raised us in a goddamn public threesome, and now you’re trying to judge her?! Like one fuck-up means she can’t be your daughter?”
FJ glared at Ola. “I would remind you, Daughter, it was two fuck-ups, and that is with a generous forgiving because surely she did not know the second breeding would lead to not one, but two more abominations upon our household.”
“Ugh! I can’t believe you! How dare you fucking saying that to her!” Ola started, once again coming to Fensa’s defense.
But this time she didn’t have to because Fensa rose slowly to her feet. “I’ll say this once, then I won’t burden you with this subject again. Xenon wasn’t a serpent. He was my fated mate. And I didn’t just breed with him for shits and giggles. I loved him. My flame burned yellow for him, even knowing what he was. And despite having no knowledge o
f what love was when we met, he somehow came to love me back. But we didn’t just love each other, we revered each other. And I consider the four years I spent with him the luckiest of my life. In fact, I would have stayed with him forever if I could have. I would have died having those two miracles you dare call abominations if it meant we could stay together. But he loved me too much to let me stay.”
She had to stop for a moment, warding off tears with a fierce shake of her head. No, she had to finish this story, had to let them know, “He sacrificed our love, gave up everything, his mate, and his only son, so I could live. So you know what? Fuck you and your judgmental bullshit. If you can’t accept me, accept your grandchildren, then you can keep your throne. I don’t need it. And I won’t let anybody talk that way to or about my son—who if you just took the time to get to know, you’d realize is one of the funniest, brightest, most wonderful grandsons anyone could ever wish for.”
“Fensa…” her mother started again—probably just as shocked that her soft-spoken daughter had language inside of her even more foul than their wild child, Ola.
“No, Mom. They don’t understand like we do. They’ll never understand how heartbreaking it is to be divorced for your own good. To be ripped from the mate you love more than life. Literally, in my case, more than life.”
She turned her tear-filled eyes on her two fathers now. “And now my heart is breaking. Again. Because I didn’t just lose my fated mate, it looks like I’ve lost my fathers, too. C’mon, Eos, we’ll get the twins and then we’re leaving. I’m sorry your grandfathers couldn’t do better by you.”
The last thing she saw before she turned to walk out with her son was a guilty look passing across FJ’s face.
It should have sparked a feeling of triumph. But instead, it only made her sad.
“Fensa…” her father called behind her. And she could hear his footsteps following her toward the stairs.
But when she turned to tell him it was too late for apologies, she found a ten-foot golden dragon standing between them.
Eos. He had turned so fast, she hadn’t even seen it happen. And as he let out a roar that shook the house, she had to wonder just how long the dragon had been lurking beneath his surface, wanting to unshell. Probably since he asked his first question. Maybe from the first moment he stepped foot in this kingdom house.
Her father reared back, a long-ago instinct making him reach for the dragon-slaying sword he used to wear across his back.
But Ola. Brave Ola, just came right up to the golden dragon and said, “Calm down, little boy. Didn’t your mama tell you shifting inside the house is against the rules?”
A pregnant pause.
And in the next moment, her son once again stood in front of her. Unlike the smart pants his father had replicated for him before leaving the glacier station, the modern clothes Eos had been given were now shreds upon his oversized body.
Yet, despite his appearance, his voice was surprisingly level as he said, “King, you have dishonored my mother and failed to treat her with reverencccce. Thisssss I will not allow a ssssecond time. Next time, you will feel my fire breath!”
42
“So that happened,” Ola said an hour later, spinning the large wheel of her early century vintage Escalade with one hand as they turned out of the Detroit Kingdom House’s long driveway.
Most women these days, including Other Fensa, had self-driving cars, but Ola had eschewed them as soon as she was old enough to get a license. “I like being in control,” she’d told her dads while putting in her pitch for why they should give her one of the Escalades from the kingdom’s old fleet for her sweet sixteen. “Plus, it’ll make me look bad ass.”
“I guess we should just be happy she didn’t ask for a motorcycle,” their mom groused before handing over the keys.
But Ola didn’t look nearly as bad ass as usual as they drove away from the kingdom house with Eos and two dragon babies in the back seat.
Usually, the twins hated driving anywhere in their car seats, since it required not only folding down their wings, but also getting strapped down. But tonight, they seemed to respond well to the sound of the old-school engine and fell asleep before they were even halfway to the airport.
“Thank you,” Fensa whispered after the babies were sleeping soundly behind her. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been there.”
“Girl, we twins 300. You know you don’t ever have to thank me for shit,” Ola said with a grin.
“Still…I know this is going to make things awkward for you with Mom and the dads.”
“Oh, that? Don’t even worry about them,” Ola said, waving off the dinner table scene as if it had been the equivalent of the time she ran screaming, “I hate you!!!” to her room because their parents wouldn’t let her go to a Troit Badwolf rap concert without taking Grif, their Beta, as a bodyguard.
“Besides, I’m taking over North Dakota in only a few more months. All you need to do is hang out in the guest house until I can get you guys officially moved in to the main one. You can live with me as long as it takes Dad and Papa to come around. Which I’m sure they will…someday.”
“No.”
Ola blinked, seeming not to understand. “What?”
“No. My children deserve more than this. More than living in the North Dakota guest house until Mom convinces the dads to tolerate us. They deserve a family. Our family.”
“Sure, sure, I understand. But why can’t you guys be a family with me?” Ola kept her eyes on the road but reached over to take her sister’s hand. “I missed you after you went away to Arizona for college, you know. This could be our chance to, I don’t know, get us back. Be twins again. I’ll help you raise these dragon babies up, and we’ll be our own weird kind of family, okay? Don’t say no. I love you.”
God…she’d never get used to all the feelings that came with have a real twin sister.
“I love you, too, Ola. You’ll never know how much I’ve loved you all along. So much so, I couldn’t let you go even after they put me into an insane asylum.”
“What…wait…they had insane asylums in prehistoric Arizona?”
“No…it’s a long story. I’ll tell you all about it when I get back.”
Now Ola blinked. “Back from where?” she demanded.
At the same time, her son said from the backseat. “Wherever it is, I’m coming with you, Wolf Mama.”
VI
“Are you real?”
43
“Still no thoughts on the return of your dog?” Damianos asked from the door of the dim room.
Naught but a candle gave relief to the pitch black, and the vents that did allow cool air into this room had all been covered. To make the room blistering cold in the winter, and blistering hot during the solstice.
In truth, Xenon found it quite comfortable. It reminded him of his former planet. But that planet was no more. Yes, the orb still hung in the heavens. But his brother, their subjects, and the entire civilization had been obliterated by a dark matter bomb. One the Royal Geneticist had set off soon after the King, having received recommendation that this planet not be awarded sanctuary status, announced his much-delayed royal hunt to his court.
God of the wolves. Fenrir had turned out to be just that. Sacrificing himself and his entire planet so his creations might live free.
But Damianos, and the most of the drakkon who had been stranded here on this planet, had not felt the same. Ecoterrorist, those drakkon most likely called him today. He’d heard the word once upon the small box Damianos had installed in his room a few solars ago. Just a few. Mayhap 40 or 50. He no longer kept track.
Damianos had put it there not as a luxury in the otherwise completely bare room, but to drown out Xenon’s fights with Fensa. At least that was what he claimed before turning the dial to the highest volume setting.
In any case, Xenon appreciated the gift. He and Fensa often watched it together, with her commenting occasionally, “Oh, I loved this song. Rememb
er I used to hum it when I washed our clothes on the rocks?”
It had been so long ago. That life in Arizona. That family in Arizona. There were so many things he could no longer remember. Luckily, he had Fensa there to remind him.
But tonight, Damianos, not his aged human servant, came to the door.
He’d been doing this for…oh, nearly three moons now. Seeming to want something from Xenon. Something Xenon could no longer give.
“You truly have nothing to say about the return of your dog? No questions? No curiosity where she might be after waiting for her for so long?”
His cousin set a plate piled high with meat in front of Xenon, just close enough for him to reach out and eat with one hand since the other was chained to the wall with a manacle forged from an Uthbert sword used in the Lupin-Drakkon War. The portion size upon the plate had been carefully considered by the few remaining drakkon after they charged him with a long list of war crimes, including treason, and stripped him of his crown. The amount of food was enough to keep him from starving to death. But not enough to make Xenon feel anything close to full.
For this reason, over a thousand rotations into his imprisonment, he was little more than skin and bones.
“Do you wish me to have something to say?” he asked Damianos, impressed to a small degree with his latest torture tactic. After all, his cousin would know nothing of Fensa, if not for overhearing their many angry exchanges here in his attic prison.
Damianos didn’t answer. Instead, he looked at Xenon, his lips turned down like a human’s until, in a sudden burst of fury, he kicked the plate in front of him. The meager bit of food went flying across the room, and the plate hit the wall with a metallic clang before falling to the floor in a sad slide of meat and grease.
“Tell your dog to fetch that for you,” Damianos snarled.
NAGO, His Mississippi Queen: 50 Loving States, Mississippi (The Brothers Nightwolf Trilogy, Book 1) Page 43
