His mother’s words were practically drowned out by the loudness of Rafesson’s stare.
“What?” Rafe asked, turning to face the son who had been nothing but openly hostile to him since the moment they met. “If you have something to say, turn back into a human and say it.”
Rafesson gracefully leaped down from the couch and came to stand in front of his father. Rafe thought for a few seconds that his oldest son would actually turn back into human, but Knud came crashing back into the living room, Dale chasing behind him.
“Come back here, you little shit!” Dale yelled at him.
“Honey, don’t call him that!” Erylace said, looking truly appalled.
Knud barked in response to both his grandparents and it almost sounded like laughter.
Rafe said, “Knud.”
Just that one word, and Knud skidded to a halt.
“All of you, it’s time for bed. Go up to your room. There’s only one bed in there, though, so you’ll either have to share, or turn back into humans, so we can put you in rooms of your own.”
As he’d often seen them do throughout the long day, Nago’s and Knud’s little heads swung toward their older brother.
Rafesson gave Rafe a long, considering look before he broke off and headed to the stairs, his brother’s right behind him.
Nago brushed against his grandmother’s legs on the way out like a cat, as if to thank her for the cookies. And Knud threw his grandfather a happy bark. Then they all disappeared up the stairs and into the gender-neutral bedroom Rafe had designated for what he’d thought would be the one child he’d be bringing home from the Viking Age.
“Those pups are going to be a hand full,” Dale observed in the wake of their departure. “Maybe Erylace and me ought to move back into the main house.”
It only got worse from there.
Monday, the triplets not only got out of the house, but made it all the way to the town square where they proceeded to kill and eat a squirrel in front of the entire town. And that was how Wolf Springs found out that not only had Rafe gone back in time, but he’d also brought back three wolf cubs, all of them his, with a 50/50 chance that they were completely feral.
On Tuesday, she-wolves from far and wide started showing up at his door, assuming the presence of the three wolves without their mother meant Rafe was now eligible again. The crowd had gotten so bad, his mother had been forced to go out and explain to the women that, yes, Alisha was alive, but no, she wouldn’t be joining Rafe at the mansion until further notice. When? Well, certainly before the wedding. And that was how Wolf Springs found out he would soon be getting married to the she-wolf who’s betrayal had been so large and epic, it had become the stuff of legend in their royal circles.
On Wednesday, Old Cletus Chandler was out for a walk when he heard what sounded like a woman singing Michael Jackson songs from the basement of Chloe’s old cottage. He went straight to the kingdom mansion and requested permission to get in contact with a human ghostbuster.
“Chloe’s foster mom, Myrna loved Michael Jackson, so I’m pretty sure it’s gotta be her, looking for Chloe—she wouldn’t know Chloe got taken back in time by that Viking,” he told Rafe, while sitting in one of the kingdom office guest chairs. His eyes widened. “Ooh, do you think we ought to get one of those seers instead? Somebody who can say, ‘Hey Myrna! Chloe ain’t here anymore. Scram!’”
“It’s not Myrna,” Rafe assured him, wondering why his father had never warned him about some of the nuttier aspects of being an alpha king. “And we don’t need to call a ghostbuster or a seer or any human.”
“Nope, nope, that’s incorrect,” Cletus informed him with the authority of a wolf who’d been steadfastly watching horror movies since the seventies. “You gotta pounce on these spirit beings early, or else they take an ugly turn. Start moving things around and possessing the nearby children.”
“It’s not a ghost,” Rafe said.
“You don’t know that for sure,” Cletus said. “I think we should get in there and at least check it out.”
Rafe drummed his fingers on his desk. “We don’t need to check it out, because it’s. not. a. ghost.”
Cletus thought about this. “So you think it’s an angel then? A Michael Jackson-loving angel? Seriously?” he said this with a roll of his eyes, like thinking whatever dwelled in Chloe’s basement was an angel was so much crazier than his knowing for sure it was a ghost.
“No, it’s a guest. A guest of the kingdom who’s staying at Chloe’s.”
Cletus scrunched up his wrinkled face. “But why was she in the basement? Doc Fisher took the washer and dryer out years ago to use at the clinic, and the only other thing down there is that custom turning cage of Chloe’s…”
And of course, Alisha’s parents chose that moment to appear in the office’s doorway.
“Cletus, it’s time for you to go,” he told the old man. “I have other business to attend to.”
But then Cletus slapped his hands together and said, “Oh, I get it! That’s where you’re keeping Queen Alisha. Caged up in Chloe’s basement, because… why exactly are you doing that?”
Rafe looked past Cletus’s shoulder at Alisha’s aghast parents. And that was how Wolf Springs and Alisha’s parents found out he had his fiancée locked away in Chloe’s basement cage.
19
Less than twenty-four hours after returning to her time, Alisha found herself engaged to Rafe.
She still didn’t understand exactly how it had happened. One minute she was flossing her teeth, and the next there was Rafe outside her cage.
She quickly pulled the floss out of her mouth. “Hi,” she said to him. “I was just enjoying the feel of flossing with waxed string as opposed to a piece of thread. It’s so nice not to have to worry about cutting up my gums. And thanks for the clothes by the way.” She indicated the bulky Broncos sweat shirt and sweat pants she’d found in the chest of drawers. “They’re so light and comfortable. You know, I just never appreciated cotton the way I should have until I had to wear wool all the time.”
Rafe just stared at her before saying, “Did you really mean it when you made that vow back in Norway?”
She shook her head, confused. “What vow?”
“The one you made in Old Norse, about marrying me before the next full moon.”
“Wait, how did you know about that?”
“Fenris told me before we left.”
Alisha shook her head, thinking of the king who’d never seen a sitcom, but seemed to have the meddler trope down pat. “Of course he did.”
“He probably assumed you wouldn’t tell me. He was right.”
He was definitely right. Alisha would have gone to her grave without letting Rafe in on the content of her vow if it had been up to her. “In all fairness, there hasn’t been a lot of time for full confessions. I mean, last night, we didn’t exactly... talk.”
Rafe looked away, and she felt a flare of his anger and frustration go off inside of her, as if it were her own. He’d grown hard inside his jeans just thinking of what had transpired last night. Somehow she knew this. It was like she could feel the truth of it, even without any evidence. “Do you, ah… actually want to marry me now?”
His anger pulsed. “Answer the question, Alisha. Do you have any intention of keeping the vow you made in Norway?”
She treaded around in her confusion for a bit before saying. “I guess? Okay, if it means I can get out of this cage and return to my boys then, sure, I’ll marry you.”
Rafe stepped away from the bars. “Fine,” he said
And that was all he said before walking up the stairs and out of the basement, closing the door firmly behind him. He didn’t look back. Not even once. Leaving Alisha more than a little befuddled.
That one awkward exchange was all the warning she got, before Erylace came down the stairs a few minutes later, with a folding chair for her to sit on outside Alisha’s cell, and an armful of bridal magazines.
This was not how A
lisha imagined planning her wedding—okay, she actually hadn’t given any thought to planning her wedding, but if she’d been one of those she-wolves who did, she certainly wouldn’t have seen herself doing it from inside a jail cell.
But at least it gave her something to do. She had no desire to revisit the soul-sucking despair of the day before, and she welcomed the distraction. Also, she enjoyed spending time with Erylace, even if she wasn’t exactly forthcoming when Alisha asked her about Rafe’s plans for letting her out.
“Well, surely he’ll have to let you out for the wedding,” his mother answered. But she sounded more hopeful than certain.
“I just want to make sure we’re not planning a wedding that will have to take place in this basement.”
“No, Rafe already approved us having it at the Wolf Springs resort—ooh, look at this dress!” She held up a picture of dress with a structured bodice and a full skirt. “This would look great on you, don’t you think?”
“Yes, it’s very pretty,” Alisha said, her eyes searching Erylace’s face for clues of how she really was feeling about her son getting married to the she-wolf he currently had locked away in his ex-fiancée’s basement.
“By the way, Chloe told me to tell you she misses you.”
Erylace turned toward her with a big smile, seeming relieved to be off the subject of Rafe’s letting her out of this cage. “Did she really? Tell me all about Chloe.”
So Alisha did. She then went on to tell her about Chloe’s children. “Well, she has three pups now. Her youngest, Olafr. He’s, um… been in wolf form since the age of five and he’s never turned back into a human as far as I know.”
Erylace’s face fell. In modern times, a wolf that couldn’t turn back into his human was considered intellectually disabled, the wolf form of mental retardation.
“But it’s all right. Wolves in Chloe’s time are taught to keep their human with them when they change. They’re not dangerous in wolf form unless they need to be. Chloe and he are very close. He follows her everywhere… and the village seems to accept him as is. And there’s Myrna. She’s just like Chloe. A great cook, really sweet girl. Fenris is already getting pledge request from his chieftains, and a couple from other Scandinavian kings.”
“And how about F.J.? How is he?”
“Oh, F.J, he’s great. Such a good kid. Strong and brave like his father, yet intelligent and caring like his mother. My boys worshipped him like a hero, and if any of them turn out half as wonderful as him, I’ll be happy.”
“That’s so good to hear,” Erylace said. “I’ve thought about all of you a lot, ever since Rafe told us where you’d gone.”
“I thought about you, too,” Alisha said, a wave of guilt passing over her. “And I’m sorry I kept your grandkids from you. I know that must have difficult, especially considering Rafe’s an only child.”
A shadow passed over Erylace’s face, and she went back to the magazine, pretending to search for another dress to show Alisha, but after five page flips she asked, “He didn’t hurt you, did he? When you… re-bonded—please tell me he didn’t force himself on you.”
“No, it was consensual. Very consensual,” she answered quickly, surprised by how defensive she felt on Rafe’s behalf. “I think he’s angry it happened. If he’d let our mating scent lapse, he probably could have sued for full custody of the boys.”
“Yes, well…” Erylace flipped through a few pages of the bridal magazines. “If that was his plan, I doubt it would have worked. Cubs need their mother. No, a wedding is what’s best—for both of you.”
“If a wedding’s the best solution, and I agreed to let that best solution play out, then why am I still in here?” Alisha asked. “Why hasn’t he let me out? Why won’t he let me see the boys?”
Erylace stopped flipping pages. “I know how this must make him look to you. Even worse than before. What kind of wolf imprisons his mate then asks her to marry him, then still doesn’t let her out when she says yes?”
Alisha kept her mouth closed, because that was exactly what she’d been thinking. That she might have just agreed to marry a sociopath.
“Rafe did not take you’re leaving well,” Erylace said. “Actually, that’s an understatement. He went mad wolf for quite a while. He shut himself up in the kingdom house but refused to come out or to let his father and me visit. Only Grady was allowed to see him. Yet, Rafe wouldn’t do any of the work of the kingdom either. His father was forced to come out of retirement and conduct the kingdom’s business from our back house. This went on for two years, Alisha.”
Erylace gave up the pretense of looking through the magazine and closed it. “Then one day he knocked on our door and told us he was ready to be king again. He let a cleaning crew into the kingdom house, started receiving visitors. It was like he had made a decision—we thought he was ready to move on, but then he announced he’d no longer be using Grady to fight his challengers.”
Alisha’s breath caught upon hearing this. There was a reason Grady was such a large and nasty piece of work. Beta sheriffs were the first line of defense against would be challengers to a throne. By council law, a challenger first had to fight a king’s beta to the death, just to gain the right to challenge the king himself. So the bigger and tougher the beta, the better. Some state kings, like her father, had chosen betas so well, they’d never had to fight a challenger. In fact, the Alaska line had remained uninterrupted for nearly one hundred years, her patriarchal ancestors had been so good at choosing betas.
For a king to publicly announce he would take on all challengers himself was the equivalent of openly declaring a death wish. It would have brought out the ambitious wolves in droves. There was a story she taught in her African-American Wolf History seminar of a Mississippi King whose she-wolf and two sons had been killed by hunters on a full moon night. He’d fired his beta in a fit of rage and despair, publicly and in front of witnesses. The challengers had started coming forward before the sheriff could even clean out his desk, but the king had not recanted his words. Less than forty-eight hours later, the Mississippi alpha came to a brutal end, beaten by a wolf whose line still ruled over the state to this day. Suicide by wolf, she’d called it back then, chuckling along with her students over her clever play on words.
But she wasn’t laughing now, thinking of how despondent Rafe must have been to willingly take on any who wished to challenge him.
However, Rafe was still alive, she realized, still in one piece above ground. Which meant he had won. Every fight against what would have certainly been a long line of challengers. Her mind boggled, and suddenly it didn’t seem like such a miracle that he’d been able to take down two Vikings without so much as breaking a sweat.
“That was a terrible, fearful time for us, Alisha. Eventually Rafe won enough fights that the number of wolves willing to challenge him petered out. But we lived in fear that one day, a challenger he couldn’t beat would come along and we’d lose our only son.”
The terror they must have felt haunted Erylace’s eyes, and Alisha felt compelled to reach through the bars and grab her future mother-in-law’s hand. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I never would have wanted you to go through that, and I’m sorry for my part in it. I honestly left here thinking he’d move on.”
“He didn’t move on. From what I could see, he couldn’t move on.” Erylace took her hand back, her only indication that she felt any bitterness toward Alisha. Then she pasted on a regal smile like a rainbows and unicorn Band-Aid for the painful conversation they’d just had. “But you’re back now with heirs to spare and that’s all that matters!”
Erylace promised to return the next morning leaving her with the homework of picking out dresses to try on. But Alisha couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d revealed about Rafe. Was he really that angry about not getting the two-state kingship? Or was it that she’d crossed him and he couldn’t do anything about it? Or was it… something else that had made him flip out for nearly five years straight after she left?
As much as she missed the boys, it was Rafe she wanted to see now. She had so many questions. But when the basement door opened the next morning, it wasn’t Rafe who came down the stairs. However, it wasn’t Erylace either.
Grady appeared, putting her in mind of a bull as he made his way down the narrow steps… and he was followed by her mother.
The sight of Wilma after so many years froze Alisha in place. The queen, if possible, looked even more iron-willed than when Alisha had seen her last, while defying her mother openly across a dinner table.
In fact, Wilma stared at Alisha with the same angry recrimination she’d worn on her face that night, and it felt to Alisha like they were resuming the conversation right where they’d left off, as if it had simply been put on pause for half a decade.
“Let me into her cell,” the Alaska Queen said without looking at Grady. Then, when he didn’t move, she turned to him and repeated the command.
Grady signed, probably something about not being allowed, but Wilma narrowed her eyes and said, “I’m her mother. Don’t make me snatch those keys off of you.”
Grady seemed to weigh the situation and in the end, unlocked the cage before heading back up the steps and leaving them to it.
After Grady left, Wilma stepped into the cell… and slapped the hell out of Alisha. So hard, Alisha grabbed her cheek, tasting blood. Then, just as suddenly, she found herself gathered up into her mother’s arms, Wilma’s tears warm against her face.
The argument that had been on pause for five years ended with Alisha wrapping her arms around her mother and saying, “I’m sorry, Mama. I’m so sorry.”
“I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again,” her mother said with an ugly sob.
“I’m right here, Mama,” Alisha assured her mother, hugging her even tighter.
Her mother’s reaction made complete sense now that Alisha was a mother herself. Back in Norway, she’d been on edge at the prospect of her boys going to the forest without her for three weeks. She couldn’t even begin to fathom the pain her mother had been through these last years, with Alisha gone to a place the queen could never hope to reach.
Wolf and Prejudice (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 2) Page 15
