ONE moment Chloe was standing there with Fenris, having just agreed to go their separate ways and the next, she was getting sucked through some kind of pitch-black vacuum, which dumped her back on the snow-covered plateau outside the Wolf Mountain portal. At least she thought it was her portal, until she and Fenris rolled to a stop in front of a small house. Jeb’s cabin didn’t sit right next to the portal. And furthermore, his cabin was an actual log cabin, made out of pine logs, with insulated windows and a roof also constructed from logs.

The house that sat before them seemed to be made of stones and dirt with a roof made out of what looked like packed in dirt and bright green turf. And then there was the cold. Shivers ran up and down her body. Werewolves tended to live in places like Colorado and Alaska, places with cold weather where their higher body temperatures wouldn’t cause them undue discomfort during the summer. But this place—she had never known a cold like this. It couldn’t have been more than ten degrees. The harsh mountain wind cut right through her sweater and prairie dress, covering her in what felt like needle pricks and making it hard for her to breathe for a few minutes.

However, all thoughts of her own discomfort flew out of her head, when a stocky, bearded man dressed in loose, rough-hewn trousers and a brown tunic opened the door with some kind of axe raised in the air. It only took Chloe witnessing a few back and forth exchanges between the Viking and this man for her to figure out what had happened, everything that had happened.

Which is how she came to find herself kicking the Viking squarely in his crotch and not regretting it at all when he sank to ground, momentarily undone by the pain she had caused him.

That is, she didn’t feel any regret until the short guy started toward her, axe once again raised, hollering in Old Norse.

Chloe’s eyes widened and she started to turn tail and run, but Fenris yelled something that stopped the man in his tracks. Fenris said a few more words, and to her surprise, the short man laughed and lowered the axe again before disappearing back inside the windowless stone cabin.

As soon as he was gone, Fenris came staggering to his feet, the look on his face almost murderous with rage. “You will never do that again,” he said. “It is considered the gravest of insults for a she-wolf to strike her mate, especially in front of another as you did. ‘Tis fortunate I was able to convince him you made a show only because your mind is so addled by the cold.”

“I give less than two fucks if I embarrassed you in front of your friend,” she answered, coming to stand toe-to-toe with him. “You lied to me!”

“I did as I must after you did try to abscond with my pup in your belly,” he yelled back.

“I wasn’t trying to abscond with anything. I was trying to get away from you, you time-traveling psycho.”

“I know not the meaning of psycho, but understand this word to be insulting in its nature, and as I said, I will bide no more insults from you, Chloe.”

“Oh, you think that was an insult? That was nothing. Check this out,” she said before she unleashed a tide of every curse word she had ever learned and few she managed to make up right there on the spot at him. Then she tried to kick him again, but this time, he easily deflected her foot.

“Try that again, and I will—”

“What will you do?” she yelled, holding her arms out at her sides. “Drag me to some time and place, away from everyone and everything I know and love, where I am literally the only black person for hundreds of miles? Because I can’t really think of anything worse than what you’ve already done.”

“Calm yourself,” he said. “You are fortunate I have chosen to honor our lot as chosen mates after what you attempted.”

“Are you not listening to me, like, at all?” she asked. “I didn’t ask you to honor our vows. I wanted you to let me go. And you lied to me. What happened to ‘we can say fare thee well?’”

“Nay, I did not lie. I spake that mates could say fare thee well. I never promised to leave you behind. In addition, it is in the manner of the spell that I could not say it alone and be able to return to my time without you.”

“And somehow it all comes down to you, right? Who cares what I want?”

He honestly looked confused now. “I do not comprehend your meaning. What I want should be what you want. You are after all, my mate.”

She balled her hands into fists. “My meaning is I’m somebody, too. I have wants and needs and a soul and desires just like you. And maybe I don’t want to live in one of the coldest places on Earth, raising pups in a house that doesn’t even have running water.”

He stepped toward her. “I do understand because I appeared in your village with few clothes and only my sword to recommend me you may think you have mated with a pauper king. But I assure you I have much treasure, and you will have every comfort in my home. Any other she-wolf would thank the gods for their good fortune if they were to be chosen as my lifelong mate.”

“Any other woman from this time you mean.” She pointed to the ground. “Because really, what you need to be doing right now is thanking my God I’m a Christian, or I would kill you in your sleep for doing this to me.”

“You would threaten me after what you attempted to do this morntide? You would threaten me when you are the one who should be about an apology for your actions?”

“The only thing I’m sorry about is that I didn’t floor the gas when our stupid sheriff showed up,” she grumbled, folding her arms.

“Again, I do not comprehend your meaning.”

“I mean you’re used to a certain kind of she-wolf, just lying down and taking whatever you male wolves choose to dole out. But the she-wolves from my time, we don’t play that.”

He opened his mouth, but she held up a hand before he could tell her he didn’t understand her again. “We have a saying in the wolf community: ‘Wolves mate for life, so decide how you want your life to go and treat your she-wolf accordingly.’ You obviously want to be miserable.”

Now he folded arms. “Be aware you are not the only one who has cause to be not pleased with this union. I would not have had the fated mates spell cross my lips if not for being in great need of an escape. It was either the spell or my own slaying at the hands of enemy wolves. And I especially would not have uttered the incantation if I had but known the depth of your talent for treachery.”

She held up a hand, “Wait a minute, are you trying to tell me the only reason you came back in time and ruined my entire life was not because you were looking for true love or anything, but because it was the nuclear option in some fight?”

“I do not comprehend ‘nuclear option,’ but if by this you mean—”

He suddenly cut off, his head turning sharply to the side as he sniffed the air.

And though she was angrier than she had ever been about anything in her life, including the time she was left at the side of the road by her own parents, she went quiet, sensing the danger as he did, and even more scary, the scent of five different wolves in the trees surrounding the stone cabin.

He moved to pick up his sword, which was still lying in the snow near the portal. “Stay here,” he said.

And that was all he said before he called out something in Old Norse, his eyes glittering with a new kind of anger.

Whatever is was, it smoked out four of the men hiding in the trees. They came charging toward him from all directions, hollering with axes raised high.

Fenris stood his ground, the only indication he was prepared to engage them, a slight baring of his teeth. And then the next thing she knew, he was plunging his sword through the stomach of the first man to reach him, then raising his foot to kick the man, whose belly was now smoking, backwards off his sword. He freed it just in time to duck and catch a axe, which had been hurled at his head, by its wooden handle.

For a moment he had two weapons, until he swung the axe himself, catching his second attacker right between the eyes, before raising his sword with his other arm and swinging it at a third guy. His biceps flexed hard with the effort it must have taken to decapitate the guy with one hand and with one blow.

As the now smoking head rolled through the snow, Chloe couldn’t help but be impress with Fenris’s obviously superior fighting skills. But then she saw the forth wolf behind Fenris, drawing back his arm to bring his axe down on Fenris’s head.

“Look out behind you!” she yelled into his mind.

But a thrown axe lodged in the back of the would-be killer’s head at the same time Fenris turned around, quick as a whip, and plunged his sword into the guy’s heart.

Chloe looked in the direction the last axe had flown from to see the gatekeeper grinning over his co-authored kill.

He turned to Chloe and said something in Old Norse, which Fenris mind-translated for her.

“He does apologize for his delay. His mate died many years ago, and he did have some trouble finding her pelt.”

And before Chloe could ask why he was looking for his dead wife’s pelt, the gatekeeper settled what looked like a red fox with its head still attached around her shoulders.

If not for the insane amount of much-needed warmth it provided, Chloe would have flung the animal skin from her shoulders and made a donation to the World Wild Life Fund just for coming into visual contact with the thing.

As it was, she closed her eyes and let her poor body revel in its warmth before mind-asking Fenris, “How do you say thank you in Old Norse?”

“’Tis current Norse to us,” he said inside her mind before saying out loud, “Pakka fyrir.”

“Pakka fyrir,” she said.

The gatekeeper nodded before turning to Fenris and presenting him with what looked like a cloak made of various animal’s fur scraps—but at least there weren’t any heads still attached.

“Upon our return to the village you will be given clothing and a fur befitting your station,” Fenris said a few minutes later as they walked away from the gatekeeper’s house.

“So is that guy going to bury those bodies all by himself?” she asked, struggling to keep up with him, but soon falling behind. He had a much longer stride, and didn’t seem all that interested in slowing down so she could walk beside as opposed to behind him.

“Nay, they are in a pile. So he would burn them.”

“Were those the guys who were trying to kill you before you used the spell for your quick getaway?”

“Yea.”

“You’re a pretty good fighter.” That was an understatement, but Chloe wasn’t in a compliment-giving mood. “I’m not getting why you didn’t just take them out like you did at the gatekeeper’s place as opposed to coming back in time for a fated mate you didn’t even want.”

“I had little choice. There were five wolves who would have my head, and unlike now, I was then weakened from an arduous hunt. Even I could not have taken five wolves on by myself. Also, then I did not have the pup inside your belly to protect. For the next Fenris would I be victor this day as I was not three moons ago.”

Chloe was finding it hard to believe only three days had passed since Fenris came crashing into her life, like a human tornado, dead set on destroying everything she held dear. “Well, congratulations on the big vanquish. That means you can send me home now, right?”

“My enemies were not vanquished in full this day. Their leader, my cousin. who I also did smell, ran as a rabbit would when he did see his first three followers fall under my sword.” He adjusted the animal cloak at his shoulders. “Also, though I am not pleased with you this day, I would not be without a mate or my pup in the winters to follow, so you will stay.”

She shook her head. Though the fox fur was now protecting her against the cold, she could feel her heart icing over. “Fine, misery it is then.”

If he got that this was a reference back to the quote about keeping his she-wolf happy if he wanted to be happy, he didn’t acknowledge it. And they walked the rest of way down the mountain in a silence even colder than the harsh winter air.