CHAPTER TWO
Many centuries ago…
“FENRIS, I would have words with you,” his aunt, Bera, said. The small woman did not wait for his assent before falling in step beside him, and he had to switch his bloodied sword to his other hand to keep from staining her clothes with it.
Even his respect for his aunt’s advanced years could not keep the terseness he felt out of his voice when he answered, “Whatever it is can wait until I have washed in the lake. I am fresh from the hunt.”
With pursed lips, she pressed a linen rag, with words written across it in charcoal ink, into his hand.
“What is this?” he asked, though he had a feeling he already knew. His lack of a mate was a subject well-visited by his aunt, even more so since he had reached twenty and seven winters.
“I have bid you too many times to seek your fated mate. You have not heeded me, mayhap because I am but a decrepit she-wolf. Thusly, I have put the spell down for you on this scrap, in the hopes you would bestow joy upon my heart by speaking it as I have written it.”
He looked from the spell to his aunt who despite her gray hair, much smaller size, and supposed decrepitude managed to keep up with his fast pace. “You realize I will disappear if I speak these words on my tongue?”
“I have put to words the return spell on the reverse side of the rag. You and your fated mate have only to speak them as one and you will be returned to this place.”
He held the rag out to his aunt. “You are dear to me, sister of my father, but you try my patience with this business. I will claim a mate of my own accord. I do not wish to be fated.”
His aunt clenched her hands by her side, refusing to take the linen back from him. “Your sires were fated.”
“Yes, and this be the reason I wish not to be,” he answered.
“Your mother and father were very happy before…”
She did not finish, but she did not have to. Fenris knew the rest. His sires were very happy, until his mother died giving birth to him, before his father was reduced to a husk of his former self in his grief.
“I do not wish a fated mate,” he repeated. “Take this back. I have no use for it.”
A knowing smile played on his aunt’s lips. “We shall see. This winter has been cold and dark. You will eventually want for a mate to warm your bed. Why not put yourself in the hands of the gods?”
His aunt was the last person he wanted to talk to on this subject, even if she was correct about the state of his bed. He had not lain with a woman since his visit to the human market to the south of them before the last summer moon. There, he and his unmated pack members could lie with human women willing to trade their services for the furs, iron, small weapons, and the other items his village was known to sell.
“Aunt Bera, the only thing I want for now is my soap.”
She stopped walking. “And you may have it. I will take my leave, but will leave you with the spell.” She then turned and hurried back toward their village before he could offer any further protest.
He balled the fabric up inside his hand. Having stripped down to bare feet and his leather hunting trousers in preparation for his bath, he had nothing with which to pin it to his clothing. However, he also did not want to leave it lying around for any young she-wolf to find. She-wolves could be silly when it came to matters of the heart, and even though most of them had no knowing of written words, they might seek someone who did to help them speak the words. In the past, his aunt had taken great care not to record the spell for fear it would fall into the wrong hands.
That she had written the spell down for Fenris without his having asked it, proclaimed her frustration with his refusal to take a bride more loudly than any words ever could. But he did not want to dwell on her actions. He was fresh from the hunt, having taken down no less than three reindeer and a bear, the latter of which he had been forced to use his sword, The King Maker, to finish off.
He desired to clean both himself and his trusted weapon much more than he desired to ruminate on his aunt’s concerns about his lack of mate. And he could see Wolf Lake, which bordered his village, glittering in the distance.
“It seems we have caught the King of Wolves unawares,” a voice said from behind him.
Fenris stopped short, his grip tightening around the hilt of his sword, before he turned to face his cousin, Vidar, a wolf almost as tall and broad as he. Fenris had banished Vidar from their village two moons ago, after the younger wolf had beaten and attempted to couple with a household servant girl who did not wish his advances.
Vidar had thought his position as cousin to the king would keep him protected, despite the strict laws against coupling with a she-wolf without her father’s consent. And indeed, it had pained Fenris greatly to banish a family member who shared his own longhouse. But in the end, even Fenris could not hold himself above wolf law, especially the ones he had set down himself during the bloody years he had spent reaffirming his position as the king of Norway’s wolves.
But like a recurring dream, Vidar now once again stood before him. However, this time, his battle axe, which Fenris had allowed him to keep, was raised and his eyes were shining with hatred and malice. Also, this time he did not stand in front of Fenris alone. At various points behind him stood four other men with swords, three of which Fenris recognized as wolves he had banished from their village for crimes ranging from theft to the murder of humans, which were also strictly forbidden under both his laws.
Fenris raised his own sword. “You should not be so close to my village, Cousin. Your mother might see you and you have already well disappointed her.”
“I beheld you talking to the wicked sorceress.” He bared his sharp lupine teeth. “The one who did put that harlot servant to her false accusation.”
Though his aunt had been the one to bring the servant girl to Fenris, it had taken but one look at the badly beaten girl to assess what had happened. He knew her attacker to be Vidar, who he had spied watching the yellow-haired girl with hard losti—lust—in his eyes on several occasions. The extent of his crime against a girl who many in his household considered like a family member had been enough to sicken even his mother’s sister, Esja, Vidar’s own mother. She had yet to ask her nephew to reverse his decision, even though it was known by all that Vidar had only gone as far as the mountains on the northern side of the lake to live.
“What matter of business is this, Vidar?” he asked.
“I wish to once again take my place in our village and there is but one way to do that.” Vidar stopped smiling now. “Become the new alpha king.”