When she woke up, she found the members of his household hustling and bustling around the longhouse, the women putting layers on over their smocks, and the men doing the same over what looked like linen long johns. But maybe thinking she was just going to the toilet pit again, they didn’t acknowledge her presence. She lifted the bench beside the bed closet and pulled out the long wool tunic and silk apron-like dress they had given her on the first day. After she put them on, she went to sit at the long table, where she’d seen them taking their meals. That got their attention, and they all turned to stare at her.
There was a long moment of confused silence, during which Chloe wondered if she she’d made a terrible mistake. But then his family members cheered as if they’d been waiting for her to join them for breakfast all this time before bursting into excited chatter. One of Fenris’s cousins came to sit on one side of her squeezing her around the shoulders in the still-universal sign of welcome. The old lady, who Chloe had now guessed to be Fenris’s sorceress aunt, came to sit on the other side of her and started talking excitedly in Old Norse, using gestures to indicate that Chloe should eat from the same bowl as she and indicating the jug of goat’s milk in the middle of the table.
Chloe did as she was told, and her depression began to ebb away as she watched the family laugh and talk while they ate breakfast as if it were nothing at all to absorb a foreigner into their fold. That is they laughed and talked until Fenris came crashing out of the bed closet with a roar. Then the room once again went silent until his aunt said something to him. Then an older man, who Chloe thought might be his other aunt’s husband said something that must have been a joke, because everyone but Fenris fell out laughing. The Viking regarded her with cool eyes as he said something to his aunt, who nodded happily. Then he settled into his seat, his eyes all but burning a smug hole through her.
But she wondered how smug he’d feel later on when he discovered while she had accepted his family, she would never, ever accept him. She’d happily learn the language and help her new family out in any way she could. But she’d never give herself to him the way she had back in Colorado and she’d never forgive him for taking her planned life away.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THREE full moons after his fated mate came to his village, she had learned his tongue well enough to speak simple conversations with his family and slightly more complex ones with his aunt, who was patient and would keep her language simple with her student. His entire family had moved back into the longhouse, spending their sleeping hours in human form on the benches that lined his walls as humans and not in the snow as wolves.
And soon did he have a notion his own family liked his queen more than the Fenris himself. He had this notion because they told him as much around the table, full of belly as they were with the flavorful meals she oversaw. After her first day in the cooking area, directing the servants to where the herbs and spices she could distinguish by smell might go, and speaking as best she could what should go in the cooking pot, the servants set forth a stew so pleasurable to their mouths, his family gave his mate great cheer. She was well-thanked by all, and henceforth, they all endeavored to also help her with their tongue because the more herbs and spice and food stuffs his queen was able to identify, the better their own meals became. It would seem her talent for cooking made her as popular with his family as it had in her own land. And she gave glad smiles and words best she could to everyone who thanked her for the privilege of her food. To his surprise, she had come to hold his family dear in a very short time.
But his fated mate had yet to say more than three words to him, and those three words were always the same: No, thank you.
“No, thank you,” when he offered her a jeweled women’s dagger, more splendid than any he had ever seen.
“No, thank you,” she said, when he presented her with a silk dress more befitting a queen. She continued to wash and clean his mother’s simple tunic and silk hangerok every wash day herself, wearing them over the dress she had brought with her from Colorado.
“No, thank you,” she said when he brought up the matter of her sitting in her rightful place at the dinner table.
Yea, it was better than the ghost of a she-wolf into which she had turned for those three moons before she began her Norse study, but in some ways it had become harder. Harder of both mind and body. Lying in bed next to a corpse had not excited his manhood in the least. Lying in bed next to a vibrant beauty such as his queen, without having leave to touch her was akin to torture. And he again found himself heavy of foot, because though he willed his prick to go flaccid in her presence, it rose like a battering ram at the mere sight of her removing her tunic dress and hangerok in the eve, before settling into their bed. And in this manner he was kept awake by his desire for her, while she slept on, uncaring of the state he was in.
Thus, did he find himself back in the meadow with his aunt soon after the time of the year when the sun grew lazy and chose to stay rested in the sky.
“Your remedy has not met with success,” he informed her.
“She has come to love your family and she does talk and eat again,” his aunt answered without question of his subject. “Verily, your pup shall at least be happy with her progress if not yourself.”
“Yea, but she refuses to mind-talk with me still, save for when she wishes to say nay to one of my gifts.”
“Mayhap you do not come to her bearing the right gifts. Not every woman can be happily claimed with objects that be pleasing to the eye. But they can oft be brought around if the gift be of right sort.”
“She is a queen. She can avail herself of the riches in my coffers and will never want for food or clothing. What more would a she-wolf hold dear?”
“Ah, ‘tis oft the short thinking of males which have brought about the most tragic endings in the love stories told around our fires.”
“I tire of your riddles, aunt,” he said, his voice growing hard. “Tell me plainly what I should do to resolve this matter.”
“I have already told you this plainly. You should put your mind toward giving her the right gifts,” his aunt said. “Once you do, all shall be well between you two.”
And thus did his aunt end this conversation, picking up her basket with the claim that she must search for a certain spell plant that could only be found during the time of the resting sun. “If I do not find it before the sun does travel across the sky again, it will be buried under snow, making for a long winter indeed for any wolf who should have need of it.”