THE sad fact was Chloe was so preoccupied with watching Rafe leave her life forever, and the ultimatum he put down before he left, that it hadn’t even occurred to her to worry about their embrace or the smell it left behind. Over the years, Rafe’s smell had become so familiar that its presence went without real acknowledgement, like the smell of shea butter in the products she made at home to use in her hair. Or the smell of hay in her chicken coop.

But then Fenris opened the door with a worried look on his face, one that shifted to confusion, and then to such anger, it made Rafe’s earlier temper look like an episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Only then did she realize what her hug with Rafe had left behind.

She and the Viking stood there like that, frozen on her back step, each seeming to wait for the other to speak first. The scent of her ongoing heat filling up the air between them.

“You would come to me smelling of him?” the Viking asked her, his voice a cold monotone. “You would give yourself to another while I did sleep then come to me with your need.”

“No,” she said. “That’s not what happened. I was apologizing to him and I gave him a hug. That’s all.”

“In my lands claimed she-wolves do not embrace men outside of their family.”

She pushed past him into the kitchen. “Well, we’re not in your village are we? We’re in mine. And here, women can hug whoever they want to.”

She set the basket of eggs on the counter, and then sprinted to her own room, wishing to God wolf houses were like human houses, where people actually installed locks on the door. Breaking and entering in shifter towns was practically non-existent—who would bother to burgle your house, since any wolf would be able to smell that you’d been there? In the same vein, there was no need to lock the bathroom door behind yourself, because any other wolf would be able to smell you in there. For these reasons, it was rare to find a house with locks on any of its doors in towns like Wolf Springs. The only reason she’d had one installed on the basement door was so she wouldn’t accidentally open the wrong door in the night and take a tumble down the basement stairs.

As it was, Chloe barely managed to strip and push her clothes out the nearest window before Fenris came crashing through the door.

Her thought had been to at least get rid of the scent, so she could reason with the Viking. As civilized as wolves had become over the centuries, she still didn’t know many who could be reasoned with while the smell of a rival lingered in the air.

And to a certain extent, her plan worked. His eyes, which had been almost murderous in their intent when he came through the door, darkened with another type of desire when he saw her standing there naked.

His eyes raked her body, her newly swollen breasts, the hot wetness gathered at the triangle between her legs, and the next thing she knew, she was on her back, underneath him in her bed as he drove himself into her.

There was nothing pretty about this fourth mating, no compliments, no kissing, no gentleness, only the sound of his animalistic grunts as he moved on top of her.

“I am the Fenris, and thus have I claimed you.”

She wanted to tell him again that “claiming” wasn’t really done any more, that mates chose each other in her time. But his knot was working its magic against her G-spot again and she could barely think, much less give him a lecture on modern wolf culture.

She hooked her hands over his shoulders and spread her legs even further, trying to hold on and let him deeper inside of her at the same time.

“Yea, offer yourself up to me,” he said, driving into her even deeper. “You are mine and will belong to no other.”

He took her with such grim determination that when he finally released inside her, it felt as if he had not only mated with her, but also marked her as his.

And knowing this did not keep her from coming. Coming so hard, her teeth clenched together and stars appeared at the edge of her vision as the orgasm washed over her, relentless in its quest to take over her entire body. Despite her earlier shame of being told everyone could hear her, she screamed again. And continued to scream as his hot seed flooded into her womb, her own pussy swelling around his knot and locking him in despite the fact she was pretty sure they hated each other at the moment, that this might be the very definition of a hate-fuck.

The orgasm must have been powerful for him, too, because his entire body went rigid above hers and he called out to a few Old Norse gods she’d never heard of, before collapsing on top of her.

They laid there like that, both breathing hard. The earlier anger still very present in the room, even as she milked the rest of his seed into her womb.

He eventually flipped her over, so she was lying on top of him. But her new position didn’t make her feel any more powerful in this situation, especially when he said, “After our mating frenzy is done, you will direct me to this other wolf’s longhouse and I will kill him. Then will we go back to my land.”

“No, I won’t,” she answered.

“You will, or I will knock down every door in your village until I find him and make him pay tribute for his insult with his life.”

“I’m sorry, what exactly are you not understanding about the fact that Rafe and I were engaged?” she asked him.

“What do you fail to comprehend about the grave insult of your traitorous actions?”

“Wow,” she said. “I have no idea who I must have pissed off to deserve this. Was I Mussolini in a past life or something?”

“I do not understand your meaning. You refer to a person I do not know, mayhap on purpose.”

“I mean, I’m a good person. I’ve always tried to do what’s right, and I just don’t understand why the universe would punish me this way.”

He went still. “You consider our mating punishment?”

“I consider it not what I wanted, not what I planned for. I deserve to be happy, to be with Rafe, and not with some Neanderthal who appeared out of the blue and wants to drag me back to his time where there aren’t any other black people or running water.”

“I also do not know this Neanderthal you refer to, but I understand it from your tone to be an undesirable thing. Hear me now, I will bear no more insults from your tongue. We are mated, and hence forth you will do as I say.”

She let out a growl of frustration. “Oh, my God, it is so unfair that I’m locked with you like this while we’re having this conversation.”

“Yea, surely you would have me shackled again to your doctor’s bed, so you might walk away.”

“Okay, try to get this through your thick head. In this time, and in this place, women are allowed to do whatever they want, to be with whoever they want, to hug whoever they want, to be happy however they want. You can’t just command me.”

His eyes narrowed. “Your intention with these words is to tell me being with me is undesirable to you, that you would rather be with him.”

“I’m trying to tell you women have choices now. And no matter what you say or command, I have choices when it comes to this…” She searched for words that weren’t “fated” or “mating” and came up blank “…whatever it is.”

He gave her an icy look. “It would seem she-wolves of your time do not understand the basic nature of wolf and helpmate, and thus am I right in wishing us to return to my land, where she-wolves are biddable and know better than to embrace male wolves who are not their mates.”

“Ugh! It’s like talking to misogynistic brick wall.” Almost crazed with her own anger now, she physically tried to disengage from him, bracing her hands against his massive chest and pushing her hips away from him with all her might in order to free her body from his. But their physiological lock was greater than her own strength, and all she ended up doing was tiring herself out.

She eventually collapsed on top of him with a defeated plop. “I hate you,” she whispered, tears of frustration brimming in her eyes.

His voice was as hard as stone when he answered, “Yet you will do as I bid. I am the Fenris and I will have the last word on all matters between us.”

This sounded much more like a promise than a threat to Chloe. And even though she had absolutely no intention of following him back to his land, to become as slavishly devoted to him as her biological mother had been to her father, she clamped her mouth shut. It was useless arguing with the thick-headed Viking anyway and answering would only restart the argument. Instead she remained quiet, holding herself stiff on top of his chest, until the deep sleep that accompanied each of their matings dragged her down into its dark confines.

That night, she dreamed she was walking down a long dirt road with the full moon shining in the starry sky above. She was happy and nearly skipping in her haste to get wherever she was going, when suddenly she heard a deep growl in front of her and a humongous wolf with a red coat and gray eyes emerged from the shadows.

“Fenris?” she said.

The wolf answered with another growl, this one even more feral than the one that came before. Then he leaped at her, his jaws opened wide—

She came awake from the nightmare with a gasp, and sat up, surprised to find herself on the opposite side of the bed from the Viking. They must have unlocked in the middle of the night and then unconsciously drifted to separate sides of the bed.

The sex they had had the night before still lingered, but the thick scent of her heat no longer hung in the air like a feral entity propelling them along like puppets on a string. Her stomach lurched with the realization that this could only mean one thing.

She, the former fiancée of the alpha prince of Colorado, was pregnant. With a baby fathered by a man more than a thousand years older than her. A man who was determined to drag her back to his time. A man who didn’t take no for an answer, and had forbidden her to disobey him in any way, shape, or form.

She carefully removed herself from the bed. He barely stirred, probably more exhausted than she was from not only traveling back in time, but also getting thrust into a mating frenzy less than forty-eight hours after doing so.

For a moment, she was struck by how peaceful he looked in his sleep, lying face-down, his now clean-shaven jaw hidden under his tousled red hair.

She remembered the scene in the bathroom, how he’d looked at her so softly as she finished washing his hair in the bath they were sharing at his insistence, with a shampoo she had made herself out of tea tree oil and castile soap.

“Is there nothing at which you do not excel, beauty?” he had asked her.

And her heart had zinged a little, because Rafe had found all the little things she made and had taught herself to do more odd than endearing. But the Viking had looked at her like he was the luckiest man in the world to have her as his fated mate.

And then less than a few hours later, he had threatened to kill her ex-fiancé and make her do his bidding after they returned to his time.

The memory of that terrible argument and the fact that she was no longer in heat was enough to clear away any goodwill his compliments had engendered within her. And when she gazed upon him again, he looked exactly like what he was. A very dangerous man who would stop at nothing to get his way.

It suddenly became very clear what she had to do now.

Run. As fast as she could and as far away as she could as soon as possible.