Her Viking Wolf (3 page)

She looked from side to side, before spewing forth words that sounded to him vaguely like some form of Germanic, but not a dialect he recognized. Why would this dark woman be speaking to him in Germanic?

He started toward her, which seemed to alarm her. She made a high-pitched noise, like a mouse, before squeezing her eyes closed. A whistling sound then emitted from her strange weapon right before something struck him with the sting of a fierce insect bite.

He looked down to see some manner of dart sticking from his shoulder. And just as he moved to pull it out, a powerful sleep overtook him, one he could not resist, even though he strove hard to fight the enveloping blackness.

CHAPTER THREE

“YOU
know, if we were mated that wouldn’t have gone so bad,” Rafe said, a couple of hours after the confrontation at the portal.

It had been an awkward and unwieldy business getting the large maybe-Viking down the mountain to the town’s two-room clinic. But he now lie sleeping upright in a hospital bed, to which he’d been handcuffed, looking much more peaceful than the two people in the room’s side-by-side visitor chairs.

Chloe adjusted her position to look at Rafe with an incredulous blink. “Seriously? We are in the clinic with
a possibly crazed Viking
sleeping off a tranq, and this is what you want to talk about?”

Rafe shrugged as if time-traveling Viking werewolves happened every day. “Once we’re mated, we’ll be telepathically connected, too, which means we’ll be able to say things like, ‘Hey, Chloe, don’t talk to him in German, just shoot him already.’”

“Or things like, ‘Hey, Rafe, you can thank me for saving your life any day now.’”

Rafe clenched his jaw and looked away. “The truth is, I’m more pissed at myself for letting him get the upper hand. I shouldn’t have let my guard down. What if he had hurt you, or worse? I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself.”

He sounded so guilty that Chloe’s irritation was instantly replaced with the need to comfort him. She placed a hand on his arm. “But he didn’t hurt me or you. That’s all that matters.”

Rafe shook his head. “I’ve never seen a guy that big move so fast. I wonder what he did to get cast out of wherever he came from.”

So did Chloe.

Doc Fischer, their shifter town’s middle-aged and perennially cranky doctor, entered the room at that moment. “Has he tried to tell you why he got sent back yet?”

“No, he’s still not awake,” Chloe said.

The doctor screwed his up his craggy face. “What do you mean? He’s wide awake.”

They whipped their heads around to see the maybe-Viking lying there with his eyes wide open and staring at them. Hard.

Doc Fischer went to his bed-side and Rafe joined him. However, Chloe chose that moment to get out of the doctor’s way, repositioning herself on the opposite side of the room from the reluctant patient. As much as she had enjoyed meeting the werewolves who came through the gate in the past, she figured it was largely because they were
she-wolves
from different cultures or points in history—but blood-thirsty werewolves with swords? Nah, she wasn’t so into that.

This guy had come very close to killing her best friend. And somehow his prone position and the fact that he was handcuffed to the bed by both hands didn’t make him seem any less deadly. For whatever reason, Chloe was having trouble staying calm now that he was awake. Something about him caused her insides to go all skittery. It was similar to how she felt when Rafe tried to talk to her about their heat night, but with a side dish of electric fear that made her nerves tingle.

And she only became more unsettled when his intense gaze followed her in her attempt to put space between them.

“We figure he’s a criminal and got cast out of his pack. Maybe he challenged the alpha and this was his punishment,” Rafe told Doc Fisher, after the old man finished examining the maybe-Viking’s eyes with a pen-light.

The doctor frowned. “Hmm, you say he came through the gate un-shifted? Usually a gate banishment is done on a diseased wolf or in desperation and toward the apex of a fight. He doesn’t have any wounds, except some bruising where his head hit that rock.”

Rafe shrugged. “Maybe he had a trial and was found guilty. There were a few packs that used the trial system, right?”

“Actually, I just consulted on this case with a friend of mine at UC Denver who specializes in history and literature from the Viking period. He said Norway and Iceland were known for their strict legal system during the Viking Age, which is why he doesn’t think this is a gate banishment. According to him, they had a fairly thorough punishment system in place, no need to go wild with the gates.”

“Then maybe he’s not a Viking. He could be from some other place and time and we just didn’t recognize whatever language he’s speaking.”

The doctor shook his head. “I don’t think so. I sent a picture of that sword of his to my professor friend and he recognized it, because of the wolf on the hilt. He even sent me a picture. It’s on display at the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo. They don’t have a firm history on it. But it definitely dates back to the Viking Age.”

Doc Fischer re-pocketed his pen-light. “I think we might need to apply Occam’s razor here.”

A bad feeling began to brew in Chloe’s stomach.

“What do you mean?” Rafe asked.

“You know, ‘the simplest explanation is probably the most likely one?’” The doctor clasped his hands in front of him like a lawyer about to put forth his case. “He came through the gate un-shifted with no visible wounds. You said he tried to kill you but stopped because Chloe told him not to.”

“Not because I told him not to,” Chloe said. “It was more like I took him by surprise.”

Doc Fischer gave her skeptical look. “Plus, he hasn’t taken his eyes off of you, despite the fact that he’s handcuffed down to a bed in a time period clearly not his own. I’m thinking the logical conclusion here is this Viking has come forward in time for his fated mate.”

Both Chloe and Rafe gaped at him.

“And it’s Chloe,” the doctor added, just in case they weren’t getting his original meaning.

“No,” Chloe and Rafe said at the same time.

Doc Fischer turned his no-nonsense gaze on Chloe. “Chloe is there something you want to tell us?”

“No,” answered Chloe, her eyes going wide with indignation.

The doctor picked up the maybe-Viking’s chart and started making notes. “So you don’t feel anything at all right now for this wolf? No increased heart rate, heightened arousal, anything like that?”

“No! I don’t feel anything for him.” Chloe looked to the red-haired man who was still quite openly staring at her but then she quickly had to cut her eyes away, because she wasn’t lying, but she wasn’t exactly telling the truth either. While she was definitely not aroused when she looked at him, the weird skittery feeling did get worse.

“Look, we’re all thinking he’s probably a Viking, right?” she said. “The last time I checked, there weren’t a ton of black people in Norway back then. For all we know, this guy has never seen a black girl, and that’s why he’s staring at me.”

She turned to Rafe, hoping he’d back her up as he did in most things.

But Rafe didn’t agree. In fact his eyes burned with suspicion as he came to stand in front of her. He slowly and deliberately sniffed the air around her, and only then did he visibly calm down. “I don’t smell any arousal on her,” he said, his voice angry with the declaration. He swung his gaze back to the doctor. “I don’t like what you’re insinuating, Doc.”

The doctor held his hands up. “Don’t kill the messenger. I’m only checking off all the possibilities.”

Rafe glared at him. “I won’t let you insult her like that. She’s my mate.”

“Not yet, she isn’t. Not officially.” The doctor shook his head. “And it’s not an insult. I’m older than both of you, and I know you two love each other, but . . .” He paused, seeming to search for the right words. “These things happen. More often then you think. Especially among wolves. There’s a reason all of our legends involve either great alpha fights or tragic love stories. North American wolves have only strayed away from the tradition of fated mates spells in the last two hundred years, which is relatively recent if you think about it in terms of world history. You need to realize it can still be quite powerful when one is cast.”

“Well, that’s not what’s happening here,” Rafe informed him. “He’s a criminal, and even if he’s not shifted, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t banished for something.”

Chloe was having a hard time figuring out how she should be reacting to this conversation. Though she was happy Rafe decided to come to her defense—eventually—the longer he discussed this topic with Doc Fischer, the more nervous and on edge she felt. Plus, she could still feel the maybe-Viking’s eyes burning hot on her, which made her feel even more awkward.

“All right, if you say so. I mean, you’re the alpha prince,” Doc Fischer answered. It was impossible not to hear the insincerity in his words. He might as well have said, “You’re being unreasonable, but I’ll just go ahead and agree with you because you’re the entitled alpha prince.”

And apparently Rafe sensed his real meaning, too, because he said, “I’ll prove it. If he came back here for Chloe, then he’d go ape if I kissed her in front of him, right?”

The doctor nodded. “Yes, he’s her fated mate, he’d definitely ‘go ape’ as you call it.”

Rafe turned to her and cupped her shoulders. Chloe immediately felt her body tense.

“It’s okay,” Rafe said. “I know you don’t like public displays of affection, but this is for a good cause.”

This didn’t soothe Chloe any. The truth was, she had told Rafe early in their engagement she didn’t like kissing in front of other people, but that had been an excuse to keep their make-out sessions contained. Rafe was outrageously handsome, and she loved talking with him and laughing with him and hugging him and even cuddling with him. However, kissing him gave her a slight case of the heebie-jeebies, and she had to not only brace herself for his kisses, but also concentrate on something else altogether in order to keep it from showing. More than one
Black Mountain Woman
blog post had been completely composed in her head, while she forced herself to make out with Rafe.

But in this case, she didn’t really have time to fully brace herself before his lips fell on hers. And she immediately set all her attention to fighting the weird urge to rip her lips away from his that always overtook her when they were intimate. However, less than a few seconds into the wildly uncomfortable kiss, they were interrupted by a loud clanging sound.

Rafe pulled away from the kiss, which allowed her to see the source of the sound. It was the maybe-Viking. He was thrashing in the bed, and the handcuffs clanged against the bed’s metal railing, he was straining so hard to break free. His face had turned red with anger, and she could actually see the veins in his neck. And that was before he started spewing his strange language, directing several words toward Rafe that Chloe was fairly sure involved some really harsh threats and expletives.

Seeing this display of temper paralyzed Chloe, rooting her in place. But Doc Fischer, who held degrees in both medical and veterinary science and had apparently seen it all, lazily prepared a syringe before stepping forward and plunging it into the maybe Viking’s arm without a word.

The sedative only took a few moments to take hold, but the maybe Viking fought his restraints the entire time, his eyes bulging and locked on Rafe as he cursed in his foreign language, his face screwed up with rage, until eventually his words began to slur and he fell back against the bed in another heavy sleep.

After he passed out, Doc Fischer regarded them both with the cynical aplomb. “Well, I think that answers our question.”

CHAPTER FOUR

FOR
as long as Chloe could remember, she had wanted to be part of the Nightwolf family. She could still remember the three weeks she’d spent in their family’s mansion after being found by the side of the road, shivering and alone. The wolf law of every state was that the king had to take in any abandoned children left in his province, which she later figured out was why her parents had chosen to abandon her in this particular place.

Back then, the clan only placed wolves with families of the same race. So though most abandoned children her age were placed in three days or less, it took three whole weeks to find her a home. And they were three of the best weeks of her entire life. Even at the age of four, Rafe had been charming and awesome. Two seconds after she stepped through the door, he had immediately asked her to come up and play in his toy room, which was just what it sounded like, a room larger than the entire one-bedroom apartment she had shared with her parents. It was designated for all of Rafe’s toys, and he’d been more than happy to share with her.

She also instantly loved Rafe’s parents. His father had a booming laugh and considered himself a friend to all—as long as they were Broncos fans. Luckily she had answered with a tentative, “Yes?” when he’d asked her at their first meeting, “You cheer for the Broncos, little girl?” And Rafe’s mother was warm and nurturing in a way her own had never been, hugging her often and assuring her everything would be all right.

When three weeks passed and they had only been able to find Myrna Adams, a local black spinster, to take her in, Chloe had actually been grateful. She wouldn’t be with a family of her own, but at least she’d stay close to the family she now loved the most.

And a year later when she and Rafe entered kindergarten at Wolf Springs Elementary, the only all-wolf public school in Colorado, they’d picked up right back where they started, playing together every day, and soon she and Myrna became regulars at their Sunday dinners. She had grown up with Rafe, and when he proposed to her, it felt like he was not only asking her to be his mate, but also inviting her into his loving, close-knit family, which she wanted more than anything.

Over the pass few years, she had prayed and prayed for her heat night to come, not just so she’d feel more comfortable kissing Rafe, but also so she could take her official place as part of his family and even start one of her own with him. There was nothing in this world she wanted more.