Claw and Crown Bundle: A Gay Viking Historical Fantasy Shifter Romance Series

by Richard Lunch

  And then there were claws and a great growl.

  Diluted blood is nothing at all to spill. It waters the ground so the plant eaters become fat. It washes my fur and makes playthings for my cubs. It pleases my mate to see the ribbons on your throat. Dance with me.

  The voice was everywhere. It was in front of me. I scrambled backward. My back hit something. Hard.

  It was pierced. A sharp lancing pain laced through my body from my ribs to my shoulder. I cried out.

  A hand brushed my face. More water to my lips.

  The light returned.

  A voice in my ear sang and filled my head with winding streams of sun yellow and orange flowers. Blues and pinks and purples sprang up and twisted into words in my ears. There was the call of a crow and the hearkening of an owl and spring swept across the land. I felt myself grow old and saw him, then, the heir.

  My heir was small and sweet and lay curled up, sleeping as a wolf. I reached for him and cupped his muzzle. His eyes were two different colors, but you would not notice it if you did not know to look. I knew to look. A father knows. His right eye was blue like mine, and the other…

  The wind swept him away and with him, the light. My hands split in two and I became two people. Both were me. Both became wolves and with teeth bared faced another, much larger, wolf. One of them won, tearing him after a desperate struggle. The other me lay open and bleeding on the ground. Somewhere, a wolf howled in triumph and another in grief.

  I called out, then, too.

  Hands were on my face.

  They calmed me. I reached for their source and found Draugr.

  I looked into his eyes. They weren’t white. I had been wrong. They weren’t gray either. They were the color of broken stone, of dark passageways, and of the moon just before an eclipse. They were the color of the snow at dusk in midwinter. I took the back of his neck in my hand and pulled his lips to mine.

  The kiss bloomed like a rose between us.

  Too soon, too soon, he pulled away. I heard him say something and felt something warm around my shoulders. I could see the room again. More water, no, something hot and sweet. I licked my lips. I could taste him still.

  He laid me down by the coals and stoked them into a fire. It was the best feeling. I was so warm, and so tired, but I could not sleep. I watched the fire.

  Like a flag unfurling, the room returned in a rippling wave. I moved my neck. It was sore. I watched the fire and thought of the two wolves and let the room hum around me.

  Chapter 6

  Draugr

  I brushed my fingers along my lips. His kiss had been a surprise, and likely, he would not remember it. I covered Hafporir with another fur. He curled into it and his eyelids fluttered. The potion’s effects were passing and he would soon have lucidity again, either tonight or in the morning. When his chest rose and fell with sleep, I got up and went outside and into the night.

  A soft snow fell and the moon had risen high. I tried to think as a teacher does of his apprentice, and to envision what Hafporir might have experienced on his journey, but I was at a loss. I could only think of the feverish heat of his lips on mine. It was something I should not have experienced, that I knew.

  I leaned against a tree and undid my laces. The moon shone down on my body. I spit in my hand and let it trace its way down my abdomen to wear my rigid cock was waiting. I wrapped my fingers around it and imagined they were Hafporir’s lips, soft and hot.

  I wound my fingers around the base of my cock and pumped. I pictured his tongue lavishing my shaft and carrying its way, all the way, up to my head. I twisted the head of my cock in my fingers and thought of Hafporir, nibbling mischievously, not-so-secretly irritated with a lesson.

  My breath caught in my throat. I spit into my other hand and clenched my cock, bucking my hips into the air. I thought of Hafporir’s buttocks wrapped around my cock. To fuck him would taste so sweet. It would feel like plunging into warmth and softness. It would feel royal to fuck him, to make him scream and cry out for more. When I imagined reaching around his hips and gripping his own desperate, dripping penis in my hand and taking him over the edge, I fell forward onto my knees. I howled and pumped into my hands. Warmth rushed through me. My seed spurted onto the ground. It steamed in the snow and my stomach filled with relief.

  I shuddered with the intensity of the thing I had just done. I wiped my cock off and laced up my pants before lying on my back in the snow. The icy pain of the cold bit into my back as it would anyone’s. I shifted my focus and told my body to warm itself, to ignore the discomfort and to make up for it, and it did.

  I took a clump of snow and put it to my forehead to dampen the fever.

  “I must let this pass like an illness. I cannot, must not, think of him that way, for his sake and mine.”

  I told myself these words and hoped that I could listen. The snow melted into my eyes like tears. I added another handful and smeared it across my lips in an attempt to wipe the tingle of his kiss from them. It did not work. His scent was in my nostrils. It drove me wild. I did not want to admit it, but there was a trace of need there, in him, calling out for a good fuck.

  “It is only a young man’s need. All young men, all young wolves have it. You think it unusual because of your training, because you go so long without speaking to others,” I told myself and wiped the melted snow from my face.

  The stars were out. I knew of some who read them. The whispers of spirits had always been more immediate, but my frenzy had quieted them for once. I thought of those who interpreted the heavens, and with a hand on my forehead, fell asleep contemplating what they held for Hafporir and me.

  Chapter 7

  Hafporir

  “Well, so much for rising with the sun,” I sat up to see light streaming through the cracks in the hut.

  Draugr lay on his side, his chest rising and falling in sleep. I ran my hands through my hair and pulled it back. I felt as though something had happened.

  A rush of visions flew behind my eyes, a kiss, two wolves, my death, and the castle with another’s colors flying there. I barely got the door of the hut open before I was sick on the snow-covered ground outside.

  Draugr was behind me in a second. He brushed my hair out of my face and tied it back with a length of leather. He left and returned with water. I washed out my mouth and spat.

  I hoped he did not think I remembered our kiss. Why did I do that? He had discarded me, pushed me away almost the moment that our lips had touched. I knew that, even among the memories of the visions and all that was there and was not there.

  My head felt quiet, though, and open. My body was sore, but there was an emptiness to my soul that did not hurt, but that felt clean, like the corners of a room after they are swept of dust in the spring and the shutters are opened to let in the air.

  I managed to stand up. My head swam. I wanted to say something, preferably something that spoke to my displeasure with being fed that poison, but I kept silent. Something held my tongue. It was, perhaps, the fear that he would bring up the shame of the kiss.

  “Why don’t you sit out here. Take in the air.”

  I leaned my back against Draugr’s hut and stared out at the forest. He was clearing snow away from a small patch in a circle. It took me a moment to realize it was a small garden. He broke a stem from a plant, and went indoors with it.

  The morning breeze cooled my cheeks. The visions from last night continued to surface in my mind, like fish bobbing above water to catch insects and diving back down only to be lost again. How could I extend a net to retrieve the memories?

  Draugr came back with a steaming cup of something. My stomach roiled. I held up my hands.

  “No, please.”

  “It’s only nettle tea with angelica and honey.”

  “Honey? I did not know you had honey.”

  “Not very much. It will soothe your belly.”

  I took a sip. It was bitter and sweet at the same time and did seem to coat the raw lining of my throat and in
nards.

  “Thank you.”

  “Those are nice words to hear,” Draugr sat next to me and looked at the sun, “we will do no work today.”

  “Thank you for that as well, then. So tell me Draugr. What did you give me to drink last night? And why could you not tell me of what would happen?”

  “I did tell you, as much as I could, but the secrets are never shared until after the first drink of it.”

  “First? I hope to never do that again.”

  Draugr laughed. It was small and good-natured, “I have drunk it many times, and I imagine this will not be your last time. It is an ancient recipe, called seidraught, handed down among our wolf tribe. It connects you with your ancestors. They guide you and show you the truths that lie just beneath the surface of our world.”

  “If what I saw was true, then I did not wish to know.”

  “What did you see?”

  “I saw a great many things,” I laughed. How could I describe them all? “But most troubling were the foreign flags flying over my castle and the two identical wolves, two wolves that looked very much like me as a wolf, fighting a large, powerful wolf.”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “And what happened to the wolves?”

  “One was victorious, though barely. The other…”

  “The other was not victorious.”

  “No.”

  He was quiet for a time. I drank more of the tea. It soothed my body but did nothing to calm my mind. The potion had been cleansing, but now the memories worried me, and I could feel my mind clouding already with errant thoughts.

  “Your instructors in sword and tooth no doubt taught you that to lose in battle is no great sorrow, that a great afterlife awaits fallen warriors.”

  I studied his face. His gray eyes looked out into the distance. I longed to have them meet mine.

  “Is that not true?”

  “It is true, but…”

  “But what?”

  “But a king must survive, at least for a time. He may go to the great feast in the next world if he dies, but if a warrior leaves his family behind in death, a king leaves every one of his people. When you face this great wolf, and you will face him, you must not lose.”

  I shuddered.

  “What must I do then?”

  “You must work.”

  I nodded. There would be no leaving this hut in the woods for the comforts of home. I would have to stay with this man who threatened to drive me insane with his handsomeness and his impossible tasks and his irritating demeanor. I lay my head back on the wall of the hut and closed my eyes. My life had been good before. If Draugr had never shown me, had never given me the seidraught, I would not know that I needed to prepare for a battle.

  I was faced with the reality of my past. I could have lived on in ignorance and revelry until I died. But now, I had the chance to live, if I learned enough to beat the great wolf, and I made a promise to myself, then. I was not going to give that up, for the kingdom, and for myself.

  Chapter 8

  Draugr

  In the weeks since his vision, Hafporir’s skill in transformation had improved, the muscles on his man and wolf forms alike growing taught and hard and more defined, but there was still something he could not quite master.

  “Time is not a river that flows unbroken and unyielding. It is a tapestry that can be woven, unwoven, and tied again.”

  “I cannot do what you claim to do Draugr. Have you considered that you are only faster than I?”

  We were sparring in an open meadow. The winter had grown late and some of the plants peeked up through the thaw. I threw a punch at him. He blocked. He dodged the next blow and the next, and side-stepped my fourth strike only to hammer his fist down toward my back. I stepped forward through the tapestry, for just a blink, and he fell to the ground.

  “That is what I mean! You must just be uncommonly fast.”

  “You saw for yourself. You took the seidraught. There are more things to this world than what you can see and hold in your hand. Let the tapestry of time unweave around you. Step forward and through.”

  I picked up a practice sword from the pile of weapons we had brought with us. He reached for one as well.

  “No. It is just you. Now, defend yourself!”

  I lunged. The sword edge was dulled. It would bruise, maybe even crack bone, but it would not maim him. He ducked and rolled along the ground. Hafporir’s wolf claws emerged from his hands and scratched into the earth.

  “If you do not, I will find a way to strike you.”

  I brought the sword down. He rolled away. He was on the defensive, now, scrambling backward through the dirt and last traces of snow. His clothes were streaked with mud. Panic flashed in his blue eyes and then it didn’t. I lifted the sword and brought it down toward his chest. The last I caught of him was the glint of sunlight on his fair hair, and then he was gone.

  The practice sword buried itself in the soft earth where he had been.

  “Hafporir!” I called, “Hafporir!”

  He was nowhere to be seen. I rubbed my face.

  “Was I so difficult an apprentice?”

  The answer was simple. My power and strength and skill had built steadily. Hafporir’s came in leaps and bounds, raw and unsteady. In any case, he had certainly learned to unweave the tapestry. Now, he would just need to reweave it. Something nagged at me as I waited one heartbeat, then two, and he did not return.

  I stretched out my hands. They were shaking. I smacked them together until I regained my stability. Something was not right.

  Chapter 9

  Hafporir

  It should have been cold, but every flake of snow that fell on my bare skin was hot like the ashes that float on wind away from a fire.

  There was no sun, no stars, nothing but a blanket of blackness above me, empty and calling to me at the same time. At any moment, I felt I might be sucked up into it, like a bird falling backwards into the sky.

  I walked toward the one thing that stood out in the endless expanse of white snow. A single, blue flame flickered in the distance. As I approached, the flame would flicker out, then return again. The snows parted and a great black boulder appeared near it. It disappeared and reappeared. I paused. Something was not right.

  “None of this is right,” I muttered to myself. My words hung in the air.

  I moved toward the flame, wishing I had a sword, anything.

  The flame rose into the sky and the boulder with it. In the sweeping, burning snow like cinders I saw a the great thing against the blackness of that un-sky.

  It curled its lips at me to reveal teeth the color of a smithy’s sparks. Its claws gleamed like steel and its breath carried the scent of roses. It was a great white wolf, one eye a blue flame and one pitch black. No, it was not pitch black, it contained all the stars, as though it had caught the heavens that were missing above.

  I looked up again, and somehow, there were more stars than I had ever seen in my life. They swirled through the sky and spun around us. The sun rose and set.

  “You see me, now.” It spoke with a voice that was eerily familiar.

  “Tell me,” it struck me when I spoke, the creature’s voice was the same as mine, “What do I see?”

  It pointed a claw at the sky. A spinning ball emerged from it and flew closer to us. It was mostly blue, but also brown and green and white as snow.

  “Your world,” it said before casting it away, “and all the others.”

  More spheres, more stars, more suns than I could count spun past us through the sky.

  “You are just one of many. No need to think of your kingdom. Kingdoms rise and crumble as quickly as late summer flowers.”

  “How do you know of my kingdom?” I took a step back.

  “Your kingdom belongs to true wolves. Your kind is mixed with man. It doesn’t do to keep the throne beneath your flimsy claws. Let it go.”

  This was no vision, no helpful spirit. This creature was not on my side.

 
; “Stay with me and I can make you pure.”

  I withdrew, focusing on my claws, letting them come out.

  It continued, “Snow is pure, white wolf, and men can never be so…And yet you think you are the keepers of the snow and all that lies above and below it.”

  “A wolf is no better. Does a pure creature crush another between its jaws?”

  A wicked grin spread across his features, “I was going to leave you for my son, but while I have you here, let us find out.”

  He moved like liquid lightning. There was nowhere to go. I raised my claws and he descended a swirling smoking mass of sparking teeth and razor sharp fur and glistening claws.

  “Back old beast!”

  My body skidded through the burning snow, and then I looked up to see Draugr. Relief and pain flooded through me at the same time, and then the wolf came for him.

  And he was smoke and then he was a great gray wolf, almost as large, his gray eyes glowing white as they had that other night.

  “We are leaving, old wolf.”

  The wolf looked at Draugr whose hackles were raised and claws were raking through the snow. He must have decided it was not worth the trouble because he walked away, and faced the sky.

  Draugr returned to his man form and ran to me. I was in his arms, then. He lifted me up, and we were home.

  It was funny that I thought of the meadow by his hut as home. I leaned my head into his shoulder and let the blackness take me.

  Chapter 10

  Hafporir

  Something cool on my forehead brought me out of my fog. I opened my eyes to see Draugr kneeling over me, a bowl in one hand and a cloth in the other. I looked into those gray eyes. I saw the death that had almost befell me, and I reached for his neck.

  His eyes widened. I wrapped my hand around the back of his neck, tangling it in his dark locks, and pulled him toward me.