When he joined her in bed that night, he said, “You will attract bedsores if you continue in this manner.”
She didn’t answer.
“Did you at least take meals with my family this day? I would not have our pup starved because of you.”
She didn’t answer, though that did bring her a tiny pin prick of guilt, because she’d need to get her act together if she wanted to deliver a healthy baby, especially in a time period without prenatal care. The guilt actually made her feel a little better. She was beginning to feel grateful for the ability to feel anything at all.
Eventually the Viking came to lie down beside her, his body stiff beside hers, and even though she couldn’t see his face, she could feel the anger radiating off of him as she drifted off to sleep again... only to be shaken awake what felt like just a few hours later.
She opened her eyes to see the Viking standing above the bed.
He held out the fox pelt the gatekeeper had given her. “You will come with me now.”
She just looked back at him, letting her lack of action serve as her denial of his command.
“Do not force me to throw you over my shoulder,” he said, beckoning her with his hand. “Come now.”
She got out of bed and took the fox fur from him. Partly because she didn’t doubt the asshole would throw her over his shoulder, but mostly out of curiosity. What could he want her to see so badly that he’d wake her in the middle of the night?
When they emerged from the longhouse, a half-moon was still high in the sky, which along with the stars, was all the light they needed to guide their way through the village, toward the small forest that stood just beyond the lake.
They walked together in silence, just like they had when they came down the mountain. This time, however, he slowed his steps so she could walk beside him as opposed to behind him.
They stopped just outside the forest, where a pack of what looked like fifteen to twenty large wolves all lie together in a pile of mostly red, but some yellow, bodies.
He let her observe them for a few moments before saying, “The yellow wolves are our servants and their children, who have all come here from another land. The wolves do take thralls as the humans do as wolves will serve no other, even by force. But if a family has great debt, they may offer themselves at our secret market to serve in the house of another so as to pay it back along with receiving a place to live and food to eat. So have these wolves come to live with us.”
He pointed to the red wolves. “These red wolves be my family, my two cousins, their mates, their children, my mother’s sister, and her mate and children.”
He then pointed to a smaller silver wolf, sleeping near the edge of the pack. “And that is my aunt, my father’s sister. She is an accomplished sorceress. In fact, it was she who did give me the fated mates spell. She is also the one who will start teaching you our language on the morrow. You will come out of our bed closet every morn as I do and not return to it until the eve as I do. From this moment on, you are no longer the dark beauty from a foreign land. You are our queen and my family is now your own.”
FENRIS HAD HALF-EXPECTED THE dark beauty to start talking, just so she might balk at his command as she had done when he attempted to lie in the way of man and woman with her. But he received no answer after making his speech, which made him clench his teeth and greatly lean on his patience so as not to demand acknowledgement of his decree.
And when he woke on the morn, her side of the bed lay empty.
He growled in frustration. If she had run away yet again... he didn’t finish that thought, fearing the dark place his mind went.
He burst out of the bed closet with an angry yell, only to find the she-wolf and his entire family staring at him from the communal table where they all sat. She was now fully clothed in his mother’s over tunic and hangerok, though she had used simple clothes pins as opposed to the bronze wolf brooches she had been given to the keep the straps in place at her chest. He also spied that she was sharing a bowl of porridge and a loaf of bread with his aunt as if the two were old friends.
“My brother’s son,” his aunt cried out. “You have failed to gift your wife a woman’s dagger. She is forced to share my bread, so any passerby would think I am the queen and she the old witch.”
Since human women were not allowed to carry weapons of any kind by human Norse laws, she-wolves took great pride in their women’s daggers, which they used for eating and cutting. The only reason he had yet to gift his mate with one was because she’d yet to have need of it, spending the majority of her time in their bed closet as she did.
“Nay, have not a worry of that, old woman,” his uncle called down the table. “Anyone with eyes can see who be the witch and who be the king’s fated mate.”
The entire table burst out laughing, including his aunt, and to Fenris’s great surprise, Chloe herself. Though she seemed to laugh more with confusion than any real understanding of what had been said.
He took his place at the head of the table, but kept his eyes fast on his mate at the other end. She should be sitting at his side, but he had not become king of the wolves by not cultivating patience within himself.
“I shall see to the her dagger, Aunt. In the meanwhile, you will start teaching her our language, so she may better understand your jests.”
Her aunt’s eyes lit up. “That, my handsome nephew, is a very good notion. Mayhap with time, she might grow to love our land as we do.”
Our land and our king, her twinkling eyes said.
But Fenris did not acknowledge the knowing in her veiled words. He still cared not for the notion of love, especially after what had passed in the dark beauty’s village. But if getting Chloe to eat at his table and partake of his bread meant he would not be aggrieved to sleep next to her lifeless body this eve, then so be it.
CHLOE IGNORED THE SMUG LOOK on the Viking’s face as he dug into the bowl of porridge, which one of the blond servants had set in front of him. He probably thought he’d told her what was what with that command of his and she’d be fully coming around any day now.
Little did he know, it hadn’t been his command that got her out of the bed closet and back into over clothes “on the morntide.”
No, his threat hadn’t moved her at all. Only his last six words had: my family is now your own.” Could it be true, she wondered, rubbing her still flat stomach as they walked back to the longhouse. Would his family really accept her as one of their own, even though she looked so different from them and was from another place and time?