by Holley Trent
I could leave.
She could hike to the road and stick out her thumb for a ride. She and Arnold had done that plenty in ten years, but they’d always been together. The road wasn’t a safe place for a single woman—not even one who was a werewolf.
Also, surprisingly, the allure wasn’t there anymore. Now that she had her feet planted somewhere stable, she was hesitant to move them very far. Wolves needed homes, and the people in Norseton said she could stay there and make the life for herself her mother would have wanted.
But she wasn’t going to be able to avoid her mate. She needed to let him off the hook or get some closure, or the animal part of her would never be content.
If he doesn’t want me—fine.
She wasn’t going to beg him to stick around, just like her mother hadn’t with her father. He’d changed his mind about having a wolf for a wife. He’d left them to struggle on their own without so much as a penny for support. He hadn’t even shown up to fetch Petra and Arnold when their mother got sick and everyone knew she was going to die.
He hadn’t wanted anything more to do with wolves, and Petra sure as shit wasn’t going to force any man into an unwilling entanglement.
She’d gotten what she wanted. She was a full-fledged werewolf and could shapeshift with the rest of her pack.
I’m fucking awesome.
She put more cereal in her mouth and chewed so she didn’t have to think anymore. So she didn’t have to meet Lisa and Esther’s gazes and have them look at her like she was a liar.
They would have known.
Her mother may have been fine alone, but Petra wouldn’t be able to stay away from her mate, whether he wanted her or not. Her mother hadn’t had a bite, and certainly not one by a man who’d apparently been vetted by the wolf goddess.
I’m so fuckin’ screwed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Generally, when Paul staggered out of the hospital after a twelve-hour shift, he pointed his feet straight toward his apartment building and pushed distractions to the back of his mind. He had to be in his bed, or at least in very close proximity to it, in the next fifteen minutes, or there’d be no guarantees as to where he’d wake up.
The emergency room and been flooded non-stop with victims of food poisoning, a kid came in with a broken leg and a bloody nose after some unauthorized playground gymnastics, and then there were the usual hypochondriacs who were pretty sure something was wrong with them but who couldn’t articulate what that might be.
He was all touched out—a shockingly rare condition for a person of Afótama descent.
“I’ve got a bone to pick with you,” came a tart, feminine tone at his back.
He paused at the corner, and his heart gave a momentary stutter.
The one person he did want to touch was behind him, and she sounded pissed.
Cool. Great.
He waved on the car that’d been waiting for him to cross the street, and turned slowly to the sneering she-wolf.
The supposed love of his life was making dagger-eyes at him.
Cool. Great.
He took a deep, bolstering breath and joined Petra near the USPS collection box she was scowling against. “What was that about picking a bone?”
“You know what you did, and you know what? I don’t care, but I didn’t want you to think I wasn’t going to call you out.”
He rolled his head on his stiff neck and folded his arms over his chest. “Okay. Humor me, please. I’ve had a very long day.”
“Cry me a river, Viking.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and gave his head a minute shake. “Obviously, you’re pissed at me for something you think I’ve done. I’m fried right now. Do you maybe want to tell me what it was? That’s usually how adults work things out.”
“Stop treating me like I’m a child. In case you haven’t noticed yet, I’m not one.”
He forced his bleary eyes open and pinned her in his gaze. She was only a little blurry. He probably needed to clean his glasses, but he could see well enough to confirm that she was still pretty, even when she was pissed.
Probably shouldn’t be paying attention to how pretty she is right now. Would probably only make her madder.
He averted his gaze, fixing it on the office supply store across the street. “Petra, just tell me what I did wrong. I’m too tired to play guessing games, and I’d probably lose one, anyway. I think we’re in a midst of a cultural misunderstanding.”
“Oh, is that what men call it now when they bounce on a chick?”
“What?”
“You left!” she shouted.
And of course, the girls’ softball team chose that exact moment to walk by, staring. Obviously, they were on the mend from their food poisoning.
He waved them along.
They kept staring as they moved, because that was what rude teenagers tended to do. He’d been one once.
“Okay, I left,” he said. “Because I had to go to work. Also…” He pointed to his newly shorn head. “Wanted to get a haircut. Was overdue.”
If she had an opinion about his barber’s aggressive trim job, she didn’t show it. “You should have taken the day off,” she said.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Here we go with the shoulds and coulds, huh? I don’t think I’ve ever been in a relationship that didn’t devolve to that particular conversation.”
“I don’t really give a fuck about your other relationships.”
“Mm. I think you hinted at that a little when you said you didn’t care what I did.”
She took one confident step toward him, chin raised and teeth bared. No pain in her gait. She’d healed.
A medical miracle.
Curious as he was about that, he couldn’t let down his guard, or else whoever was working in the E.R. might be called on to work a medical miracle on Paul. Petra looked pissed enough to bite.
“You make a habit of not doing what’s expected of you in a relationship?” she asked, this time loudly enough for the queen of the Afótama to hear.
Cool. Great.
Queen Tess, who looked like she’d been headed toward the diner for a very late meal with her cousin-slash-bodyguard, Nadia, in tow, turned on her boot heel and headed back toward them.
For fuck’s sake.
“Do you know who she is?” Paul asked the wolf lady.
She shrugged.
“That’s the clan’s queen,” he leaned in to hiss. “I don’t really want Queen Tess in my business, because when she takes special interest in things—”
“Hey, Paul,” Nadia said.
Fuck.
He leaned away from the stubborn wolf and smiled at the newcomers. “Good evening.”
Queen Tess batted some of her dark curly hair out of her face and pinned him with a searching look.
Oh, hell.
“’S’up?” she projected telepathically.
Nadia got between him and the wolf, and started chatting with her, but he wasn’t paying much attention to the precise nature of the conversation. He knew what Nadia was doing. It was a distraction tactic so Queenie could get into his head. They did that divide-and-conquer shit all the time, which was why most intelligent shit stains in the clan ran fast when they saw them approaching.
It was too late for Paul to run.
“Nothing’s up,” he told the queen. “Just a minor misunderstanding.”
“About what? Seems like relationship stuff to me. You know not to bother lying, right? I may not be the best lie detector, but I can tell when the clan’s web has changed. There’s a tentative new connection on it, and the best I can tell that person isn’t Afótama. I’d be reading them better if they were.”
She shoved her hands into the kangaroo pocket of her sweatshirt and squinted at him.
He knew a dare when he saw one, and he was too smart to take it.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Queenie,” he projected.
“So, you’re not dating her?”
“I wouldn’t call our relationship
status ‘dating,’ no.”
“Then what would you call it?”
“I—” He took off his glasses and pressed the heels of his palms against his tired eyes. “I don’t know what to make of this, okay? I don’t like feeling like I’m being rushed into things, and this is moving way too fast.”
“So, your attachment is through no doing of your own?”
“Are you asking if this thing is one-sided? No.” He dropped his hands and looked over at Petra, who’d been moved several yards away by Nadia. They were chatting quietly, but there was no mistaking that Petra wasn’t calm. Her animated gestures and the expressive faces she was pulling made that perfectly clear.
“You don’t trust the connection?” Queenie asked.
He shifted his weight some more and nudged his glasses back up. “That’s not the problem. We could be connected, even if she decides she doesn’t like me after all.”
“Doesn’t work like that. She wouldn’t be yours if she couldn’t put up with you.”
He wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be comforting.
“Hey,” Queenie projected. “Remember? I’m the last person who should have been someone’s fated match. I’m pretty sure I’ve still got warrants out for those crap charges from when I was hustling all over the southeast. I’m no one’s idea of a perfect queen.”
“You’re exactly what the clan needs.”
She smirked. Shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. I knew, though, that when I saw Ollie, that I could be happy. I didn’t understand why. I wasn’t up on the Afótama learning curve back then, but trusting him was so easy, I guess, because I needed to trust someone then.”
“You’ve got two someones, though. You’ve got complicating factors.”
The queen had two chieftains. The nature of her power required her to have an additional lover to pass magic through, but no one could say the chieftains were just empty vessels for her to use as she saw fit. The men had their own magic, apart from Queenie’s. The bit of magic Paul had was a drop in the proverbial bucket in comparison. The chieftains were frightening when pushed. Fortunately, they rarely were.
She shrugged again. “Yeah. Having two complicated things at first, but everything worked out the way it needed to. The old Viking gods took pity on us, I guess.”
“And is that what they’re doing to me?” he asked. “Taking pity?”
“I’d say so. I think you may be the most reluctant recipient of a blessed matched in the entire clan.”
“I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors about me. They’re all true.”
“That you’re a non-communicative bastard? Yeah, I’ve heard those. But guess what?” She crooked her thumb toward her cousin. “When Nadia and I are in a room alone, we don’t talk at all. That’s why our relationship works. We both know there’s one person in this place we don’t have to try to be pleasant around. We lean on each other for restoration.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“You’re not meant to, but now you know. Even the freakin’ queen has her flaws. Sometimes, we have to look outside of ordinary places to find the people who balance us.”
“I wasn’t looking,” he said.
“That’s right. Because you’d given up. Don’t think I don’t know why you haven’t settled down.” She gave him a hearty thump to the back. “You don’t fit in? You think people dislike you? So what?”
“That’s easy for you to say. You can electrocute people from across a room. People respect you.”
“Because they’re afraid of me, just like you.” She poked his shoulder. “I’d rather have people like me for me.”
“I’m surprised you’re telling me this.”
“Why? Because I’m confessing a weakness, and I’m not supposed to have any? Ask my chieftains. I have many, but they do a good job of propping me up so no one knows. That’s the way this is supposed to work.”
He stood stunned, still, at her confession. Queenie had never been one to hash her words, but for her to be so open about her flaws humbled him.
“Try to enjoy the gift,” she projected. “You might as well. You don’t get another match, and you know deep down that the ultimate reason none of your other relationships lasted was because you weren’t meant to be with them. You were just biding your time.”
“Until a werewolf fell into my lap, you mean.”
“It was going to happen eventually, Paul, with more wolves moving here. Some wolf was going to hook up with a member of the clan, and why not you?”
He wondered the same. Why not him? If there was no woman right for him in Norseton, where they all knew him too well, and if no one out in the larger world had hit the right buttons, either, why not accept the match?
He knew the answer to that, though. He was scared that he wouldn’t be enough of what she needed, just like with all his friends in the past, and all his demanding lovers. He couldn’t give them enough. He either hadn’t had the right stuff to give, or he hadn’t wanted to give it.
He raked a hand through what was left of his hair and risked a glance at the wolf. “What the hell am I supposed to do with her? What am I supposed to give her? I’m not a wolf.”
“And she’s not a witch, so it seems to me, you’ve both got some things to worry about.” Queenie reached up and gave his shoulder a tender squeeze. “You’re skeptical. I understand that. But you’re not going to be able to shake the feeling that she’s yours. You feel that, don’t you?”
“Yes.” He didn’t see the point in lying. Even if the queen hadn’t been in his head, she’d already intuited his connection with Petra. Those bonds didn’t disappear.
“So what good is ignoring her? What good is going slow and setting up unnecessary roadblocks?”
“Is this a, ‘You’re not getting any younger, Paul’ speech? I could go get one of those from my mother.”
Queenie grunted and got him moving toward the shop window Petra and Nadia were standing in front of. “Well, you’re not getting any younger, and the older you get, the more stuck in your stubborn asshole ways you’re going to be.” She deposited him beside Petra and rubbed her palms together gleefully. “Okay!” she said brightly.
That merry sound always sounded so ominous coming from the queen, given her usual tone’s husky nature. “Let’s hash this out so I can go eat pie before my little princess wakes up, deciding she doesn’t want to sleep through the night anymore.”
“We’re doing this right here?” Paul asked.
Petra cocked her chin at him again. “You got something to be ashamed of?”
“Do you?”
“You’re the one who was running. I’m not going any-damn-where.”
“I never told you to leave. You can stay all you want to.”
“Good. I’m going to, whether you want me to or not.”
He laughed. All he could do was laugh, because nothing else made sense at the moment.
“You’re not running me off, Paul.”
“I never tried to. I’m so confused. All I did was go to work.”
“You abandoned me to shapeshift on my own.”
“You’re mad at what?” Paul raked a hand through his hair again, and then gave it a frantic tug. “You fell asleep, and I recall it being at a very inopportune moment. Really, I’m the one who should be pissed.”
Petra pantomimed playing a very tiny violin.
He growled. “How the fuck was I supposed to know you were getting up again soon? You were in a coma when you came here, and went right back to bed after you got up. For all I knew, you were going to sleep until Ragnarok.”
“You bit me. You were supposed to stay.”
Nadia put up her hands. “Wait. I think this is where we’re gonna have an impasse.” She looked to Petra. “He couldn’t possibly know that. Maybe it’s instinctual to you, but he doesn’t have a wolf’s instincts. He has Afótama instincts.”
Queenie cleared her throat and muttered through the fingers she held over her mouth, “We’re usually pretty clingy with
our matches, too.”
Paul groaned. Thanks a lot, Queenie.
“He’s fighting the pull,” Petra said, and she seemed to be truly hurt by the idea that he’d avoid her.
He didn’t want to avoid her. He just needed to make sure they both knew what they were getting into. He wasn’t an easy person to live with. He was a dick. If anyone would want to leave the relationship, the runner would probably be her.
“He doesn’t want to be with me. That’s why he’s trying so hard to buck it, but I—” Her knees wobbled beneath her, and Nadia grabbed her by the arms.
“Whoa,” Petra said after a gasp.
Paul took a step forward to take Petra, but she waved them both away.
“I’m all right.” She held up her hands as if to dissuade anyone from getting closer, but she couldn’t get another word out.
Her legs faltered again and face froze in some pained expression as a croak sounded in her throat. He didn’t understand what was happening until the trembles started.
He barely managed to get in front of her before she crumbled to the sidewalk.
A seizure.
He scooped her up and headed straight back to the hospital with her, Queenie and Nadia at his back.
“That’s why you totaled your truck, isn’t it?” he whispered into Petra’s hair.
“What?” she asked sleepily.
“Never mind. Hold tight.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Arnold seemed a little less bony than usual. On the very regular occasions when Petra had to share a bed with her brother, she tended to wake with bruised ribs and shins. He had pointy elbows and knees.
Must have put on some weight in the past week.
Eyes still closed, she patted down his chest and poked at his leg with her big toe.
She didn’t remember him being that wide.
And he didn’t smell quite right.
She sucked in some air through her nose and itemized the notes of the scent.
Not wolf.
Viking.
Vikings smelled like too much coffee, wood, and leather, for some reason.
She withdrew her hand and opened one eye.
Paul chuckled. “I was wondering where you were going to put that hand next.”