“My enemies were not vanquished in full this day. Their leader, my cousin. who I also did smell, ran as a rabbit would when he did see his first three followers fall under my sword.” He adjusted the animal cloak at his shoulders. “Also, though I am not pleased with you this day, I would not be without a mate or my pup in the winters to follow, so you will stay.”
She shook her head. Though the fox fur was now protecting her against the cold, she could feel her heart icing over. “Fine, misery it is then.”
If he got that this was a reference back to the quote about keeping his she-wolf happy if he wanted to be happy, he didn’t acknowledge it. And they walked the rest of way down the mountain in a silence even colder than the harsh winter air.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
WHEN
they descended from the mountain into his small village, his people spilled out of their pit houses, longhouses, and shops to watch them make their way down the village’s main thoroughfare to Fenris’s own longhouse.
It was much the way he had envisioned it when he had still been well pleased with Chloe. Men and women alike beheld her with great awe, and a few of the children came forward to touch her skin, as if to check if it were covered in paint that might come off. North people were traders by their very nature, and thus, the man who returned from abroad with the most exotic treasure, was the one they talked about when it came time to tell stories around the fire.
He could tell just by seeing the looks on the faces of his villagers that many stories would be told around many fires this night about the new queen.
Many called out to them, and a few even followed behind them, not wishing their story of beholding the Fenris enter the village with his new queen to end just yet. But only his fastest friend and beta wolf, Randulfr, fell into step beside them.
Even though Randulfr was a head shorter than Fenris, his old friend looked more the king than he at the moment, with his red hair freshly combed and dressed as he was in a cloak made of a brown bear they felled two winters ago, as opposed to the gatekeeper’s scraps which Fenris now wore on his own back.
“So ‘twas true you did avail yourself of the fated mates spell as your aunt did say when we wondered after your disappearance. I will confess I did not believe the sorceress’s words to be true and was set to organize a search if you were not returned within two moons.”
“You would not have found me, as I had been taken away to a land very far from this one.” Fenris had already decided on the trip down the mountain not to talk of his adventures through time, lest his followers would seek the spell for themselves, if only to see, too, the wonders of which he spoke.
“However, treachery was involved in my invoking the spell. While preparing to wash in the lake, I was set upon by Vidar and four followers, three of which I had banished from this place previously. I did use the spell to escape their planned beheading. However, when I did return through the gate, they once again would attack me. This time I felled four of them with my sword and the help of a battle axe well-thrown from the gatekeeper’s hand, but my cousin did escape.”
“I shall gather a group to scour the mountain now.”
“You are well-thanked. Now will I introduce you to my queen.”
Chloe received his beta’s formal greeting with a distant smile. It was one Fenris would come to know well over the course of the day. She gave it to everyone who greeted her directly, including his family members outside his longhouse.
His aunt was especially happy to meet with his new mate, drawing her into her arms as if they were friends of long past, before directing Fenris to pick her up and carry her over the threshold.
“I must carry you through the door way so you would not trip and bring misfortune upon our house,” he told her, all of sudden feeling awkward with the vacantly smiling Chloe. “’Tis our custom.”
Her answer to this was to lift her arms in the air so he could easily pick her up. But still, she did not speak to him in his mind or with her tongue. And despite his still simmering anger, to suddenly lose her voice in his head felt unnatural and wrong.
But silent she remained, giving but the briefest of glances to the interior of his longhouse, which was not only the largest of its kind in the wolf territories of Norway, but also well-adorned with bright tapestries along its walls and many bearskins on the floor, so that it was soft nearly every place a wolf might set his foot.
A look of gratitude passed over her face when his mother’s sister, Esja, presented her with his own mother’s winter dress, a long wool tunic dyed the bright blue favored by her father’s people and a silk
hangerok
of red that had most likely hung loose on his mother, but fit about Chloe’s curves in a way that made his manhood swell inside his trousers.
However, he could not smell a similar arousal emanating from her own person. Also, her eyes did not light, as a she-wolf’s were wont to do, when one of Esja’s daughters secured the hangerok’s front with two bronze wolf brooches, and then hung between them glass beads and thin chains of gold.
A polite, “
Pakka fyrir
” were the only words from her tongue after her clothing was so adorned.
A pig was slaughtered and set upon his long table for a small feast, to which the local merchants were invited. But there came a point in the night when Olafr, the husband of his mother’s sister, noted his queen had not touched her drinking horn of honey wine.
“They wonder why you do not drink,” he pushed into her mind. “As do I.”
“Women in my time do not drink any liquor when they’re pregnant,” she answered.
A strange custom indeed, but when he asked her the reason why, she would not give him any further answer.
So he told his family of this strange custom and a drinking horn of goat’s milk was set before her by one of the servants, for which she thanked the servant in Norse.
He lingered at the feast, if only to hear her protest that she was tired and wished to return to his bed. But she said nothing more after receiving the milk, merely sitting there with the same distant smile, which never reached her eyes. And the night pressed on with the people around the table filling up with food and honey wine before eventually calling her forth for a song.
“They would have you sing a song or tell a tale. ‘Tis the custom of both humans and wolves with new friends.”
He thought to this she might not answer, but verily she stood and sang a song rendered in a voice so clear and true, that even though her words could not be comprehended, it was understood by all at the table to be one of heartbreaking sadness.
A somber silence descended over the feast after she took her seat.
“I would have you sing a happier song the next time you are called forth or not sing at all,” he said.
Again she did not give him a mind-answer, but reached for the drinking horn of goat’s milk in a manner that clearly conveyed there would be no next time.
Finally he gave in and announced that they would retire. This announcement caused every wolf at the table to depart, welcoming Chloe to their village and calling out good tidings as they did so. When they were gone from the house, he showed her to his bed closet and opened its tall doors to reveal the large, free standing oak bed inside. It was covered in furs, and to his mind, seemingly designed to the purpose of holding them within its confines.
“Vikings do not live alone as your people do. We will be given one night of privacy. It is traditionally five, but you are already with pup, so one is all that is required. I would have us lie together now and forget the anger of this morntide.”
He moved closer to her, hoping their close proximity might ease the chasm between them at least for this night. He felt warm with all the mead and food he had consumed and she remained the most beautiful wolf he had ever laid eyes on, the mother of his child, and the woman he was fated to spend the rest of his life with.
But as soon as he cupped her breasts over her hangerok with his two hands, she said, “I’ll sleep in your bed, but I’m never going to mate with you ever again. So unless you’re one of those guys who has no problem forcing himself on a she-wolf, you can remove your hands now.”
“We have staunch laws against such things in my land. For the humans it may be practice, but for wolves, I find allowing such causes too much fighting between males who would protect their daughters and claimed mates.”
“So we’re clear then.”
“I will not force myself on you, but if I spoke as you, I would not let my mouth make promises my body might hold not.”
She took his hands and physically removed them from her bosom as if dealing with two leeches. “Oh, my body’s in full agreement.”
And thus, the silence returned. She took off the clothes she had been gifted and slept in the dress she had arrived in, which he had no doubt had been made by her own hand. And the next day she stayed shut in the bed closet, only coming out to relieve herself and to eat the large meal with his family and servants in the main room.
For the first days of her stay, her silence was of such a hostile nature he did wonder if she would do him harm in the night as she had spoken in the forest. But on the morntide of her third day in the village, he encountered his mate for the first time outside of the longhouse since their arrival.
He was deciding a dispute between two wolves over a goat. One had been invited to the other’s longhouse to enjoy drink. But in the eventide, the host had promised his guest his best goat if he could do as simple a thing as walk in a straight line to the door. The guest could, though he very nearly fell over a few times before reaching the door. But when the guest attempted to take the goat upon his leave, the host said it was but a jest and sought to take back the goat’s lead. Thusly, all three, host, guest, and goat appeared before him now seeking judgment.
He awarded the goat to the guest and then reminded the sullen host that promises made were promises made even if deep in his cups. That was when he caught the scent of his queen and felt her gaze on him.
He looked up and found her still in her Colorado smock with the fox pelt around her shoulder. She had re-braided her hair, and it now lie in one tail down her back. But what he found most interesting was the curiosity in her gaze before she realized he was now watching him watch her.
““You have finally decided to leave our bed?” he said to her mind.
After he said this, she looked away and continued on to the toilet pit that sat behind their house. He might have followed to try to mind talk with her more, but that was when Randulfr arrived at his house with the news that they had not been able to find Vidar in the mountains.
“Mayhap, he has taken to the sea, knowing we are all now aware of his schemes, and that both you and your followers would have vengeance if ever he be spotted in these lands again.”
“Mayhap,” Fenris agreed, though something in his king’s knowing told him this would not be his last dealing with his cousin.
That eventide when he returned to their bed, her mood was much changed, duller somehow. And upon the morntide, she no longer came out of the bed closet to eat, only to empty her bladder, with the rest of her day spent lying underneath their bed furs. When he left their bed the morntide after, she could be found staring up at that wooden carving on the closet’s ceiling, and when he returned in the eventide, she could be found to do the same.
It took but two days of this behavior for him to confess her to be the winner of this battle. Verily, he was miserable and he would seek a remedy or it would be a long and cold winter indeed.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“AUNT
, I am in need of a potion,” Fenris said without preamble, upon stepping into the small meadow in the forest on the other side of the lake. This was where his aunt received wolves in need of her services in the waning twilight before the night moon fully rose. His aunt he found here, preparing some manner of potion as she was wont to do between visitors.
“Nay,” she answered without looking up from the ingredients she was working with a pestle in a mortar bowl.
“But you know not what it be for,” he said, frowning at her quick denial.
His aunt let out a great sigh and ceased her work with the pestle to say, “I will not give you a potion that will make your queen forget what brought her here or a potion that alters her temperament or a potion that makes her love you or a potion that makes her obey you in all things. Did you have in your mind another type of potion?”
He folded his arms, annoyed by his aunt’s prescience. Even if after twenty and seven winters in her company, it had become more than familiar. “You rather her suffer then?”
“I would rather you fix what is wrong with your mate as opposed to calling on the services of a tired old woman.”
“The same tired old woman who commanded me to seek out my fated mate only a few moons ago?”
“Yea, the same tired old woman.”
“You do anger me, Aunt.”
“Nay, not I. ‘Tis your queen who has you in such fine dander. I am but an old woman seeking peace in my end years.”
“If you truly want peace, then give me the potion I seek.”
She turned to face him then. “Is it known to you how many male wolves do come to me in private, seeking such things? I deny them all as I am denying you. Yet they call me wise woman in your lands and beyond. Why do you think that is, my Fenris?”
“I verily do no know,” he grumbled.
“Because the wolves who seek me out do oft listen to me and heed my advice. This is something you have never done, and you are one of the few who do not think me wise.”
“It is not that I begrudge you my esteem, Aunt. I simply do seek a remedy to my problem, and it angers me that you refuse to give it.”
“I have your remedy. And I will give it, but I would not waste my breath if it is to fall on deaf ears.”
“You have my ear, Aunt, and my audience, but considering your fated mates spell did saddle me with a wife who doth refuse to obey, I cannot promise I will heed your advice.”