The skald followed his gaze, and Fenris could see the frank curiosity in his eyes as the smaller male looked upon his wife. Most wolves had never encountered anyone who looked as she did. Even the wolves who viking had only had a few encounters with peoples with skin the color of Chloe’s. Blamenn they called them. And before the time gate delivered Fenris to Chloe’s land, he, like his fellow viking warriors, had only come across humans with skin as dark as his mate’s. Fenris imagined their skald guest had also never encountered a wolf who looked like his Chloe ere to this.
“Your dress is of such a strange design. Does it hail from the same land as you?” the skald asked Chloe.
“In a manner,” Chloe answered without looking up from her sewing. “The dress I came here in fell apart many winters ago. This one was reconstructed from memory and made of a much heavier material.”
Fenris inwardly frowned, recalling the eve she began sewing the first of three garments she referred to as “prairie dresses.” He’d liked these dresses of hers well enough, as she was wearing such garb when first they did meet. But it unsettled him that she now wore her prairie dresses exclusively. Before they moved into this cabin, she’d happily worn hangerok aprons as the other North she-wolves of this land did.
“Your garb is enchanting,” the skald said, interrupting those thoughts. “Such a wonderful detail to include in my tale. I am sure this story will become one of my most well-received poems. I only have a few more questions?”
The skald turned back to face Fenris across the table. “What happened to your sons, Fenrisson Ever the Man and Olafr Ever the Wolf, after the Great Serpent Battle? Why did your former beta’s son become the fenrir of the North Wolves and not your own? When I asked Fenrit the Chosen about this, he could not answer for certain. So please tell me now, Fenris the Beardless, did your son die from his wounds after sacrificing himself to save us all from the serpent threat?”
Fenris the Beardless. No one had called Fenris that in quite a long while, even though his Chloe continued to shave his face twice a week to keep the hair there from growing back.
The skald’s breathless tone told Fenris this male had already decided his guess was true. And he opened his still beardless mouth to let him know that his sons did not die in battle but left to find their fated mate.
However, another voice stopped him. “Get out!”
They both turned to find Chloe, standing now with a furious look upon her face. “You think you can pick over our tragedy like a vulture? No, get out! Get out of my house now!” she screamed at the skald. Not in their North Wolves tongue, but in the English from the future land she’d left so many winters ago.
“Get out! Get out! Get out!”
“What is she saying?” the skald asked Fenris, his eyes wide with astonishment.
Fenris tightened his jaw, swallowing down the story he would have told him if not for Chloe’s upset. Then he said, “You will leave now. And you will speak of this not in story, poem, nor song.”
“But how shall I end my tale?” the skald demanded, looking between Fenris and the she-wolf whose unexpected fury Fenris could feel quavering over their mate bond.
Fenris rose from the table and went to his mate. “You shall say that after the great battle, Randulfsson became fenrir and the former alpha took a cabin in the woods,” he answered the skald, wrapping an arm around his mate’s shoulder. “You may also say that our hearts were…saddened by the loss of our three children.”
“So does that mean—” the skald began to ask.
Fenris cut the persistent teller of tales off with his next words. “That was the end of the tale,” he growled at him. “If I hear you have ended their story any other way, I will hunt you down and kill you.”
Chapter Eight
OLA
As my mom often says after something crazy goes down…So that happened.
I sit collared and stunned in the back seat as Damianos intones, “Colby, you may continue on to our final destination.”
“Right away, Master,” the driver answers with a super posh English accent.
He turns an actual key to start the engine, and we drive past Akwasi and the gun, leaving them behind in the parking lot.
“Please fasten your seat belt,” Posh British Dude says after a few minutes of driving, then he pulls onto a highway leading north without consulting any kind of GPS system I can see.
Hmm, he’s English, but he knows how to drive on our sides of the road, no GPS required. I’ve never seen someone drive without a nav system before. Biosystems only work with driverless cars. And biomaps only work outside of moving vehicles, so as to avoid the kind of technological conflict of interests that ends up in car crashes.