Viking's Pride

by Holley Trent

  He would have bet his laptop that she was a Fallonite. How she’d ended up in Norseton, given the two groups’ contentious relationship during the time when she was born, Will couldn’t guess. There were some people he could ask, though.

  He found Ollie in the executive mansion’s garage, tuning up a motorcycle. The chieftain was a retired Air Force officer-turned mechanic. Apparently, the move to Norseton hadn’t cured him of the drive to fix things.

  “How goes it, Will? What can I do for you?”

  “I’m not here in a formal capacity, but a personal one.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Hear me out. Would you be able to discern that someone is a Fallonite just by being near them?”

  “No. Fallonites aren’t linked in that way. We have a general awareness of and connection to people we are closely related to, and we may be able to judge that a person is somehow psychic, but we wouldn’t necessarily be able to tell they’re a part of the group if we didn’t already know them. Why?” He tossed a socket wrench onto the counter and leaned onto the long, metal surface.

  “Fuck.” Will raked a hand through his hair and nudged his glasses up. “Erin Petersen. You know her?”

  “Chef’s daughter?” Ollie chuckled. “She could do with a bit of taming. What about her?”

  Will ground his back teeth a few beats. He knew Ollie didn’t mean anything by it. It was true that Erin was a bit scattered, but who could blame her? “Remember when I asked you about my dreams? They were about her.”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit. Trust me when I say I’m not unhappy about it, but now that we’re linked, I’m not getting from her what I expected.”

  “And you think she’s a Fallonite?”

  “I don’t know what else she could be. She’s a lousy telepath, but we’re similar enough that it’s obvious we’re from the same stock. From the moment she walked out of my apartment today, I’ve been in a cold sweat from anxiety, and I don’t think it’s just because I miss her, though I gotta say I like the way she looks in my space a hell of a lot.”

  “It’s her anxiety.”

  “Yeah. I think it is.”

  Ollie blew out a breath and rubbed the dark stubble on his jaw. “She’s what, twenty-two?”

  “Twenty-three.”

  “Okay. I’m trying to think of who I’m still on good terms with back in Fallon and who I could make some inquiries with. The group is small enough that some folks would probably remember everyone born in a particular year.”

  “I appreciate it. We can see if what you find out matches up with what her parents are telling her.”

  “If they’re telling her anything at all. I’ve never known Chef to voluntarily discuss his family.”

  “You never thought that was suspicious? Afótama love bragging about their kids.” It was some kind of weird Viking pastime, apparently. They all tried to one-up each other about how great their offspring were. His parents sure as shit did it. Will had always just rolled his eyes, knowing that if he ever had kids, he’d probably do the same damn thing.

  “I’m a Fallonite,” Ollie said. “I have a skewed perception of what’s normal for Afótama. You’d be better off asking Jody about that, or even Harvey.”

  “It’s not that serious.” Will picked up a couple of loose screws and jangled them in his palm. “Can I ask you one more question?”

  “What’s up?”

  “How do you stay away from her? When you feel like…like this?”

  “Who, Tess?”

  Will nodded.

  Ollie folded his arms over his broad chest and just shrugged.

  “It’s easy for you.”

  “No. It’s not. And I’m not gonna lie and tell you it’s gonna get easier in time, because it doesn’t. It started from the very first time I touched her.”

  “It’s amazing you don’t follow her around like a sad puppy.”

  “The compulsion is always there, don’t get me wrong. It niggles in my mind and tells me I need to be at her back, and let me tell you, that’s not typical for Fallonites. We don’t do that. We like having our space, as much as we can, and touch isn’t quite as big a deal for us.”

  “So it’s my fault for being Afótama.”

  Ollie chuckled. “That’s what I tell Tess, since she’s half. I tell her that all the neediness comes from her and Harvey, and I’m just going with the flow, but the truth is, there was a time when we were all pretty much the same. Our proclivities diverged when the two groups split off. You’re the touchers and the listeners. We’re the feelers and fighters. Who knows what’ll happen when we mix things back up? There is no normal.”

  Will put the screws back on the table and drummed his fingers against the surface. “You’ll let me know if you find out anything?”

  “Yeah. In the meantime, do yourself a favor and keep busy until you see her again. The waiting will drive you nuts, and sometimes, our women have a tendency to make us wait.”

  “Why?”

  “Fallonites are prideful. They don’t like asking for help.”

  “So I’m supposed to wait until she hits rock bottom before I drag her back?”

  “There is no supposed to, but let me tell you this—sometimes, we can’t fix things that are wrong with us until our blinders get knocked off. We Fallonites are guilty of ignoring our weaknesses until they become problems with us. It doesn’t matter how many people point them out. We have to be forced to confront them on our terms. So, if she’s having identity issues, I’m not sure there’s anything you can do to help her right now.”

  “That’s a big if. I’m only speculating and trying to come up with some excuse about why her psychic bits and pieces aren’t working as they should.”

  “Because you want her to fit in?”

  Will turned his hands over in concession. “I feel like it would make things easier for her, though, honestly, I don’t care one way or another how she fits.”

  “If it doesn’t bother you that she’s a square peg, make sure she knows that. If she’s anything at all like Tess, she’s going to need some convincing, and not when either of you are naked.”

  “Well, there goes my plan, then.”

  Ollie snorted. “Typical. I’ll call you if I find out anything. Keep your phone handy.”

  “Yep.”

  ___

  Erin wrested her backpack from beneath the pile of shoes in her closet and yanked the zipper open.

  The doorknob jiggled, and a heavy fist shook the door. “Come on, Erin. I think you’re overacting. If you really think about it, it’s not a big deal at all.”

  “Right,” she muttered. She rolled up a few pairs of jeans and some sweaters and nestled them into the bottom of the bag. Not a big deal. She had no identity, no history besides the one her parents had fed to her, and they thought that was not a big deal.

  She scoffed and tossed several pairs of socks into the backpack. She had to get out. To where, didn’t matter. She was just so angry—irate, even—that she needed to put some space between her and her—the Petersens. Will had been right. They weren’t her parents, at least not by blood. It shouldn’t have mattered so much, but the fact that it felt so wrong made her ache to leave. She had to clear her head and think things through.

  She needed to be out of touching and speaking distance from them, and far enough away that their forceful mental voices didn’t try to chip away at her mind and plead with her in that way that had always made her feel so fucking guilty just for being. Just for breathing.

  “We did a good thing,” her “mother” said. “You would have struggled growing up there, and we had so much we could give you.”

  But not freedom. And why not freedom, unless there was something else they didn’t want her to know? “What do you want, a gold star on your hand?” Erin asked. “Well, I’m fresh out.”

  A few bras, a few pairs of underwear, and she was all set. She just needed to find a way out of the community. If she got to the gate, the gua
rd would certainly let her out, but he’d probably call her parents, curious about where she was going on foot. Her plan was to hitch a ride on the main road, or just wait until one of the commuters left and catch a ride with him or her into the nearest town.

  She checked her purse for her wallet and phone, then slung her backpack over her shoulder, and squeezed though her bedroom window.

  She’d done it plenty of times as a teen, but as a grown woman, the maneuvering had a certain desperation about it. She slipped through the bushes at the back of the yard, sprinted up the alleyway, and broke into a full run when she hit the sidewalk.

  She didn’t look back until she’d reached the main avenue leading to the highway, and she didn’t slow until she got to the gates.

  “Fuck.”

  Jody was at the gate. More often than not, there was a werewolf on duty, but sometimes Jody and his uncle worked there in a pinch if all the wolves were out on other missions.

  Jody gave his head a slight shake, opened the gatehouse door, and pointed to the door on the other side of the small room.

  “No questions asked?”

  “Not my business. And your brain is loud, by the way. I don’t have to ask because you’re saying too much already.”

  “Shit.” Her cheeks burned so hot, she thought her ears might pop. Of course she was a telepathic “yeller,” though. She had to try harder to be heard than her Afótama peers. But, they weren’t supposed to hear her or her them. She wasn’t broken, just different.

  “Need a ride?”

  She let out a breath and rolled her tense shoulders. “Look, I don’t know where I’m going. I just need to untangle from the web for a while to see if it helps.”

  He nodded. “Be careful.”

  “I will.” She walked through the gatehouse, closed the door behind her—which Jody locked—and started running toward the sunset.

  She didn’t know where she’d end up, as long as it was away. She needed to think, and she couldn’t do it in Norseton.

  Not in a place where she couldn’t keep anything to herself, even when she tried.

  ___

  At Tess’s urging, Will turned his Jeep off the highway down a path leading to a private campground in the El Malpais area.

  “This is good practice.” She gave her chest a little thump and made a face. She’d been battling pregnancy heartburn for the entirety of the two-hour drive.

  Nadia—Tess’s first cousin and aide—in the backseat, grunted. “If you can track a Fallonite, you should be able to find our missing people.”

  “But we’re only able to do this because Will is joined with her. If they weren’t connected, we wouldn’t be able to get a lead on her.”

  “So, we’ll work through people who are connected to the missing people somehow, if there are any. I mean, it can’t hurt to try.”

  “I’m feeling a bit like a psychic bloodhound.”

  “Better a bloodhound than a bat-swinging wild woman like you were in days gone by.”

  “Shush.” Tess may have sounded annoyed, but she had a smile on her red lips and looked way too smug twirling her hair.

  The Afótama queen’s job had always been, in part, to bind their people and draw them back in when they spread too far from home. As the center of the web, she had the best psychic view of where everyone was, but there were degrees of separation. The more degrees there were between Tess and her clansperson, the harder it would be for her to locate them, especially if they’d been out of the community for a while. She was on the trail of her long-absent eldest brother, and had run into obstacle after obstacle because she couldn’t remember anything about Keith. She’d been kidnapped as a toddler before she’d developed any permanent memories of him. She’d tracked Erin’s proximity through Will. If she could find the right conduits, she could possibly do the same for her brother and the clanspeople who’d been taken against their wills.

  “Do you think she’s going to be pissed at me for tracking her like this?” Will asked. “It feels like an invasion of privacy.” He was more or less mentally needling her, sending out volley after volley of psychic darts in a wide net, and narrowing it the closer he got to her. If she wanted to, she could close herself off to him, but she probably didn’t know how…and he suspected, she didn’t truly want to.

  Tess let out a breath that made her lips sputter. “I don’t know. Depends on why she ran. I will say that Ollie or Harvey might have done the same thing had it been me.”

  “They would have done it for sure,” Nadia said.

  Will slowed the Jeep and steered carefully around what looked to be an ancient pothole. There was a group of cabins clustered at the tree line, and Tess confirmed that his girl was in one of those.

  “I think at this point, you know more than she does about herself,” Tess said. “I know that feeling, and I pity her for it. Be gentle.”

  “I’m not seeing where it’s a big deal. Her being a Fallonite doesn’t change anything.”

  “Doesn’t it?” Nadia caught his gaze in the rearview mirror. “You can’t deny that even after all these years, there’s a stigma. No one talks publicly, much, about it anymore because of Ollie, but many Afótama perceive the folks out in Fallon to be traitors. Their ancestors turned their backs on ours and pretty much left them for dead.”

  “Besides that”—Tess pointed to a fork in the path that led to the cabins at the far right of the cluster—“Fallonite women have a reputation of being mentally unstable.”

  “Is it true?”

  “No,” Nadia said. “Everyone there is equally unstable. Folks like Ollie and his friend Jeff are just better at self-regulating.”

  “I don’t think Erin has any self-regulation problems.”

  “Neither do I,” Tess said. “But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t think badly of herself for where she was born or who she was born to.”

  Ollie was able to ferret out was that Erin was born to a couple of teen parents. The Petersens had encountered them during a drive through Nevada. Erin’s mother hadn’t planned on giving up the baby, but the Petersens convinced her that the Arnolds wouldn’t be able to provide for her. Four months later, Mrs. Petersen returned to Nevada and picked up Erin.

  That hadn’t seemed particularly deceitful. What did that was Mrs. Petersen pretending to be pregnant during those last four months.

  Why she would pretend to be pregnant while so many people in the community were pro-adoption, Will couldn’t even begin to speculate.

  As Will slowed to a stop near the end of the path, Nadia leaned between the front seats. “Do you want us to stay, or drive back to Norseton and get you later?”

  He killed the engine and pulled up the parking brake. “Come back. Being stranded suits me fine for the time being.”

  “Cool.” Tess stabbed her seatbelt release and reached for her door handle. “I’m going to tell you something, though. Friendly advice from your friend Tess.”

  “My friend Tess, huh?”

  Nadia snickered and pushed open the left, rear passenger door.

  Tess hopped down and made her way around the front of the Jeep. She leaned into the doorway, wearing the knavish smile that always seemed to make her chieftains cringe, and it made Will do so as well.

  “Your friend Tess says that if you make Erin run, Tess will be very, very pissed. My genetic programming is to draw my people in, not to send them scattering like struck bowling pins at the first sign of threat.”

  “I’m not a threat, Tess.”

  “But she might think you are. Through you, I can feel that she’s afraid and confused. She doesn’t know what her place is. You make sure she understands that if she feels at home in Norseton, then that’s her place. Ótama’s wish has always been to bring all the groups back together. Some say it’s not possible because we’ve grown apart so much, but I say I’ll make it happen, even if I have to convince one person at a time. If you make her run, I will make your life in Norseton a living hell. I will make sure no one sells you coff
ee. So help me, I have the power.”

  Will laughed. “My parents said you were a mess. I didn’t want to believe them.”

  She shrugged. “I am what I am, and remember, I’m half Fallonite.”

  “Any parting shots, Queenie?”

  “Just do what’s natural. Your job is to…keep her from hurting.” Her smile waned, and she added in a softer voice, “You may not be able to fix her, but you can make the hurt stop.”

  “I hope so. I’ll call you.”

  “Take your time.” She grinned again. “I’m gonna have fun driving your Jeep through the desert. “My chieftains won’t let me have one. They say I’m reckless. Where on earth could they have gotten such an idea?”

  It was apparently Nadia’s turn to cringe.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Shit.” Erin stepped back from the peephole and wrung her hands.

  “Honey, let me in. I can tell you’re right there.”

  “What do you want, Will?”

  “You’re hurting, and that hurts me. Will you let me in so I can help?”

  “How did you find me?”

  “Tess and Nadia helped.”

  “They did? Why would they do that?”

  “Because in spite of where you were born, the people in the executive mansion consider you to be an Afótama clansperson.”

  In spite of.

  He knows.

  But of course he knew. She couldn’t keep such a thing a secret, even if she hadn’t said anything—not with her head being as loud as it was. And Will was a bulldog of a researcher. He could find out things about her she hadn’t even thought to ask.

  “Erin, please let me in.”

  “I don’t know what you think you can do.”

  “I’m not trying to do any particular thing. You’re my lady, and I really need to touch you right now. Please.”

  Touch. The word snapped tingles down her spine and over her skin. She squeezed her hands into tight fists and let the pain of her nails digging into the flesh of her palms clear her concentration. She wanted to touch him, too, and be touched by him. But she’d left Norseton so she could sort things out without interference. He would get in the way of that.