The Brothers Nightwolf Trilogy

by Taylor, Theodora

  With a shiver, he thought of the two sleeping newborns, already the size of six-month-old humans, with scaled legs that covered up their gender and a set of golden wings folded on top of each of their backs.

  If it had been anyone else, from a family less rich and powerful, Georgina would be handling this. Fensa and her monstrosities would probably be living in a government facility right now, on their third month of questioning and undergoing a battery of tests.

  But Fensa was not only the president’s cousin, but also the princess of Michigan, a kingdom that had gone from being mange to one of the top three richest when her mother, Tiara had assumed the throne as the first North American she-wolf alpha. The only richer kingdom was Oklahoma, the queen of which, his Aunt Tu, had already called to tell Rafes she’d be withdrawing all campaign funding if any of his “black-ops goons” so much as looked at her niece wrong.

  So three months ago, Rafes himself had gone in to handle her shocking re-entry into the current time period. And after several arguments with Fensa’s twin sister Ola and his brother, Knud, at the Arizona kingdom hospital where the twin monstrosities had been cut out of her, Rafes had reluctantly agreed to let Fensa return to her home kingdom, give her some time to get reacclimated, and then circle back.

  This was him circling back, and he’d been intent on getting more answers out of Fensa this time. But as it turned out, he needn’t have worried about Fensa’s dads. Neither of them had been there when Rafesson stepped off the drone. Just Fensa and her twin sister Ola. So he hadn’t needed Myrna to come. But still…

  Sitting in the family room of the Michigan pack’s Upper Peninsula kingdom house with Fensa and Ola, instead of going over all his interrogation questions, he found himself thinking about his last conversation with Knud. It had taken place just a couple of hours after Rafes had agreed to leave Arizona.

  Usually kingdom houses fell all over themselves to host sitting presidents. But go figure, the King of Arizona's family had made a special point to invite Tiara, her husbands, and Ola—pretty much everybody who wasn’t him to stay at their kingdom house. Guess taking on a fated mate less than twenty-four hours after asking to marry the King of Arizona’s baby sister had made Rafes persona non-gratis, even if he was up in the polls now thanks to all the pro-black box campaigning Myrna had been doing on his behalf.

  Why Rafes had decided to stay here in the same hotel as his brother, especially when he was so famous among the humans these days thanks to his recently turned mate’s celebrity, Rafes had no idea at first.

  But he began to suspect a reason when just a few hours after Knud kicked Rafes out of the Arizona kingdom hospital, he sat down next to him at the bar and asked, “So, when are you planning on fixing this shit with Myrna already?”

  Then requested a beer for him and another whiskey for Rafes, from the bar’s touch panel surface. Like the vicious fight they’d had about Fensa at the hospital had just been a blip in an otherwise perfectly normal brother relationship.

  Same old Knud. Sometimes it seemed like his number one goal in life was to get in Rafes's way then act like nothing he did was a big deal. He’d managed to convince everyone, including their parents, the human medical board, and Layla freaking Rustanov that he was just some tortured soul whose broken character could easily be mended with love. Meanwhile Rafes was still trying to hide his savage wolf from both the public and his fated mate.

  “There’s nothing to fix,” Rafes answered, forcing his bitter thoughts back down. “I stupidly drank too much. We had a misunderstanding. I apologized. She accepted my apology. And now it’s over.” Close call, he added, silently cursing his wolf, but lesson learned. He hadn’t let himself give Myrna so much as a too lingering look since returning with her to The Wolf House.

  Knud lifted an eyebrow as he took a beer and the glass of whisky from the robot behind the counter. “You sure about that, big bro?”

  Rafes's jaw ticked, fur raising on his back, as his wolf growled its irritation with his brother, too. “Yes, I’m sure,” he said. “She’s been on perfect behavior since returning. I’m up in the polls, and there’s a good chance the North American wolves are going to vote in their best interest and keep me in power.”

  His brother smirked. “Okay, I didn’t ask about the damn election. I asked about your she-wolf who showed up at my door, pissed and about ready to leave you. And I know you like to Lord it over Nago and me for being the one who got all the power and the not-fucked-up head, but I’m here to tell you, you better fix this thing with Myrna. Hot Valkyrie Babysitter’s got a fuse on her and you need to stop campaigning for a while and go take care of that shit before it blows up in your face.”

  Again Rafes had to bear down…control the wolf…control the wolf. “Don’t call her that,” he growled low at her brother. “And yes, she was upset the night she came to you. But there’s nothing to be fixed. She accepted my apology and has acted the part of future First She-Wolf impeccably since we returned. She even delivered a pro-gate speech to the Mothers of Wolf Soldiers organization that polled really well. We’re thinking of having her stump for me in the anti-gate states the first two weeks of November.”

  Knud took a slow swig of his beer a hint of mockery creeping into his expression. “So you’re just thinking she’s fine now, huh?”

  “I’m not thinking that. I know that,” Rafes answered taking his own swig of the whiskey Knud had bought him without asking if he wanted another one. “She’s fine. Better than fine. Her approval rating is in the high eighties.”

  Knud chuffed. “Yeah, I’m asking about Myrna, and you’re spouting off statistics. She didn’t seem fine when she showed up at my door. And take it from somebody who’s expecting a kid with a media trained woman, you’ve got to look through that ‘fine’ shit and get underneath to what’s really going on with your mate.”

  Rafes took an annoyed sip of his own drink, hardly able to believe his fuck-up brother was trying to give him relationship advice. “I understand you’re proud of yourself for landing Layla Rustanov. But you do realize her stupidity doesn’t make you a relationship expert, right?”

  “Yeah, I get that…” Knud agreed easily enough. “But not when it comes to you. I grew up with you. I know you. Mom even pointed out that Layla’s kind of a perfect female amalgamation of Nago and you.”

  Rafes shuddered. Because yes, that sounded like something their mother would say. And even worse, it was kind of true. “Why, Mom? Why?”

  “Because she’s like hell bent on putting shit we can’t ever scrub out into our heads,” Knud answered. And for a moment they shared a moment of head shaking camaraderie as they took aggrieved sips of their drinks.

  But then, Knud had to keep talking.

  “All I’m trying to say is that Myrna still hasn’t gone into heat…”

  The wolf inside of him growled at the implication that there was something wrong with his mate that had kept her from going into heat, even as his human coldly pointed out, “She’s thirty-two. Maybe older. The Viking wolves weren’t exactly crack record keepers with that winters' system of theirs,” Rafes answered, keeping his tone as cold and clinical as possible, to hold his raring wolf back. “But it doesn’t matter. We’ll deal with getting her the heat shot after the election.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Knud agreed, taking another swig of beer. “Or…”

  Infuriatingly that “or” had been where Knud decided to finally shut his mouth.

  “Or what?” Rafes asked after a few too many seconds of grating silence.

  “Just or,” Knud answered, his tone snide and smug. Like they were kids again, and he knew what their parents had gotten Rafes for Christmas, and wasn’t going to tell, no matter how much Rafes badgered him.

  Rafes had made himself walk away then. Drink unfinished, lest he get in another fist fight with his asshole brother like he had back in June when Knud had been hell bent on ruining Layla Rustanov’s life after she went into heat.

  But after today’s breakfast c
onversation with Myrna that “Or…” echoed in his mind.

  And though his interview with Fensa was a matter of national security, Rafes couldn’t stop thinking about Knud’s insistence that he needed to fix things with Myrna…or the fact that she’d acted like he’d invited her to jump into a pool filled with venomous snakes as opposed to spending a couple of hours on his luxury drone with him.

  She’d been nothing but pleasant to him since their return trip. But she’d also been distant and almost out of it and tired at their morning breakfasts. At first, he’d chalked it up to all the lessons she’d been required to undergo while also campaigning. Hell, he was exhausted himself.

  But her newfound dedication to meditation worried him. When she’d first started, she would only spend a couple of hours every morning practicing. But as the weeks went by, the time she spent meditating had increased. And now she spent four hours in meditation every weekday morning and she’d put a block of six hours on the schedule for today.

  Sure, Saturdays were free days for her, and she was supposed to be able to do whatever she wanted. But the way she’d reacted to his invitation….

  He still didn’t quite know how to feel about that. It was a reasonable denial. She already had plans, and it wasn’t like he would ever change around his previously made plans if she asked him out of the blue to go somewhere with her.

  Yet, an uneasy feeling had been lurking in his chest ever since, like sand was slipping through his hands and he didn’t know how to make it stop. While Knud’s “Or…” rang like a snide warning bell inside his head.

  “So you’ve stopped talking. That means we’re done here, right?”

  Ola’s question brought Rafes’s head up from the notes he’d been taking. By hand, since all of this intel was too sensitive to entrust to his bioware. Back to the living room in the Upper Peninsula kingdom house. He sat in a wingback chair with his notepad, and was supposed to be interrogating Fensa, who was sitting on the couch across from him, holding her twin sister’s hand.

  They seemed closer now, Rafes noted. He’d always suspected that Fensa’s decision to study in Arizona had less to do with the gate and more to do with getting away from her overbearing twin. But now Fensa seemed grateful for Ola’s constant presence. Throughout the interview, she’d looked to Ola for guidance, and a few times she’d even let Ola speak for her, which used to drive Fensa crazy.

  Which brought him to his next question…

  Pushing thoughts of his mate from his head, he said, “So you claim to be not only the Fensa who disappeared two weeks ago, but some sort of mash-up of two Fensas from two different timelines?”

  “Stop calling it a claim,” Ola shot back, before Fensa could even open her mouth. “If she says that’s what happened, then that’s what happened. I believe her.”

  Of course, Ola believed her, Rafes thought with an inward roll of his eyes. “I only call it a claim, Ola, because it doesn’t make much sense,” he answered with deliberate calm.

  “Well, it’s not like the gates themselves make much sense,” Ola answered. “I mean, wolves, including your parents have been flying all over time to get paired with their fated mates? That’s crazy! And yeah, I know, Fensa had this theory about the gate system being put here by aliens—”

  “Actually, it’s more than a theory now,” Fensa interrupted, throwing a gentle smile her sister’s way. “It’s true. My fated mate, Xenon, is that alien this timeline’s Fensa hypothesized about before my timeline’s Fensa went back in time. They constructed the first gate, and for all we know, every gate that was ever built after that. And though we’ve really romanticized them, for scientific purposes, what Xenon called fating was actually a pretty scientific method of matching wolves based on physical, emotional, and most of all, genetic compatibility.”

  Ola nodded along as if that made perfect sense. But Rafes found himself shaking his head. “Why would the same dragons who attacked us during the Viking age, build time portals to help us find suitable partners? Also, why would the time portal match you with a dragon? If it’s only about genetics—”

  Again, Fensa who he’d remembered as being quiet and introverted to a fault, much like her mother, interrupted. “That’s just it. The gate only works on this planet. And from what I understand the dragons are extremely hierarchical. Xenon and I didn’t talk much about his tech, but I believe it’s sort of like our first responder bots. You know how if a robot is sent into a burning house and senses life signs for a human and a dog, it’s programmed to save the human first? I think in this case, the tech—which is actually an iteration of the fating gates the dragons used on their own planet—is biased towards its makers. So, like, if a wolf says the fated mate spell and there’s a dragon she could reproduce with, she gets sent to the dragon.”

  “You’re so smart. It’s like you did all your doctorate research in two weeks!” Ola said, looking at her twin in complete admiration. “Now you can write that paper, like bam, baby! Handled with sources!”.

  Fensa chuckled. “Well, it’s not like I planned any of this. And as for my doctorate, it’s going to take years of work and portal carbon-dating to prove even one of my theories true. I mean it pretty much took thirty years from hypothesis to conclusion to prove the Arizona portal was the first one in North America. Imagine how long it will take to prove they're dragon made. And I have three kids now—”

  “Two of which almost killed you in childbirth,” Rafes pointed out.

  Fensa winced slightly at his contention, then argued back, “But they didn’t, thanks to modern technology. You have to remember that until, like, the 90s, seven out of ten shifter multiple births ended with the death of the mother. My mother is a twin, and her mother, Janelle, died giving birth to her and my uncle Clyde. And as you should know, it’s still considered a miracle that Alisha survived triplet births in the Viking age. If my gate compatibility theory is true—”

  “Which it totally is,” Ola interjected.

  “Thanks, sis. But what I’m trying to say is that Alisha’s survival can probably be directly linked to the fact that she and your father were fated mates.”

  All I’m trying to say is that she still hasn’t gone into heat…

  The repercussions of Knud’s words mixed in with Fensa’s theories rang in his head, because if what she was saying was true, Myrna having not gone into heat yet, even though they were fated, had severe implications. And he had to ask Fensa, “How can you be sure a mistake wasn’t made? Maybe you were really meant for one of the Ice Age wolves but ended up mating with this dragon instead when you went into heat.”

  Fensa laughed. “That’s the thing about fated mates. Most she-wolves will let anyone breed them when they go into heat. That’s how we’re designed—to reproduce over everything, including emotions or good sense. We were bred to keep our numbers up at all costs. In fact, in the ice age days, she-wolves often got mobbed by partners and sometimes died in the frenzy to make a baby. We civilized out of that as a culture. But in the case of fated mates, I found out the extremely weird way that my body completely rejected any other wolf but my fated mate. Same went for Xenon. His logic told him I was just a science experiment, but when I went into heat, nature took over…”

  “Wait,” Rafes said, trying to keep up. “He thought you were a science experiment? Why?”

  Fensa grimaced. “Oh, that kind of brings us back around to your question about why the dragons would want to help us reproduce—at least back in the Ice Age. I can tell you exactly why they did that, but I don’t think you’re going to like the answer…”

  25

  Rafes

  Fensa was wrong about his response to her answer to his question. Rafes didn’t dislike it. He fucking hated it.

  An hour later, he left Michigan with a head full of explosive information, his entire world view turned upside down.

  What Fensa had told him had far-reaching implications, which he already knew would need to be kept at the highest level of classification. So hi
gh, he struggled with whether to share this information beyond Georgina, his Defense Secretary. Even if he did decide to tell the Lupine Council’s National Security Committee, he’d bet money they’d vote against sharing this intel with the next sitting president. Especially if Lowell won….

  Rafes woke up to his drone’s alert that they’d be landing in twenty minutes.

  And of course, he was in wolf form. Of course. Why wouldn’t his beast see how stressed out he was and think, “You know what this high-charge situation needs? A feral wolf.”

  With a growling grunt, he force-shifted back to human with his wolf still howling in pain inside of him. Not that Rafes felt sorry for the asshole. You’d think he’d learn to just stay put after getting hit with the crippling alarm every time he took over while his human slept. But no…no matter what Rafes did, the wolf was always there.

  Waiting to pounce. Waiting to ruin everything.

  “Reflection mode,” he muttered to the drone’s smart wall, only to get hit with the memory of Jillian huddled up against her bedroom door. Sobbing…

  Not the kind of reflection he’d meant.

  This is why, he thought coldly, as he forced a comb through his messy curls, barely able to look at himself as he did so. This is why you can’t listen to Knud.

  Maybe Knud could follow his wolf into a relationship, but Rafes's wolf wasn’t like that. Rafes couldn’t be like that.

  He smoothed out his nanite suit, adjusted his tie and gave himself one last check over in the mirror.

  He looked perfect. Like always.

  However, he was anything but perfect. He needed to remember that. For Myrna’s sake.

  In fact, maybe it was best she hadn’t gone into heat yet. Who fucking knew how his wolf would react to something as unusual these days as a spontaneous heat? No… probably better to go with the heat shot method after the election. That way he could stage everything and drink or maybe even drug his wolf into submission before he claimed her.