Nothing could have prepared Wilma for the moment of standing across from her first real opponent in the ring. Not all that practice with Wilt and Ford. Not all those nights she’d spent in front of the TV, dreaming about exactly what she would do if she could wrestle like a boy.
Her heart thrilled, and suddenly this was all that mattered. The fight. The performance. The motherfucking leap she took across the ring in order to put Ursula in an old school headlock.
“How did you do that so fast?” Ursula demanded while pretending to painfully choke inside Wilma’s arm.
Wilma just spun her away from Bohdan, so that she could fake gouge the woman’s eyes without “the ref” catching sight of it.
The wrestlers in the stands burst out laughing at the old 50s move. “Did you see what she just did? That’s illegal! Bohdan do something!” They gamely screamed and booed, just like if they were at a real match.
In response to their cries for justice, Wilma face punched Ursula, causing her to fake cry out and eliciting even more boos and cries of foul action.
“You are doing great, black girl!” Ursula whispered even as she pretended to be in unfathomable pain. “Keep it going!”
“How about a body slam?” Wilma whispered back.
“Are you kidding?” Ursula replied. “There’s no way you could lift me!”
But Ursula must have been curious about Wilma’s proposal. She back elbowed Wilma in the gut, providing the perfect cue for Wilma to release the larger woman from the headlock. Clutching her mid-section, Wilma made a dramatic show of staggering back from her opponent.
The All-American wrestlers were on their feet now, stomping and hollering for the villain who had suddenly been converted to a hero for this tryout. And Willa saw that more than a few of the girls from the tryout line had gathered in the open door to see what was going on. They cheered, too, momentarily forgetting the competition in favor of a good old-fashioned fight.
And as for Ursula…she turned back to Wilma her eyes gleaming with challenge.
Wilma didn’t hesitate. She charged forward, meeting Ursula in the middle of the ring for a classic hand to neck grappling hold, disguised as a double choke. After a few turnarounds to get the audience really riled up, Wilma knocked back Ursula’s elbow and went for a duck under.
“She’s not going to…”
“No way!”
“How would that even be possible?”
“I’m covering my eyes, I can’t watch this girl break her back! Tell me when it’s over!”
With her enhanced wolf hearing, Wilma heard everything the audience muttered in hush fascination. But it didn’t matter, because, for the first time in her life, she truly understood the expression, “In the zone.”
Like a math test long studied for, Wilma ran through all the steps…first the crotch lift…then she growled angrily to mask the fact that she was securing Ursula by the shoulder to make sure she didn’t truly get hurt when she executed her final move.
Next came the controlled throw….and then the sound of Ursula’s heavy body hitting the mat echoed across the auditorium.
For a moment there wasn’t a sound to be heard. It was as if the entire audience had caught its collective breath. Then everybody went wild. Cheering and screaming, the villain and hero roles completely forgotten.
Wilma herself could hardly believe she pulled that body slam off without either her or Ursula getting hurt. But there was no time to soak in the cheers. Ursula was doing a great job of pretending like she was writhing around in pain, but Wilma knew she only had a few more seconds to pull off her last move if she wanted it to look convincing.
Without wasting another moment, she climbed the ring’s ropes, then threw her body into a backward somersault, before stretching herself out to land right on top of Ursula, for a perfect pin.
And nobody had asked, but Wilma was pretty sure she just proved that when it comes to moonsaults, she-wolves do it better.
“10…9…8…” the crowd started counting down, their voices a mix of shock and glee.
Wilma could honestly call these the most exhilarating nine seconds of her entire life. And then came….
“ONE!!!” the crowd called out while a few of the tryout girls sing-songed, “DING-DING-DING!”
And the next thing Wilma knew, Ursula and she were up on their feet, standing side by side as Ursula lifted Wilma’s hand in the air. As it turned out, Wilma had been wrong about this woman never smiling. She waved and blew kisses to the crowd, her face happy and red with exertion, even though she’d technically “lost.”
“Hell of a show, black girl,” Ursula said, before turning Wilma around to face Bohdan.
Bohdan, for his part, didn’t cheer along with the crowd. But his dark, sunken shark eyes flashed with a new interest as he gave Wilma a long up and down look. “I will need your real name,” he said eventually. “For the paychecks when you join our team.”
His voice was so gravelly and severe, it took Wilma a moment to understand the meaning of the words coming out of his mouth. Holy shit, he was offering her a job. Like, a real job.
She couldn’t believe this was happening. To her. The black pack princess of Detroit, who’d never quite fit in anywhere.
But it was happening. Actually happening. And Wilma's heart revved like a motorcycle engine as she said, “Thank you, Mr. Bohdan, sir! This is a dream come—”
An arrow of pain shot up her spine, so sharp, it nearly doubled her over.
Actually, it should have doubled her over. Was meant to, biologically speaking, since the unbearable urge to get down on all fours was technically the first phase of a full moon shift. But Wilma fought it. Breathing hard as her skin broke out into an instant sweat as the magnitude of what was happening to her body sank in.
Oh Jesus! Oh Jesus! She was about to shift…right here in front of all these humans!
Two
Myrna
Viking Age Norway
“By the Fenrir Wolf, do you never tire of defying me? Why are you here, Sister?”
Myrna woke up to the feel of her younger brother, Olafr’s wet nose on her forehead and the sound of her older brother, Fenrisson—or FJ as he was called by his family—shouting at her.
In a whisper of course. As furious as he was, he’d never want the other wolves to know his stubborn sister had defied her brother. For the countless time.
Myrna sighed, giving herself a few seconds behind purposefully closed eyes. She’d known this would be her older brother’s response when she snuck back down the mountain and slipped in beneath the furs of her own bedding bench late last night. Upon the arrival of Freya’s colorful lights, FJ had sent her away with strict orders to stay hidden on the mountain with the rest of the women and children and a handful of men either too feeble or essential to their kingdom village’s trade to be considered fighters.
However, as the day passed, she had become too curious about why FJ had bid the rest of the males who formed the kingdom village’s fighting force to stay behind in their village as opposed to taking the fight directly to their enemy as their father, the current Fenris and all of the Fenrises before him had done. Myrna could also no longer abide living in the same space as her fellow villagers.
Not because she was the Daughter of Fenris and therefore thought herself too good for them. But because she had no idea what to do with herself in the cave hideouts. She had no mate and no children, and at three and thirty winters, she was no longer considered of marriageable age. The males who had quickly put themselves in charge of them all, despite her presence, refused to allow her to help with the daily hunts. “Our fenrir next would be unhappy with us if any harm were to come to you,” they had explained as if talking to a child and not a woman grown.
Unfortunately, the she-wolves in charge of the cooking fires would also not abide her help. It had become well established over the years that while Myrna could fell a cow with one stroke of her hatchet, she had not inherited her mother’s talent for the cook
ing arts.
So then she'd tried to join a night fire conversation with the other unheated she-wolves. But that had truly been a miserable exercise for them all. For with so much free time to gossip, the only theme the much younger she-wolves wished to talk upon was FJ’s possible wedding.
Who could blame them really? Claiming to have had a night vision of a bride to the south, FJ had sent their parents to arrange for a bride the very next morning after the lights had appeared in their night sky. Not wanting to pass up the opportunity to finally marry off their most eligible but also most reluctant progeny, her parents had set off with almost laughable great speed to fulfill the request of the next fenrir of the North Wolves. And now all any of the unheated she-wolves could talk about was the wedding, which might very well bring an influx of eligible male wolves into the village.
A few of their grandmothers had been first heated at the weeks-long wedding fest of Myrna’s own mother, so they had reason to be excited, even if the wedding was still many seasons away. However, there would be no match for Myrna “Ever the Maid” at her brother’s wedding festivities. Both Myrna and the rest of the unheated she-wolves, many less than half her age knew that.
Myrna had heard a few village women gossiping about how Myrna had been most likely cursed by Odin for her hubris after her rejection of the Jelling Prince seventeen winters ago. And she knew quite a few of these girls’ mothers were still bitter about having to settle for local wolves from their own and nearby villages as opposed to wolves from the more fertile lands of the South Wolves.
Perhaps they still were. Not soon after Myrna sat down amongst their gossiping daughters, the mothers, most of whom were the same age or even younger than Myrna, found excuses to draw them away. As if Myrna’s ever-maidenhood were some manner of sickness that could be caught by a young unheated she-wolf, just by sitting near to her.
Which left Myrna with little more to do than, as her time journeyed mother would say, twiddle her thumbs. But also as her mother would say, forget that noise.
Instead of staying put as she’d been told, she’d journied back down the mountain to see if she might not be put to better use among FJ’s fighting force.
However, FJ didn’t seem at all happy about her voluntary self-recruitment to his cause…whatever that cause might be. In truth, she was not certain still why she and the rest of the women had been sent away. The village had seemed peaceful enough when she returned to it under the cloak of dark last night.
But now FJ railed on and on at her for returning until she gave up on the pretense of sleep and threw back her furs.
“Where are you going?” FJ demanded when she rose from her longtime bed bench, gave her younger brother, Olafr, a pat of greeting on his shaggy head, and started walking toward the longhouse door without a further word.
“To the toilet,” she replied, not bothering with a respectful tone everyone else in the village employed when speaking with their future fenrir. “If you wish to keep shouting at me, you may follow me outside.”
It was a dark and grey morning, yet beautiful because Freya’s lights, what her mother oft referred to as the Aurora Borealis, could still be seen in colorful bloom in the sky. Most of the village still slept, and for first time in day tides, Myrna felt completely at peace, as cold wind rustled her thick red hair. She was glad to be back in her village, even if she had received little welcome from her older brother.
But of course, her brother took her up on that invitation. She received a small respite while she crouched over the pit toilet. But as soon as she emerged from the pile of stones arranged in a half wall around a hole a few favners away from their longhouse, FJ started up again as if he had been holding his breath the entire time she’d been releasing her waters.
“One reason. Give to me one reason I should not mate you off to the first widowed alpha who will have you before Papa returns,” he asked.
Myrna froze, a shiver going down her back at the thought of being given away to one of the seemingly unending string of widowed alphas, who had started inquiring about her hand in allied marriage soon after she became too old to be considered a good prospect for heating.
All of them had mate, recently lost to childbirth and need of a new she-wolf to mind the pups left behind. But there was just something so disgusting about a male who still carried the mating scent of another. And though she still held hope to have children of her own someday—a very secret hope as she had no wish to become the butt of ever more villager jokes—she did not relish the thought of being acquired as little more than a babysitter for some poor she-wolf who had died in childbirth.
Upon hearing her brother’s threat, she decided to as her mother would say, “fix her face” and “get rid of all the attitude” before addressing him again.
“Let me explain, FJ,” she said, reaching down to pet Olafr who’d come to stand between them as he always did whenever they got into a fight. Which was often. While they both loved their younger brother, Olafr, the brother whose human no one had seen in several generations of winters, FJ and Myrna found little else they could agree upon. They had always rubbed each other the wrong way. And she could just bet he would be more than happy to finally solve the problem of his stubborn little sister while their parents were away finding him a suitable bride.
“There is naught to explain,” FJ answered, his handsome sand-colored face setting like stone, as the cold wind whipped through his braided beard and long red hair, which unlike hers, was silky, the same as their father’s. “Why are you no longer on the mountain with the other she-wolves and children? Why did you disobey me?”
“Because I understand not why you have asked me to go with the others!” she answered truthfully, trying but failing to keep the indignation out of her voice.
“Myrna, my word is law—” he started to say with a frown
Myrna made the same disgusted scoffing sound her mother did whenever her father tried to make her leave the meal preparation she loved so much to their servants. “Only because our father is not here is your word law!” she pointed out to her overbearing brother.
“That matters not now. Our father is away, and our enemy could come at any time,” FJ insisted, pointing to the mountain looming high behind their small village. “You will obey me and return to the mountain with the other women and children. Now.”
So Fenris did fear an attack from an unnamed enemy. Myrna’s heart quickened with the knowledge. Situated as their kingdom village was, between a mountain and the sea, not even their oldest night fire stories carried a tale of it coming under attack. But if that was really the case….
“Our father has taught me to fight well,” she told FJ. “If he were here, he would let me face whatever enemy you claim is coming.”
Okay, that declaration was what her mother might call “a stretch.” Even at her very advanced age, Myrna doubted her father would invite her to battle beside him. But that mattered not, in Myrna’s mind. The point was that if FJ truly believed their village faced an imminent threat, he should let her stay and fight beside him.
However, FJ met her declaration with a fierce glare. “This enemy is not imaginary, Sister. And Father taught you to fight, yes, but only so you might defend yourself in the absence of your male folk. If you return to the mountain now, there will be no need of such defense.”
Not caring that she was only a couple of inches taller than her small mother, Myrna drew herself up to her full height, jutting her chin, because there was no way she was going to let FJ order her back to the mountain. “But why did you send all the women and children away?” she demanded, switching to their mother’s tongue, just as Chloe did when someone (usually her husband and children) pushed her too far. “Why are you making ready for battle in Mother and Father’s absence? Father did not give word about any of this before he left.”
“No, he did not,” FJ answered, also in their mother’s language. Then he looked away guiltily as he added, “Because he did not know we would need to defend
ourselves.”
Myrna’s eyes widened at the thought of FJ not only keeping news of a forthcoming enemy from their father, the Fenris, but then going so far as to send their parents away.
“It was the only way to make sure he and mother survived,” FJ said defensively as if reading her thoughts.
“Survive what?” Myrna asked, with a shake of her head. “What do you think we need to defend ourselves from?”
“We need to defend ourselves,” he said, pointing to his chest and then to Olafr. “You need to hide.”
“Why does he get to stay?” Myrna demanded, crossing her arms over her wool tunic. “He is ever the wolf and cannot so much as raise a sword!”
FJ exchanged a long look with their brother. One very familiar to Myrna. The brothers shared a special bond and often exchanged looks so knowing, that even though Olafr could not speak as a normal North Wolf could, Myrna very often felt as if they were talking behind her back.
Usually, she let it go. But this morn she all but screeched, “Cease doing that! You have oft behaved as if you share a secret. Tell me, what is going on? And why do you permit Olafr to fight and not me?!”
FJ sighed. “Myrna, I will not argue these petty points with you—”
“They are not petty—!”
“I must prepare the village to fight—”
“Fight who?” Myrna demanded, refusing to let her brother off the hook. “Who could possibly pass through the inlet or come over the mountains without us knowing? Who would dare? You know what? You don’t even have to answer that, as our mother would say. In truth, if you are certain there is an enemy coming, I believe you. But I insist on fighting, too!”
To that Fenris gave her yet another decisive shake of his head. “I cannot. I would not lose you…”
“You will not lose me,” she said, her voice gentling with sisterly sentiment, even though FJ threatened to send her away mere moments before this heartfelt declaration.
FJ hesitated and once again, looked to Olafr. While Myrna stood waiting to hear the future fenrir’s final verdict.
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