Her Viking Wolves: 50 Loving States, Michigan (7 page)

O
lafr knows
the she-wolf is his from the moment their eyes meet. Knows by the way his heart expands with awe. His female is dark. Darker than his own mother, and his mother is the darkest woman he has ever seen or heard tale of. His female is also full figured. More so than his Aunt Alisha whose bountiful gifts of which the bards still sing. And his brother thought his sister like a Valkyrie with her bold red curls, but this she-wolf is even more the Valkyrie, with hair cut close and black on one side of her head, while the other is filled with long roped locks, white as snow. But in spite of her white hair, the she-wolf is not in her winter years he senses. No, this mate of his has the hair of a warrior, and the pretty, round face of a young maiden.

From the moment his eyes meet her deep brown ones, wide as a rabbit’s, everything else disappears. The other wolves in the party she has come with. The cold against his naked human skin. The snow beneath his bare, no longer padded, feet. Even the pain of the silver arrow lodged in his upper back.

Everything disappears but her.

But then a familiar voice calls out, “Olafr? Is that you?”

He blinks, and his eyes come to rest on the familiar face of the she-wolf who stands beside his fated mate. A well-remembered face, yet she does not seem much older than when he saw her last, so many winters ago.

Olafr has to work hard to push the words in his mother’s tongue through his human voice box. “Aunt Lisha?” His accent, he discovers then, sounds rather slow and thick in comparison to his brother’s.

Then comes the pain once more, rising up and forcing him to lose his grip on the consciousness he’s been fighting to hold on to since tumbling through the time gate.

“No, no,” he mumbles in his father’s tongue. “Must stay. With her. Must…”

The pain overwhelms him, engulfing him in fire and forcing his eyes closed as his body falls into the snow. But this time, there is no staying awake. Only blackness and the memory of her eyes, staring back at him. She is his.

His. His. His.

S
o
…that happened.

We all stare in the aftershock of the huge Viking crumpling into the snow like a pile of light brown bricks. Me feeling guilty as hell, because my wolf was so busy staring at his huge dick, I completely missed the freaking arrow sticking out of his chest.

Someone shot him in the back,
I realize with a gasp.

Just as Tu chooses the most inappropriate moment to declare, “Seriously guys, we need our own reality show. We’d make SO much money!”

Ignoring her, I fall to my knees beside the Viking, doing a quick scan to see if I can help him. I can’t get his gray eyes out of my mind, or the way he stared at me, like nothing else mattered—not even the arrow in his fucking chest. I’ve never been looked at like that in my entire life.

And I have no medical knowledge whatsoever, but an inner voice is screaming at me to help him in any way possible. Thankfully he landed on his side, which lets me inspect his wound easily. I can just see the base of the arrowhead partially lodged in his skin, and I briefly contemplate pulling the whole thing out while he’s unconscious, so he can maybe morph quickly into a wolf and start his healing process before we head back down the mountain.

But then I see how the shaft glints in the moonlight.

“I think it’s made with silver,” I say when Grady bends down on the other side of the man’s body.

Grady may be the Alpha King of Oklahoma, but once upon a time he was Rafe’s beta sheriff before reluctantly accepting his state’s crown. But when push comes to shove, he’s still the kind of guy who takes charge when bad shit goes down.

Tu crouches beside me. “Yep, copy that.” She’s obviously communicating with Grady via their telepathic mate bond.

As silly as Tu can be sometimes—okay, most of the time—she’s all business now. She turns her head back to where Uncle Tikaani stands guard.

“Daddy, do you have a sat phone on you?” she asks. “We need to call the town doc. Tell them we’ve got an incoming in need of a silver arrow extraction.”

“On it,” he says, holstering his tranq gun and whipping out his phone. “Ford picked a hell of a time to pass out drunk,” he grouses as he makes the call.

While Uncle Tikaani talks to the pack doctor, there’s some debate about whether we should send for a stretcher or take the Viking down the mountain ourselves. Jostling him with a silver arrow so close to his heart is risky. But taking too long to extract the toxic arrow is even riskier. Then again, Dr. Leesma, the town’s only doctor, is old and no one’s even sure he’d be able to make it this far up the mountain in the snow.

In the end, Grady, Mag, Rafe, and Uncle Tikaani gently carry the traveler back down the mountain, making every effort to keep him as steady as possible.

Still I can’t keep from worrying, and my heart just about bursts with relief when I see the lights of Wolf Lake’s small clinic, which is located on the main street, along with the rest of the town’s small businesses.

Dr. Leesma is waiting outside in a pair of sweats and moccasin-like house slippers. His outfit doesn’t exactly scream, “I’m a competent medical doctor!” But then again, it’s 4:00 AM on New Year’s Day. He was probably sleeping off all the champagne he drank at the kingdom house’s New Year’s party when Uncle Tikaani’s call came in.

“Not good,” he tuts with a shake of his gray head after looking over the patient. “Better get him inside to the surgery. First door on the right.”

I watch the three alpha kings carrying him in, not sure what to do with myself, yet feeling somewhat compelled to follow them.

Dr. Leesma starts to go in, but Alisha grabs his arm. “Ah, Dr. Leesma, just so you know, the Vikings didn’t really have a word for it, and Chloe and I never spoke of it because I knew it troubled her, but…” Alisha seems to be searching for the right words to explain. “…I’ve never seen him outside of wolf form. That is, I’m pretty sure Olafr is wolf-bound.”

My heart freezes. Wolf-bound is what we call werewolves who can’t transform into their human forms. It’s considered a severe developmental disability and even has a name: Wolf-Bound Syndrome.

Unfortunately, like nearly all disabilities in our community, it has not been widely studied or even understood. But one thing I do know, wolf-bound wolves often retain a childlike quality about them, as if they haven’t properly matured. Which is why they rarely leave the safety of their families and are often crated at night for their own protection—and that of others.

We might have all continued to stand there in shocked silence if not for Tu who turned to Alisha and said, “Damn! So I guess those Vikings of yours ain’t quite as accepting as you claimed in your book.”

Alisha throws her sister an irritated look, “Yes, Tu, we should discount their comparatively open attitudes about divorce, homosexuality, and acceptance of other cultures because they’ve apparently banished one wolf-bound shifter to another time.”

Tu shrugs off her sister’s academic admonishment. “Just sayin’ it’s kinda cold, yeah.”

Alisha shakes her head, “For all we know, they didn’t banish him at all but used a gate spell to send him here because he was mortally wounded. Have you even read my account of the Chloe story—?”

“Girls! Girls!” Uncle Tikaani says, cutting them off with the weary resignation of a father who’s had to break up too many of these arguments.

“Maybe you should go in with Dr. Leesma, Alisha,” he says to his middle daughter. “And Tu, you probably don’t want to hang out around here, right?”

That’s when another shadow falls over the conversation. And I remember about the baby Tu lost a few years before she and Grady mated. Probably right here in this same clinic.

“Yeah, I think I’ll get going,” Tu answers, her voice uncharacteristically soft. “I mean, Grady has Rafe in there with him. And he knows how to sign.”

“Yes, he does,” Janelle agrees, smoothly stepping in and putting an arm around Tu’s shoulder. “I’ll go home with you. We should get poor Olafr some clothes. He looks to be about Mag’s size...”

“All over?” Tu asks, rallying with an eyebrow-waggling grin. “Because if that’s the case, you go Janelle!”

They leave, Janelle’s embarrassed laugh tinkling in the night. And everybody here is probably expecting me to follow. Which I really should, given how much work I have waiting for me back at the house, but…

I can’t bring myself to leave. Even after Janelle and Tu have disappeared over the slight rise leading to the kingdom house’s large backyard. For some reason, I feel like I need to go in there and be with him. Even though the only experience I have with arrows is deciding they’d be too much of a coding bitch to program into
Viking Shifters.

Which is silly, I know. He’s wolf-bound. Most likely only in human form because of the arrow. But the way he looked at me…

He was confused
, I tell myself with a shake of my head. Who knows what circumstances led him to this era? Wolves of old weren’t nearly as enlightened as we are now. Maybe an illness struck his village and they decided to banish him in order to ward off bad luck or something like that. Alisha has a shit ton of stories about her father’s mostly Inuit state pack doing similar things to any wolf who was different back in the day. That had to be it. Because it couldn’t be the other alternative.

That he had come here to seek his fated mate. And she happened to be me. I doubt wolf-bound shifters are even capable of…those kinds of feelings.

“Yeah, you should go in there and be with him,” I say, glancing at Alisha. “He knows you. And he might be scared when he comes to.”

“That’s true,” Alisha answers.

And I’m about to force myself to turn around and head my silly ass on back to the house when it happens.

Another flash in the distance. This one just as brilliant as the first, and coming from the exact same place.

O
kay
, so somehow I end up making my way into the clinic after everyone else scatters. Grady, Mag, and Rafe head back up the mountain to find out what the hell is going on, and Alisha stays outside the clinic with Uncle Tikaani. Totally back in Alaska Princess mode as they try to calm down the new, but much more insistent batch of kingdom wolves who’ve come to inquire about the second flash.

I follow an ominous whirring sound through the tiny lobby and find Dr. Leesma standing behind Olafr, who’s propped up on his right side. The doctor is using what looks like an electric medical bone saw to cut off some of the arrow shaft protruding from his patient’s back.

“Good, they sent me someone to assist,” Dr. Leesma says, when he sees me in the doorway. “Stand there in front of him. Make sure he doesn’t fall forward.”

I do as he says, watching with wide-eyed horror as he switches over to a small knife and begins cutting away at the skin surrounding the partially embedded arrowhead. I can’t see much from my current position but a small puddle of blood begins to form on the floor beneath one side of the table. Eventually, the doctor grabs what appears to be a pair of needle-nosed pliers, latches them on to what remains of the shaft, and with one slippered foot braced against the side of the table, yanks the arrowhead out in a quick jerk.

The speed at which he does this doesn’t make it any easier to watch. The arrow comes out with a wretched sizzle, accompanied by the smell of burning flesh. The stench of it makes me want to retch. It also makes me really happy the wolf-bound Viking is still unconscious. I wouldn’t want my worst enemy to be awake for this.

But after the arrow’s out, I take one of the Viking’s large hands in mine. I’m somehow unable to deny the strange desire to comfort him. Even though he’s still knocked out. And even though I’m not a huge fan of physical contact—I mean I could barely stand to participate in Aunt Wilma’s mandatory family pre-party family hugs before this truly surreal night.

“Don’t worry,” Dr. Leesma tells me as he removes his surgical gloves and picks up a huge syringe from a nearby counter. “Poor guy should return to wolf form soon, then I’ll give him something to help him sleep this nasty wound off.”

But he doesn’t change back. We wait and wait, with Dr. Leesma braced to hit him with a whole lot of tranquilizer as soon as he goes wolf. But Olafr continues to lie there, motionless as a corpse.

“Why hasn’t he shifted yet?” I ask the doctor after twenty more minutes of watching the unconscious male on the gurney.

He answers me with a worried frown. “Unfortunately, I don’t know much about this condition since we don’t have any wolf-bound shifters here in Wolf Lake. Also, I’ve never heard of a case of a wolf-bound shifter changing into a human, so I’m afraid this is all new territory to me. But it might be that whatever kept him from transforming back into a human, is now keeping him from turning back into a wolf.”

“So then…” I squeeze the stranger’s hand inside of mine. “Maybe you should think about patching up the arrow wound?” I don’t know much about infections, but I binge-watched like a million seasons of
Grey’s Anatomy
while coding
Viking Shifters
and I’m fairly certain you’re not suppose to leave patients lying around with open wounds for too long.

Another frown from the doctor. “That would require stitches…and maybe some kind of cauterization, I think.” He pulls a phone out of his back pocket. “Let me make some calls…” After fiddling with his phone for a minute, he says, “Dammit, I can’t get enough bars in here. I’ve got to go outside.”

“Are you serious?” I ask him, feeling more than a little alarmed.

He just gives me a weary sigh. “Listen, I went to what amounts to a special version of vet school. Wolf docs are trained in the bare bones of human medicine, with C-sections thrown in for fun, and that’s pretty much it. If this had been an episiotomy, no problem. I know how to deal with those. But with males, my biggest problem is typically them going wolf in the middle of a procedure. I’ve never had to bandage so much as a deep cut. So yes, after a five-decade career of never seeing anything like this, I need a little help figuring out what to do with a silver-arrow wound. Just…”

He hands me the huge syringe.

“Just make sure he doesn’t roll over. I’ll try to make it quick, but if he wakes up, yell for me and stick him with that as soon as he changes.”

I do not feel at all equipped to deal with this giant male possibly transforming on me while Dr. Leesma is outside getting the basics on human wound treatment. But it’s not like I have a choice. The doctor leaves before I can open my mouth to ask another question.

But he’s probably right, I think, nervously glancing at the large wolf’s angry arrow wound with its blackened edges. It must be something to do with him being wolf-bound that’s making it difficult for him to shift back into his wolf form. And this is not good news for the Viking on the table. We heal much faster in wolf form, and we also feel less pain. If he wakes up now, the pain from the arrow extraction would be blinding—

The Viking wolf’s eyes suddenly pop open, then squeeze shut again as he’s overtaken with pain. He bellows like an animal, and his large body pitches forward on the table, one heavily muscled leg kicking over the nearby surgical tray with the bone saw.

Sadly, without a game controller in my hand, my reflexes aren’t much to write home about. So instead of sticking the Viking with the syringe like any capable she-wolf would in this situation, the tranq goes flying right out of my hand.

I throw an apologetic look at Olafr, and am nearly overtaken with guilt when I see just how bad he’s suffering. His whole face is constricted in a terrible rictus, his teeth bared wide as he bellows again.

“Change back,” I plead with him. “You’ve got to go wolf now so you can heal.”

This is probably the stupidest thing I could have said because if he could change into wolf form, he would have already done so. And let’s face it, considering he comes from a time and place where Old Norse is the primary language, the odds of him understanding me aren’t great.

Still, I continue talking to him, holding his hand tight and smoothing down his red dreadlocks with my other hand. Why? Because it feels like I have to do something. Anything to help him.

“It’s all right,” I whisper. “Shhh. It’s going to be all right. Please, calm down, please.”

He slaps a large hand over the back of mine, pressing it against the side of his face and rubbing one large cheek into it.

The lost tranquilizer syringe all but forgotten, I give him what I think he needs, continuing to whisper nonsense reassurances like, “It will be all right. I know it hurts.” And, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

But the soothing seems to be working. He stops bellowing and starts panting. Quick expulsions of breath between clenched teeth.

“I’m sorry,” I say again. “I’m going to go get the doctor. He’ll be able to give you something for the pain…”

But when I try to move away, he grabs my arm and pulls. Before I know what’s happening, I’m tumbling over, working hard to avoid his un-bandaged arrow wound as I reach out to catch myself.

That’s how I come to find myself on top of him. One hand braced above his injured shoulder, and one hand still wrapped tight inside his, my body flush against his longer one. He’s leaning back on the table now but doesn’t appear to notice his open wound.

“I’m sorry,” I say again, totally mortified.

However, when I try to get off, his arm wraps around my waist, and he shakes his head at me. Like he doesn’t want me to go.

And despite the situation, I find my usually dormant wolf sitting up again. Crooking her head inside of me, like
Hey-hey now!

He’s in pain
, I admonish my wolf.
He doesn’t know what he’s doing
.

And I try to explain to Olafr as best I can, “Must get, uh, medicine man. Doctor. Try to help you.” Dear God, I sound like I’m reading from some corny 1950s Lone Ranger script.

Then he shocks the hell out of me by saying, “No…doctor…” in the same thick accent from before. “You. Want
you
.”

So he speaks English! At least a little—but then I remember where I am, on top of a seriously wounded wolf, and shake my head.

“But I don’t have any medicine.”

“You,” he says, clumsily stroking my hair. Is he…?

Yes, he is, I realize with a start. He’s petting me, just like I petted him earlier.

Okay. Um, yeah.

I awkwardly grab hold of his wrist to stop him.

“You need the doctor,” I repeat.

And again he shakes his head, more slowly this time, holding my gaze. “You,” he repeats. The word thick. And final. “Need you.”

Then I feel something else on the table with us, a large presence swelling to life in the general vicinity of my solar plexus. And when I look back into his gray eyes, they’re no longer glowing, but clouded with the same primal lust I’ve seen on the grooms during my pack’s time-honored “Fuck and Burn” ritual.

Which should repulse me. I hate that ritual. It’s one of the many reasons I asked Clyde to talk to my father in order make sure it wouldn’t happen at my wedding. But my body doesn’t respond to the animal lust in his eyes like it’s supposed to, which is crazy, because she-wolves don’t exactly have a lot of sexual feeling going on before they go into their first heat. That’s why it’s illegal for males to have sex with us before our first heat. Our bodies just aren’t ready to go there. The first heat lets the first and most likely only male we will ever mate with know when we’re ready to receive him.

But just as his body doesn’t seem capable of shifting back to wolf form, my body doesn’t seem capable of playing by the rules. My breasts grow heavier, and all of a sudden I’m feeling a number of parts stirring in ways they never have before.

And for a wolf-bound shifter, no less.

Seriously ashamed of myself, I struggle to get up. For real this time. “Ok, look. You need a doctor—”

He flips both of us over—I have no idea how, given his injury. But he does, and the next thing I know, I’m looking up at him rather than down.

He sniffs at me. First burying his face in my loose yarn locs, then I feel his long nose at my neck, breathing me in as if he’s trying to memorize my scent. Like a dog.

Or like someone who’s wolf-bound and doesn’t know any better.

Nevertheless, I feel myself clench down below with an ache that feels, even to my thirty-year-old virgin mind, very sexual. Which is wrong. So, so wrong. Because this guy is wolf-bound. Plus, he really,
really
needs a doctor.

Oh God, I’ve got to get away. From him. From this. I try to slither out from underneath him.

And that’s when he flips me over again. This time onto my stomach.

What the…?

“Wait! Don’t…!” I start to get up onto my knees, only to have a large hand shove me back down flat.

Weirdly, I’m reminded of when I turned seventeen. The age when the girls in our pack get their first brand so everyone knows exactly where they belong. I can almost feel Yancey’s foot on my back, holding me down as he sears the Dark Wolf symbol into my right shoulder.

Don’t you dare fucking cry when you get your mark,
my father told me before the ceremony
. And you better not shift. Represent your fucking family
!

I hadn’t cried. I hadn’t shifted. I’d taken it like a Greenwolf, like you’d expect from the princess of a mange biker pack.

Then I disappeared into my rooms to recover and pretty much never came out again unless specifically requested. For over twelve years, I pretended I was some other wolf. Not a princess. Not a girl, even. Just a game designer with a product to sell. Like the brand on my shoulder never happened.

But now I’m back on my stomach. And it feels like the brand is blistering on my back as I struggle beneath the large body holding me down.

I can feel his naked member, big and heavy against my back, as his wide, clumsy hands claw against the sides of my pants, trying to get them down.

“Get off of me!” I struggle against him, kicking a heel back into his leg with my high tops. “Get the hell off me!”

Then I scream out, “Help! Somebody help!”