“Check the gnarly beard on this guy,” Rafe said, lowering his gun. “He looks like a Viking, right?”
Chloe stepped from behind Rafe to fully observe the unconscious man. “He’s either a Viking or a very strange rock star, and I’ve never seen a rock star with—”
Suddenly the maybe-Viking’s eyes popped open. And that was all the warning they got before he yanked on Rafe’s leg, pulling him to the ground and jumping to his own feet. As Rafe’s tranq gun went flying across the snow, the red-haired man pinned Rafe with a large bare foot planted squarely in the middle of his chest. And his eyes blazed with a warrior’s fury as he raised his vicious-looking sword above his head with the blade pointed downward. Chloe didn’t know a lot about sword fighting, but even she could tell this was the preparation for a killing blow.
“No!” she screamed, raising her own tranq gun and pointing it at the mad wolf.
He paused and looked toward her, pinning her with a piercing gray gaze that looked like it had been fashioned from the same material as his steel sword.
Chloe just hoped to the heavens above that whatever time period this wolf was from, he understood what a gun was—even if hers technically wasn’t a real one.
“Put the sword down or I’ll shoot,” she said, hating that she couldn’t keep her voice from trembling as she issued this command.
She half-expected him to kill Rafe then come after her. He’d pinned Rafe so quickly, he’d probably be able to do away with them both before she managed to squeeze the trigger. But he didn’t kill Rafe or her. He just stood there staring, his eyes flinty under the midday sun.
Several seconds ticked by, but he did not look away.
And eventually he said something to her in a thick, coarse language that sounded a little like German, but she couldn’t be sure. Oh God, he probably really was a Viking, she realized.
“Um,” she said, wishing now that she hadn’t chosen to take three years of high school Spanish as opposed to a language that might actually be useful when dealing with a possible Viking werewolf. Her mind fumbled around for any German she knew, and started spewing every single word and phrase, in the hopes something would stick. “
Dankeshein
? Um…
neinn
…
sprechen sie Englisch
? Um…um, oh my God,
Auf Wiendersehn
?”
He squinted at her. Then to her great alarm, he lowered the sword and came stalking straight toward her.
“Um, stop. Stop, please! Stay right where you are!” How did you say “stop” in German? She had no idea.
In the end, she squeaked, squeezing the trigger, and her eyes shut at the same time.
She heard a hard thump and when she opened her eyes, the maybe-Viking was lying crumpled on the ground with a dart lodged in his shoulder, already rendered unconscious by the fast-acting sleep agent it administered.
Beyond him, she could see Rafe, now sitting up and shaking his head. “Chloe…”
She re-harnessed her tranquilizer gun. “I know, I know, tranq the wolf first, ask questions later.”
“Especially when he has a sword pointed at my freaking neck.” Her normally indulgent fiancé didn’t look too happy with the Viking or her at that moment. “And do I really need to tell you not to close your eyes when you shoot?”
CHAPTER TWO
Many centuries ago…
“FENRIS
, I would have words with you,” his aunt, Bera, said. The small woman did not wait for his assent before falling in step beside him, and he had to switch his bloodied sword to his other hand to keep from staining her clothes with it.
Even his respect for his aunt’s advanced years could not keep the terseness he felt out of his voice when he answered, “Whatever it is can wait until I have washed in the lake. I am fresh from the hunt.”
With pursed lips, she pressed a linen rag, with words written across it in charcoal ink, into his hand.
“What is this?” he asked, though he had a feeling he already knew. His lack of a mate was a subject well-visited by his aunt, even more so since he had reached twenty and seven winters.
“I have bid you too many times to seek your fated mate. You have not heeded me, mayhap because I am but a decrepit she-wolf. Thusly, I have put the spell down for you on this scrap, in the hopes you would bestow joy upon my heart by speaking it as I have written it.”
He looked from the spell to his aunt who despite her gray hair, much smaller size, and supposed decrepitude managed to keep up with his fast pace. “You realize I will disappear if I speak these words on my tongue?”
“I have put to words the return spell on the reverse side of the rag. You and your fated mate have only to speak them as one and you will be returned to this place.”
He held the rag out to his aunt. “You are dear to me, sister of my father, but you try my patience with this business. I will claim a mate of my own accord. I do not wish to be fated.”
His aunt clenched her hands by her side, refusing to take the linen back from him. “Your sires were fated.”
“Yes, and this be the reason I wish not to be,” he answered.
“Your mother and father were very happy before…”
She did not finish, but she did not have to. Fenris knew the rest. His sires were very happy, until his mother died giving birth to him, before his father was reduced to a husk of his former self in his grief.
“I do not wish a fated mate,” he repeated. “Take this back. I have no use for it.”
A knowing smile played on his aunt’s lips. “We shall see. This winter has been cold and dark. You will eventually want for a mate to warm your bed. Why not put yourself in the hands of the gods?”
His aunt was the last person he wanted to talk to on this subject, even if she was correct about the state of his bed. He had not lain with a woman since his visit to the human market to the south of them before the last summer moon. There, he and his unmated pack members could lie with human women willing to trade their services for the furs, iron, small weapons, and the other items his village was known to sell.
“Aunt Bera, the only thing I want for now is my soap.”
She stopped walking. “And you may have it. I will take my leave, but will leave you with the spell.” She then turned and hurried back toward their village before he could offer any further protest.
He balled the fabric up inside his hand. Having stripped down to bare feet and his leather hunting trousers in preparation for his bath, he had nothing with which to pin it to his clothing. However, he also did not want to leave it lying around for any young she-wolf to find. She-wolves could be silly when it came to matters of the heart, and even though most of them had no knowing of written words, they might seek someone who did to help them speak the words. In the past, his aunt had taken great care not to record the spell for fear it would fall into the wrong hands.
That she had written the spell down for Fenris without his having asked it, proclaimed her frustration with his refusal to take a bride more loudly than any words ever could. But he did not want to dwell on her actions. He was fresh from the hunt, having taken down no less than three reindeer and a bear, the latter of which he had been forced to use his sword,
The King Maker
, to finish off.
He desired to clean both himself and his trusted weapon much more than he desired to ruminate on his aunt’s concerns about his lack of mate. And he could see Wolf Lake, which bordered his village, glittering in the distance.
“It seems we have caught the King of Wolves unawares,” a voice said from behind him.
Fenris stopped short, his grip tightening around the hilt of his sword, before he turned to face his cousin, Vidar, a wolf almost as tall and broad as he. Fenris had banished Vidar from their village two moons ago, after the younger wolf had beaten and attempted to couple with a household servant girl who did not wish his advances.
Vidar had thought his position as cousin to the king would keep him protected, despite the strict laws against coupling with a she-wolf without her father’s consent. And indeed, it had pained Fenris greatly to banish a family member who shared his own longhouse. But in the end, even Fenris could not hold himself above wolf law, especially the ones he had set down himself during the bloody years he had spent reaffirming his position as the king of Norway’s wolves.
But like a recurring dream, Vidar now once again stood before him. However, this time, his battle axe, which Fenris had allowed him to keep, was raised and his eyes were shining with hatred and malice. Also, this time he did not stand in front of Fenris alone. At various points behind him stood four other men with swords, three of which Fenris recognized as wolves he had banished from their village for crimes ranging from theft to the murder of humans, which were also strictly forbidden under both his laws.
Fenris raised his own sword. “You should not be so close to my village, Cousin. Your mother might see you and you have already well disappointed her.”
“I beheld you talking to the wicked sorceress.” He bared his sharp lupine teeth. “The one who did put that harlot servant to her false accusation.”
Though his aunt had been the one to bring the servant girl to Fenris, it had taken but one look at the badly beaten girl to assess what had happened. He knew her attacker to be Vidar, who he had spied watching the yellow-haired girl with hard
losti
—lust—in his eyes on several occasions. The extent of his crime against a girl who many in his household considered like a family member had been enough to sicken even his mother’s sister, Esja, Vidar’s own mother. She had yet to ask her nephew to reverse his decision, even though it was known by all that Vidar had only gone as far as the mountains on the northern side of the lake to live.
“What matter of business is this, Vidar?” he asked.
“I wish to once again take my place in our village and there is but one way to do that.” Vidar stopped smiling now. “Become the new alpha king.”
Fenris shook his head. “You cannot hope to best me on your own.”
There was a reason the Alpha King title had stayed in his line for five generations. The sons of Fenris were known throughout Norway as fierce warriors, and he himself had been trained from childhood to defend his inherited crown.
Vidar grinned. “Not on my own, no. But my friends have avowed to herald it that way when we return to the village with your severed head in my hand.”
“No one will believe your tale.”
“It does not matter that they believe, only that they submit to their new king.”
Fenris spat. Vidar had been a pig’s penis since childhood, prone to tantrums and high-handed with his mother and two sisters. And now it was plain to see he had gone mad with desire for power and revenge.
Fenris considered himself a warrior of great skill, but even he could not best five wolves, especially having just come off the late winter hunt. He cursed himself for letting his mind become so distracted by the conversation with his aunt that he had momentarily relaxed his guard, giving his cousin the perfect opening for this underhanded attack.
The conversation with his aunt.
Fenris lowered the hand that held his sword and raised the one that held the rag with the spell written upon it.
Mistaking the lowering of his sword as an admittance of defeat, Vidar came charging toward him with his battle axe raised high.
Fenris barely had enough time to utter the words that would send him hurtling through a gate to the gods-only-knew—but at that moment, any land was better than this plain, surrounded by power-mad Vidar and his outlaw followers.
He did not hear the gate open behind him, but knew it must have, because Vidar came to a fumbling stop, his eyes widening and his mouth falling open.
In the next moment, Fenris was sucked backward into a pitch-black tunnel of wind, which sent his body hurtling through space and time at such a speed, he barely managed to hold on to his sword.
Eventually he was deposited on a snowy plateau, his head slamming against a large rock just as he hit the ground with a bone-crunching thud. His head spun, and he groaned in a bid to stay conscious, but it was a bid not won. And he was surround by blackness again.
The sound of two voices speaking a strange language above him eventually came filtering in through the new blackness. And when he opened his eyes he found what looked like a Moor standing above him with his booted foot on his chest.
Fenris moved quickly. Even though the man was dressed in a strange costume—some manner of faded blue trousers and a thin coat made of a shiny and slick material Fenris had never seen before—he could smell that the man was a fellow wolf. Consequently, he didn’t waste time trying to deduce who this wolf was or why he had his boot planted on his chest. His way had always been to kill quickly, and his own life had been spared many times over because he did so. In a few moves, he reversed their positions and had raised his sword for the killing blow—
“No!!!!”
What sounded like a female’s voice rang out beside him. And he would have ignored it, except...his nostrils flared…he
could not.
As if compelled by an invisible puppet master, he turned toward the voice, and found a trembling she-wolf with bushy hair and what looked like some manner of weapon pointed at him. Perhaps the spell had transported him to Iberia or what he’d heard referred to as
Blaland
, a hot and dry land to the far south where
blamenn
, black people with very dark skin, lived.
It was she.
Whoever she was, wherever she hailed from, he recognized her for who she was the instant his eyes met hers. Not only from her intoxicating scent, but also from his body’s reaction to her. A powerful wave of desire overtook Fenris, causing him to sway, even though he was in a firm killing stance. His cock swelled inside his hunting trousers, hard and surprisingly insistent, as if he were a pup in his first stages of coming manhood.
For a moment, he stood there frozen, unable to move, he was so enthralled by her. But finally he remembered himself enough to say, “I am here for you.” He held up the rag with the spell upon it. “And now we must speak these words as one, so I might go back to my lands and vanquish my enemy.”