NAGO, His Mississippi Queen: 50 Loving States, Mississippi (The Brothers Nightwolf Trilogy, Book 1)

by Theodora Taylor

  He’d escaped. And apparently taken the she-wolf with him.

  Damianos cursed in the way of humans.

  His only solace: he still had the boy. And the she-wolf twin. The one who’d so unexpectedly made his male works descend upon first sight of her.

  His hemipenis pulsed, urgent and hard at the thought of what had passed between them in the parlor. By the mothers, he’d very nearly thrown her into the nearest wall. Put a foot in her thigh to hold her while he rutted her. Even now, his teeth ached with the desire to pin her down, and plunge into her.

  He bounded back down the stairs.

  Only to find the parlor empty.

  No broken windows, but an open door told him exactly what had happened. They were gone. They were all gone.

  A distraction.

  The action that had induced the most powerful feeling he’d had since his father’s death had been but a mere Mata Hari scheme.

  Pain pierced his flame. Pain like none he’d felt since his father fell under that Viking’s sword in their first battle with Fenrir’s mutations. He was old. Very, very old. It had been centuries since he’d felt anything above mild irritation, much less this burst of flame that made him feel weak with shame and anger.

  But then the pain passed. And in its place.

  Resolve.

  Cold and red.

  His dark blue wings flapped once. Twice. He would have his revenge.

  And it would begin with the bitch who’d dared to touch him.

  50

  Fensa expected them to be pursued back to the States, and took every precaution to ensure they didn’t get caught. She and Ola had already offlined their GoGens. But just in case, they flew into Bulgaria, prioritizing getting the hell out of Greece over the risk of Xenon and Eos being seen in dragon form.

  There, Ola, using her strange Ola charm, zero fucks, and get ‘er done, found a pilot who not only spoke English, but was willing to accept off-system credits from a temporary account she set up upon landing in Bulgaria.

  After that, it was a matter of flying home before chartering another private plane that would take Fensa and her newly reunited family plus two to their final destination. Just a couple more steps, but Fensa braced herself as they walked through the front doors of the North Dakota kingdom house.

  Communicating with their uncles over the bioware had been too risky, so as they pulled up to the house in Ola’s Escalade, she had no idea what she’d find. Which was why she instructed Eos to stay in the car with his father, who’d fallen asleep on the long ride from the private North Dakota airfield, and wait for her signal.

  For once she received no argument from her usually over-protective son. And she could see in his short nod of agreement how worried he was for the father who’d done little more than sleep on the long journey. Well, relatively long. At least this time they didn’t have to walk across several ice sheets, forests, tropical jungles, and mountain ranges teeming with oversized prehistoric beasts to reach their destination.

  “You ready?” Ola asked, pulling her gun out of the Escalade’s glove box.

  No, not really. But Fensa got out anyway and braced herself for anything from her super worried uncles to a swat team lying in wait as they walked through the doors of the North Dakota kingdom house.

  But what they found in the grand house’s ornate foyer was way more shocking than either of those possibilities.

  Their fathers. Both with a wolf puppy raised above their heads. “Ein! Tveir! Thrír!” they chanted together in Old Norse, before whipping the puppies so high into the air, Fensa screamed, “Dads!”

  However, the two puppies shifted into baby dragons at the top of the throw, cawing down to everyone beneath them, before shifting back into puppies and dropping into their grandpas’ arms.

  “Daughter, you should have given warning,” Fenrir said, his tone admonishing as he stroked the furry head of the twin he’d just caught. “Your papa and I might have missed catching our granddaughters, if not for our Viking focus.”

  “So that happened while we were away,” Ola said beside her as Fensa stared at their two fathers in amazement. “Also, gender mystery solved!”

  What followed was a Lifetime Channel-worthy tale of regret, apology, and a Color Purple-esque proclamation from their wife that FJ and Olafr would not be allowed back in her good graces—or her bed—until they “made things right with Fensa.” Like Other Fensa had said, after their very rough start, her parents really were happy together. It had taken them less than twenty-four hours of their wife’s affection deep freeze for the Viking brothers to follow their daughters to North Dakota.

  However, upon arrival, they were informed by their equally vexed brother-in-law that Fensa, Ola, and Eos had left for reasons unknown shortly after leaving the babies with them. They had known the reason must be important if Fensa had left her barely weaned babies behind, and had decided to stay on at the house to wait for her return. (Also, they sensed it would be better to wait here in North Dakota rather than Michigan where they’d be subjected to their wife’s baleful stare.)

  To that end, they went to the room her uncles had designated as the twins’ nursery to make amends with the babies who they would need to claim as their grandchildren before they returned to the Detroit kingdom house. So imagine their surprise when they found two girl wolf puppies where the creatures they were expecting should have been.

  To FJ and Olafr who had missed the first five years of their own twin daughters’ lives, this felt like a gift from Odin himself. And for the last forty-eight hours, they’d been making up for the lost time they hadn’t had with their daughters.

  “Wow. And I thought you had a heart wrenching seventy-two hours,” Ola said, wiping a bit of mist from her eyes after their fathers finished their story, still holding the wolf pup granddaughters in their arms. “Thug down.”

  What was it about the sight of huge men and babies? As angry as Fensa had been when she stormed out of the Michigan kingdom house, she came down with a big old case of the “All Is Forgivens” by the time they finished.

  “But where is our grandson, the future King of Michigan?” FJ asked. “We must request his forgiveness as well!”

  Aaaaannnnd cue the return of the Awkward Mood.

  Fensa and Ola looked at each other in a way that must have clearly relayed their “Oh shit” response. Olafr asked, “Why do you look to each other so?”

  Which is how Fensa came to find herself bracing for a fight all over again only fifteen minutes after entering the North Dakota kingdom house.

  “Dads, you swear you’re going to be cool about this?” she asked one more time as they approached Ola’s Escalade.

  But before they could answer, the door opened and slammed shut.

  “You will not hurt Blue Papa!” Eos declared before once again hulking out of his third set of clothes in as many days by going ten-foot dragon.

  And then…whoa…she was reminded of the time she pulled the spear out of his father’s eye as Eos let out a roar so thunderous, she could hear the windows rattling behind her.

  “Good luck explaining that to the rest of the kingdom town,” Ola muttered as Fensa ran forward waving both arms at the golden dragon.

  “Eos, it’s okay!” she called up to her seriously pissed off son.

  “They just want to say sorry!” Ola yelled behind her.

  “And meet their son-in-law. Please change back!” Fensa begged, even though she wasn’t sure he could hear her over all that roaring.

  But then the roaring stopped, and Eos once more stood before her in a shredded version of the WELCOME TO BULGARIA! shirt and basketball shorts they’d bought him yesterday.

  To her surprise, her mate stood behind him. Gaunt, but thanks to his shell, much stronger than he’d been when she’d found him in that room.

  “Hi,” she pushed into his head.

  A very long beat passed. Then, “Reverence, you do honor me with your hi.”

  And she found herself smiling as
she came to stand in front him and their hulked out son. “I’m glad you’re awake, because totally weird story: my dads are here and they want to meet you.”

  “We have already met.”

  “No, I don’t think you understand,” she said, scrunching her forehead. “They’re standing behind me. But they want to formally meet you. Like, get an introduction.”

  “Reverence, they do not stand behind you.”

  “What?” she asked, glancing toward her fathers because she couldn’t understand what Xenon was talking about—

  Wait, what was going on?

  Her fathers weren’t only not standing, they were in full-on kneeling bows on the ground, babbling, “Please forgive us, All Father. We did not know! We did not know!”

  What. The. Hell? Before Fensa could ask, Xenon did something she’d never conceived he ever would.

  Spoke out loud. In a human tongue.

  It was Old Norse, which she could vaguely translate as, “Rise, worthy ones. Of course, you could not have known.”

  And that was how she discovered her mate, the King of Wolves, had gone on to become the god her fathers called Odin. The same god who had spoken to their Aunt Myrna, and come down from Valhalla the eve before the great North Wolves battle against their serpent enemy, and guided them in their fight.

  Or as Ola put it after all was explained, “Let me get this straight. You went back in time, mated friggin Odin, made three half-dragon babies. And now you’re, like, somehow our family’s whole freaking origin story, too?! Dude, you were only gone for two weeks!”

  Epilogue

  It was Fated Mate’s birthday. For her, less than a year had passed since he’d forced her and Golden Son to leave. But it had been nearly a lifetime for Xenon. All those many centuries ago, he’d made a vow to stay alive, and meet her again, no matter how long it took.

  And he’d kept his vow, even after the Widower’s Madness set in. However, he still had a hard time believing the female sleeping across from him was Fated Mate.

  “Are you…real?” her voice asked inside his mind, giving voice to his deepest fears.

  “Yes, Reverence,” he answered. “I am.”

  Xenon enjoyed the brightening of her yellow flame, and the soft smile that lifted her lips, before asking, “Are you real?”

  “Totally,” she replied, pulling him down for a sleepy kiss.

  Even after a whole year on a private island, gifted to them by Knud’s father-in-law, they were still having trouble believing the reality of their life together.

  As they so often did, drakkon and wolf consummated their words with the press of bodies and lips. Quietly proving their reality to one another with the single act his delusion could never perform.

  Xenon was old now, in his final two millenniums of life. But when they came together like this, he had the stamina of a 2000-year-old.

  “I remain your drakkon,” he murmured as they began to crest.

  “And I, your wolf—oh, God!” Fated Mate broke off with a cry to her mother’s god as she found her joy.

  Since discovering Xenon was the origin of the one the wolves called Odin, she’d completely stopped mentioning the Fenrir Wolf. On Drakkon, stories were nothing more than factual reports. However, as he’d discovered through the millennia, humans were altogether too fond of changing stories through poetic license in order to suit their own tastes and desires. Fated Mate’s concept of the Fenrir Wolf bore little resemblance to the story he’d told the Zone 2 wolves during the many years he’d spent preparing the Fenris line for their fight with the drakkon.

  But that was then. He and his Most Revered now lived in peace.

  Meanwhile, Fated Mate fell back into a tranquil sleep once they were sated, her soft snores another sign that 15,000 years later, Xenon had finally been granted his most fervent wish.

  The delusion he’d called Fensa never slept. Never snored. Never pulled him down for sleepy kisses on her birthday. Every day he knew with a little more certainty that Fensa had been nothing more than a delusion, and Fated Mate was his only reality.

  As she slept, he carefully left the bed. And after evacuating into a modern toilet, he pulled on a pair of pants and snuck out of their room…only to be waylaid by two little girls.

  “Daddy! Daddy! It’s Mommy’s birthday!” they whisper-shouted as soon as he stepped into the hall.

  They were less than a year old now, but as it turned out, they were true drakkon.

  “I’m going to have to ask Ola to bring us some of those homeschooling books for kindergarteners the next time she visits,” Fated Mate had said a few days prior. Then in a much quieter tone, she lamented, “In this timeline, I lived without my fathers for the first five years of my childhood. But at this rate, I’ll only get the twins for five years in total. Funny.”

  And sad.

  But they didn’t spend much time dwelling on the sad parts of their lives anymore. They had anywhere from 70 to 130 years with each other. They had five years of childhood with their twins. That was more than either of them could have hoped for when he seeded her with their daughters over 15,000 years ago. Neither of them wished to waste the time they had left on sorrow.

  Besides 15,000 years felt like nothing when these two little girls greeted him like the king he used to be. All memory of suffering fell away, and he could feel nothing but grateful to have this time with his children.

  For this reason, he let his daughters guide him down the wooden stairs to the island house’s cooking area. The kitchen, as it was called in these relatively civilized times. There they made pancakes upon a piece of electric iron work called a griddle, while the girls shrieked “Happy Birthday” in drakkon as if to practice for the big moment when they’d help him bring the tray up to the room of the person they simply called “mama.”

  “Eos! Eos!” they cried when their brother landed with a heavy thunk outside the east-facing kitchen wall, which was not so much a wall, as a collection of floor-to-ceiling plantation windows.

  The island was located in a truly tropical region, and only had a few supporting walls that didn’t open to the great outside. They frequently left the plantation windows open. Not only to cool the house but to give Xenon peace of mind. He liked to see in all directions, which meant if his cousin, the King of Drakkon ever found them, Xenon would see him coming.

  Xenon watched his daughters run to hug their brother, who according to Fated Mate, now looked like he should be “starting high school” in human form. Not quite like a five-year-old. But not nearly like a wolf.

  Something else, Xenon thought as he watched Golden Son shift back to human in the loose basketball shorts he wore in lieu of the smart hose that Xenon had lost the means to replicate. His family, his children—they were something nebulous and undefined. And he could only wonder what the King would do with the information Xenon knew he must have by now: that there was at least one she-wolf strong enough to mate with a drakkon, and that two mostly drakkon girls had been born upon a planet without any drakki.

  Dwell on the time you have left with them, not upon what might happen, he reminded himself before calling out to Golden Son, “You have arrived at a good moment. We were just about to go up to Great Wolf Mother’s room with her birthday breakfast!”

  But then Xenon stopped when he saw the color of Golden Son’s chest flame.

  “Oh hell, here they come,” Knud said to his brothers, as the two winged beasts, one large and dark, one golden and only slightly smaller flew towards them. “Told you the kid was doing a security sweep when we saw him earlier.

  “Fuck, they’re big,” yelled Nago from behind the wheel of the speedboat. “Keep waving that flag, Rafes. Hopefully, they know what it means or else we’re about to get burnt to a crisp. Seriously, lift it higher, bro!”

  Rafes did as instructed, but glared at Knud as he did so. “We wouldn’t have to risk our lives like this if you hadn’t helped them hide where no one could find or get to them.”

  “Hey, it was my fathe
r-in-law, not me. And they wouldn’t have had to hide if you hadn’t—”

  “You know what, I’m going to stop,” Nago said, efficiently cutting off another Knud/Rafes argument as he had done ever since they were kids living in the Viking era. “Maybe if we act like sitting ducks, they won’t roast us first and ask questions later.”

  “Maybe,” Rafes and Knud grumbled, proving Ola and Fensa weren’t the only ones capable of talking in stereo.

  Speaking of talking…

  The two dragons descended and stopped just a few feet from the boat. They both pulled their tails down and hovered, flapping their gigantic wings as they let out a series of caws that Nago was sure could be translated as, “What the hell are you doing here?” Or maybe, “Give us one reason why we shouldn’t set all three of you on fire for coming here uninvited!”

  “Oh, shit, we’re going to die. Today’s the day,” Knud said with an ironic shake of his head.

  Rafes didn’t look much more optimistic.

  “Hey, how’s it going, guys!” Nago called up, struggling to keep his voice casual. “Great to finally meet you, too. Sorry I couldn’t before. Look, we know you value your privacy. I mean, or you wouldn’t be living out here in the island boonies. We never would have tracked you down if it wasn’t important.”

  Neither dragon morphed back into humans, but they didn’t caw anymore, either. Which Nago decided to take to mean, “Go on, we’re listening…”

  So Nago lowered his hands to say, “It’s Ola. She’s been taken. We’re pretty sure it was Damianos Drákon, and we need your help to get her back.”

  Oh, my gosh, guys!

  I only consider myself a vessel for these stories, so I was completely unprepared when Fensa announced she not only had a story of her own but that it would be the origin story for her family. (Though I wasn’t nearly as unprepared as she was for Xenon’s naughty bits! Hee-hee!)

  I’ve been haunted by this story since the end of Viking Wolves, and I’m so glad it’s finally here. I hope you enjoyed it. If so, please do us the further favor of leaving a review so others might find this one-of-a-kind dragon tale.