Bitten & Beholden (Children of Fenrir Book 2)

by Heather McCorkle

  An hour or so after we’d started chatting, a blue Xterra pulled into the parking space behind Ty’s truck. Set back some way from the road as our table was, I couldn’t see who got out. Leaning back to look around a tree, I saw that it was a woman. Before her first foot stepped on the grass I knew she would come our way. Everything about her from her energy to her stride revealed her to be a varúlfur. Whether it was that energy, or just her, I wasn’t sure, but something made my proverbial hackles rise. Ty fell silent and sat up straight and stiff. The tightening around his eyes made it obvious he was fighting for control of his temper. Was that veiled anger in his eyes? I couldn’t quite tell, but I didn’t like what it meant about the woman walking across the grass.

  An athletic body was clothed in gray slacks and a darker gray top that revealed quite a bit of cleavage. A plait of long brown hair swung as she walked. Severe brown eyes glared at me from a face that might have been pretty if it didn’t look so hostile. The glare only deepened when her gaze shifted to Ty, turning into something almost feral. That look told me all I needed to know about her animosity toward me. And damn if it didn’t make me hate her.

  “Hello, Tyler,” she said coldly.

  “Morene.” Ty’s tone was neutral, careful.

  In a flash too quick to be real, her energy changed and she smiled as she looked to Candice. “On behalf of the Alpha Council of Hemlock Hollow, I apologize for what has happened to you. I will take you to people who will help you through this, you have my word.” She had that same quality to her voice that told me her first language wasn’t English.

  She sounded sincere enough, but part of me still didn’t like her. Before she arrived Ty had explained to Candice that she needed a teacher of her own to get through this. To my surprise, she had asked for me to do it. When he had explained I was still going through the verða myself, she had asked him to do it. Though it seemed like the best option to me, he had insisted she needed a kennari of her own, one who could focus solely on her. I didn’t know what I had expected, but this woman was not it.

  I couldn’t help but notice her nails were short and stubby, some clearly having been chewed, as she stuck her hand out to Candice. Like everything else about her, that rubbed me the wrong way.

  “I’m Morene,” she said.

  Candice only stared at her hand as she finished chewing a mouthful of fries. Her hard eyes scanned the woman from top to bottom. Swallowing, she cocked her head. “Yeah, I got that. I’m Candice.”

  Pulling open the wrapper that held the fries closer, she stuffed another handful in her mouth and leaned back to cross her arms over her chest. “And what happens after you get me to people who will ‘help me through this’?”

  Morene sat down on the edge of the bench as far from Ty as she could get. “Then you get to decide whether you want to stay with us or leave.” The words were tight and the tone controlled, leading me to believe they weren’t entirely truthful.

  Candice turned to look at me. “Will I be safe with her?”

  The question struck a protectiveness deep inside me, making me turn a questioning gaze to Ty. By his pinched look, he clearly wasn’t happy about it, but he nodded. Determined not to scare her, but to get the whole story later, I met Candice’s eyes again. “Yes. I trust Ty’s judgment.” I looked to Ty again. “Got a pen and paper?”

  Like any good teacher, he produced both from a pocket of his jacket. I wrote my cell number down and handed it to Candice. “You can call me if you need anything, or if you just want to talk.”

  “I don’t have a phone.”

  Elbows resting on the edge of the table, Morene leaned forward. “We’ll stop on the way out of town and get you one.”

  Gaze never leaving mine, Candice took the piece of paper and shoved it in the pocket of her worn-out jeans. “All right,” she said to me.

  Promises of also stopping for more food finally got Candice moving toward the Xterra. Barely concealing a look of begrudging tolerance that bordered on hostility, Morene stared Ty down for a tense moment. I walked them to the vehicle, Ty shadowing me much farther behind. There were no tear-filled good-byes, hugging, or even much more than a nod, but Candice’s eyes told me all I needed to know. She was grateful but was trusting this woman only because I did. The moment the engine revved to life and Morene began to back the SUV out of the parking spot, I turned to Ty.

  “Want to tell me why I’m placing that girl’s life in the hands of someone you obviously can’t stand?”

  “She will be safe with her, you have my word.”

  Though the words were measured and controlled, his clenched fists gave away his fury. He started for the truck.

  “Why don’t you like that woman?” I pushed.

  “It does not matter,” he said as he got in and shut the door.

  Determined, I jumped in the passenger side and turned to him. “It does if it affects that girl’s life.”

  His hands clenched the wheel so tight I saw imprints. “It does not. She and I have history. It ended badly, that is all.” As he spoke I saw the gleam of fangs.

  Compelled by something I couldn’t fight, I laid a hand on his arm. It was like placing my hand on a wood stove. Despite the sting, I refused to pull away. Breathing heavy, fangs bared, he turned to me, but it wasn’t hostility that flashed in his eyes, it was pain. Damn if that didn’t make him even sexier. It shouldn’t have after what I’d been through. But where Raul’s wolfiness had felt threatening and dangerous, Ty’s made my blood heat up.

  “I’m sorry. If you feel she’s safe, then I trust your judgment,” I said softly.

  As a long breath eased from him, his fangs retracted. I was about to pull my hand back when his came to rest on top of it, trapping it in a wonderful cocoon of heat. “Thank you. I am sorry, I did not know they would send her.”

  “You wanna talk about it?”

  His hand let go of mine to start the truck. “No.”

  Though I knew they were long gone, I glanced in the rearview mirror. “Do you think Candice will make it through the verða?”

  He nodded without hesitation. “It is easier for the young. Their minds are resilient, malleable. The concept does not seem so foreign to them, therefore the risk of madness is less.”

  “How do you know that if there hasn’t been a new varúlfur in so long?” If he was just trying to make me feel better, I needed to know.

  “The kennari handbook.”

  “Seriously?”

  Another nod.

  “How did you find her?” he asked.

  He shifted into reverse and I sat back in my seat, pulling my seatbelt on. “I saw her sitting in the coffee shop. Coincidence, I guess.”

  As he turned my way to look behind us, his doubtful gaze raked across mine. “Which is weird enough in itself. But how did you know she was a new varúlfur?”

  I shrugged. “Varúlfur radar. I assumed that was a thing.”

  His brows knitted together as he pulled out onto the virtually traffic-free road. “It is, sort of. But only after you have gone through the verða.”

  The way he kept his tone guarded, it was hard to tell, but I thought he sounded mystified. Between the sunlight and dappled shadows caused by the trees lining the road and the way he kept his eyes firmly ahead, I couldn’t tell much by trying to read his face, either.

  “So I’m an early bloomer,” I suggested.

  “Maybe. I do not know. According to the literature it is not supposed to happen. But like I said, you are the first new varúlfur in my lifetime. Well, you and now Candice.”

  “Wait, there’s literature on this? More than just the kennari handbook?”

  Tension drained from his body and he relaxed back into the seat. “Of course.” The playful tone of his voice suggested it wasn’t so simple.

  “Why haven’t you let me read it?”

  He shot a half grin my way. “It is in Icelandic.”

  “Oh.”

  A determination the likes of which I hadn’t felt since my
first year of college came over me. Crazy as it was, this was my life now—or would be if I survived. I had to know as much as possible. “Will you teach it to me?”

  “Icelandic?”

  “No, Chinese.” I rolled my eyes upward. “Yes, Icelandic.”

  “If you really want to learn it.”

  Was that a challenge I heard in his voice?

  “I do.”

  “All right then. We will start when we get back to the cabin.”

  I grinned at him, pouring all the challenge I could into it. “Excellent.”

  Sitting back, I crossed my arms beneath my breasts and turned my attention to the tree-lined roadside. It wasn’t that I thought Ty was withholding information, quite the opposite. I needed answers to things I wasn’t willing to ask him yet. Like, why was I drawn to a rune that looked like the birthmark on my hip? Why had I known that girl was a new varúlfur who’d yet to go through the verða? And more importantly, how had I known she needed my help? Me of all people, who could barely help myself.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sonya

  Head still spinning from a two-hour lesson on a literally tongue-tying language, I leaned over my outstretched leg to grab the deck railing. The pull of my hamstring muscle helped me clear my head almost as much as the view of the spruce and pine forest beyond the deck. Clouds covered most of the blue sky above the towering treetops, keeping the day pleasantly cool. Even now, rolling some of the words around in my head, I couldn’t get Ty’s accent quite right. Breathing the wet earth and fresh rain-scented air deep into my lungs, I whispered a few of the toughest words, going over their meaning in my mind.

  “See, you are a natural at it.” Ty’s voice came from the French doors a moment before his soft footsteps sounded on the deck.

  Laying the side of my face against my leg, I peeked at him through the curtain of my black hair. Clothed only in a pair of loose gray sweats, he looked as divine as a Norse god. With that smirk on his fine lips, the expanse of chiseled chest, abs, and those bulging arms, I couldn’t imagine a finer looking deity.

  “Hardly,” I said a bit breathlessly, hoping he would think it was from the stretch.

  One of his legs came to rest on the railing beside mine, and he leaned down to stretch. Seeing how my leg was at a ninety-degree angle and his was barely at forty-five, it hardly seemed as effective for him. I was suddenly very interested in how flexible he might be. Shaking the thought from my mind, I pulled my leg off the rail, took a step away, and began stretching my arms. Sanity, I had to keep my sanity. Which made me wonder…

  “You mentioned varúlfur who didn’t make it through the verða being put to the reaper. Is that like a metaphor for a person, or just the killing itself?”

  Eyes going so wide they practically bulged from their sockets, you would have thought I’d wrapped my hands around his neck and squeezed. “I should have known you would catch that. I did not mean to say it. Such dark talk is not exactly encouraging to a newly bitten.”

  I touched his arm, partially because it was growing harder and harder not to touch him, but mostly to make him look at me. Right, that was why, because that was so important. Dammit. “I realize it’s been less than a week, but you still know me better than that already. My doctor brain wants all the facts. Tell me.”

  He met my gaze. “Hundreds of years ago, it was a person, chosen by the Gods, legends say. But with fewer and fewer being bitten in, there has been no need for the Gods to choose a reaper. So now, when necessary, it is carried out by the lögreglu.”

  “The police?”

  He grinned. “Very good. Yes, the police, or the chief of police, rather.”

  “Tell me more about this reaper legend.”

  “My apologies, I do not know much more about it. It is one of our most obscure legends that is not talked about much. It is a dark part of our history, my father says.”

  Cocking my head at him, I put a hand on my hip. “Seriously? A history teacher that does not know the legends of his own people?” I teased.

  Pink flushed across his cheeks. “I know of it, just not the details. Like I said, our kind do not like to talk about it. Besides, I have spent much of my time learning the history of the world, and there is a lot to learn.”

  I tagged him gently on one rock-hard biceps. “Forget it, teach. I’m just messing with you.” Another thought occurred to me, this one almost as disturbing as thoughts of the reaper. “Do you think Raul had one of his people bite Candice as some twisted backup plan?” With two long phone calls between us in the last twenty-four hours, I had learned the girl liked to chat and had a million questions. Not that I could answer any of them.

  Stretching over his leg to loop his interlaced fingers over his toes, he shook his head. “No, even Raul is not that sick. She is just a kid.”

  “I thought you said they—we—don’t do this kind of thing without approval.”

  “We do not. I do not know who could have done it, or why. Unless… No that is not possible.”

  His eyes had drifted off into the distance, peering deep into the trees but seeing something else entirely.

  “Unless what?” I prompted.

  “There are old legends my mother used to tell me, about a time when our kind would bite those who had wronged them. The bitten ones became indentured to those they had wronged, often serving decades or centuries trying to redeem themselves.”

  Despite the constant flush that clung to me lately, chills crawled up my arms. “What could a teenage girl have done to deserve that?”

  Gaze pulling back to me, he shook his head. “Nothing. That is not done anymore. It risks exposing us too much. It was outlawed around 1900.”

  Hip thrusting out a bit, I rested my right hand on it. “Yeah, well turning someone without raðið approval is outlawed too, yet here I stand.” I almost nailed the accent, which made me proud despite the darkness of the conversation.

  Ty fixed me with a stare so serious it drained the snark right out of me. “You do not understand. Since it was outlawed, the sentence for turning someone to punish them is death.”

  “Oh.”

  My chills multiplied until the cool morning air seeped right through my varúlfur temperature. “Who would risk that? And why?” My mind went to Raul, then to James—the one who had attacked us on the road. As pissed as I was at him, Raul didn’t feel like the right culprit here. But James, I wondered.

  Ty shook his head as he stretched an arm behind his back in a maneuver that looked almost painful. The movement made the muscles of his chest flex, which made me forget what we’d been talking about for a second. “No one in their right mind, which sort of answers the why too, I guess. But I do not believe that is why whoever turned Candice did it.”

  “Why do you think they did it?”

  “I am not sure yet.”

  “What do we do about it?”

  “Us?” A sort of helpless frustration clouded his eyes. “There is nothing we can do. It is Council business now. They will handle it.”

  The finality of his tone grated on my nerves. I got that he felt helpless, removed from the situation because he didn’t belong to one of the packs, but how he could let something like this be, I couldn’t get.

  “And what will they do about it?”

  He bent at the waist, reaching for his toes and hiding his face from me at the same time. But that toned backside was oh so visible.

  “They will put a lögreglu on the case, sniff out whoever did it, and take care of them.” The flat tone of his voice revealed that he was trying to hide something.

  “And you trust them to do this?”

  Expression guarded as it so often was, he stood to his full height and looked down at me. That careful guard slipped a bit as his eyes flicked across my low-cut tank top. Apparently I wasn’t the only one distracted. “Yes. Now let us get to this, shall we?” he asked.

  I was too emotionally drained to have the energy to pull any more information out of him, so I nodded. “Te
ach away.” Part of me desperately hoped today’s lesson involved running, or better yet, chasing something. The need to run something down burned through me. I didn’t know if it was related to my desire to hunt Raul specifically, or if anything would do. The closer the full moon got, the stronger this impulse grew. Psychoanalyzing that should have helped me squelch the need, but it didn’t. I prayed to any who would listen, even the Norse Gods, that it wasn’t the madness clawing at the edges of my mind.

  Without a word, Ty leaped over the railing and dropped the twenty feet or so to the grass below, making it look graceful and sexy as hell. No. I wasn’t allowed to think of him that way, especially when he was acting like the unsanctioned creation of new varúlfur wasn’t his problem. It seemed to me that should be every varúlfur’s problem. Lone wolf or not. He started down the flagstone pathway that wound through a backyard carpeted in as much clover as grass. After a moment he stopped and turned to look at me. A grin pulled his luscious lips upward. How could he frustrate and entice me practically at the same time?

  “Are you not coming?”

  “You dropped like twenty feet.”

  He shrugged. “You can too.”

  Sparkling blue eyes beckoned.

  If I broke an ankle or something I was totally going to make him wait on me hand and foot. Preferably in only those sweats. Or less. I took a deep breath and jumped. My legs bent and absorbed the impact with an ease that left me breathless with shock. I didn’t even stumble. Looking back up at the deck, I wondered if I could just as easily jump back up. When we came back, I was definitely going to try that.

  “Told you,” Ty said, drawing my attention back to him and the yard.

  Hints of a dark blue lake peeked through the pine trees that bordered the edge of the large lawn. Most people would have cut those trees down to have a full view of the lake, but this way it was somehow more beautiful, mysterious almost. A smile on his face, Ty followed my gaze.