No answer.
“Did you at least take meals with my family this day? I would not have our pup starved because of you.”
No answer.
Fenris set his jaw before removing his tunic and trousers and crawling into the bed in his linen underclothes.
It was becoming harder for him to believe that only a week ago, they had created the life in her belly on a tide of passion. He remembered the way her wet heat had gripped him, demanding all of his seed, even in her anger. Now they lie there, side-by-side, stiff like strangers or corpses. He smelled no arousal on her, and even her anger seemed to have disappeared, leaving but the shell of the vibrant woman who had told him only her Christian deity kept her from killing him in his sleep.
This is when he knew he must heed his aunt’s advice. Even if it was unbecoming of a Fenris. He could not abide any more nights like this one.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
WHAT she missed the most was the anger, Chloe thought to herself. She hadn’t realized it had been fueling her ability to deal with being thrust over a thousand years into the past until it slowly ebbed away, leaving only a heavy sadness in it’s place.
And she had been seriously furious at first, determined to punish the Viking for ripping her from everyone and everything she’d known and loved. But three days into it, she unexpectedly lost her biggest supporter while walking to the toilet pit—which was exactly what it sounded like, by the way, with only a waist-high structure made of sticks to give its user any privacy. As she was coming out the longhouse’s only door, she saw Fenris for the first time outside since the day she arrived.
Unlike that day, he was now dressed in a silk tunic top and wool leggings that framed his tree trunk legs even tighter than the pants he’d shown up in Colorado wearing. Around his shoulders he wore a cloak and hood, much like the one his friend, Randulfr, had been wearing when they entered the town, except apparently he had taken out a polar bear to get his coat, because it was white. And just in case there was any danger of someone not getting what animal it was made of, the polar bear’s head sat on top of the Viking’s own, complete with shiny black eyes and a vicious set of polar bear fangs hanging over his forehead.
Being from a time when polar bears were on the endangered species list and the subject of numerous nature specials, Chloe should have been appalled. But the truth was, with his loose red hair falling in shiny waves around his shoulders and shimmering against the white of the fur, the Viking looked like nothing less than a rock star.
At the moment, he stood with his hands clasped in front of him while two men, standing before him, spoke forcefully, each pointing at a goat tied to a nearby pole.
After they were done, Fenris asked them a couple of questions, which they answered at the same time, each trying to shout over the other until Fenris raised his hand and said a few words. After that, one of the men whooped and went to grab the goat’s rope.
To the other man, who had now folded his arms with a sour look on his face, Fenris said a few more words, to which the man nodded before walking away.
She was dead curious about what had just gone down, but realized she had lingered too long at the scene, when Fenris caught her eye.
“You have finally decided to leave our bed?” The thought appeared inside her head,
And that was when the anger started to fade. Because she realized then that while Fenris’s people needed him to be their alpha, to lead them, and serve as the judge and jury for small arguments, there was no one offline awaiting her return back in her own time.
Rafe hated her. The entire town of Wolf Springs had pretty much turned against her before she left. Her online fans would miss the Black Mountain Woman show, and her sponsors would wonder what happened to her. But Rafe’s father wasn’t dumb. If too many people started asking questions, they’d just log on to her blog and leave a goodbye note. Her fans would be sad, but no one would truly miss her. No one needed her back in her time like Fenris’s people needed him. She had no family, she had no friends, and she had no community, which meant despite everything she had tried to build and do, since getting left on the side of the road by her parents, she was essentially back where she started. A lone wolf in a place she did not know.
And suddenly she became tired, too tired to stand even a moment longer.
She looked away from the Viking and used the ridiculous toilet before trudging back to the bed closet and closing herself in. She fell asleep and dreamed of nothing. And when she awoke, she needed to use the toilet pit again. So she did, and then she came back to bed and stared at the ceiling until sleep overtook her again. And when she woke, it was time for the toilet pit again.
This continued on for how long, she didn’t know. On a few trips the rest of the people who lived in the longhouse would be gathered around the table eating, and the same woman who had hugged her like she knew her on that first day, the one with a face full of wrinkles, crisp gray eyes like the Viking’s, and a head full of silver hair that fell all the way down her back, would grab her by the arm. She’d press a piece of bread covered with one meat or another into Chloe’s hand and wouldn’t let her go until she finished eating it and had drunk at least a horn of goat’s milk, which always seemed to be within her reach. And that was how she came to learn the Old Norse words for eat and drink, the only two words she knew besides thank you and the spell words that had thrown her back in time.
The woman no longer looked as happy as she had on the day they entered the village. And she regarded Chloe with a mix of sadness and pity when she finally let go of her hand.
Chloe’s world became the beige of the bed closet, with her days consisting of sleeping, using the toilet pit, occasionally being forced to eat by a little old lady, and staring at the carving on the bed’s closet’s ceiling for hours on end. It was a rather intricate scene of two wolves engaged in battle, while above it, a woman with a rounded belly and a man stood facing each other, she with a garland of flowers around her head, he with a crown. The couple was encircled by wolves, all of which seemed to be howling at the moon.
Chloe couldn’t help but wonder at its origins. But that would mean asking Fenris, and she still wasn’t talking to him, even though he had become the only other spot of color, besides the old lady who made sure she ate, in her days. Occasionally, she’d still be awake when he joined her in bed and the Viking would push a couple of sentences into her mind, usually surly ones, that she was able to take a little pleasure in not answering. But not much.