Both his younger twin sisters, Lis and Nauja, were firmly Team Mom—obviously, they’d been front and center in the video. His youngest brother, Nago had designed the Black Box for his oldest triplet brother. But then, proving himself the world’s most irresponsible Lead Engineer, he hadn’t shown up for the official installation, because he was too preoccupied with that Mississippi she-wolf ex of his. Again. Knud—well, who knew where Knud was these days. After his last botched black-ops job, he’d gone completely off the radar. And though Rafes occasionally left him messages at his old bio number, he couldn’t be sure Knud was actually getting them. According to the Wolf House tech team, Knud hadn’t accessed or so much as turned on his bioware system in years.
And as for his usually supportive father, Rafes Sr., he’d officially declared himself Switzerland after his mother and sisters turned last year’s Thanksgiving dinner into a political debate.
“I don’t know, Ola,” Rafes answered his younger cousin testily, beyond sick of the circular Myrna argument. “I guess I’ll tell them they’re welcome for the nearly three decades they got to wait for her. For all we know—”
“Don’t say it!” Ola said, a vicious warning in her tone. “Don’t you dare!”
Right, Rafes thought, because no one was ever supposed to say out loud what had most likely happened. That the portal probably sent Myrna backward in time or somewhere so far away from Scandinavia, she hadn’t been able to make it back to her family in Viking Age Norway. No, it would be way too crazy to counter Ola’s emotional argument with that highly logical scenario while she and his mom tried to make it look like Rafes and the rest of the Lupine Council were literally killing this famously lost she-wolf with the Black Box Initiative.
Rafes opened his mouth to say exactly what he thought about Ola and his mom using a most likely long dead Viking shield maiden as the poster child for their protests against the Black Box Initiative…only to come to a dead stop when he saw the kerfuffle in the distance.
“What?” Ola asked on the screen. “What’s going on?”
The question sounded innocent enough, but Rafes could tell from his cousin’s shit-eating grin, that she already knew.
His mother. That was what was going on. She’d somehow managed to chain herself around a big pile of black box construction materials and was now yelling at the advance crew of construction workers about every wolf’s “right” to time travel.
Crap on a cracker, as his maternal grandfather used to say. His mother must have snuck in and set up her latest demonstration first thing this morning. Maybe even just a few minutes before the construction team arrived.
Guess he should’ve taken Craig up on his offer.
Inwardly cursing, Rafes closed his finger screen without bothering to say goodbye to his traitorous cousin. Then for the first time in his entire presidency, he actually waved his security detail forward. “Do a bio-vid deletion sweep, then jam the advance crew’s bioware,” he told them.
Craig nodded, his usual resigned expression, lit with enthusiasm.
And as for Arik, his other guard, Rafes could tell he was actively controlling his glee at finally being assigned a duty beyond the usual background checks, as he asked, “And your mother, sir?”
“I’ll handle her,” Rafes answered, voice grim.
“Mom…” he growled a few seconds later, as he approached the spot where she’d chained herself up.
“Don’t worry,” she answered in a breezy tone as if he were merely fussing at her for a history lecture that had gone on too long. “I’ll leave just as soon as my T.A. is done getting my side of the story.”
Rafes looked over his shoulder, and sure enough, the cute blonde who’d asked all those convenient questions during his mother’s earlier protest speech stood further up the mountain, rolling tape on her fingers.
“Mom,” he said, lowering his voice. He also turned his back so that her grad student wouldn’t be able to catch anything she could run a lip reader over at a later date. “I can’t touch you, but I’m more than willing to bring the power of the Lupine Council down on that acolyte of yours if you don’t tell her to close her fingers.”
Alisha glared at him. But eventually, she sucked her teeth and called out, “Okay, Maddie, I think we’ve got enough. Head on back to the hotel now. I’ll meet you there before we leave for Norway tonight.”
Rafes waited until his mother’s sycophant was fully out of hearing range before asking, “Why are you going to Norway this time, Mom?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know, little boy.”
Little boy. At 6’4, he towered over his mother now. He was the president of all the goddamn North American Lupine Territories for God’s sake. One of the five most powerful wolves in the world. Back before he went AWOL, Rafes literally had Knud kill wolves for less than what his mother was doing right now. Without blinking an eye. Only she would call him a little boy.
And only she could get away with it. Once again, his head throbbed with resentment, but he locked his jaw, knowing what his wolf would do if Rafes let his emotions get away from him. “Mom, I know we’re on two different sides of this portal issue—”
“With you being on the side that not only designed these monstrosities but is also overseeing their installation,” she reminded him, folding her arms over the steel chains.
“But I’m not your enemy,” Rafes continued, refusing to take his mother’s bait or point out that it was her favorite triplet, Nago, who’d actually designed the gate.
“You’re not my enemy? Then why did I get a call from Ola telling me you finally managed to push these damn things through, starting with North Dakota. And before she inherited Kyle’s throne!”
Rafes inwardly cursed. He knew going over Ola’s head to her lame duck uncle-in-law would piss her off, but did she really have to go crying to his mom about it?
“Mom,” he said, changing tact. “You know I love you, but I also love my people, and I’m trying to protect them from the dragon threat.”
“A threat you don’t even know exists,” she pointed out, her still lovely dark brown face tightening with annoyance on.
“A threat you can’t prove doesn’t exist. From what FJ and Olafr told me, the dragons hit all of Scandinavia’s portal towns hard. And according to the docs you and Matt found, they might have made moves on kingdom towns in the British Isles and Asia, too. Do you realize…”
He cut off, then checked to make sure his security team was still dealing with the advance crew, before informing one of the few wolves on the planet who knew about the possibility of a continued dragon threat. “Damianos Drákon’s made secret deals for gates all over the world, and that’s just according to the intel we have—who knows how many gates he’s managed to procure at this point? Why would he have done that if he wasn’t after our time portals? North America is the last front.”
“Okay, other than his last name—which by the way a lot of humans have, too—you have no proof that the Greek billionaire is a dragon shifter. And let’s say he is. Why does it matter? The Idaho Amendment means he won’t be able to purchase any other gates. So there, North America’s solved. No need to black box all our time portals.”
Rafes closed his eyes, because seriously, how could his mother be this dense? A few decades ago, the Lupine Council had pushed through the measure forbidding wolves from selling or renting their property to non-wolves after a human managed to get his hands on the Idaho kingdom town. Rafes had never met the former king of that state’s pack, but he must have been beyond stupid because he’d somehow managed to lose his entire town to a human in a game of high stakes poker. And that human had then gone on to sell the town to guess who…that’s right, Damianos Drákon.
Yes, the Idaho Amendment provided some protection against outside forces and had kept the billionaire from purchasing anymore North American portals. But if the Idaho Amendment was the best argument his mother had against why North Americans shouldn’t fear the machinations of Damianos Drákon,
then she truly did not understand how deep this threat went.
“Drákon is a trillionaire now, mom. And Lowell will overturn the Idaho Amendment if he wins—that’s one of the platforms he’s running on, even though you and your cronies have managed to distract everyone from that point with all this anti-Black Box rhetoric. And if he does what he promises—which I guarantee he will, because his campaign has Damianos Drákon’s Manchurian candidate written all over it—just how many of the southern mange states do you think will turn down the billionaire’s offer on land they can’t build on? Trust me, there is a need and there is a threat.”
But Alisha just kept shaking her head, her intelligent, almond shaped eyes flashing with annoyance. “It doesn’t matter. Drákon doesn’t matter. He’s only one person, and we’ve already won this war. The dragons were beaten on every front. In Scandinavia and in Britain—probably Asia, too.”
Rafes rubbed at his temple, his human fully in charge now, because even his feral wolf hated dealing with Alisha, when she got like this. “Yes, but Mom, seriously…they would’ve had Scandinavia if not for intervention from the future. We might not have access to that kind Deus Ex Machina the next time the dragons decide to come after our portals. And we have no way of knowing for sure that’s not exactly what they’re planning to do.”
“You really think that?” Alisha asked, her voice incredulous. “The then North American President barely took your so-called dragon threat seriously when FJ and Olafr came through the Alaska portal the first time. The Lupine Council wasn’t even willing to fund those swords they bought. You know why? Because no one has heard of or seen dragons in centuries. You say there’s no way of knowing they’re not a threat. We honestly thought they were made up! I say there’s no way of knowing they weren’t completely decimated, thanks to the Detroit-Norway wedding contract.”
This was the problem with his historian mom. She’d read all the books, was privy to all the secret history, but had bent everything she’d learn to her own belief bias. “You forget, Mom, I’ve actually read all of your academic work. According to your own research, dragons were said to live a very long time. A few, like the Loch Ness monster, were said to have lifespans measured in centuries. So what’s to say they haven’t been lying low all these years? Biding their time until they have enough weapons to decimate us and take our portals? The Black Box Initiative will make sure that doesn’t happen. That it will never happen.”
“And meanwhile, while you’re chasing down a phantom enemy, no wolf will be able to connect with his or her North American fated mate ever again,” his mother insisted with yet another stubborn shake of her head.
“Or run away from her fated mate,” Rafes reminded her viciously.
Low blow, yes. But as venerated in the wolf community as Alisha was now, it was often left to him and only him to remind her that their years in Viking Age Norway weren’t a fever dream. It was a terrible decision with near family destroying repercussions. A decision she had made. A decision she wouldn’t have been able to make had the black boxes been in place. And that’s why her running away from his father to Norway with their unborn pups in her womb hadn’t been included in her campaign to turn the general populace against the boxing of gates.
But, of course, his mother didn’t see it that way.
“Wow,” she said, her face blinking from self-righteous to incredibly hurt. “Your father’s forgiven me for that, but it looks like you’re not ever going to.”
Rafes responded with an irritated grunt. Yeah, well for all the practical business sense Rafe Sr. passed down to his eldest triplet, the former King of Colorado was nothing less than a besotted fool when it came to his queen. Not only had he forgiven her for running away to the Viking age, he continued to let his wife use the Nightwolf Foundation’s billions of dollars to follow whatever whim she wanted—even if that whim included fighting his own successor tooth and nail over the Black Box Initiative.
However, Rafes was not his father. Not bothering to hide his disdain, he asked his mother, “Are you going to tell me why you’re going to Norway or do I have to call in the North Dakota beta to have you forcibly removed from these chains and jailed until you start talking?”
Alisha’s eyes flashed defiantly. “I think you’re going to have to call in your Uncle Clyde. I want to know just how far you’ll go to advance the Lupine Council’s rollback agenda to keep me and every other she-wolf in North America under their thumbs because they’re afraid of all the sexual freedom we have now. It’s not like the good old days, right? Not like thirty years ago, when all the brilliant young she-wolves who came out to my protest yesterday would have been at home raising pups because they couldn’t control their own heats.”
Rafes clenched his jaw. “Mom. If you accuse me of being anti-she-wolf one more time—” He stopped and pinched the bridge of his nose, forcing his wolf down, as he explained, “I’m not anti-she-wolf. I’m actually trying to protect you and every other she-wolf in North America. And if I have to deny a few wolves their dramatic love stories to do that, so be it.”
Alisha sucked her teeth again. “Yeah, right. Do you know how many human and wolf rollback initiatives have been pushed through on the premise of ‘protecting women?” Alisha lifted her arms below the chains to make air quotes around those last two words. “Nah, I’ll take our portals and leave the protecting up to the individual females themselves.”
Rafes truly respected his father, more than any other wolf on earth, in fact. But he seriously couldn’t understand how he’d put up with this she-wolf for over three decades.
He threw up his hands. “Okay, Mom, I don’t care. Go to Norway. Try to convince them to turn down my black box request. But you’ll be wasting your time because nothing you can do or say will keep these boxes from going up. First here, then around every other portal in the world.”
“We’ll see about that,” she answered with a huffy shake of her of long black curly hair.
“Yeah, you will,” Rafes answered, standing his ground.
Total silence, only relieved by birdsong and the faint hum of the small craft the Black Box workers had used to hover into the construction site. Which reminded Rafes…
He had work to do here. And no time for bleeding hearts—even if this particular one belonged to his mother. He walked away from her dramatic chain show toward the portal that would be contained within the black box by the end of the day, no matter how his mother protested.
“Face Clyde,” he says, elling his fingers open.
“What’s up, little cuz,” Clyde said, his face filling up the finger screen an instant later.
Ignoring the glare of his mother’s disappointed eyes on his back, Rafes said, “Clyde we’ve got a problem. I need you to—”
The portal erupted right in front of him, emitting a sound like a contained sonic boom. Then came a sharp burst of light illuminating everything and everyone at the construction site before it contracted back inside the portal like a nuclear mushroom cloud.
But not before leaving something behind.
Rafes’s eyes widened as a woman with thick, curly red hair and brown skin raised up on her arms from where she’s been unceremoniously dumped on the time gate’s grassy meadow. Obviously disoriented, she climbed to her feet, legs shaky, like a newly born foal.
Rafes’s heart stopped. She was naked. Utterly naked save for her mouth which was covered in blood.
At the sight of her, Rafes went completely still. But his wolf…
It howled primal and crazed as it took in her full breasts with their dark brown aureolas and the wide hips that created a tantalizing canvas for the feminine triangle housed within. Not caring a fig about the blood on her mouth.
And Rafes’s human didn’t seem to care either. He hadn’t had an improper thought toward Camille in the entire six months they’d been dating. But staring at this unexpected vision…
He hardened painfully inside his slacks, not just his wolf, but his entire being growling one word
: “Mine.”
And somewhere in the distance, he heard his mother cried, “Myrna? Myrna is that you?”
Five
Myrna
Myrna wouldn’t say she floated through a dark sky full of stars, so much as flew. But not like a bird. More like an arrow. Her body propelled through space by some unseen force. Yet, it happened so fast, she could feel neither wind upon her face, or any real sense of movement. The journey felt more like blinking. Blink…she was diving into the starry tunnel. Blink…she was in the starry black space.
And then…
And then…
Blink…she was suddenly spat out, landing hard upon a floor of packed earth. The impact rattled her bones, and it took her a moment before she could make her way to her feet, standing on legs as shaky as a newborn calf’s.
However, she stood up straight at the sight before her. She blinked. Once. Twice. And once more, thinking that surely, her eyes deceived her. For there stood…her entire body suddenly lit up warm with the knowledge…her fated mate.
In all her winters, Myrna had never felt anything like this. Her stomach danced, as if a flock of cranes had just taken flight. For never had her soul so quaked as it did now, looking upon this wolf. Her mind filled with wind and crashing waves, so that she was unable to answer the faraway voice that called out in her mother’s language, “Myrna? Myrna? Is that you?”
Was that her? She no longer knew.
All she knew was the sight of her fated mate before her. For he was truly wondrous.
Troubadours had sung song of the Jelling Prince before he did arrive in their lands. But the wolf standing before her made that male look like the backside of her father’s steed. In truth, Myrna had never sighted such beauty upon neither woman nor man. The Jelling Prince’s appearance had been lauded throughout his father’s South Wolves lands and those of Myrna’s own father’s. Indeed, when he’d step foot off the boat upon his arrival in her village for the engagement announcement, did two unheated she-wolves faint upon the sight of him with his fine beard and his long yellow hair whipping in the wind.
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