An odd sort of agony twisted though her and she slowly breathed through it. He’d finally come…but only to tell her she wasn’t the only person at the table who’d been waiting to die. “Where are you planning on doing it? The way these smart rooms monitor you these days, I can’t watch an exciting movie, without some voice asking if it can scan me, just to make sure I’m not having a cardiac episode."
Bohdan looked at her in that way she remembered from when they were young. Frustration mixed with bemusement. Like she was a wrestling move he couldn’t quite figure out.
“My old apartment upstairs,” he answered. “The morning after my match with your son. I had planned to do it then. But then you told me you would be waiting for me here. You got in my way.”
She got in his way. To tell the truth, she didn’t know how to feel about that. On one hand, she’d kept him alive, for thirty-four more days than he’d had planned. But on the other hand, here he was telling her that was what he stilled planned to do.
“But now I have decided to come to this place. Not to meet you here at this diner, but to go up to my old apartment and complete my plan in peace,” Bohdan insisted, his voice churlish.
Wilma went quiet. For a very long time, she went quiet. Then for the second time in this diner, she made a big choice. Decided to say, “Okay, well then can I lay with you? Can I keep you company while you go?”
She thought of her husband as she often did. Floating beneath the not solid enough ice. His life fading, fading in a cold-water grave. And she said, “Nobody should have to die alone.”
Bohdan looked back at her, his face as sour as she’d ever seen it.
Then he got up, pushing his large body out of the booth, and throwing down just enough bills to cover the coffee. Not a dollar more.
Wilma didn’t realize his answer to her question was yes, until he paused in front of where she sat. And held out a hand to help her out of the booth.
Bohdan’s apartment was just the same. A perfectly preserved time capsule of seventies furniture and dingy wallpaper. Peeling now, but otherwise exactly like she remembered it. The place wasn’t much still.
But at the end of the day, at the end of his life, this was where Bohdan had chosen to lay down.
Literally. She watched him take an envelope out of his suit pocket. It had the name OKSANA written across it in big block letters, and he laid it down on the formica counter where they’d drunk the coffee she hadn’t known was a date. He took off his suit jacket and folded it neatly over the back of that seventies pattern couch. Then he toed off his shoes and climbed into his big…but not large bed.
Wilma stood there, feeling awkward and foolish. Until he crooked one arm behind his head and patted it like a pillow.
She wasn’t twenty any more. No longer a silly little girl. But she kicked off her orthopedic heels and climbed into the bed with him. Laying her head down on that arm and wrapping her own arm around his waist.
They lay like that for a while. The way they used to, when they were young and they both knew she’d have to go but wanted to enjoy each other a little bit more.
She listened now as she did then, to the sound of his breathing, but now in the quiet of the apartment with her wolf ears, she could hear exactly what he’d been talking about. Subtle ticks and clicks. Bio-tech and replacement parts doing the work his heart and bones couldn’t handle anymore.
She lay there with him waiting for the sound of all those small ticks and clicks to stop when he gave the mental command to turn off his biosystem.
“Did you love him?” he asked after a few minutes of her waiting. “The man you chose over me. Did you love him?”
“Yes, I loved him very much. We had a very good life together up in Alaska. And when he died, I wanted to throw myself in that grave with him and die myself,” she answered honestly and without hesitation. No more lies. She never wanted to lie to him again even if the truth turned him angry like he’d been in his office when he asked if another man had kept her from the diner.
But he surprised her by saying, “Good. I would be even more angry at you, wolf girl, if it was not love.”
He breathed. Ticked. Then admitted, “It was not love with my wife. She was a beautiful woman. A good business partner. But she was not…it was not love.”
“Compatibility is as good a reason to get married, too,” Wilma pointed out. “All my children married for love and you wouldn’t believe even for a second all the drama that entailed.”
He made a sound gruff noise beneath his chest, a sound she now remembered as being the Bohdan equivalent to a laugh. “You are lucky to have so many grandchildren and now great grandchildren. Sana is perfect business daughter, but she is gay—the bad kind where she goes through women like drinks of vodka and refuses to settle down with nice lesbian and give her father grandchildren.”
Wilma let out a soft cackle. “That’s why you got to stay guilt-tripping them like I did with all my daughters. And now they’ve passed the guilt-tripping down, and even my gay, deaf grandson done adopted. If I was you, I’d complain about it in that there suicide note. Make her feel bad about it forever.”
“I should,” Bohdan said, his chest rumbling with more gruff noises. “I should do exactly that.”
But he didn’t get up. Didn’t rewrite the note. And after a few more ticking moments, he said, “Tell me more about Alaska.”
So she did, describing their mountain kingdom in the northern part of the state, and how it could only be gotten to by a plane capable of landing on their lake. She told him how she didn’t like it at first. It was too quiet and the only other black person living there was her brother, Ford. But eventually she came to love it. The wild, cold beauty, the people who were different from any kind of thing she’d known growing up, but kind.
“You should see my home village in Ukraine. It is same. Wild and far from everything but beautiful. Maybe…”
He paused, then carefully shifted his big body, so that he could turn to face her without moving his arm. The way he used to, when he wanted to give her one last kiss before letting her go take her shower. “Maybe I can show you my village, and maybe you can show me your village someday.”
Their lips were close now…so close that she could feel his breath as he made the offer. Warm and soft, just like her voice when she said, “I’d like that, Bohdan. But what about turning off all your biotech?”
He looked off to the side for a moment. Not his biosystem side, but the left natural side as he considered her question. Then he said, “I think I will make new plan, wolf girl. Because right now…right now it feels as if I finally have something to live for. Again.”
“Really?” Wilma asked, her heart beating so fast, she wondered if he could hear it, like she could hear his as she said, “Because it don’t feel like I have something to live for…”
Bohdan’s face fell, that too heavy frown returning to his lips…until she said, “Right now it feels like I’ve got everything to live for.”
And here it came, that smile, so rarely given that it had faded like the rest of his features from her aging mind.
But she remembered now. Remembered like it was yesterday. And then…
Taking a quick, courageous breath, she pressed her lips into that smile, feeling so different from the girl she’d been the last time she dared to kiss him.
Yet, somehow, exactly the same.
Epilogue
Wilma
So Bohdan did end up coming to that Mississippi triple wedding after all. He even held Knud’s baby during the ceremony. A little boy named Rustanov, who must have really liked his formerly human mama, because according to Knud, he only ever shifted on full moon nights. Unlike Nago’s little girl, who lay curled up in her other grandma’s lap, looking like a little puppy to anyone who didn’t know any better.
Wilma still thought Halle’s reason for throwing this big event was silly as all get out. But she had to admit it was a beautiful wedding, performed outside the same cabin wher
e the ancestor who had made the prediction lived. And she loved seeing how at peace all three of her triplet grandchildren looked, as they repeated their vows while gazing into their brides' eyes.
Afterwards, while introducing Bohdan to Halle, at the outdoor reception on kingdom house’s back lawn, Wilma might have muttered something about her being wrong and the over smiley southern wolf being right.
Luckily Halle was too star struck by Wilma’s date to rub it in. “Oh, that’s all right. I’m just glad you and Bohdan are having a good time. Can I call you Bohdan?” she asked, as if the huge wrestler was the star of their garden wedding and not her and the other two brides. “I am such a huge, huge fan.”
The same thing happened with Dale and Erylace Nightwolf, Rafes’s other grandparents. Dale Nightwolf and Tikaani Ataneq had been best friends from before they were even married, and when the former Colorado King and Queen drew her aside while Bohdan was in the bathroom, she was afraid maybe Dale would lay into her for falling in love with a human who wasn’t Tikaani, just a year and a half after they’re mating scent faded.
But instead, Dale said, “I’m glad you’re dating somebody. I can still remember how much Tikaani worried about making you happy when he brought you to Alaska. That was all he wanted for you. All he’d ever wanted for you. So get that guilty look off your face, because he’d be nothing but happy to see you at your grandsons’ wedding with another guy.”
“Not to mention impressed,” Erylace added, winking conspiratorially. “I still can’t believe you’re dating Bohdan the Terrible.”
“You know, Tikaani and me always loved wrestling, but he stopped watching it after you two got married, because he said you hated it,” Dale told her.
A pang of guilt hit Wilma, remembering that sort of lie she told her husband…but then it quickly faded.
Life was short. And love was fleeting, whether it lasted three months or fifty years.
Bohdan had decided to keep on living, to love again. And so had she. So instead of fretting over the husband who, no matter what she used to pray for, didn’t want her there with him in that grave, she smiled at Bohdan. And asked him if he wanted to dance when a Michael Jackson song came on.
However, Rafes, wasn’t nearly as generous. Shortly after Bohdan got pulled back onto the dance floor by his daughter Sana, her grandson took Wilma aside with one hand, with his other wrapped around Myrna’s as if he was still afraid to let her go. “Look, I like Bohdan as much as the next wolf. And Myrna considers him like her grandfather, since he’s literally played that role on TV,” he told Wilma. “But it’s a full moon tonight, so friendly reminder, all the humans need to be off the property and far, far away since it’s still technically a crime for a wolf to tell a human about the existence of our kind.”
Wilma looked at Rafes fondly. Loving that he still had so much of his by-the-book grandfather in him, and that he’d also had enough good sense to fall in love with a she-wolf, with whom he could build a big and interesting life. Someone who continued to gaze adoringly at him, as if she’d hung that incoming full moon, he was warning Wilma about, in the sky.
Then she said, “Well, I guess you’re gonna have to pardon me, because Bohdan already knows I’m a shifter. He’s known for over fifty years. And I told him every single truth about me the day we hooked back up. And by the way, Rafes, baby…” She nodded to the table sitting underneath the magnolia tree. “Your bad-ass son is eating the wedding cake.”
Myrna broke out laughing as Rafes cursed and shook his head. But they ran over to deal with the puppy Wilma already suspected had Nightwolf Syndrome, together.
“I had my doubts, but this day couldn’t have gone any more perfect,” Wilma said to her triplet grandsons and their wives, when she joined the lot of them in the refurbished kingdom house’s smart living room shortly after sending Bohdan and Sana back to the hotel.
But then she sighed, thinking of her outspoken grandniece. “I just wish Ola could have been here.” She turned to Rafes then. “Did you really decide not to invite her, just because she interfered a little in your marriage?”
“It wasn’t just a little,” Rafes grumbled from where he was sitting in an arm chair with Myrna in his lap, while behind them Rafe T. growled and chew-dogged the bottom of one of the house’s magnolia flower print curtains like it owed him rent. “And no, I didn’t invite her. But I told Myrna she could if she wanted to.”
“And Nago and I left the decision up to Rafes and Myrna, because we didn’t want to invite Ola if Rafes was going to get upset,” Halle said from the couch, where she and Layla were nursing their babies, who were now both in human form.
“And naturally, I did invite her,” Myrna said, adjusting the long flowing sleeves of her custom Viking style wedding dress. “I called her to make the invitation myself, and she promised me she would come even though it was the same weekend as her coronation. But alas, she did not. I am saddened by this, too, Most Honored Grandmother.”
Myrna spoke of her disappointment lightly, but when she glanced up, everyone in the room was staring at her, with very serious looks on their faces. “Did I say something wrong?” she asked.
Rafes spoke before the rest of them. “Myrna, think back on your conversation very carefully. Did Ola actually say the words, ‘I promise?’”
“Not ‘maybe I’ll show up,” Nago added from his position on a wing chair opposite of her and Rafes.
“Or ‘we’ll see, bitches,’” Knud, who was making himself a drink at the living room’s rustic French country style bar front, suggested.
“No, she gave me her vow most certainly. Her exact words were, ‘I promise you I’m coming, just to annoy Rafes's ass because I know he doesn’t really want me there’,’” Myrna answered. Then she asked the suddenly somber group, “Why do you all look this way, as if something grave indeed has passed?”
“Because Ola never breaks her promises. That’s her thing,” Nago answered.
“Like, seriously her thing,” Knud said. “In the worst, possible way. She once promised to slap the hell out of me when I least expected it for stealing her Halloween candy. Then, like, six Halloweens later, kapow, backhand right across the face.”
“Yes…” Myrna said, her own expression sobering. “I do remember her sitting with me upon a blanket the last night before Fensa’s leave taking and talking with me without cease about her coronation, because she had promised her sister she would not cry. I do believe you when you say that Ola is a she-wolf of her word.”
A grim beat. Then comm rings came out and eye was bio-averted, everyone reaching out to the same she-wolf. But no one getting an answer.
And soon the question came to hang in the air above the formerly happy wedding party….
If Ola, wasn’t here in Mississippi after promising to come, then…. where was she?
Oh my gosh, I can’t believe we’ve made it to the end of the Brothers Nightwolf trilogy and the second to last book in the Viking Wolf saga. When I was a kid, I freaking LOVED wrestling. I watched WWF matches, GLOW…whatever came on TV. So, I couldn’t have been more thrilled when Myrna told me a wrestler was what she wanted to be.
And can we talk about Wilma?
For whatever reason, a handful of readers have been asking for her story for ages. I always wondered why, since I felt her and Tikaani’s story was pretty straight-forward. Accidental mating due to her manipulative father and then happily ever after. The end.
But no, not the end, as it turns out! How surprised was I when she revealed the Bohdan backstory by way of a dream? There was certainly more drama left for this particular mama.
Anyway, this story has been an amazing journey, and I look forward to sharing more with you. Speaking of which….
Wondering why Ola didn’t keep her promise to attend the triplet’s triple wedding? Sign up for my newsletter to get the bonus story! Already subscribed? Click here.
I truly can’t wait to tell you the rest of that big, bad story. Please stay tuned for HER DRAGON
KING.
While you’re waiting for HER DRAGON KING to drop, Eve Vaughn and I have launched a crazy hot alien romance series under the name, Taylor Vaughn. Please keep swiping to read the very special preview of KEL D’REK: HIS TO CLAIM
So Much Love,
Theodora
The World of HER VIKING WOLF
Her Viking Wolf (Myrna’s parents, Chloe and Fenris)
Wolf and Punishment (Janelle and Mag)
Wolf and Prejudice (Alisha and Rafe)
Wolf and Soul (Tu and Grady)
Her Viking Wolves (Tiara, FJ, and Olafr)
Her Dragon Everlasting (Fensa and Xenon)
NAGO: Her Forever Wolf (Brothers Nightwolf 1)
KNUD: Her Big Bad Wolf (Brothers Nightwolf 2)
RAFES: Her Fated Wolf (Brothers Nightwolf 3)
Sign up for my newsletter to get new release alerts, preview novellas, bonus stories, and more: www.theodorataylor.com/newsletter
Kel D’Rek: His to Take
Every human girl growing up on New Terrhan knows she will be bred by one or several Xalthurian males when she turns twenty-one.
I should accept my fate, but I can’t. When they come for my sister, I dare to defy the alien, they call “Tel.” As it turns out, “Tel” means prince. But rather than killing me for my insolence, the giant blue alien vows to return to the planet. When I am twenty-one.
He’s huge, all-powerful, and determined to claim me. Can I stop him?
The Brothers Nightwolf Complete Trilogy: A Sci-Fi Shifter Paranormal Romance Box Set Page 73