Her Dragon King (Her Dragon King Duet 2)

But now he could see himself for what he really was. A fool.

And now, he gave the current fenrir the advice he should have provided him when he first answered his call. “Discuss the matter with your mate. She will give you the best counsel, for the females know each other better than us males ever will know them.”

“This is true. Listen to our fenrir past,” Fenrit’s mate called out from the other side of the longhouse. The longhouse that used to be his and Chloe’s.

Their fenrir past… Yes, that was what the line of Fenris was now. This village’s past. And the line of Fenrit was their future.

Darkness descended on the walk home and his wolf tugged on his mind. Most North Wolves shift while traveling at night, as their wolves stood better chances if they happen upon a bear or a full wolf without any human inside. Hence it was customary to keep extra clothing in the kingdom house for those who journeyed the great distance through the forest or over the mountain to visit.

But that night Fenris ignored his wolf. That night he made the long journey back to the cabin in the woods with a strange dark hope in his chest. A wish for an animal to attack him. A wish for something he might fight as he could not fight his mate’s heavy spirit.

Her words hung like a storm cloud over his memory, along with the unspoken things she did not say. I was so happy to come here (but now I’m not)…. We’re in our sixtieth winters and we’re having our first fight about skin color (I wish you had never shown up in my village and taken me for a mate)…. None of them can be replaced (all is lost).

The cabin was as dark and cold as his spirit when Fenris arrived. He found Chloe upon the bed, lying on top of their furs in her human form, without thought of heat or comfort.

Or perhaps she wishes for death now, a dark voice suggested inside of him. She has deemed that a better fate than living out the rest of her winters with you.

Nonetheless, Fenris went over to the hearth and stoked the dead fire back to life. If only he could do the same for his Chloe.

“I’m sorry.”

He turned when Chloe’s voice appeared inside his mind. He saw that she continued to lie upon the bed as before, still as a corpse. But her voice was steady and vibrant inside his mind.

“I tried. I’ve been trying so hard not to be sad, to accept my fate. I was raised to believe in a higher power, and I know He’s got a reason for this, just like He had a reason for sending me to you in the first place. I was grateful during the good times. And it’s only right that I be grateful during the bad too. I just have to figure out how. That’s all.”

Fenris did not respond. Neither with voice nor mind. For he had no words. Only hate. For the God she clung to even after they had lost everything. And even more hate for Odin, the All father who’d summoned Fenris and his sons the night before their great battle with the serpents…

Fenris, King of the North Wolves, join your sons and come to me all three so that I might give you counsel. Tell your mate not of where you are going.

The voice startled Fenris awake inside the tent he was sharing with Chloe.

“Where you going?” she mumbled over their mate bond when he rose to get up.

“I should have heeded your warnings about drinking too much mead with our sup.”

Fenris frowned at the answer that had so easily slipped out of his mouth. The truth but also a lie. And as a matter of personal law, he did not lie to his wife. The one time he had, it had been for just cause but had cost him greatly. And if not for his aunt’s sage advice, he might still be sleeping beside a she-wolf who despised him. Or worse, died in childbirth as his own mother did.

But he also could not tell her the truth in that moment. Something seized his tongue fast against that notion, as surely as if there was some manner of clamp pinning back the words.

He found his sons waiting for him outside the tent. This came as no surprise somehow, but the sight of Olafr, fully upright and dressed in pants and furs the same as his brother, FJ startled him yet again. Until the day he arrived on the shore of the village where Fenris had gathered all of the remaining North Wolf warriors, Fenris had known only his youngest progeny as a wolf for many winters prior. Chloe had believed him to have a condition of the mind her future people called by the name of wolf bound.