Her Viking Wolves: 50 Loving States, Michigan (19 page)

FJ places his hand back where I want it, only to pause again.

“Brother,
Varra
, behold the full moon,”
he says, his voice full of awe.
This is a sight we three have never witnessed as humans.”

This is true. Once a mating heat has begun, we wolves won’t shift again until three moons after the baby is born. So with true wonder our eyes drift to the large picture window across the room to take in the sight only our wolves have beheld before this. The full moon, which I’ve only ever seen in photos and on TV, takes my breath away. It sits low on the horizon, so big and bright it almost seems to be blessing our strange coupling.

“In our land, we would take our marriage vows under such a moon,”
FJ says inside our heads.
“We three in our human forms, while the rest of the pack circles us inside their wolves, howling blessings for our union to the sky above.”
He pauses for a thoughtful moment.
“Unless I am much mistaken, this day is Freya-Day—Friday. Freya is our goddess of marriage,
Varra
. With the full moon above, it is a doubly auspicious day for the taking of vows.”

He pauses once more, and this time I can feel the weight and meaning behind his words when he again asks,
“
Varra
, will you have us?”

Olafr also turns to face me. And I begin to realize where this is headed. They want me to promise myself to them. To marry them here, under a full moon, in the way of their pack.

“We would have your answer on this,”
Olafr says quietly inside my head.
“Will you have us,
Varra
?”

They don’t need me to make any vows. I’ve already made up my mind to go back with them, our strange mate connection seems to tighten in that moment. Like good code made stronger with the right edit.

I can’t explain it—even to myself. But the moment is unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. We are bound together…three wolves under the benevolent watch of our beloved and mysterious moon. How can I not say yes? How can I not make strange vows to these two while bearing witness to our first human moon?

And so I do.

“Yes.” I say aloud, turning my head to hold the gaze of each of them in turn. The fact that I can hold their gazes at all is more proof of the miracle we’ve created within our mating bond in my mind.

FJ cups my upturned face, kissing me as he says inside my head,
“And so do we take you as our she-wolf. So will you be ours, always.”

I kiss him back, my body heating with a new warmth that doesn’t have anything to do with my heat. In fact my heat fades into the background as we seal our vow with a kiss.

Then I feel Olafr’s hand on my other cheek. He turns my head, so I can kiss him. And I wonder at how differently they taste. FJ more like frost, Olafr more like the forest. Neither better than the other. Just different.

“And so do we take you as our she-wolf. So will you be ours always.”
Olafr says inside my head now, also giving me his vow.

Theirs always.
Yes
, I answer. Not with my mind or my voice, but with my heart. So loud, I’m sure they can hear the single word resonating in the air, along with my renewed heat.

“Raise your leg,
Varra
,”
FJ says inside my head as I kiss Olafr.

I do as he says, like a puppet with no mind left of her own, expecting him to take me from behind. But then, oh God…

FJ’s hands tighten around my hips and he presses me down onto his brother’s length, forcing me to take all of him in one hard push.

“Receive my brother’s wolf,”
he growls inside my mind, as Olafr starts fucking me.
“Know him as your mate, as you now know his human. Give him your wolf. Hold nothing back from us,
Varra
.”

I cry out, unable to stop myself from participating in this lewd act, even as I realize it goes beyond taking turns with them. FJ is holding me while his brother has his fill. It is
so
wrong. But my body could care less, because it feels
so insanely
right…

My wolf is going crazy, releasing massive amounts of heat as Olafr’s wolf rocks into me and FJ’s large hands bite into my hips. Then FJ raises one hand to turn my face. He captures my mouth and kisses me over my shoulder.

So wrong!
I think as his tongue delves deep into my mouth while his brother fucks me, each thrust short and shallow thanks to how little room either of us has.

Olafr and I both yell out. My body is so confused by all the sensations, and I have no idea whose climax has triggered whose. But it rolls over us in waves, making me scream against FJ lips…

…and then Olafr knots inside of me.

I scream out loud, gritting my teeth as another orgasm sends me right back over the edge of sanity.

I’m not sure how long it takes me to come down, but I know the exact moment Olafr unknots from me. Not just because he pulls out, but because of how quickly I’m yanked away from him.

The next thing I know, FJ is on top of me. He wraps one of my legs around his waist, his teeth sinking into my left shoulder. And as if to brace itself for a coming invasion, my body immediately releases a new round of heat.

Just in time to welcome FJ, as he pushes into me, hot and hard.

“Think you I will ever tire of this,
Varra
?”
FJ asks inside my head. He seems angry with me, his voice tight with accusation as he drives his big body into mine.
“Think you my brother or I could ever want another after having this with you? A true union like none we have ever known? No, you are ours. And ours will you always be.”

“Yes,”
I say on a gasp.
“Yours.”

“Always,”
FJ repeats. Then he looks me deep in the eyes and tells me out loud, “I would have these words from your tongue. Ours always.”

“Yours always,” I cry, and then to my astonishment, I’m overtaken by a third orgasm, bright and full as the moon outside the window.

FJ also comes undone, yelling out and knotting inside me with one final thrust as he shoots what feels like a river of semen into my soaked pussy.

And then…

…he smiles down at me bright as the moon above.

“Ours always,”
he whispers inside my mind as he rolls us together. In an instant, we’re once again on our sides, my pussy milking his dick in tugs so hard and long, I’m not entirely sure the action won’t make me come again.

Olafr nestles in behind me, kissing the shoulder FJ bit like a healing balm.

“Ours always,”
he says sleepily.

I have never in my life felt so warm. Or so cared for.

“
Yours always
,” I say, resting my forehead against FJ’s chest and pressing my shoulder into Olafr’s lips.

And I swear it feels like we really did just get married. Like we’re official somehow, because of a few words uttered while fucking under the light of a full moon.

Have I mentioned this whole situation is off-the-charts weird? Because it totally, totally is.

Totally weird,
I think on a yawn. Then I once again fall asleep feeling safer than I ever have before in my entire life.

“
S
he is
with our child now,”
Olafr tells his brother.
“I can smell it.”

Olafr and his brother have not succumbed to sleep as quickly as before. They are on opposite sides of their sleeping she-wolf, listening to her breathe softly in the dark room. Waiting.

For what, Olafr does not know until he smells the subtle shift in their mate’s scent.

He feels FJ’s relief as if it is his own, even before his brother answers,
“Good.”
A quiet whisper, even though they’re speaking privately through their Brother Bond.

Still, Olafr understands well the reason for his brother’s relief. She has accepted their vows, and she is with their child. Finally can they be sure she meant what she said that morn, and that she will not leave them.

“She understands how it will be between us now,”
Olafr says to his brother.
“Understands and accepts.”

“Mayhap, but still I sense her hesitation. Her human still holding itself away from us even as her wolf gives us passionate promise.”
FJ gives him a grim look over their she-wolf’s shoulder.
“She is strange. Innocent but strong. Distrusting of her emotions, but reliant on her mind. She has want of us, but doubts our fidelity. She has pledged us her troth, but still she worries. She was shy with us before, but a fiercer lover never have I met. Yet I cannot think her strange ways a simple matter of what Mother does call ‘insecurity.’”

Olafr nods, understanding his brother’s meaning.

“She has confused me also, but I think it is because of her past. Her Detroit fenrir…”

As is often the way with them, FJ is already nodding before Olafr’s thought is fully finished.
“I saw great fear come into her eyes when I did speak of meeting with him to contract her hand in marriage.”

Olafr’s faces hardens.
“I would have her fear no wolf. We must protect her.”
He rubs his nose against the mark on the back of her right shoulder. A raised image of a black wolf which smells strongly to Olafr of fire and smoke and pain.
“Against him and anyone else who would wish her harm.”

“Yea,”
FJ says.
“We must and we will. Tonight have we married three. Tomorrow will I give her public claim as my queen. This is how it shall be.”

Olafr kisses their mate’s mark, and repeats after his brother.
“This is how it shall be.”

And only then does he allow himself to fall asleep, knowing their babe grows within her belly and she will forever theirs be.

S
o that happened
.

This time when I wake between FJ and Olafr, the room is still dark but the beautiful moon is gone. What I’ve come to know as a typical Alaska winter morning.

But I’m too hungry to care about the gloomy darkness. Right now, the fact that I haven’t eaten a full meal in over twenty-fours hours is the only thing that matters.

With lots of turning and wiggling and pushing on heavily muscled bodies, I somehow manage to get out from between them. But it’s not easy. By the time I’m done, I’m breathing hard and even hungrier than I was when I first woke up.

But still, I can’t resist taking a few seconds to look at them once I’m out of the bed.

“Yours always,” I whisper out loud. And I feel the truth of it in my bones.

As crazy as all this is, they have my heart now. I know this as I watch them sleep, hardly able to believe these two beautiful Viking brothers are my mates.

I’ve never had a chance to look at them side by side like this before—well once, I think, remembering our first meeting in the clinic. But that didn’t count, because I was more interested in running from them than anything else.

That was then. This is now.

Now I let myself stare without any reservation whatsoever. They look so at peace in the large bed. The harsh edges of their faces relaxed, like they just top-leveled a game and earned a good rest.

Seriously, I was mad at Tu before but now I feel like she understated the hell out of their looks. They are so freaking fine, despite my empty stomach I’m almost tempted to—

I pause in my lustful thoughts, waiting for the inevitable heat explosion. Nothing.

That’s when I realize…
Oh God, I’m pregnant
.

Me. Tiara Greenwolf, the woman who designs and plays video games for a living and drinks way too much Mountain Dew, is going to be a mama.

During my short-lived engagement to Kyle, I’d planned to slowly wean myself off all the soda, junk food, and eighteen-hour work days. But that hadn’t gone as I’d hoped and now I’m pregnant. And starving.

Well, food first, I guess.

I walk over to FJ’s closet and open the doors. Only to find five dark suits with five matching white shirts hanging inside. There’s nothing else. I check the built-in cedar drawers, but only one is full of underwear and socks and the rest are empty. No jeans. Not even a sign of Mag’s “Thug King” sweatshirt.

How bizarre. Yeah, I realize FJ hasn’t exactly been here long enough to go on a shopping spree or anything. But there are more than enough big men in this house who he could borrow clothes from. You’d think, considering he came from a culture that places a lot of value in wearable clothes, he’d be interested in some of the more comfortable attire of this era. But apparently, FJ is dressing exclusively like a businessman now.

No, not like a businessman, I realize, regarding the suits. But like an Alpha. A man who knows he’s going to be in charge of shit no matter where he goes.

The thought sends a sharp chill up my back. But even that’s not enough to distract me from the hunger now gnawing at my gut.

I slip one of the white dress shirts over my head and head down to the kitchen, where I find a whole box of bright orange Hostess cupcakes in Uncle Tikaani’s not-so-secret stash. I rip open the first cupcake package and bite into it, savoring the familiar collection of chemically-perfected ingredients as they hit my food-deprived tongue.

But it just doesn’t taste very satisfying to me in the moment, and it feels like my hunger is still clawing at me after I eat the first one.

Ugh, this is no good. I wonder if I’ll have to go into town. What time is it, anyway? It’s dark outside, but it might not be too late. Alaska winters mean super short days, and I’m not sensing or smelling anyone else on the main floors of the house. Which means they could still be below stairs, waiting out my heat as wolves do.

But when I leave the pantry, a smell catches my nose. So tantalizing, I feel like I’m following a cartoon fragrance swirl to the refrigerator…where I find an entire roast chicken in a Pyrex roasting pan surrounded by a ring of root vegetables.

Obviously a gift meal. Placed there by whom, I have no idea. Janelle, Alisha, and Tu would have beat it out of town with their families as soon as the full moon that released them from my heat thrall was done. The kingdom housekeeping staff is taking a well-deserved break after all those holiday parties, and this really doesn’t feel like Aunt Wilma’s style.

But I’m not one to look a gift chicken in the mouth. I grab the entire pan, plop it on the nearest counter, and go H.A.M. Devouring the chicken and veggies so fast, it feels like only a few seconds have passed when I look down and find there’s nothing but bones left on the plate—

My back suddenly straightens, my wolf going on high alert as I sniff the air beyond the chicken. There’s someone else in the room with me. With our heightened sense of smell, it’s almost impossible for one wolf to sneak up on another without a lot of effort. But I’d been so consumed with eating that someone has managed to do just that. Someone who isn’t Olafr or FJ, or a member of the royal Alaska family.

Unfortunately, I know precisely who it is before I turn and find Uncle Ford standing there with a large cardboard box in his hands.

“Hi, Uncle Ford,” I say. Voice small.

I’m not exactly sure what to do next.

Uncle Ford is a very dedicated beta. So dedicated, he’d opted to stay behind to guard Wolf Lake the few times Aunt Wilma brought her family to Detroit to visit Granddad, back when he was still the Detroit alpha. I knew he’d mated with a local she-wolf and had a son of his own, who now served as Grady’s beta in Oklahoma.

But aside from those few facts, I didn’t know much at all about my father’s younger brother. Other than he was still willing to do Dad’s bidding when asked.

I take a step back, preparing to run. Back to the room. Back to my mates.

But Uncle Ford shakes his head, more weary than aggressive.

“Relax, girl,” he says, holding up the box. “I brought you some more food.”

So he was the one who left the chicken…

“Th-thank you,” I say, too socially inept and frankly wrung out from being so thoroughly mated to hide my surprise. “That roasted chicken was really good.”

He’s either embarrassed by my gratitude or has as many problems making eye contact as I do, because his eyes stay on the box on his hands as he mumbles, “I’ve got a couple of lasagnas here, too. Still hot. Just took them out the oven.”

So that’s how I ended up sitting across from Uncle Ford at Aunt Wilma’s kitchen table, forking a surprisingly delicious lasagna straight out of the pan.

But then he goes and ruins the comfortable moment with a quiet, “You know Wilt ain’t going to let this stand.”

And just like that, I lose my appetite. “It’s okay,” I answer, setting my fork down. “I’m going to go back with them to their time. I already decided.”

Judging from the terrible look that comes over Uncle Ford’s face, he doesn’t think that’s a great idea.

“I know it sounds crazy,” I tell him. “But they’re my mates. And this wouldn’t make much sense to you or anyone else, but we have a connection. The three of us. And I don’t want to be without them.”

Ford frowns ugly for a long, quiet while, and then says, “So you three are leaving today? Like right now? Because Wilt called before I came over here, and he said if I didn’t put your ass on a plane today, he’s sending Yancey and Grif, that beta they’ve been training up for Clyde, out here on a private plane. That what you want?”

“No, of course that’s not what I—”

Uncle Ford cuts me off. “Alisha told me those boys came here to get some help with their dragon problem,” he says. “From what I understand, she’s trying to negotiate with that Norwegian pack of theirs over the phone to gear them up with the weapons they need to win this fight. But if Yancey and Grif come by private plane, it’s going to take them less than a day to get here.”

Uncle Ford jabs an index finger into the blond wood table, his Detroit accent coming out in full effect. “You from Detroit, girl. You ever heard of any of your father’s weapons deals going down in less than a day? And somehow I don’t think we talking about a couple of sawed-offs here.”

Shit, he was right. He was totally right. “But there has to be a way—” I start, only to get cut off again.

“You in far up
Alaska
, Tee, and all your cousins left out this morning,” Uncle Ford says like I’m not just desperate but completely stupid. “I’m the only wolf in this town who even carry a gun, and half the time I forget and leave it at home. And what you think Yancey’s going to do when he finds you up in here? Straight mated to these two yellow Vikings? How you think that’s going work with all them unicorns and rainbows you trying to pull out your ass? With this, ‘I’m just going to go back in time and fight dragons’ bullshit you trying to sell me?”

I collapse my face into my hands, not wanting to hear more. Unable to take what he’s saying. Not just because his words are so repellant, but because they are totally true.

As soon as Yancey and Grif smell those two on me, they’ll shoot first and ask questions later. All the food I ate roils in my stomach, just thinking about how ugly it would get. And hot tears come to my eyes as I begin to realize how futile my situation truly is.

On the other side of the table, Uncle Ford sighs, and to my surprise, his voice gentles as he says, “I don’t know much about this fated mates business. I had a simple marriage with a simple girl until she…”

He doesn’t finish, but he doesn’t have to. His mate died in childbirth, just like my mother and his mother—the grandmother I’d never met because she’d died soon after pushing out Aunt Wilma. It’s the tragic thing we have in common, along with poor interpersonal skills and the inability to say a hard thing soft.

“But I do know this,” he continues, his voice almost sorrowful. “It don’t matter what any of them old stories say about fated mates. Wilton ain’t going to let you keep them boys. You
know
that.”

They’re not boys. They’re grown men. Two kind and amazing men who have shown me more consideration over the last three days than my father has showed me over the course of an entire lifetime.

But I don’t tell Uncle Ford that. Because this conversation, one sided as it is, isn’t about the words he’s using to make his point, but the point itself. And the fact that he’s right.

My father is the most ruthless person I know. He would have no problem killing my two mates and forcing me into marriage with the prince he’s chosen. He’d happily have Yancey and Grif take care of this entire situation with their Mossberg friends before he let two time-traveling Viking wolves claim me and whisk me back with them to Viking Age Norway.

Try as I might, I can’t figure a way out of this. Even if I somehow convince FJ and Olafr to take me back to the past before they get the weapons they need to battle their dragons, I can’t risk the chance that I was sending them back to certain slaughter.

I think of what Olafr told me last night about his sacrifice:
And would I do the same again to keep the ones I have love for safe.

“You know what you’ve got to do, right?” Uncle Ford says on the other side of the table.

It’s like the final Boss level of
Viking Shifters
, where players are unexpectedly swarmed by dragons. Nobody wins that level on the first try. Even the best players typically go through no less than ten gameovers before they make it through. And then there are those who have figured out how to bypass that level altogether using one of the many cheat codes floating around in cyberspace.

FJ and Olafr came here looking for answers. Something to help them either skip or win the Boss level back home. I can’t make them go back before they have a chance to gather everything they need to save their parents and their entire village. No, I can’t just sign their death warrants, because I don’t want my father to win the game.

Which means I can’t keep them. And I can’t keep the vows I made to them.

I nod in answer to Uncle Ford’s question. My chest so tight, it feels like I’m being squeezed to death by my awful feelings.

And he gives me a stiff nod of his own before quickly looking away. He seems to be having an even harder time looking at me now. Because I mated with two wolves, or because I mated with two wolves despite knowing what my father would do when he found out, I don’t know. Either way, I now feel the opposite of what I’d felt with Olafr and FJ.

Not treasured, but disgusting. Because even when I thought I could run away with them, I knew. In my heart of hearts, I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay with them forever. But I let them believe we actually had a chance of being together. Let that whole game of moonlight make believe go down even though I’ve never in my life been given any reason to so much as imagine my life could ever have a fairytale happy ending.

I feel awful. And yeah, I know what I have to do in that moment. Get on a plane. Go back to Detroit before they wake up, so this terrible dream I let happen between us isn’t made any worse. But…