Her Viking Wolves: 50 Loving States, Michigan (2 page)

So my parents married out of duty. Then less than a year after putting my mom in the ground, my father married the sister he’d wanted in the first place. And he only waited that long because it’s against Lupine Council law to mate an unheated she-wolf. So he had to wait for a special medical dispensation to marry my hot-ass aunt.

So pretty much since birth, I’ve had to put up with my step-aunt Evelyn trying to recode me into the daughter she’d never be able to have. Aunt Evelyn puts a ton more effort into presenting herself in ways males of our species appreciate than my mother ever did. She’s also very social and flows seamlessly between conversations with biker wives and the comparatively refined regular Michigan she-wolves, like Iggle’s mom.

And for all my life she’s treated me like some kind of less-than reflection of her. Like if she pokes and prods hard enough, she’ll crack the protective coating of my jeans and sweatshirts to reveal the sexy and socially adept Tee lurking just below the surface. Otherwise, she’d have to finally accept I’m nothing more than the yarn-locked nerd she shoved into a leather evening gown for this party in order to pretend I’m worthy of someone as handsome and respectable as the Dakota prince.

Speaking of which…

“Why are you yelling at me?” I ask, staring at my feet. “It’s not like Kyle is doing a much better job. I don’t even see him here.”

Evelyn looks around with a frown. “He’s probably in your brother’s rooms playing that damn
Viking Shifters
game of yours.”

I perk up. “Really? You think so?”

My aunt’s eyes slit so hard, it seems like it should be accompanied by an angry sound effect. “It’s not anything to be proud of, Tiara.”

Another thing I don’t love about my aunt. She insists on calling me by my full, super-ridiculous name as opposed to “Tee” like everybody else.

“I’ll go find them,” I offer, hoping to mollify her…and make my escape. Playing She-Wolf’s bestselling game to date with my twin and my fiancé seems like just the thing to save an otherwise useless night.

“You do that,” she says. “But come right back afterwards, and bring that damn brother of yours, too. All this money we paid for this party and we got the Prince of Detroit missing in action.”

I leave her grumbling, and make my way up the stairs to my brother’s wing of the house on the second floor. It seems unfair that she’s mad at Clyde, even though he’s done almost every single thing our dad has ever asked of him, including setting his nerdy sister up with one of his best friends from college.

And as for Kyle, the truth is he barely knows me. I remember our ten months of dating as mostly IM conversations with the occasional date thrown in. With me mumbling my way through answers to his questions, and him responding with what I can only guess is some kind of special North Dakota brand of relentless cheer. The truth is, I don’t blame him for preferring to spend time playing my video game with my cool-as-hell brother instead of hanging out with me at our engagement party. I know that’s what I’d rather be doing right now.

I can hear the game blasting as I approach Clyde’s door, along with the groaning of fallen shifters. One round, I decide. One round of
Viking Shifters
and then I’ll go back down to the party and try like hell to pretend I’m a shifter princess and not a super-awkward videogame developer in disguise.

Throwing the door open, I call out “Okay, I’m playing the…”

Only to stop dead in my tracks, the word “winner” falling pitifully from my mouth.

Because yes, the video game is on. But the groans aren’t coming from the game.

They’re coming from Kyle, the Prince of Dakota, who my brother, the Prince of Detroit, currently has bent over one of his gaming chairs. And he’s doing something to him that would definitely get us banned on several console platforms if we ever dared feature it in any of our shifter games.

Clyde’s eyes go wide and he abruptly stops his enthusiastic pumps into my fiancé’s backside when he sees me standing wide-eyed in the doorway.

But Kyle’s eyes are closed and he doesn’t notice me, or maybe he’s just too far gone to care.

“Oh fuck! Oh God, don’t stop, baby! Don’t stop!”

“Kyle,” my brother says.

“You fuck this ass so good. Oh baby, you don’t know how much I’ve missed you. How much I’ve missed this!”

“
Kyle,”
my brother says again, his voice a shade louder.

“What? Why did you…” my fiancé whines as he finally opens his eyes…and registers my presence in the doorway.

Now it’s his turn to trail off.

“…stop?”

“
F
J
…”

The gray eyes of Fenrisson, Ever the Man, come open in an instant, the woman’s whispered voice still ringing in his ears. She does not call him by either of his true names, however, neither Fenrisson nor Fenris Next. Instead she uses his
barn nafn
—his child name—the one he is called by none but his mother, siblings, and Aunt Alisha, a woman who left their land along with her three young and her fated mate nearly twenty winters ago—the last time Freya’s lights could be seen in their land.

Yet it is this name he has woken to ever since the coming of Freya’s mating lights. The lights his Aunt Bera, the pack’s wise woman, predicted so many winters ago. The lights she said would usher in an enemy unlike any they had ever known.

“Come they will under Freya’s purple lights in the five-and-thirty winter of our Fenris not yet. An enemy who will kill many of our wolves and give final harm to Olafr’s human. And will they the future of our Fenris and his queen take.”

He understands little more of this prophecy now than he did when his aunt first spake it to he and his brother. They had been mere boys of eight and five winters the night she called them over to speak with her by the dim longhouse fire.

However, he is five-and-thirty winters now. And just as his aunt foretold, the lights have come for the first time in many winters. And does Freya’s blessing—purple this time—light the sky above.

Not that any of their village wolves were much enjoying the lights this year. Not only because their father had finally given in to his mother and bade his wolves to worship the Christian God as opposed to the fertility goddess who sent her sky lights to remind them to mate and be merry. But also because Fenrisson, Ever the Man, had sent every woman and child to the safety of the mountains as soon as the lights appeared.

Of course the remaining males, many of whom chose still to celebrate the lights with rutting, gave great complaint. But Fenrisson, Ever the Man, chose to ignore their many lamentations. So determined was he to keep the prophecy from unfolding.

Besides his brother, Olafr, Ever the Wolf, had given up both his boy and his man to keep the prophecy at bay. The very least their warrior males could do was forgo their copulating for a fortnight.

Yet it would seem that despite his noble spirit, Fenrisson is not immune to the affects of Freya’s lights. Every morn since their coming has he woken with the strange female’s voice in his ear, and a dagger painfully throbbing between his legs.

He wonders if the mysterious voice and his morning cockstand are a punishment from the Norns, the three sisters of Fate. They do not look kindly upon mortals who attempt to thwart destiny, and have been known to wreak havoc on those unlucky enough to get caught.

Fenrisson rubs a weary hand over his eyes, and finds himself for the first time hoping his parents, who he had sent away on a false mission to find him a bride, do in fact return with a mate. Fenrisson has never wanted for a wife, but he would be most pleased to lie now with a willing female, human or she-wolf. Anything to rid his mind and body of that cursed voice.

“We have a problem.”

Another voice—this one inside his head—calls his attention away from the female who invaded his dreams. Fenrisson peers further into the darkness and makes out the shape of Olafr’s great red wolf standing quietly before him. His gray eyes glowing in the gloom, as if he has only been waiting for his older brother to wake.

Fenrisson rises from his sleeping bench beside the hearth of his pack’s longhouse. The building, usually full with family, is almost empty save for a handful of young male cousins, warriors who will serve them well in the coming fight.

“Are you well Olafr, or do you too suffer dreams of Fates unknown?”

Their Brother Bond has always been strong, but as of late did it seem especially powerful, like an unseen twining that bound them even more fast. It would not surprise Fenrisson if he and his brother had also begun sharing dreams.

But Olafr’s answer soon comes inside his head:
“Nay, wolves dream of naught but rabbits.”

“What brings you to my bedside so early in morn, then?”
Fenrisson asks, the thought of their coming enemy humbling his cock as sure as cold water.

Olafr turns his great head to the sleeping benches on the women’s side of the longhouse. All should be empty now since he gave the order for the village women to remove themselves and the children to safety on the nearby mountain.

Yet Fenrisson can clearly see the outline of a small female sleeping upon one bench, her tightly coiled red hair bursting from beneath a pile of sheepskins like wild flame.

“Myrna!”

“
L
et me explain
, FJ!”

“There is naught to explain,” he answers his sister, voice grim as the dirty snow beneath their feet.

They stand outside the longhouse, upwind from the toilet pit, with Olafr standing between them like a fur-covered diplomat attempting to keep the peace.

“Why are you no longer on the mountain with the other she-wolves and children? Why did you disobey me?”

“Because I understand not why you have asked me to go with the others!” she answers, her dark brown eyes—an exact match of their mother’s—shining with indignation.

“Myrna, my word is law,” he answers, hardly believing he must explain this to his sister who knows he will be her fenrir when their father steps down.

However, his sister, who has truly earned the nickname, Myrna, Ever the Maid, for her stubborn refusal to marry any wolf their father would bring before them, merely makes the disgusted spitting sound she learned from their mother. “Only because our father is not here is your word law!”

“That matters not now. Our father is away and our enemy could come at any time.” He points again to the mountain looming high behind their small village. “You will obey me and return to the mountain with the other women and children.
Now
.”

The mention of a coming enemy gives his sister pause. But only briefly.

“Our father has taught me to fight well,” she insists. “If he were here, he would let me face whatever enemy you
claim
is coming.”

Now Fenrisson’s eyes narrow. “This enemy is not imaginary, Sister. And Father taught you to fight, yes, but only so you might defend yourself in the absence of your male folk. If you return to the mountain now, there will be no need of such defense.”

Myrna juts her small chin into the air, her light brown face ablaze with defiance. Despite her small height, in that moment, with her fierce eyes and her wild red curls blowing in the wind, she looks to him like a Valkyrie from the old tales.

“But why did you send all the women and children away?” she demands in their mother’s tongue. “Why are you making ready for battle in Mother and Father’s absence? Father did not give word about any of this before he left.”

“No, he did not,” Fenrisson answers, also in their mother’s bold and tenacious language. “Because he did not know we would need to defend ourselves.”

Which is partially his fault. Over the years, he had thought much over how to convince his father of what must be done to prepare for this day, but there were too many unknown outcomes to risk him knowing.

If his father believed him, he would insist on leading his soldiers into the fight and would have his future taken away, as their great-aunt predicted. If his father did not believe him, Fenrisson might never have been able to convince him and his mother to embark on a long land journey to find him a mate. In the end, Fenrisson decided he must send his parents away to ensure their great-aunt’s prophecy did not come true.

“It was the only way to make sure he and mother survive,” he says to Myrna now.

“Survive what?” Myrna asks, looking very like their mother as she shakes her head. “What do you think we need to defend ourselves from?”

“
We
need to defend ourselves,” he says, pointing to his chest and then to Olafr. “
You
need to hide.”

“Why does
he
get to stay?” Myrna demands, jerking her head towards their brother, her arms crossed tightly in front of her wool tunic. “He is ever the wolf and cannot so much as raise a sword!”

Fenrisson exchanges a much-aggrieved look with his brother.

“Cease doing that!” Myrna very nearly screeches. “You have oft behaved as if you share a secret. Tell me, what is going on? And why do you permit Olafr to fight and not me?!”

“Myrna, I will not argue these petty points with you—”

“They are not petty—!”

“I must prepare the village to fight—”

“Fight
who
? Who could possibly pass through the inlet or come over the mountains without us knowing? Who would dare? You know what? You don’t even have to answer that, as our mother would say. In truth, if you are certain there is an enemy coming, I believe you. But I insist on fighting, too!”

Now it is Fenrisson’s turn to shake his head in the way of their mother. “I cannot. I would not lose you—”

“You will
not
lose me,” Myrna insists, her wide eyes beseeching him to believe her.

He hesitates and looks to Olafr. Olafr puts his nose to the ground, as if he also searches for the best path forward. It is true Myrna has no part in their aunt’s vision, but it is also true neither of them wishes to place her in harm’s way—

Three short horn blasts shatter the gray morning. And argument forgotten, the siblings look toward the mountain watchtower and then back to one another.

One short blast means travelers approach the village by sea via the inlet.

One long blast and two short ones means a new wolf has come via the time gates atop the mountain.

But three short blasts is something they have only heard tale of until now. This signal has not been given since the time of their father’s father, when he defeated the last north wolf tribe who did not wish to call him fenrir, by mating with their only princess. Yet despite the signal’s long disuse, they know without a doubt what it means.

Enemies approach.

But from where? Fenrisson looks to the left and right but sees nothing. The inlet is frozen over. And if attackers marched on them via the mountains, he would certainly have had earlier warning, as it takes days to reach the village by land through the single pass connecting them to the mainlands of the North.

From all around, male wolves spill from their huts and longhouses with swords, clubs, and axes in hand.

Shouts of confusion go up because it is still dark and even with their wolf vision, they can see no ships in the frozen sea, nor any armies marching through the mountain pass.

“Come they will under Freya’s purple lights in the five-and-thirty winter of our fenrir not yet. An enemy who will kill so many of our wolves and fell Olafr’s human. And will they the future of our fenrir and his queen take.”

Aunt Bera’s words once again float through his mind, and he notices Olafr sniffing the air toward the east. Olafr, so long a wolf, has a nose keener than any other in their village.

But now he himself also smells it. A foreign scent, sharp and acrid like fire and brimstone, and it comes from the forest that lines the east side of the village. The forest that stands between his village and a range of mountains so large and onerous, no one should have been able to climb them. Especially in mid-winter.

But then there comes a terrible flapping sound. Like the wing beats of a flock of birds. But deeper. And slower. And much, much louder.

Suddenly the dark purple morning is cast completely in black. As if a god has cupped a hand over their village, blocking out the light. But no, it be not a god…

With his heart inside his throat, Fenrisson, Ever the Man, looks up.

And in the sky he spies a strange and terrifying sight. Winged serpents! At least twenty of them, each longer from head to tail than two of himself, the tallest Viking in the village.

“Oh…my…God!” Myrna cries beside him in their mother’s language, her defiance giving away to true horror.

And inside his head, does his brother say,
“The enemy in no longer coming. For they are already here.”