“Anyway, I was so surprised when the First She-Wolf called me and asked me to come to the rally and meet with you,” she said.
“Myrna? Myrna called you?” Rafes asked, wondering if maybe she’d misunderstood.
“Yeah, she was so nice, and she really does sound like a Viking. I put her on my comm rings, and my kids were freaking out. And none of us could believe it when your brother showed up at my door to escort me to the rally himself. In a real manual car. I haven’t ridden in one of those in years! And here’s me now, getting driven around by the husband of Layla Rustanov. By the way, I can’t even tell you how much I love her mother…”
Rafes sliced his eyes at Knud, not bothering to hide the shit-ton of questions popping off in his head. But Knud only shrugged, like he hadn’t just clocked a bunch of time escorting a blast from the past back into Rafes’s life.
So Rafes turned back to a still smiling Jillian. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice hollow with regret. “I’m sorry for what I did to you. If there was a way to make it up to you…”
Jillian cut him off with a confused shake of her head. “Rafes, why are you apologizing? Like I told the First She-Wolf, getting turned into a she-wolf was the best thing that ever happened to me!”
“Are you serious?” Rafes asked, still unable to reconcile his horrific last memory of Jillian with the woman now smiling and nodding her head at his question.
“Did you forget everything about me?” she asked, lightly punching his arm. “I was a huge sci-fi nerd. I mean, I’ve watched all the Twilights, including both reboots. The Teen Wolfs, too—though I didn’t like those nearly as much before I got turned. And yeah, it was crazy at first to wrap my head around. But I love my job, working for a powerful woman like your cousin, the Queen of Wyoming. That’s where I met Norman. He’s a huge nerd, too—but oh my God, so good in bed. Not that you weren’t good, Rafes—I mean, you were all right. But Norman…it’s like dating the accountant version of Khal Drogo.”
Rafes chuckled. He’d forgotten how quirky and weird Jillian was…that quirky and weird used to be his type. Before he hurt her and forcibly changed his type to fit in with his political aspirations.
They ended up talking for the entire hour. About everything from that 2020 Anniversary edition of Viking Shifters they’d both loved to play so much to the upcoming VR reboot of Teen Wolf. And when his biosystem alerted him that he’d need to get on the drone if he wanted to make it to the nighttime rally in Mississippi on time, he actually found himself disappointed that he had to cut the conversation short.
“Wow. I feel like I became fifty percent uncooler, just from sitting through that conversation,” Knud said, after Rafes sent her on her way with campaign stuffed wolf swag for her children, and an autographed picture for her husband, who Jillian suspected didn’t really believe she’d once dated the president of North America.
Rafes had been wanting to rail on Knud, ever since he found out that his brother was the one responsible for helping Myrna not only sneak out of The Wolf House to train as a wrestler, but also file with Ola’s uncle for custodial sanctuary.
But with only a minute to go until he had to get on his drone, Rafes clasped his brother’s arm. “Thank you. That was…exactly what I didn’t know I needed.”
Knud shrugged again. “Don’t thank me, thank your fated mate. I was already in North Dakota, helping Fensa with her ‘poked an evil dragon and now he wants to retaliate problem’ anyway….”
As important as all intel on Damianos Drákon had become, the rest of Knud’s words faded into the background, his grandmother’s voice raising once again to tell him. “She chose you. She loved you, pure and true, and you blew it. You blew it, because you’re a damn fool!”
Rafes found himself unable to say much more to Knud after that. And then there was an alarm in his ear, telling him he needed to board the drone for his flight.
When his temporarily paused messaging system started downloading on the drone, there was an invite to meet with Baylor in a private VR room to talk about the wrestling footage. He accepted the invitation without hesitation, pushing all the messages with more urgent priority flags aside. Not just because Baylor, unlike his media strategist, Stacey had been cleared of any Damianos tampering in Georgina’s investigation. But also because he found himself eager to see the footage himself. To see Myrna again in any form. Had she really been as good of a wrestler as his grandmother had said?
However, Baylor’s avatar did not look happy when Rafes joined him in the newly re-encrypted VR version of his Wolf House office.
No small talk today. Baylor got right to it without any preamble. “We were getting close to a number, but IWF’s people just called to inform us they received a counter offer.”
“A counter offer?” Rafes repeated. And although he already had a sick feeling about the answer he asked, “Did they say from who?”
Baylor nodded, his face grim. “Damianos Drákon. They say he’s offering 10figs and wants a sit down this Friday.”
Rafes’s own face went grim, all the nasty possibilities of Drákon getting his hands on that footage, going through his head. If this got out before voting day, it would cost him the election, no doubt.
Rafes thought about the problem, his wolf still unresponsive inside of him.
Then he snarled at Baylor, “Get me wolf-ops. Put a rush on it. If Drákon wants a sit down on Friday we’re going to have to get to that footage first.”
38
Myrna
Do you still have any questions, any more doubts about how much I want you?
“So what are you thinking about doing tonight, Myrna?”
Ola’s question startled Myrna back into present day, away from the memory of the words that had been haunting her for daytides, even though she knew them now not to be heartfelt but part of what Rafes’s campaign manager had oft called spin.
Five days after her leave-taking, Myrna had not heard from Rafesson. Not even once. And according to WolfNet, which she had free, unrestricted access to in the North Dakota kingdom house, she needn’t have worried about her refusal to go out on his behalf hurting his excellent campaign. Thanks to the prospect of a naturally conceived Wolf House baby, Rafesson seemed to have the election…as it was being referred to by many, “on lock.”
Rafesson claimed to have wanted her, Myrna thought bitterly, but all he truly needed was the consummation of their heat session to win his campaign. And his complete lack of contact attempts spoke volumes about what had really happened in his bedroom during her heating. So now that he was on his way to winning…nothing.
According to Knud, Rafesson had not even brought up the subject of her leave taking when Knud was carrying out the arrangement she'd made for Rafesson to talk with Jillian in Wyoming. Myrna had thought him talking to Jillian might give him a chance to heal some of the guilt he still carried. But after talking to Jillian for an hour, he’d merely thanked Knud, gotten on his drone and left for the next rally.
“Typical Rafesson,” Knud had said with a sympathetic shake of his head, after giving her the report. “He’s laser-focused. I’d thought being sent a fated mate might make him give up the President Robot routine but—"
“So are you thinking about doing something? Not even wanting to talk about it?” Ola asked, jolting Myrna out of yet another Rafes-centered memory.
Hating herself for obsessing over a wolf who apparently did not wish to have her as a true mate, Myrna forced her attention back to the she-wolf sitting with her in the North Dakota kingdom house’s ultra-modern kitchen.
She’d been surprised to find her only slightly younger niece in the kitchen when she’d come down to break her fast with one of the lovely bowls of grain called cereal early this morn. Myrna’s body was still yet accustomed to getting up with the sun as she had in Viking age Norway, even after half a year in this current time.
But she suspected Ola’s early rising had more to do with the family now sleeping beyond the breakfast nook’s d
oors, on the kingdom house’s back lawn. Eschewing the house’s shelter, Fensa’s odd hybrid family had chosen there to sleep. Xenon, her mate lay upon the ground in dragon form. Larger than a felled tree, he had one dark blue wing extended over his mate, who lay in something called a sleeping bag, and their twin daughters, who slept in wolf form with their dragon wings folded peacefully into their backs. On the other side of that wing and nearly half the blue dragon's size, even though Fensa claimed him to only five winters be, slept their son, the oldest. He’d also chosen his dragon form for slumber, but instead of dark blue, his scales shown bright and golden underneath the morning sun.
Her only other encounter with the serpents, this time period referred to as dragons, nearly ended her life. For that reason should this sight have struck Myrna as disgusting and odd. But watching Fensa’s family sleep together did not repel her. It only made her ache…for Rafesson…for something they never had.
Never could have had, she reminded herself, again, as she forced herself to focus on Ola, who she knew must be feeling as Most Honored Grandmother would put it, “some kind of way” about the imminent departure of her twin sister and family to a hidden island owned by Knud’s father-in-law on the morrow.
“I’m sorry,” Myrna said to her niece, “Unfortunately I do not understand your questions, because my thoughts were somewhere else when you first began speaking.”
Ola’s eyes drifted to the family sleeping on the lawn. “I was just saying that our dads decided to throw a goodbye celebration for Fensa and her family tonight. They’re trying to do it like back in your guys’ days. Get some meat together and make a fire, so that everybody can tell stories or sing songs around it. And they’re saying they want one-hundred percent participation, so I was just asking what you planned to do?”
“Oh, that is a worthy idea,” Myrna answered, trying to muster up the proper enthusiasm. “I will have to think of a story to tell.”
“I think I’ll sing a song myself,” Ola said, her eyes still on her sleeping sister’s family. “Most of my really good stories have Fensa in them. And I promised her I wouldn’t cry.”
Myrna reached out to squeeze her niece’s shoulder. Rafes had complained of the she-wolf’s hedgehog-like nature. But Myrna suspected at this moment, she was more like a turtle. Carrying around a hard shell to protect the soft body she kept hidden inside.
“It feels like I just got her back. And now she has to go run and hide. All because of some dragon, who thinks her mate should be punished forever because of shit that happened centuries ago.”
The ‘centuries ago’ hit Myrna hard. For hadn’t the Jelling Prince happened even longer ago than the dragons’ arrival in her village? And here she was, in present times, still letting the long-dead boy’s memory cast a shadow over her life.
“You okay?” Ola asked. Most likely because Myrna had gone quiet yet again.
“I am fine,” Myrna answered, forcing a natural smile, just as her media trainer had taught her. Even though she’d broken free of that life.
“Sister, how fare thee?”
Myrna met her younger brother’s question with a sigh. They’d spent most of the sun’s waning hours busily putting together a fire pit in the middle of the yard and laying blankets all around. They also had set out an array of platters prepared by Fensa and Ola with meats and vegetables to be roasted upon a bench table. She’d felt all of Olafr’s worried looks while they undertook the same duties they’d been tasked with in the longhouse. So, she wasn’t surprised when Olafr chose to ask her this question in Old Norse, soon after their oldest brother went inside to fetch everyone for the party, including their wife, who’d passed the day upstairs coding a biosystem game,
“I am fine, brother,” she answered, still finding it hard to believe that he was no longer ever a wolf. Or the fact that he was so much taller and older than her now and even communicating with her in Old Norse. “How fare thee?”
“Worried,” he answered. Like her, he’d inherited their father’s candor, while their mother’s finesse with words had gone to FJ, who represented the kingdom he co-ruled with their mate Tiara on all missions of diplomacy. “About Fensa who will be leaving us on the morrow because of a serpent I failed to kill. And our mate who has passed the day working because she is too sad about our daughter’s and grandchildren’s leave-taking. And also about my dear sister, who has left her mate to follow her true heart, but who does not look to be ‘fine’ as she claims.”
His anxiety over Fensa and Tiara she could well understand. Damianos Drákon, the dragon she and Ola had crossed to get back Fensa’s mate, also happened to be the very same one Olafr had attacked centuries ago. The one who’s fire had chased FJ and her into the fated gate. Myrna shivered at the thought of what he’d do if that golden-eyed serpent caught up with the hybrid family here in North America. Needless to say, there was no more talk against Rafesson’s black box project. The discovery of the still living and most likely vengeful dragon had changed everything for her brothers and their family. And she could not imagine what Fensa’s poor mother must be going through.
But…
“In earnest, brother, you should waste not even a grain of time worrying about me. I have made my decision,” she told him.
“You also made a decision to marry the Jelling prince at one time. And to stick by your fated mate. How did you put it? Where he goes, so shall I?”
His words felt much like Sana’s flying kick to the face might have during that match, if the human woman hadn’t expertly pulled back.
But Olafr only laughed at her pained expression. “Do not look like that, Sister. Did you know in the first version of Viking Shifters there were no shields?”
As hurt as Myrna still felt by Olafr’s assessment of her past decisions, she had to ask, “But how could a Viking fight without a shield?”
“Exactly! This is what we did say to her. But she protested that shields were too hard to code, and then did she insist the game looked better without them in any case. However, in the special edition made for the year 2020, she found a way to include shields. And did her fans all over the world rejoice.”
Myrna shook her head, liking the story, and indeed, the game, which she’d played oft on her room’s smart wall since coming to the North Dakota kingdom house. But she understood not how this tale related to her.
Again, Olafr laughed at her pained, and now confused expression. “I only mean to say that every relationship is a string of decisions. Decisions that you make and unmake every day. Do not think any decision is forever.”
The screeching laughter of Fensa’s twin daughters, who came flying out of the house in full dragon form, turned Olafr’s head. “I must now play with my granddaughters while I still can. But FJ and I have decided to tell the story of our great love around the fire tonight. I think you should listen, sister. Carefully. It might serve as a guide.”
And with that, he walked away.
Myrna thought to retire to the room she had been given on the second floor of the kingdom house. She treasured the family that had taken her in during her time of need. But she had desire neither to feign happiness this night nor to throw a cloud over the festivities with her apparently not so well-covered mood.
However, just as she stepped foot upon the kingdom houses long back porch, Ola appeared out of nowhere and grabbed her by the arm. “Where do you think you’re going? You are not leaving me out here alone with all these loved-up fated mates. C’mon, sit down next to me at the fire. Us single she-wolves have to stick together.”
Myrna went along with her niece, not because of her newly single status, but because she sensed Ola really did need her company this night.
Tomorrow Ola would lose the twin sister she loved dearly. The threat to their lives was so severe that the entire family had decided no one other than Knud’s father-in-law should be privy to their location. She’d be allowed to visit in a few months’ time, Knud had assured her, but other than that, they would be fully out o
f communication.
Ola’s turtle shell was cracking, Myrna sensed as they sat upon one of the blankets she, Olafr, and FJ had laid out earlier. And thus, she gave her niece, and not the ache inside her chest, her full attention as they ate a dinner of chicken and root vegetables that had been roasted upon an open fire, just as their mother might have made.
But Ola spoke not of her sister as the sun sank in the sky, but of her coronation. Her uncles, the king and beta of North Dakota, and also, still deeply in love had announced earlier in the strange week, that they wished to take retirement. Like Rafes, both men had been raised to become royals, but now wanted to see how they might fare as subjects. So then would they pass their kingdom down to Ola nearly five years ahead of the original schedule.
This night, Ola did seem to Myrna more concerned with the party she’d get to throw to commemorate her ascension to the throne than the owner of having it bestowed upon her earlier than planned.
As her fathers stoked the fire to prepare it for some foodstuff called smores, did Ola speak most passionately about her upcoming coronation as Queen of North Dakota, filling Myrna’s ear not with laments of Fensa’s departure, but with talk of “venues big enough” and “ten different DJs—not robots—but, like, human DJs.” She reminded Myrna much of Rafes in the way he’d obsessed over one topic, while his wolf growled feral and untamed inside of him—
Oh, for Fenrir Wolf’s sake…Myrna chastised herself for letting her thoughts once again stray to her fated mate. And yet another pang of guilt raised inside her chest as she recalled Olafr’s words about her not sticking to earlier decisions. And Rafesson’s words about her not keeping the promise she’d made to help him train his wolf.
A dirty tactic, she’d told herself at the time.
And she kept telling herself that now.
But the guilt, it wouldn’t leave.
Luckily, sticks were passed around, and she soon had distraction in the form of something called marshmallows. They were white and sweet and safe to eat on their own, yet was Myrna instructed to spear them with the stick and roast them upon the fire. Then did Ola sandwich the now gooey confection between bars of chocolate and a sort of sweet light brown cracker.
The Brothers Nightwolf Trilogy Page 70