That resolved, Xenon charged toward his cousin with a blood-thirsty screech.
Chapter Thirty-One
FENRIS
Chloe returned to herself in the days after he came back to their cabin without the pup. She tended to the small collection of goats and chickens they’d acquired for the cabin and she hummed songs he had never heard her give voice to before, most likely from her future land. She also helped him prepare for his delayed hunt by giving him a list of animals she would like to have before the long winter.
“If you happen to see a walrus or something like that when you head north, I could use the fat to make that fried chicken you like so much and we’d have enough left over for oil and stuff like that. But that might be too heavy to drag back here.”
“Do not worry yourself, beloved,” he answered. “For you, I can carry any load.”
“Aw, Sweetie…” she said, pressing a kiss into his clean-shaven cheek in that still girlish way of hers.
And that made Fenris all the more determined to succeed in his mission to bring her animal fat.
She was still not the woman he knew before they lost their children. She didn’t chatter endlessly as she used to when they lived in a longhouse filled with family members. But she also hadn’t cried since the eve he returned to the cabin. Nor had she screamed at him again for not understanding her pain.
However, the pain was still there. It continued to flow over their mate bond, sometimes in slight trickles but occasionally in great rushes.
Fenris did not blame his mate for her sadness. Nay, he appreciated how hard she worked to act as if she were unaffected by the loss of their offspring. And he went along with her play acting. Perhaps if they both pretended in this manner long enough, they would one day find their way back to their old selves.
On the morning of his hunt, he woke his mate with soft kisses to the back of her neck. She did not giggle as she used to when they shared a bed closet, but when she rolled over toward him, her sleepy smile reminded him of the she-wolf he had once known.
He claimed her lips, deeply aware that many morns would pass before he was able to have her in this manner again.
Then he rolled her onto her back and covered her body with his, telling her not with words, but with a deep plunge into her sea how much he would miss her while he was away.
Perhaps she was in a past times mood as well. After eating a fortifying breakfast of porridge and eggs, she escorted him from their cabin.
This was something she used to do when he went viking. Usually for only a few seasons, but once for nearly two springs when the seas froze earlier than expected. This morn she walked with him out of the cabin as she used to walk with him to their bay’s shore, with both arms wrapped around his forearm, and her hands clasped over his.
Then she stood on the top of her toes to press a sweet kiss into his lips.
“You’ll stay safe out there alone, right?” He could feel her fear rippling over their mate bond. Much greater than when they parted the last time for his winter’s hunt.
“Yes, my Chloe. I will return to you. I swear this on my life,” he assured her.
Then he kissed her hard, letting all the love he had built up over their many winters together flow over their mate bond.
It was a silly bit of business. This was merely a winter hunt, not a viking voyage.
But he looked back at her as he left and remembered a time when their entire family had come to see him off. Not just her, but Myrna, a girl of ten winters, Olafr, ever the wolf at her feet, and FJ, sullen because he thought twelve winters old enough to be allowed to come with his father on raids.
Their children were long departed, but their ghosts remained, shimmering like the morning sun.
Fenris turned away from his mate with tears pricking his eyes. And he did not look back again as he disappeared into the woods. As he’d said, it was but a little hunt, and he did not want Chloe to see him cry for the past they had lost.
Two mornings after his departure, he came across an unexpected sight. An ice bear. The kind he used to travel to the most northern fjords to hunt before meeting his strangely sentimental mate. She did not ask that he stop wearing his ice bear coat, but when she first came to his land, she refused to cook, eat, or condone the hunting of an assortment of various animals, including horses and bears.