The professor gave a nervous laugh, before translating. “No, he’s not an alpha prince. He just commanded me to tell you he is king of the wolves of Norway. He say he’s come to this strange place to fetch you and he’s ready to take you home with him.”
The Viking continued to stare at her as he spoke one more word, which the professor immediately translated. “Now.”
CHAPTER SIX
IT took Chloe quite a few shocked moments before she was able to speak again. “Well, wow. Um, can you tell him I’m not going anywhere with him and I would like him to return home to his own time period? Now.”
After looking up a few words, the professor translated, and the Viking’s eyes shined with amusement as he answered.
The professor translated, “He’s basically saying, no, you will come with him. And even if he was willing to leave you here, which he isn’t, he won’t go back with out you.”
She shook her head. “Who do you think you are?” she asked the Viking directly. “You can’t just step into my time and tell me to come to yours. I have a life here. And that wolf you were trying to fight earlier is the person I’ve chosen to spend the rest of my life with. Not you.”
The professor had to look a few more words up in order to translate. But before he could even finish doing so the Viking was shaking his head and pounding his chest for emphasis.
“He says he will spray Rafe’s blood across the snow for his insult—it’s actually some pretty poetic stuff he’s saying. Very Beowulf-esque. But the main point is he wants you to know you are his.”
“Can you explain to him in my time period, men don’t own women? They don’t drag them around by the hair, and he can’t tell me what to do.”
The professor flipped through the pages of his dictionary. “I can try.”
“Good,” she said, standing. “Exhibit number one can be me walking out of here to go be with the man I’ve chosen and love.”
And she did just that, her own righteous anger fueling her steps.
But that anger faded when she found Rafe sitting on the clinic steps, hunched over with his fists balled up on top of his knees.
She dropped down beside him and strung her arm around his shoulders. “I’m sorry that happened,” she whispered.
“Don’t apologize,” he said. But he leaned over toward her and Chloe was pretty certain he sniffed her for evidence of arousal before saying, “It’s not your fault. This is some fucked up shit, but it’s not your fault.”
Her heart flooded with love for him then. And she nuzzled against his shoulder in the friendly way they used to before Rafe came into his manhood, before his brotherly affection became muddied with lust.
“I’ll move in with you,” she said.
He turned to her. “What?”
“I’ll move in with you after the full moon. I want everyone, including your father, to know how much I love you and how committed I am to you and only you.” She nudged him. “But you’re going to have to get rid of that TV in the kitchen. I hate it.”
He cupped her face in his warm hand. It was in the twenties that day, but wolves ran hot—male wolves even more so than female ones. “You just made me a very happy man.”
“I want to be with you. I choose you,” she told him.
“Well, I think you made the right choice,” Rafe said, patting her knee. “Now, seriously, you want me to kill that chicken for you before I leave for work, right?”
Chloe let her head fall against her shoulder in embarrassment. “Right. I tried to do it myself this morning, but it looked at me with these big innocent eyes.”
Rafe shook his head and chuckled.
“I know, I know,” she said, before he could. “Worst wolf ever.”
THE DAY PASSED QUICKLY WITH Chloe rushing to finish up her chicken and fennel recipe and get it edited and posted online before the full moon rose. Generally, Rafe bounced back from shifting with energy to spare, but turning into a wolf and then back into a human took a lot out of her. It often took up to forty-eight hours for her to sleep it off, and back when she’d been in school, almost all of her absences had been due to recovering from her monthly shift.
Rafe thought this was because she chose to cage herself up during full moon nights as opposed to running with the pack as he did. But as civilized as modern werewolves were in human form these days, they became particularly wild when they shifted, or “got wolf” as Rafe referred to it. They spent the entire night, in what seemed to Chloe to be a hunting-lust, taking out animals big and small, or whatever else crossed their paths.
A few times human hikers, who had ignored all the “No Trespassing” signs at the foot of Wolf Mountain, had gone missing or survived the attack and gotten changed into werewolves themselves. Back in the eighties, the number of wolf attacks had gotten so bad the North American Lupine Council had strictly forbidden shifting outside of full moon nights, just to keep the damages to a minimum.
In any case, it just wasn’t in Chloe’s nature to “get wolfed,” so she chose to shift in the confines of her own home rather than running to the mountain with her fellow wolves.
About an hour before sunset, Doc Fischer called to tell her they’d made little to no progress in convincing the Viking to go back to his time. “He keeps telling the professor he can’t go back without you. I’ll cage him up before sunset, but we can’t just keep him chained to a bed when he turns back into a human. I think it’s time to bring the king in to handle this.”
“Why do we have to bring the king into it?” she asked. “He can’t make me go back in time with him.”
“No he can’t, that’s why we’re going to have to consult with him. We’re at a stalemate, and he’ll have to decide how to handle it.”
Chloe rubbed a hand over her face. If anyone else were her mate, the king, who was an otherwise fair and level-headed leader, would side with the she-wolf. But since she was engaged to his son, he might just decide to declare their engagement null and void, if it meant freeing Rafe up to mate with another. The king liked her well enough, but he liked the king of Alaska’s three daughters even better, and if he could forge an alliance and get grandpups, he’d probably be more than willing to kick Chloe to the curb.
Rafe had been right, if they had any hope of his father ruling in their favor, they had to make a strong show of commitment by moving in together.