Wolf and Prejudice (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 2)

by Taylor, Theodora

However, in the end, Alisha raised her chin and approached him through the parted crowd with a sureness of step that belied the fear he could smell rolling off of her in waves.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, like he was an unwelcome visitor who had dropped by her house unannounced.

  “Did you really think this would work, Alisha?” he asked. “Did you really think you could take my cub anywhere on this earth or time and I wouldn’t find you?”

  “Yes, obviously I did,” she answered, her voice frank. “Or I wouldn’t have traveled over a thousand years back in time to get away from you.” She shook her head at him, looking more perplexed than anything. “I figured you would have moved on by now.”

  A heavy thunk sounded behind him, followed by more thunks and metal clanging. And suddenly his words came back to him.

  “You left me and you took my cub with you. You ripped my child from it’s own space and time, because your feelings were hurt. And you thought I would just move on? Not even. Not ever. Not after you took everything from me, you selfish bitch.”

  Alisha’s eyes widened, and beside him, Chloe gasped. “Now, Rafe…” his ex-fiancée started.

  But Alisha cut her off. “I’m a selfish bitch? You’re the one who railroaded me into mating with you, so you could be a two-state king. You’re the one who never cared about what I wanted for my life. You’re the one who tricked me into believing you actually gave two fucks about me, when in reality, you were playing me like a chess piece in your stupid, never ending Game of Wolves—” she stopped, obviously trying to get a hold of herself. Then she whispered fiercely, “Take whatever spell you used to get here and go away, Rafe. You can’t force me to go back with you, and I won’t go back. Not like this. Not until I can get my annulment.”

  With that, she turned and started walking toward the duffle bag she had dropped outside the longhouse’s door, like she could just dismiss him, even though he could still smell his mating scent on her, faint as a breeze, but still clinging to her all the same. It made the wolf inside of him want to pin her down to the ground and hold her there. Just hold her there until she finally submitted and agreed to never walk away from him again.

  “I want to see my cub,” he said to her back. “Now.”

  There came the sound of more metal clangs behind him.

  She stopped, but didn’t turn around. “You can make other cubs. You’re still an alpha king, even it’s only one state. Go back to your time and find a she-wolf who actually wants to make cubs with you. Just give up on Alaska already. I’m a she-wolf, not a two state solution.”

  More metal clanging sounded behind him.

  “Rafe, Alisha…” Chloe said.

  “That’s right, I am still the alpha king, and you’re still my mate for another three weeks,” Rafe informed her. “I’ll be taking my mate and my cub home with me now.”

  “Rafe, Alisha…” Chloe said again.

  “Stay out of this, Chloe,” he growled.

  But then Fenris’s hand fell upon his shoulder. “You listen,” the Viking king said in heavily accented, almost Schwartzeneggeresque English.

  This was not the day for his ex-fiancée’s husband to start throwing orders around. Rafe’s fist bunched, ready to fight this guy if he got in his way.

  But then Chloe said, “Fenris isn’t the one you need to be worrying about, Rafe. Turn around already!”

  Rafe turned around, and found the source of the metal clanging. On the ground in front him lay a pile of large steel swords, some rough, some works of art with intricate designs around their hilts. Just beyond the pile of swords stood a group of red-haired Vikings, all wearing menacing expressions. And unlike Fenris, these Vikings all had biker-level beards to go along with their tough guy looks.

  “The hell?” Rafe asked.

  “You’re not in modern times anymore,” Chloe said, regret laced through her voice. “We have certain laws here that they don’t have in your time. For example, if someone wants to take your mate from you, he can challenge you for her hand. By throwing a sword at your feet. Then you’re obligated to fight him to the death in order to maintain your claim.”

  Well, hell…

  Rafe looked back over his shoulder at Alisha, who for once looked like she was at a loss for words. Then he looked back to the pile of swords at his feet. There were at least twenty.

  “Fine,” he said. “Let’s do this.”

  15

  Alisha blinked. Did Rafe just say, “Fine. Let’s do this?”

  In fact, she asked his back, “What did you just say?”

  He looked over his shoulder, his eyes colder than the polar night wind, and repeated, “Fine, let’s do this.” Then he raised his voice so everybody could hear him and yelled, “I agree. We will fight.”

  Apparently his words needed no translation, because a great cheer went up from the village and the warriors who had thrown in their swords all smiled, like a pack of feral wolves.

  “Killing this painted man shall be fun for me,” Skeggi called out—at least that’s what she thought he said while he leered at her, as if he’d already won her. Heebie-jeebies galore went down Alisha’s back.

  “Chloe!” she called out over the cheering. “Chloe, please stop this.”

  Chloe shook her head. “I’m not sure I can, but wait, let me talk to Fenris.”

  Chloe sought out her husband’s eyes and he gave his head a great shake.

  “He says the challenges have been made and accepted. There’s nothing he can do.”

  “But most of those guys are Viking warriors. They lift swords heavier than Rafesson for a living. They’ll kill him!”

  Chloe gave her an apologetic grimace. “Yet another reason I’m trying to get Fenris to convert the wolves to Christianity. It wouldn’t hurt these guys to take death a little more seriously. Outright murder kind of needs to be declared a mortal sin.”

  She watched Fenris call Fenrisson, or, as she and Chloe called him, Fenris Junior—F.J. for short. He gave the already well-muscled teen instructions, and F.J. nodded his head, his curly mane of red curls obscuring his face for a moment as he gave his assent. He turned into a wolf right there, tearing through his clothes before sprinting in the form of a bulky red wolf toward the forest on the other side of the lake. The forest where the town's children, boys and girls, were currently receiving their wolf-form training.

  “What’s happening? Where’s he going?” Alisha asked Chloe, panic dancing like a blizzard in her chest.

  “He’s going to go get all the cubs and bring them back here,” Chloe answered, her voice grim.

  “Why?” Alisha demanded. “Why the hell would he do that?”

  “Because a couple of the challengers are widowers with cubs, and because of Rafe.” Chloe’s mouth thinned. “Remember, when that chieftain challenged Fenris for the kingship and you were upset because I brought Fenris Jr, Myrna, and Olafr out to watch? I wasn’t being callous. The rule is if anyone fighting to the death has cubs, they must watch. It’s considered a rite of passage to see your father die.”

  “No! Oh, hell no!” Alisa said.

  She wanted to pull the chord on this crazy train and scream at everyone to get off. But Rafe and the Vikings who’d put in their claim challenges were already being escorted to the middle of town, toward a fenced in ring designated for displaying livestock on market days, sparring on training days, and on this day, battles to the death. Alisha didn’t know what was more upsetting, that the village had a death match ring, or that someone from her time period was about to meet his demise there.

  “We’ve got to stop this!” she yelled at Chloe over the noise of the cheering crowd. “How do we stop this?”

  Chloe exhaled. “The only other alternative would be for Rafe to stand down, and say that he no longer wants you as his mate. But I doubt that’s going to happen…”

  Alisha abandoned Chloe, running to the center of town where Fenris was explaining to Rafe, in the extremely simple version of English he occasiona
lly used with his children, that since Rafe was the challengee, he could pick the fighting form and the order of challenge.

  Alisha would have thought Rafe would choose to fight Egill first, the village swordsmith. He was muscular, like most of the hard working men from this time, but he was also only five-foot-five, and it might be slightly possible for Rafe to beat him. However, like a bad prison movie, Rafe’s eyes lasered in on Skeggi, the biggest and baddest motherfucker in the Viking Age joint.

  “You,” he said, pointing to the nearly seven-foot Viking. “Hand-to-hand.”

  Fenris translated, and Skeggi happily threw down his sword and stepped into the ring. Alisha didn’t wonder why he looked so happy. Sword play actually came with some risk. Even the shortest skilled warrior could do a bigger warrior some serious nerve damage if he got a good slice in. But hand to hand? Skeggi flexed his biceps to his sides and let out their village’s battle cry.

  Alisha’s stomach turned. This would be a total Invasion of Poland, with Skeggi’s Hitler easily crushing Rafe’s small republic under his boot.

  “Are you crazy?” she said, going up to stand toe-to-toe with Rafe. “He’s Fenris’s best warrior. And he’s huge. And he’s nasty-mean.”

  Rafe bared his teeth at his opponent. “Good,” he snarled.

  “No, not good. He comes from a long, proud line of Viking warriors, and he will kill you.”

  “I also come from a line of warriors.” Rafe indicated his outfit. “And I carry their spirits here with me today.”

  Her brow knitted with nonplussed confusion. “Are you talking about the Cheyenne? Because they were all right… I guess… moreso when they’re joined up with other tribes. I mean, yes, they were certainly fiercer than we Eskimos, but they weren’t the Apaches, or the Sioux, or the Iroquois, or the Comanche—I mean those guys were badass.”

  Now Rafe went as still as a cigar store Indian. “So now you’re insulting my tribe?”

  “Not insulting so much as saying I wouldn’t pit a Cheyenne against a Viking warrior.”

  As if on cue, Skeggi yelled something to Rafe in Old Norse. She had no idea what it was, but from his tone, insult was definitely intended. Then he capped his statement by spitting on the ground and giving Rafe a killing look, before going to wait on the other side of the wooden ring.

  “Oh, my God, this is bad. This is so, so bad.” Alisha said, curling her fingers into her hair. “Think, Alisha, think!” Then she said to Rafe. “I’ve got it. I’ll create a distraction. You run as fast as you can and go hide so you can use whatever spell got you here to take you back.”

  Rafe cut her yet another cold look. “I don’t think so.”

  “I’m trying to save you, you stupid…” She snatched her hand into a fist and shook it in front of her chest. A mother having to deal with a child dressed like a native warrior, and she talked to him like he was truly no older than Rafesson when she said, “Understand, the alternative would be for me to let you die here and then use my return spell to get back to my time anyway, despite your interference. Please run, Rafe. It’s the only way.”

  He nodded his head toward Skeggi who was currently singing a battle song with the rest of the challengers. “It’s not the only way.”

  “Ugh! Okay, I know you’re all geeked up because you got to cosplay with all your ancestor’s old stuff, but please understand, this is not a Battle of Little Bighorn reenactment. I’ve seen how they raise Vikings here. In our time, people childproof the house when babies start walking and grabbing on to things. In this time they give them little swords—seriously they’ve been trained from almost day one to kill. In fact, Rafesson is in the woods right now, learning how to properly kill things in wolf form, he’s only four—but that’s how they roll in this time. This will not be like one of your kingdom challenge fights…” which he’d probably never had to fight. A challenger had to get through a king’s beta in order to win the right to challenge a king to the throne, and Grady, with his refrigerator-like build, didn’t strike her as the kind of beta who lost in a king fight. Yet another reason Rafe had no business accepting those challenges or going into a ring with Skeggi. “Trust me, you do not want to fuck with any of these guys.”

  Rafe’s face shuttered from cold to curious. “You named my cub Rafesson?”

  She faltered, unprepared for the question. “Not on purpose. Most human Vikings don’t believe in naming a son after his father—they like to name them after a respected relative. But among the North wolves, it’s actually the law that the first-born cub be named after his father. If it were up to me I would have named him Knud.”

  “After the Danish anthropologist,” Rafe said.

  She blinked, surprised he would know about the first European to cross the Northwest Passage via dog sled, the anthropologist who had been dubbed “the father of Eskimology.” Despite being a white man, he remained an important figure in Eskimo history, because of his research into the culture, folklore, and origins of the Canadian Inuit.

  “You’ve heard of Knud Rasmussen?” Then before he could answer, she remembered this wasn’t the time for a casual chat. “Seriously, Rafe, run! This doesn’t have to end badly for you.”

  “Five years,” Rafe said. Then he gave her a look so filled with anger, Alisha actually took a step back. It was like his rage was a living thing, something she could feel inside of her, like it was her own. Rafe, she realized then, had no plans to run, because that would mean letting her go. And he’d literally die before he let her go.

  “Alisha?” Chloe’s soft voice said behind her.

  She turned around to see Chloe and Fenris standing there. Chloe must have heard most of the conversation she’d just had with Rafe, if not all of it, because she handed Alisha the duffle bag she’d dropped again and said, “Let us talk to Rafe. Maybe we can get through to him.”

  In a daze, Alisha took the bag from Chloe, and went to wait at the side of the ring. Anticipation for the fight had reached a fever pitch among her fellow wolves. They stomped their feet and chanted for Rafe’s blood. A few of them had even converted to wolf form, howling with bloodthirsty delight for what was about to come.

  Alisha frantically tried to come up with another solution that would keep Rafe alive, but nothing came to mind. She watched Chloe talking to Rafe, a gentle hand on his forearm. Fenris’s head was bent down over both of them, and it looked like he was taking part in the conversation, too, even though his lips didn’t move. Chloe was probably translating his thoughts for Rafe. Fenris was a wise and good leader, maybe he could talk some sense into Rafe…

  A collective howl resounded behind her, and Alisha’s heart sank, knowing what it meant. But she turned around anyway, having to see for herself.

  And there they were: Fenris Jr in wolf form, leading the cub pack toward the fight, along with a stocky red wolf she recognized as Randulfr, Fenris’s beta. She could also see Rafesson’s little black and tan wolf close behind the older wolves, leading the pack of cubs like an alpha born.

  “Oh, shit,” she whispered.

  She doubted anyone would be giving her a Mom of the Year award today, because her alpha son was about to lay eyes on his father for the first time.

  And then watch him die.

  16

  “You do understand dying here today won’t make Alisha respect you any more, right.”

  Chloe’s soft voice somehow easily cut through the din of the fight crowd.

  “Don’t you think you’ve already done enough?” Rafe asked his ex. But it was hard to really snap at Chloe, considering this version of her, while still very pretty, was also, judging by the grey streak in her hair and the many running through Fenris’s mane of red, at least a few years older than him. “I don’t want to talk about this with you.”

  “Well, I’m the only one here other than Alisha who speaks modern English, and no matter what happened between us, I will always consider you my best friend. So maybe you should talk to me.”

  He shook his head, fighting the nostalgi
c pull that had made them such constant companions until the day the Viking showed up. Chloe had always been so easy to talk to, about the pressures of growing up an alpha, about wolf culture, about everything, save Alisha.

  “What’s there to talk about? She took our baby and tried to get our mateship annulled without so much as leaving a note. She’s selfish, and she’s—”

  “She was also young and scared.” Chloe peered up at him. “It’s hard for she-wolves, you know. Especially intelligent ones like Alisha. It’s hard to spend years making your own decisions, then have someone come along and turn your world upside down.”

  “Maybe for you, but she was raised to this purpose. All of her life she knew she would be mated for the good of her kingdom.”

  “Being raised to something isn’t the same as being okay with it.”

  “So you’re saying being mated to me is the worst thing that could happen to a wolf like Alisha?”

  “No, of course not,” Chloe answered. “You know, if I hadn’t been fated for Fenris, I would have happily married you. You’re a really great guy, caring and smart, and loyal. But Alisha hasn’t had much of a chance to see that side of you.”

  Her mate, Fenris, came to stand beside her. This had been another surprise for Rafe. When he and the portal keeper had made their way down the mountain after an awkward, mostly pantomimed conversation about who Rafe was and why he was here, they’d come upon Fenris headed up the mountain toward them. The last time Rafe had spoken directly to Fenris, the alpha king had been handcuffed to a hospital bed and threatening to kill him for daring to kiss Chloe, the Viking wolf’s fated mate.

  But this Fenris had to be at least ten years older than the Fenris he’d met. And this Fenris actually seemed happy to see him, greeting him with great cheer and saying in halting English. “I thought you come. I say to Chloe you will come here. She do not believe.”

  Now, while waiting for the fight to begin, Fenris gave Rafe an up and down look of appraisal and then he must have telepathically communicated something to Chloe, because she said, “He’s asking if you’ve tried communicating with Alisha. Like really putting your feelings out there and talking to her.”