Fenris stopped talking when he saw Chloe’s expression. It was no longer one of confusion, but there was still no joy to be found in it. Only rage. The kind he hadn’t seen upon his dark beauty’s face since the very early months of their union.
“Why?” she demanded, this time over their mate bond, where everything was made clear without accent or need for translating each other’s tongues. “Why would you do that?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” he answered, as baffled as she was angry. “Do you think I have not gleaned over the past winters how sad you are, even though you try to hide it? And I know you and Myrna were never a true mother-daughter match. What was it you called her? A daddy’s girl?”
Chloe’s eyes widened. “So you think just because I was upset that Myrna liked swords more than she liked the kitchen that I would just want to replace her with some random white girl?”
Fenris shook his head, not understanding. “Her fur is not white but yellow.”
“I’m talking about her skin! Her human skin!”
“What does her skin have to do with it?”
“Everything!” she yelled back at him in his own tongue.
“But you know I do not care about such things…” he began to tell her.
Only to stop when she threw up both her hands and her head, as if bidding for patience from the single sky god she convinced him and the rest of their kingdom village to take into their hearts. “Okay, I’m not sure how we got to our 60s without you realizing this, but my skin color is important to me. Our mixed brown babies were important to me. Myrna and I had our issues, but she was my daughter and she was important to me. She’s still important to me, even if there’s a good chance she’ll never know that because of the way I left things. You think she can just be replaced? She can’t be. And you’re right, it’s not about skin color. It’s about her. Who she was. Half of you and half of me. She’ll never be replaced. None of them will—oh God….”
Chloe screamed all of this across their mate bond. Then instead of thanking him prettily as he thought she would during his trek through the woods, she dissolved into tears. Ugly, wrenching sobs that racked her entire body.
“Beauty…” he tucked the still sleeping pup under his arm and took a step toward her.
He only wished to comfort her. But when he touched her shoulder, she jerked away as if his hand were a fiery brand. “No, don’t touch me,” she screamed. “Just get her out of here. Please just take her out of my sight. I can’t even stand to look at her.”
Not knowing what else to say, Fenris did exactly as Chloe asked.
The trip back to the village took half a day, and by the end, the formerly docile pup was wailing. Most likely because instead of the porridge Fenris had promised her when they had first set out, the only reward she’d received for her long trip with him was a screaming she-wolf who refused to so much as look at her. Much less receive her as a daughter.
Fenrit, the new fenrir formerly known as Randulfsson, took the little yellow pup back with easy aplomb. After handing her off to his wife to feed, he told Fenris, “In truth, you might have saved me from the ire of the childless she-wolves who would have had her for daughter. I received an ear blistering after I allowed you to leave with the pup.”
His words were reassuring and well-chosen. Fenrit was just as Fenris suspected when he appointed the son of his former beta as his replacement, the best candidate to rule over the North Wolves.
Fenris very much regretted coercing his successor into giving him the pup after he’d heard the call of the elkhorn while hunting. Fenris had gifted Fenrit the elkhorn before departing with Chloe to build their cabin in the woods.
“This is the horn of guidance I wish I’d had when I was a king, but alas, my throne was inherited, not handed down,” he had told the then-new fenrir, “If you blow upon it, I will return to the village and advise you on any matter for which you might need counsel.”
When Fenrit’s first horn blow had been to ask how Fenris had made past decisions about who to give the orphaned pups the kingdom village received, Fenris had felt struck by a sense of serendipity. He’d believed this wolf pup was meant to solve everything.
Give Chloe a new beginning. He’d even thought of commanding Randulfsson to bring them any other pups that were delivered to their former kingdom village. Perhaps all three of her children could be replaced. He’d build a larger house, and they’d start a new family. One that would remain with them, this time until the end of their lives. He believed himself a savior.