FENRIS did not realize how bad his mood had become until he nigh killed his fastest friend. Randulfr was recently returned with many white pelts from the most northern lands, and had requested to join him in his morning weapons exercises, wishing to engage a wolf after fighting the white bear for so many full moons.

Usually Fenris welcomed the challenge of sparring with a warrior near to his own skill level, but on this morn, every swing from Randulfr’s sword felt like an insult. And soon the fighting became more serious than intended with great clanging of their swords and much sweat on both their parts.

Finally, Randulfr backed away and said, “I would have an end to this play.”

“Nay,” Fenris said, “I would have you continue to fight.”

“I am not in prime spirits, having stepped off the boat only yesterday.”

“Lift your sword.”

Fenris advanced on him, attacking in the expectation Randulfr would defend himself as opposed to wasting his breath with further protest. But then he ended up using all his strength to stop the blade just short of his friend’s neck when Randulfr dropped his sword to the ground in the known sign of surrender.

Fenris lowered his own sword, having to resist the urge to punch his friend in the face for refusing to fight any further. “You disappoint me.”

“Nay,” Randulfr answered, with a knowing grin. “Your prick does make you fast to anger. Do I need to be the one to suggest you find your queen and set her to screaming?”

“She is otherwise engaged these moons. Big with our pup and making many preparations for our wedding.”

Randulfr picked up his sword and re-sheathed it at his waist. “Then if I were my Fenris, I would bid her pause. You are in need of a lay.”

“I am in need of a fight,” he all but growled back.

But Randulfr was already walking away, “Nay, a lay,” he called out almost like a song, without bothering to look back.

* * *

When Chloe first traveled back in time, it hadn’t occurred to her she’d have two skinny blonds washing her hair every Saturday, but apparently the servant women washing all the other women’s hair was a thing on Saturdays. She’d actually concocted a sort of conditioner out of eggs, honey, almond oil (thank goodness she had learned how to make it for a Black Mountain Woman show), and a yogurt-like food called skyr. And as it turned out, teaching them to finger comb it through her hair every wash day hadn’t been too hard.

The only problem was she was now having a hard time making a big enough batch of it every Saturday. Fenris’s young girl cousins had tried her conditioner a few months ago and had been shocked at how shiny and lustrous their locks turned out after air-drying. And soon all the other women in their household wanted to try it. Then because the males, contrary to the way Vikings were often depicted in the movies, were even vainer about their hair than the ladies, they’d demanded a weekly batch for themselves. Somehow word spread and folks started showing up at the door, offering all sorts of trades for conditioner. Which was how Chloe found herself spending most of her Saturday mornings overseeing the preparation of pots of conditioner and preparing for a wedding at the same time.

“It would seem you would have a trade in any time you did set foot,” Fenris teased her two Saturdays ago when she clumsily climbed over his body to get out of bed at the crack of dawn.

It was true. Over the last few weeks, Chloe had worked harder than she ever had in her life. Though she was a queen, nothing came easy in the Viking village. She had to make the fabric for her wedding dress, then sew it all by hand. She also had to plan the menu for the big wedding feast, which meant overseeing the roasting and spicing of boars, ducks, goats, and apparently a couple of sharks—which she hadn’t been able to convince her family not to serve, though at least she’d been able to draw the line at horse meat. She also had to pre-memorize her vows in Old Norse and learn to do a few traditional dances expected of the bride and groom. The last few weeks, she’d been rising at the crack of dawn every morning and falling into bed exhausted to her very bones every night.

And she loved it.

Unlike the wedding she would have been harangued into having with Rafe, which would have been catered by the most sought after chef in Colorado, and overseen by the most exclusive wedding planner Rafe’s mother could find, with a wedding dress provided by a designer everyone recognized by name; her wedding was everything she’d always dreamed it would be. And in many ways it felt like she had been planning her whole life for this.

The only thing she did mind, was she’d barely had a chance to do so much as mind-chat over dinner with Fenris, and even though they slept in the same bed closet, she found herself missing him.

“Is it your plan to wash Fenris’s hair at the hot springs then?” Aunt Bera asked when Chloe rushed out of the lake as soon as the servants were done rinsing the conditioner out of her loosened curls and started putting her wet hair back in its side braid while sitting on the bank. Whatever modesty she might have had about sitting around naked in front of a bunch of other women in Colorado had been killed after six months in no-privacy Viking Norway.

“No, after I braid my hair, I will return to the house to sew my wedding dress some more.”

“Let us put thread to your wedding dress this day,” his mother’s aunt said. “We would not have Fenris grow his beard again.”

She scrunched up her face. “I do not understand your words.”

One of her girl cousins came to stand by her mother. “Before you came to this place, we did call our king Fenris the Serious. Never smiling he, never one to let us feast in celebration, not even for a harvest.”

“Why think you I was so keen for him to avail himself of the fated mates spell?” Aunt Bera asked.

The cousin continued, “But now you have cut off his beard again, he is allowing feast, and we hope to have his ear for another at the winter to mark the yule-tide, and mayhap another one at the beginning of the resting sun.”

“Wait,” she said in English. Then she remembered herself and switched back to Old Norse. “What does his beard have to do with it?”

“When first he did return, we did tease him mightily about being without his beard. And on that first eve he said in your land the men do not care for beards and so do not the women, and that was why it was removed,” the cousin said.

Her mother chimed in then. “We all would be surprised, because no Northman would be without his beard in these lands, human or wolf. We realized our Fenris must hold you dear indeed, if he would allow you his beard. But then his beard did grow back and did he become both serious and quick to temper until you did start screaming every few moons. And at the next wash day his beard was once again disappeared.”

“But now it does grows back for a sennight or more,” Aunt Bera said, her tone growing dire. “We would not have his beard back. We would wish it good-ghost if it doth mean a less serious king.”

Chloe laughed and was about to deny any part in the state of Fenris’s mood, when he pushed into her mind. “We shall be met at the longhouse. I would have my grooming attended to.”

Chloe’s eyes narrowed at the women in the lake. Was there some kind of family version of wolf telepathy she didn’t know about? “Um … hi,” she mind-spoke back to Fenris. “Do you mind washing your own hair today? I’m at the lake and I still have to—“

“We shall be met at the house.”

So Chloe pulled on her prairie dress and walked back to the house, where she found him standing in the door in only his pants and his sword strapped across his back.

“Where be your woman’s dagger?” he asked as she walked up the longhouse. “We have spoken of this. What if you be met with some manner of animal while you pick herbs in the forest?”

“Then it would probably kill me,” she answered. “You saw what happened when you tried to take me on that field trip to the sheep farm and they slaughtered that poor little lamb. Me and up-close-and-personal animal killing don’t exactly go together.”

He gave her what she’d probably call a “much aggrieved” look, if she were speaking in Old Norse, and then walked past her, leaving it to her to follow.

“Are you angry with me?” she asked a little while later as they approached the hot springs in gloomy silence.

“Nay,” he answered between gritted teeth.

“Because if this is about me not washing your hair these last couple of weeks, you should know I’m super-busy with all the stuff that needs to get done for the wedding.”

“I do repeat, I am not angry with you.”

“Well, you snapped at me about the dagger, and you didn’t even laugh at my self-deprecating sheep farm comment—which was pretty funny.”

“Chloe, I hold no anger toward you.”

She twisted the side of her mouth, “But see, I think you do—”

She wasn’t able to finish, because he suddenly turned her around, placing her hands on the rowan tree beside the hot spring before whipping her the skirt of her dress up. And then he was inside her, his fingers clawing into her hips, as he pumped into her.

As she’d grown big with the baby, they’d developed different positions for different places, against the tree while at the hot spring, on hands and knees on the benches and floors, and reverse cowgirl—a position that had particularly blown Fenris’s Viking mind—for the bed closet. Usually Fenris took his time with her these days, careful with her and with the baby.

However, that day he slammed into her mercilessly, as if crazed and out of control. And her she-wolf loved it. Howled inside of her for more, even as he drove into her hard and rough. “Yes! Yes!” she said in English. “That feels so good, Fenris. More, more!”

It was all she could do to hold on to the tree as the orgasm washed over her, fierce and breathing like a beast coming alive within her. “Fenris,” she cried out. “Oh, Fenris.”

He let out an angry roar, and she felt him spilling hot ropes of cum inside of her, his cock pulsing between her folds as his large rough hands held tight to her hips.

But to her surprise, as soon as he had fully released, he pulled out of her, letting go of her hips with a disgusted growl.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked.

“No.” She turned around just in time to see him kick off his shoes and pants, which were pooled around his ankles.

“And the pup? He is unharmed?” He unbuckled his sword and also let that fall to the ground.

“He’s kicking up a storm like, ‘Hey, what just happened?’ But other than that, he’s fine. Are you okay?”

His face was now a grim mask. “I am sorry I took you in this manner.”

“My she-wolf isn’t.” She cupped a hand around her mouth and whispered, “Don’t tell her I told you, but I think she might like the rough stuff.”

His answer to that wasn’t to laugh but instead to turn and do a running dive into the hot spring water, leaving her there to awkwardly adjust her skirt.

By the time she made it over to the bank, he was lathering soap under his arms and over his shoulders. He looked angry, truly angry. And she had no idea why. “Did I do something wrong?” she asked him.

* * *

When his queen came to stand above him at the hot spring’s bank, he lathered the soap over his chest, refusing to meet her eyes. “You did speak truth. You will probably be safe to return to the village without your woman’s dagger. You may take your leave now. I will attend to my own grooming.”

But she remained where she was. “Did I do something wrong?” she asked again.

He gave the air an exasperated glance. “No, you have done nothing wrong. Return to the village, so you may finish your wedding preparations.”

Her answer to that command was to carefully lower herself down to the ground and crisscross her legs under her swollen belly, “I thought we were getting along now.”

He gritted his teeth. “We are.” He turned away from her, soaping himself in the opposite direction, hoping that would put an end to the conversation.

But she said behind him, “Then under our communication contract, I would have your thoughts.”

He slowly turned around to face her unable to keep his annoyance off his face.

“Be there need to know my thoughts when there is so much for you to attend?” he asked.

“Just the fact that you’re acting like you care how much I have to do is setting off my alarms, Fenris, so come on, spill.”

“I know not this ‘setting off alarms’—” he began.

“You’re stalling.”

Indeed he was. But how to tell her in words his feelings when he did not understand them himself? “I did try,” he confessed.

“You tried what?” she asked, shaking her head.

“You think I saw not all the work you have been doing, that I care not for your well-being or what you would want. But I did see you have been tired of body and slowed in your actions because of our pup. I am a wolf but I did not want to act the animal. And I did try to stay away from you, to give you the days you did need to make ready for our wedding. It nearly drove me mad.”

She folded her hands on top of her belly. “So let me get this straight. You’re angry now because you were so horny?”

“I know not the meaning of ‘horny.’”

“Full of losti.”

He shook his head. “Tis not losti, that is what does irk me. A Viking warrior can ignore losti. I have felt it before and did shove it aside when it meant getting a thing done. No, my upset comes from—“ he broke off. “I have no wish for the poison of the fated mates, but I find myself unable to fully resist it. I cannot resist you. You are inside of me, and even when we are apart, with you is where I long to be.”

She looked down at him, and for many moments nothing was said accept by the birds in the trees. But then she whispered in his own tongue, “Hvart elskar pu mik?” Do you love me?

He had not thought of it that way. Love in his mind, ‘twas but a word featured in the songs of the traveling skald, and then mayhap, only because it made human women swoon and offer their wares to its singer after the great feast, at which he performed.

He did not care for this love, did not want to believe in its existence, but as soon as she asked him this question in his own tongue, he knew the answer to be yes. And under the communication contract, he said, “Yea, I am in love with you, but I fear you are still in love with another.”

Another long silence passed, in which his fated mate sat, looking as if he had slapped her.

He hefted himself from the water and sat on the bank beside her just close enough for him to feel the heat from her body, but not close enough for their skin to meet.

“I am aggrieved this has happened, too,” he told her. “But now that I have put a mind to it, I believe I have been in love with you for a great number of moons. When we did first come to this place and you would not mind-speak or leave our bed closet, my aunt did give me words I might use to break the fated mates spell and send you back to your own time on a scrap of fabric. Yet, did I not use them. They remain pinned to my winter fur.”

She turned to him, with tears brimming in her eyes. “So even when I was crazy-depressed and not talking to you, you never considered using it?”

“No, and that is how I have come to realize now how much I truly love you.”

He braced himself for her anger, but it never came. Instead she did the one thing that could hurt him the most. She started crying.

Quiet tears fell down her face, and she rocked back and forth with her hands around her stomach.

“I am sorry you still love the other wolf,” he said, his heart growing stony with regret for confessing his feelings. “But I still cannot let him have you.”

“No, I don’t love Rafe,” she said through her tears. “I mean I love him but not in the way of mates. I love him like you love Randulfr. As a dear friend. Only imagine if you and Randulfr weren’t both friends and the girl version of him asked you to mate before her heat night.”

“That would be impossible,” he answered. “Girl and boy wolves from different houses have no reason to become as fast of friends as myself and Randulfr.”

She dismissed these words with a wave of her hand. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. But in my time period, girl and boy wolves go to school together. In fact, we don’t do anything but receive tutoring in the same place for nine full moons straight, six hours a day or more, from the time we’re six winters to the time we’re eighteen. So please try to expand your mind just enough to understand Rafe and I could have become as fast of friends as you and Randulfr. And if you were in my position, it would have been easy to mistake that friendship for love, especially if you lived in a time when fated mating was fairly uncommon.”

She laid her hand on his arm now. “The day I hugged Rafe—it wasn’t because I still wanted him over you, it was because I felt like I had betrayed him. It was because I didn’t understand then what true love is. But now I do.”

Now it was she who reached for his hand and laid it over her heart, covering it with her own. “Because of you. You’ve given me a family and the way of life I yearned for, and now you’ve given me your love. I love you, too, Fenris, more than I ever thought possible and to the end of time and back.”

His heart swelled to hear these words fall from her lips, but he still did not understand: “Then why do tears continue to fall from your eyes?”

She squeezed his hand against her chest. “When I was a pup of four summers, I was living in a small wolf settlement, somewhere in Washington, I think. My mom went into heat when she was only fifteen, and she and my dad didn’t have much money. Plus, they were overwhelmed with having to take care of me.”

“Did they not have family to help them with your raising?” he asked.

“Wolf families from my time aren’t like wolf families from your time. We don’t all live together like you do. And if a she-wolf chooses to mate with a wolf her parents don’t approve off, they disown her—kind of like how you banish wolves from the village for crimes.”

He shook his head. “That is not like our way at all. As king I only banish if the crime is grievous. If it be but a mating unapproved, the family must accept it and continue on as a family.”

“Yeah, that’s really not how it works in my time. In my time, if you go into heat like my mother did and go running straight to the wolf who sells drugs to humans as his main hustle, then they pretty much kick you out. But my mom found out quick how uncool living with a drug dealer could be. ” She shook her head. “My first memories are of trying to stay quiet and make myself very small, so they wouldn’t get mad at me, but it didn’t help. They were always angry, yelling at each other, yelling at me, or behind closed doors, doing something I would only later come to understand was fucking.

“But one day it all came to a head. They got to yelling at each other so loud I went and hid in my room and covered my ears, but it was still loud enough for me to hear my dad tell my mom that either she got rid of the kid or he was going to leave her.”

“Yea, I see,” he said, nodding. “Your parents parted ways because your father did not wish to do his duty. In our village, when this happens, we send the young wolf on an ocean voyage, which is oft enough to make him see the lure of hearth and home. But I would guess you do not have such a practice in your time and it must have caused you great sadness when your parents parted.”

She looked up him. “They didn’t part.”

He shook his head, confused. “Then why does this memory continue to sadden you to tears?”

“Oh, my gosh, you can’t even fathom, that’s so…” And to his surprise, she began to have tears again. “My mother chose him. She left me by the side of the road and drove away with him. That’s how I came to be in Wolf Springs, that’s why I don’t have a family of my own, and that’s why it moves me to tears when you say you’re never going to let me go. I didn’t know until now how much I needed someone who would never let me go.”

He dragged her into his wet arms, holding her to him tightly as she cried, wishing to go forward in time again, if only to punish both of her parents for having done this to his queen.

But at the same time, he could no longer curse his fate or hers. What had happened to them both was the reason the spell had delivered him across time to her, his fated mate, his dark beauty, the one he had always been destined to love above all others.