The Brothers Nightwolf Complete Trilogy: A Sci-Fi Shifter Paranormal Romance Box Set

by Theodora Taylor

  Strangely, Wilma liked the woman at first sight—and not just because she was making fun of Barbie’s name. The much taller wrestler reminded her of the older she-wolves from her kingdom pack. Females with hard faces and even harder attitudes. The kind of bad-ass bitches who could ride comfortably on the back of a bike, holding on to their male’s leather jackets with just their hands, no death grip hugs required. Or even better, ride their own damn bike and beat all the other guys to their destination.

  However, the petite blonde didn’t look as impressed with the massive woman as Wilma. Nor did she look nearly as confident as she had when she first strutted in.

  “Well, it’s short for Barbara…” she answered, looking uneasily from Bohdan to the woman wrestler.

  “Any wrestling experience, Barbara?” the woman asked.

  Maybe a sister or a wife, Wilma thought. She looked to be in her thirties, but she had the same thick accent as Bohdan.

  “No, but I made it into the top three of the Miss Detroit pageant with my gymnastics routine.”

  Bohdan and the large woman exchanged a glance so cynical and disparaging that Wilma sensed exactly what they thought of Barbie’s top three Miss Detroit finish.

  “You have gymnastics,” Bohdan said, finally addressing Barbie. “This means after you show me one punch and one submission hold on my sister, Ursula, you can end with a moonsault.”

  The petite blonde goggled at his mountainous sister then stared back at him apparently baffled. “A moon what?” she asked.

  Bohdan stared at her. Blinked. Then yelled, “NEXT!”

  There was one more girl in front of Wilma. The brunette, who’d snickered at her friend’s catty joke. But when Miss Detroit Top Three ran past them crying into her hands, her friend ran after her, calling out, “Barbie? Barbie? Are you okay?”

  “NEXT!” Bohdan roared again, his voice taking on the distinctive tone of an impatient man who’d been kept waiting too long.

  Putting all her focus on not throwing up, Wilma walked into the auditorium and climbed into the ring. Yes, Bohdan was super intimidating, and this Ursula chick was a bad-ass. But hey, she was the Princess of Detroit. The daughter of a man who had declared himself the biggest, baddest muthafucka on the planet so often, it felt like a smite against her last name to feel even slightly intimidated by a couple of humans—but oh God, Bohdan was even more intimidating close up.

  He had to be six five easily. Maybe even six seven. And his face...forget Vlad. Apparently, Dolph Lundgren and, like, a granite statue of Ivan the Terrible had produced this stony-faced man. With a body like that and such sharp features, she might have thought him handsome. But sunk deep into his face were two dark, emotionless pits. Wilma guessed you could call those pits eyes, but they made her think of the sharks in the PBS nature specials her father liked to watch. It was like staring into a void. And Wilma had to look away or risk fear vomiting.

  Another mistake.

  The lights in the auditorium had been dimmed, so Wilma hadn’t noticed it before. But, looking away from Bohdan she stared directly at them, she had an audience. A sea of mostly white and a couple of brown faces. All huge. The All-American wrestlers. Oh God…

  The All-American wrestlers were here! And they’d be watching her tryout!

  Don’t throw up! Don’t cry like a little bitch! Don’t wolf out! she whispered fiercely to herself.

  She couldn’t quite meet Bohdan’s eyes, but she lifted her chin, set her hands on her hips like Lynda Carter, and somehow managed to make her face and voice strong before announcing, “Name’s Wilma Gangster. And that name ain’t a made up.”

  The sister, Ursula snorted, and there were a few deep chuckles from the shadowy stands, but Bohdan’s expression remained fixed in place. Like that “emotionless yet clearly aggrieved” look was all his face knew how to do.

  Meanwhile, the wolf tingled up her spine. The moon was getting closer. No time left for small talk. If she was going to do this thing, take this chance, it had to be now. So…

  Without a word of warning, Wilma ran over to Ursula and heart-punched her with a sharp, vicious swing, not pulling back until the last possible moment.

  Wilma had never seen this woman on television, but Ursula proved herself a true blue professional when she staggered and going along with Wilma’s unexpected move fell backward off the side of the ring…before jumping right back up and saying, “All right, you want fight, black girl. I will give you fight.”

  And just like that, their audience of wrestlers in the stands erupted with cheering and whistling as Ursula dramatically climbed into the ring.

  Nothing could have prepared Wilma for the moment of standing across from her first real opponent in the ring. Not all that practice with Wilt and Ford. Not all those nights she’d spent in front of the TV, dreaming about exactly what she would do if she could wrestle like a boy.

  Her heart thrilled, and suddenly this was all that mattered. The fight. The performance. The motherfucking leap she took across the ring to put Ursula in an old school headlock.

  “How did you do that so fast?” Ursula demanded while pretending to painfully choke inside Wilma’s arm.

  Wilma just spun her away from Bohdan, so that she could fake gouge the woman’s eyes without “the ref” catching sight of it.

  The wrestlers in the stands burst out laughing at the old 50s move. “Did you see what she just did? That’s illegal! Bohdan do something!” They gamely screamed and booed.

  In response to their cries for justice, Wilma face punched Ursula, causing her to fake cry out and eliciting even more boos and shouts of foul action.

  “You are doing great, black girl!” Ursula whispered even as she pretended to be in unfathomable pain. “Keep it going!”

  “How about a body slam?” Wilma whispered back.

  “Are you kidding?” Ursula demanded. “There’s no way you could lift me!”

  But Ursula must have been curious about Wilma’s proposal. She back elbowed Wilma in the gut, providing the perfect cue for Wilma to release the larger woman from the headlock. Clutching her mid-section, Wilma made a dramatic show of staggering away from her opponent.

  The All-American wrestlers were on their feet now, stomping and hollering for the villain who had suddenly been converted to a hero for this tryout. And Willa saw that more than a few of the girls from the tryout line had gathered in the open door to see what was going on. They cheered, too, momentarily forgetting the competition in favor of a good old-fashioned fight.

  And as for Ursula…she turned back to Wilma her eyes gleaming with challenge.

  Wilma didn’t hesitate. She charged forward, meeting Ursula in the middle of the ring for a classic hand to neck grappling hold, disguised as a double choke. After a few turnarounds to get the audience really riled up, Wilma knocked back Ursula’s elbow and went for a duck under.

  “She’s not going to…”

  “No way!”

  “How would that even be possible?”

  “I’m covering my eyes, I can’t watch this girl break her back! Tell me when it’s over!”

  With her enhanced wolf senses, Wilma heard everything the audience muttered in hush fascination. But it didn’t matter, because for the first time in her life, she truly understood the expression, “In the zone.”

  Like a math test long studied for, Wilma ran through all the steps…first the crotch lift…then she growled angrily to mask the fact that she was securing Ursula by the shoulder to make sure she didn’t truly get hurt when she executed her final move.

  Next came the controlled throw…and then the sound of Ursula’s heavy body hitting the mat echoed across the auditorium.

  For a moment there wasn’t a sound to be heard. It was as if the entire audience had caught its collective breath. Then everybody went wild. Cheering and screaming, the villain and hero roles totally forgotten.

  Wilma could hardly believe she pulled that body slam off without either her or Ursula getting hurt. There was no time to so
ak in the cheers. Ursula writhed around on the floor, doing a great job of pretending like she was in pain, but Wilma knew she only had a few more seconds to pull off her last move if she wanted it to look convincing.

  Without wasting another moment, she climbed the ring’s ropes, then threw her body into a backward somersault, before stretching out to land right on top of Ursula, for a perfect pin.

  And nobody had asked, but Wilma was pretty sure she just proved that when it comes to moonsaults, she-wolves do it better.

  “10…9…8…” the crowd started counting down, their voices a mix of shock and glee.

  Wilma could honestly call these the most exhilarating nine seconds of her entire life. And then came….

  “ONE!!!” the crowd called out while a few of the tryout girls sing-songed, “DING-DING-DING!”

  The next thing Wilma knew, Ursula and she were up on their feet, standing side by side as Ursula lifted Wilma’s hand in the air. As it turned out, Wilma had been wrong about this woman never smiling. She waved and blew kisses to the crowd, her face happy and red with exertion, even though she’d technically “lost.”

  “Hell of a show, black girl,” Ursula said, before turning Wilma around to face Bohdan.

  Bohdan, for his part, didn’t cheer along with the crowd. But his dark, sunken shark eyes flashed with a new interest as he gave Wilma a long up and down look. “I will need your real name,” he said eventually. “For the paychecks when you join our team.”

  His voice was so gravelly and severe, it took Wilma a moment to understand his meaning. Holy shit, he was offering her a job. Like, a real job.

  She couldn’t believe this was happening. To her. The black pack princess of Detroit, who’d never quite fit in anywhere.

  But it was happening. Actually happening. And Wilma's heart revved like a motorcycle engine as she said, “Thank you, Mr. Bohdan, sir! This is a dream come—”

  An arrow of pain shot up her spine, so sharp, it nearly doubled her over.

  Actually, it should have doubled her over. Was meant to, biologically speaking, since the unbearable urge to get down on all fours was the first phase of a full moon shift. But Wilma fought it. Breathing hard as her skin broke out into an instant sweat as the magnitude of what was happening to her body sank in.

  Oh Jesus! Oh Jesus! She was about to shift…right here in front of all these humans!

  2

  Myrna

  Viking Age Norway

  “By the Fenrir Wolf, do you never tire of defying me? Why are you here, Sister?”

  Myrna surged awake to the feel of her younger brother, Olafr’s wet nose on her forehead and the sound of her older brother, Fenrisson—or FJ as he was called by his family—scolding her.

  In a whisper of course. As furious as FJ was, he’d never want the other wolves to know his stubborn sister had defied her brother. For the countless time.

  Myrna sighed, giving herself a few seconds behind purposefully closed eyes. She’d known this would be her older brother’s response when she snuck back down the mountain and slipped in beneath the furs of her bedding bench late last night. Upon the arrival of Freya’s colorful lights, FJ had sent Myrna away with strict orders to stay hidden on the mountain with the rest of the women, children, and a handful of men either too feeble or essential to their kingdom village’s trade to be considered fighters.

  However, as the day passed, she had become too curious about why FJ had bid the rest of the kingdom warriors to stay behind in their village as opposed to taking the fight directly to their enemy as their father, the current Fenris and all of the Fenrises before him had done. Myrna could also no longer abide living in the same space as her fellow female villagers.

  Not because she was the Daughter of Fenris and therefore thought herself too good for them. But because she had no idea what to do with herself in the cave hideouts. She had no mate and no children, and at three and thirty winters, she was no longer considered of marriageable age. The males who had quickly put themselves in charge refused to allow her to help with the daily hunts. “Our Fenrir next would be unhappy with us if any harm were to come to you,” they had explained as if talking to a child and not a woman grown.

  Unfortunately, the she-wolves in charge of the cooking fires would also not abide her help. It had become well established over the years that while Myrna could fell a cow with one stroke of her hatchet, she had not inherited her mother’s talent for the cooking arts.

  So then she'd tried to join a night fire conversation with the other unheated she-wolves. But that had been a miserable exercise for them all. For with so much free time to gossip, the only theme the much younger she-wolves wished to talk upon was FJ’s possible wedding.

  Who could blame them really? Claiming to have had a night vision of a bride to the south, FJ had sent their parents to arrange for a bride the very next morning after the lights had appeared in their night sky. Not wanting to pass up the opportunity to finally marry off their most eligible but also most reluctant progeny, her parents had set off with almost laughable great speed to fulfill the request of the next fenrir of the North Wolves. And now all any of the unheated she-wolves could talk about was the wedding, which might very well bring an influx of eligible male wolves into the village.

  A few of their grandmothers had been first heated at the weeks' long wedding fest of Myrna’s own mother, so they had reason to be excited, even if the wedding was still many seasons away. However, there would be no match for Myrna “Ever the Maid” at her brother’s wedding festivities. Both Myrna and the rest of the unheated she-wolves, many less than half her age, knew that.

  Myrna had heard a few village women gossiping about how Myrna had been most likely cursed by Odin for her hubris after her rejection of the Jelling Prince seventeen winters ago. And she knew quite a few of these girls’ mothers were still bitter about having to settle for local wolves from their own and nearby villages as opposed to wolves from the more fertile lands of the South Wolves.

  Perhaps they still were. Not soon after Myrna had sat down amongst their gossiping daughters, the mothers, most of whom were the same age or even younger than Myrna, had found excuses to draw them away. As if Myrna’s ever-maidenhood were some manner of sickness that could be caught by a young unheated she-wolf, just by sitting near to her.

  Which left Myrna with little more to do than, as her time journeyed mother would say, than twiddle her thumbs. But also as her mother would say, forget that noise.

  Instead of staying put as she’d been told, she’d trekked back down the mountain to see if she might not be put to better use among FJ’s fighting force.

  However, FJ didn’t seem at all happy about her voluntary self-recruitment to his cause…whatever that cause might be. In truth, she was not certain still why she and the rest of the women had been sent away. The village had seemed peaceful enough when she returned to it under the cloak of dark last night.

  But now FJ railed on and on at her for returning until she gave up on the pretense of sleep and threw back her furs.

  “Where are you going?” FJ demanded when she rose from her longtime bed bench, gave her younger brother, Olafr, a pat of greeting on his shaggy head, and started walking toward the longhouse door without a further word.

  “To the toilet,” she replied, not bothering with a respectful tone everyone else in the village employed when speaking with their future fenrir. “If you wish to keep shouting at me, you may follow me outside.”

  It was a dark and grey morning, yet beautiful because Freya’s lights, what her mother oft referred to as the Aurora Borealis, could still be seen in colorful bloom in the sky. Most of the village slept, and for the first time in day tides, Myrna felt utterly at peace, as the cold wind rustled her thick red hair. She was glad to be back in her village, even if she had received little welcome from her older brother.

  But of course, her brother took her up on that invitation. She received a small respite while she crouched over the dug pit. But as soon as she
emerged from the pile of stones arranged in a half wall around a hole a few favners away from their longhouse, FJ started up again as if he had been holding his breath the entire time she’d been releasing her waters.

  “One reason. Give to me one reason I should not mate you off to the first widowed alpha who will have you before Papa returns,” he asked.

  Myrna froze, a shiver going down her back at the thought of being given away to one of the seemingly unending string of widowed alphas, who had started inquiring about her hand in allied marriage soon after she became too old to be considered a good prospect for heating.

  All of them had mates recently lost to childbirth, and they needed a new she-wolf to mind the pups left behind. But there was just something so disgusting about a male who still carried the mating scent of another. And though she still held hope to have children of her own someday—a very secret hope as she had no wish to become the butt of ever more villager jokes—she did not relish the thought of being acquired as little more than a pup-sitter for some poor she-wolf who had died in childbirth.

  Upon hearing her brother’s threat, she decided to as her mother would say, “fix her face” and “get rid of all the attitude,” before addressing him again.

  “Let me explain, FJ,” she said, reaching down to pet Olafr who’d come to stand between them as he always did whenever they got into a fight. Which was often. While they both loved their younger brother, Olafr, the brother whose human no one had seen in several generations of winters, FJ and Myrna found little else they could agree upon. They had always rubbed each other the wrong way. And she could just bet he would be more than happy to finally solve the problem of his stubborn little sister while their parents were away finding him a suitable bride.

  “There is naught to explain,” FJ answered, his handsome sand-colored face setting like stone, as the cold wind whipped through his braided beard and long red hair, which unlike hers, was silky, the same as their father’s. “Why are you no longer on the mountain with the other she-wolves and children? Why did you disobey me?”