Her Viking Wolves: 50 Loving States, Michigan (32 page)

But as soon as the doors close behind us, their hands are on me, rough and desperate. And the only talking we end up doing for the rest of night involves words like, “Yea,
Varra
,” and “How we did miss you,
Varra
,” and “Give me your lips,
Varra
.”

“Well, ‘vàrr’ means ‘ours,’ and ‘a’ is often added to words to make them feminine,” Alisha told me once over dinner. “So I think that must have been their way of calling you their female. Their version of a special title, ‘Ours.’”

And I am theirs. That night they prove it by easily bringing me to the height of pleasures I didn’t ever think I’d feel again. That night the many years apart fade into mere hours. And when the summer sun rises outside the window, it’s truly a new day.

The first of many I know will be spent with my Viking wolves.

“Yours always,” I say as the sun rises.

“Ours always,” they say aloud on either side of me.

Then they kiss me. First one and then the other, tipping my face back and forth to receive their tired kisses.

“This is what my mother did call ‘happily ever after’ in the story she told around the longhouse fire of how she and my father came to be mated,” FJ says when they’re finally done kissing me.

“Yes, that’s exactly what this is,” I agree. Even though there’s a lot we still haven’t said and a lot—I mean, like, a ton of details—we’ll have to get figured out somehow. But none of that matters. I know this is our HEA.

We have each other now, so we all know what will come next. The daughters we’ll raise to believe they can do anything. The kingdom we’ll happily run together.

The life we’ll make, now that they’re finally home.

“
I
know right then
and there that our lives together will truly be one big happily ever after
…”

On his finger screen, Rafes watches his mother Alisha Ataneq-Nightwolf read the last line of her cousin’s memoir. She lets that last sentence linger for a few emotional moments before looking up to once again address a rapt crowd which includes Rafes’s younger fraternal twin sisters, Nauja and Elisapie.

Rafes, who’s making his way up Yellow Wolf Mountain toward the North Dakota time portal, rolls his eyes as he observes his mother squeeze every bit of dramatic juice possible out of the moment. But despite having heard this story many times before, Nauja and Lis look just as caught up in the tale as the rest of the crowd, many of whom are carrying digital signs with slogans like FATED MATES FOREVER! and TIME TRAVEL IS A RIGHT!

And even though it’s a beautiful sunny morning here on Yellow Wolf Mountain, Rafes finds himself grunting at the screen. Not good.

This video was recorded yesterday but went viral on the wolf-net a few hours ago. The last thing he needs on the day the first Black Box Initiative is supposed to break ground is for other North American wolves to respond to Queen Tee’s newly released memoir the way the crowd in his mother’s video is.

“Unfortunately, their happily ever after is now being severely threatened,” Alisha tells the crowd on his finger screen.

The camera pans to the construction materials for the Black Box Initiative, then back to a solemn Alisha who says, “We now know why no future wolves have come through the gate since early this millennium. The Lupine Council, in all its short-sighted wisdom, has decided to construct one of these so-called “black boxes” around every gate in North America. Starting with this one. So unfortunately, the fated mate tradition, a tradition as old as our race, will soon come to an end because a bunch of male wolves got together and decided they knew what was best for us all.”

The crowd boos loudly in protest while Rafes grits his teeth. If his mother is to be believed, the Lupine Council decided to go forward with this multi-trillion dollar construction project merely because they wanted to bum everybody out.

He notices she didn’t mention the true purpose of the black boxes—to keep the time portals out of the claws of a dangerous enemy. Designed to counteract the portal’s energy field, once the black boxes are installed, they’d prevent anyone from coming through the portals in every state and wolf territory in Northern America.
Anyone
. Including dragons.

He’s also pretty sure at least half the “protestors” participating in his mother’s silly demonstration are her current and former grad students.

Including the cute blonde who yells above the booing crowd, “But what about Myrna?!?!”

Thanks to recent medical advances spearheaded by Queen Tee and his Aunt Tu—like a skin patch that prevents she-wolves from going into heat until they want to—female wolves are much more likely to attend grad school now than ever before. Unfortunately, that also means his mother’s she-wolf centered history books have become more popular than ever before, which means she has plenty of disciples to go along with her hare-brained schemes. Like protesting the implementation of the project her oldest son has been working on for years.

“Good question,” his mother says, smiling at the blonde with such approval, Rafes has to wonder if she didn’t plant the question herself.

“Unfortunately, despite over twenty years of research on my part and on the parts of many diligent grad students, we’ve never been able to find mention of Myrna in any wolf text. Perhaps this means she found her fated mate and chose to live out her life quietly with him or her. Or perhaps this means she went forward in time, much further than her brothers.”

Only now does his mother acknowledge the camera’s presence. And despite the fact that this speech was recorded the day before, her angry eyes seem to bore into Rafes.

“Sadly for Myrna and any other wolf who tries to use a fated mate spell, the construction of these black boxes will mean any wolf who tries to come through them from now on will be trapped. Hopefully in their own time, but for all we know, they could be stuck somewhere in the time stream. In a kind of purgatory, never able to leave. That’s what my son and his cronies on the Lupine Council have condemned that poor she-wolf to.”

The crowd lets out a collective gasp.

“But that’s cruel!” the blonde says.

Yep, definitely a plant
, Rafes thinks to himself. Her reaction is just too perfect. He shouldn’t even let it get to him, but seriously, the last thing he needs today is this video of his own damn mother speaking out against his project. The wolf-net was going to have a field day with this mess. He could just see the headlines now: “President Nightwolf’s Mother Protests Her Own Son.”

Instead of listening to his mother’s response, he wipes the screen and says, “Face Ola.”

His red-haired cousin’s wide, nut-brown face appears between his elled fingers a moment later.

“I assume you’re calling about that wonderful speech your mom gave yesterday at my portal,” she says with a smug smile.

“The portal’s not yours yet,” he reminds her. “You still have a month until you take over as the Dakota queen.”

Not that her lack of alpha status had kept her from interfering with his plans. He knew she had to be the one who’d tipped his mother off about his plan to install the first black box at the North Dakota portal. She’d probably even used Michigan kingdom funds to jet all those protesters to his project site. Hell knows she has more than enough money to do it. Thanks to the numerous ground-breaking programs funded by their state queens, Michigan and Oklahoma—which were both mange states when Rafes was a kid—now boast two of the largest kingdom treasuries on the planet.

“Yeah, and that’s exactly why you pushed up the vote on the Black Box Initiative, wasn’t it?” Ola asks, her pretty face going harsh with anger. “You wanted to make sure I wouldn’t have a vote in what happened at my own portal.”

“Yes, you’re right,” he answers with total frankness. “I didn’t particularly care to leave a project over a decade in the making up to the whim of someone who can’t see past her parents’ mateship to the bigger picture. I knew Kyle would side with me, so yes, I pushed the vote up.”

“Seriously, cuz, what am I supposed to tell my parents when they find out?” Ola asks, shaking her head. “My dads never gave up hope of finding Aunt Myrna. And now they’re going to have to. Because of you!”

Rafes rubs a hand over his eyes. God, he doesn’t need this. He’s about twenty minutes away from cutting the ribbon on the first North Dakota black box installation, and not one member of his immediate family will be there to support him.

His twin sisters are firmly Team Mom. Nago is preoccupied with that Mississippi she-wolf. Again. And Knut—well, who knows where Knut is these days. With all the black-ops work he’s been doing for the Lupine Council, Rafes would consider it a miracle if he even managed to make it home for Christmas.

But his father’s absence really hurts. Before this, Rafe supported his oldest triplet in everything he’d ever done from his first peewee football game to his run to become the youngest Lupine Council president in North American history. The fact that he won’t be here makes Rafes feel like an orphan, despite coming from a much larger than normal wolf family.

“I don’t know, Ola,” Rafes answers his younger cousin. “How about you tell them they’re welcome for the nearly three decades they got to wait for her. For all we know—”

“Don’t say it!” Ola says, cutting him off. “Don’t you dare!”

Right. No one was ever allowed to say what had most likely happened. That the portal probably sent Myrna backwards in time or somewhere so far away from Scandinavia, she hadn’t been able to make it back to her family in Viking Age Norway. No, it would be too crazy to say that highly logical scenario out loud. Instead, they’d all rather make it look like he was literally killing this famously lost she-wolf with the Black Box Initiative.

Rafes is about to tell his cousin exactly what he thinks about her and his mom using some most likely long dead Viking shield maiden as the poster child for their protests against the Black Box Initiative, when he sees a kerfuffle in the distance.

He comes to a dead stop.

“What?” Ola asks on the screen. “What’s going on?”

But from her shit-eating grin, he can tell she already knows. His mother. That’s what’s going on. She’s somehow managed to chain herself around a big pile of black box construction materials and is now yelling a bunch of stuff about every wolf’s right to time travel at the advance crew of construction workers who showed up to set things up for the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Rafes closes his finger screen without bothering say goodbye to his traitorous cousin.

“Mom…” he growls as he approaches the spot where she’s chained up.

“Don’t worry,” she answers. “I’ll leave just as soon as my T.A. is done getting my side of the story.”

Rafes looks over his shoulder and sure enough, the cute blonde who asked all the convenient questions during his mother’s earlier protest speech is rolling tape on her fingers.

“Mom,” he says, barely able to keep his voice even. “I can’t touch you, but I’m more than willing to bring the power of the Lupine Council down on that acolyte of yours if you don’t tell her to close her fingers.”

Alisha glares at him. But with a suck of her teeth, she says, “Okay, Maddie, I think we got enough. Head back on back to the hotel now. I’ll meet you there before we leave for Norway tonight.”

Rafes waits until his mom’s willowy sycophant is fully out of hearing range before asking, “Why are you going to Norway this time, Mom?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know, little boy.”

Little boy. He towers over his mother now. He’s the president of the goddamn Lupine Council for god’s sake. The most powerful wolf in the North American territories. He’s literally had Knut kill wolves for less than what his mother is doing right now. Only she would call him little boy.

And only she could get away with it.

“Mom,” Rafes says, keeping his anger locked tight behind his jaw. “I know we’re on two different sides of the portal issue—”

“With you being on the side that not only designed these monstrosities, but is also overseeing their installation,” she reminds him, folding her arms over the steel chains.

“But I’m not your enemy,” Rafes continues, refusing to take his mother’s bait.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. But then I got a call from Ola telling me you pushed these damn things through, starting with North Dakota. And before she inherited Kyle’s throne!”

Rafes inwardly curses. He knew going over Ola’s head to her lame duck uncle-in-law would piss her off, but did she really have to go crying to his mom about it?

“Mom,” he says, changing tact. “You know I love you, but I also love my people and I’m trying to protect them from the dragon threat.”

“A threat you don’t even know exists.”

“A threat you can’t convincingly prove
doesn’t exist
. From what FJ and Olafr told me, the dragons hit all of Scandinavia’s portal towns hard. And according to the docs you and Matt found, they might have made moves on kingdom towns in the British Isles and Asia, too. Why would they have done that if they weren’t after our time portals?”

Alisha shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter why because we’ve already won this war. The dragons were beaten on every front. In Scandinavia and in Britain—probably Asia, too.”

“Yes, but Mom, seriously…they would’ve had Scandinavia if not for intervention from the future. The kind of Deus Ex Machina we might not have access to the next time the dragons decide to come after our portals. And we have no way of knowing for sure that’s not exactly what they’re planning to do.”

“You really think that?” Alisha asks him, her voice incredulous. “We barely took your so-called dragon threat seriously when FJ and Olafr came through the first time. The Lupine Council wasn’t even willing to fund those swords they bought. You know why? Because no one has heard of or seen dragons
in centuries
. You say there’s no way of knowing they’re not a threat. I say there’s no way of knowing they weren’t completely decimated, thanks to the Detroit-Norway wedding contract.”

“You forget, Mom, I’ve actually read all of your academic work. According to your own research, dragons were said to live a very long time. A few were said to have lifespans measured in centuries. So what’s to say they haven’t been lying low all these years? Biding their time until they have enough weapons to decimate us and take our portals? The Black Box Initiative will make sure that doesn’t happen. That it will never happen.”

Alisha shakes her head at him. “And meanwhile, while you’re chasing down a phantom enemy, no wolf will be able to connect with his or her North American fated mate ever again.”

“Or run away from her fated mate,” Rafes reminds her with a raised eyebrow.

As respected and revered in the wolf community as Alisha is now, sometimes it was left to him to remind her that their years in Viking Age Norway weren’t a fever dream. Her running away from his father to Norway with their unborn pups in her womb actually happened. A nearly family-destroying thing that would have been prevented had the black boxes been in place.

But of course his mother doesn’t see it that way.

“Wow,” she says, blinking up at him, her expression incredibly hurt. “Your father’s forgiven me for that, but it looks like you’re not ever going to.”

Rafes let’s out another irritated grunt at the thought of his father. For all the practical business sense he’d passed down to Rafes, the former King of Colorado is nothing less than a besotted fool when it comes to his queen. Not only has he forgiven her for Norway, he continues to let his wife use the Nightwolf Foundation’s billions of dollars to follow whatever whim she wants—even if that whim includes fighting his own successor tooth and nail over the Black Box Initiative.

But Rafes is not his father. He looks down at his mother and asks, “Are you going to tell me why you’re going to Norway or do I have to call in the North Dakota beta to have you forcibly removed from these chains and caged until you tell me what I want to know?”