CHLOE wore the scrap of fabric with what she called the “divorce spell” on it pinned inside her wedding dress, right next to her heart. Fenris teased her about making it into a memento, but she didn’t care. It had shot past her woman’s dagger as her as most valued treasure, because it more than any told the story of how much Fenris loved her. And at the wedding when she and Fenris drank a special non-alcoholic version of bridal ale she’d concocted from the same wolf-head shaped drinking vessel, she held her hand over the divorce spell, not caring that the pin pricked her skin. After this, she decided, she’d wear it inside her tunic, as a daily reminder. She’d never forget her Viking would never abandon her.

At that point the festivities had been going on for nearly a week. The trading boats had returned, and it was the rare day that everyone in the village was given leave by Fenris the Serious to put aside their work and celebrate. Also, hundreds of alpha chieftains and their contingents had come from far and wide to celebrate the wedding of their king. The wolves of their village were taking full advantage of the many feasts and all the new faces. It caused Uncle Olafr to joke that at least two or three she-wolves would have gone into heat by the time the festivities were over. At least she thought he was joking.

In any case, to her great relief, though the young wolves flirted madly, with one of the alpha chieftains even putting in a heat night claim for Aunt Bera’s daughter, no one actually went into heat. And though the festivities went on for many days, it felt like Chloe blinked her eyes, and suddenly it was time for the wedding banquet. In her time, wolves married as any pregnant human would—as close as possible to the conception date, so as not to have a bride with a significant bump, and in one day with the usual wedding and reception to follow.

In this time, though, not only did they spend a week celebrating, but they also set up a small market so their many guests could trade and barter throughout the festivities. Instead of a receiving line, she and Fenris received many visitors in their longhouse over the week. While most weddings took place in the spring and summer in her time, most Norse wolf weddings took place as close to the fall harvest as possible, so as to ensure enough food for the festivities – there were even a few cases of wolf couples getting married after their pup was born if the conception happened right after the harvest times. And instead of a reception after the wedding, there was a wedding banquet before the ceremony.

Not coincidentally, every wolf but she and Fenris, was pretty drunk when they all spilled from their house to the meadow between the lake and the forest right before the moon was set to rise. Apparently they did not understand the meaning of solemn occasion, because Chloe could barely hear herself speak her vows above the hooting and hollering of the wolves of Norway, who all stood naked as the day they were born in a semi-circle around them.

But then, thankfully the moon rose, robbing all of the guests, except for Fenris and her, of their human speaking voices. Still, the wolves did manage to create quite a bit of ruckus as Fenris presented Chloe with a golden ring on the hilt of his sword. They howled to the sky, even more so, when Chloe put a gold band for Fenris on The King Maker sword and pushed the hilt back towards him to take.

But the biggest howls of all came when they kissed much longer than necessary under the light of the full moon, which hung large and low in the sky that night.

When they finally broke off the kiss, Fenris raised his sword in the air and pointed it toward the forest. It was Norse wolf tradition that the groom lead the pack on a hunt to fell a deer, while the bride went back to their home to prepare their bed with goldgubbers, palm-sized gold plates with wolves imprinted on them.

“Make quick work of the bed, beauty,” Fenris said inside her mind as he ran toward the forest with the other wolves at his heels. “As I will make quick work of this deer, so I might have the pleasure between your legs that much sooner.”

“I’ll get it decorated as fast as I can, considering I’m carrying a bowling ball around.”

“I know not what you mean by ‘bowling ball,’” he answered, somewhat predictably.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said, heading back to the village. “I’m going now.”

She just hoped she was at least able to make it back to the longhouse before Fenris did. He was nothing if not quick, and as Rafe might have said, “Dude knows how to hunt.”

She smiled thinking of Rafe and Colorado. They were now like a memory that was good until it got bad, but then got good again, because she was now so happy. Rafe would eventually find another she-wolf, hopefully one who pleased him in every way as Fenris said often of her. And eventually his anger would fade, and he’d see their split, though dramatic and humiliating, was for the best.

Her thoughts were abruptly cut short by a low growl and the sudden stench of a wolf who had not taken his Saturday bath in a very long time.

She froze in her tracks when she saw a large red wolf, standing halfway between her and the door of the king’s longhouse.

Fenris had assured her all wolves were trained to be in control of themselves while in wolf form and she had seen for herself over the course of her seven months in the village how much more civilized they were in wolf form than people from her own time.

But she could tell just by looking at this wolf that he wasn’t civilized. Though, he wasn’t frothing at mouth, his gray eyes looked crazed.

She took two steps back and the wolf took as many steps towards her, crouching low.

“Fenris?” she said, calling his name out loud, because she didn’t quite know what to do.

Then the wolf charged her. She cried out and ran, hoping to God there wasn’t a distance limitation on telepathy as she yelled, “Fenris! Fenris! One of the wolves is after me, it’s trying to—”

A growl pierced the air beside her, right before the stinky red thing threw itself at her back, pitching her forward. She caught herself on her wrists, keeping her belly from hitting the ground. She had to protect the baby, she thought. But she also had to protect herself.

“Chloe? Chloe?” she heard the Viking ask frantically inside her head. “By Fenrir, answer me!”

The wolf lunged at her, burying its sharp teeth in her side, as if its sole intent was to tear the baby out of her womb. Red-hot pain ripped through her side, and she nearly passed out when he opened his jaw wide and sank his long, hot teeth into her again.

She screamed partly out of pain, but mostly out of terror.

But then she remembered the woman’s dagger, the one she had worn, only to tease Fenris about always nagging her to wear her dagger.

“Tis your wedding gift,” she had said in her joking speech after recounting for their guests how often they’d gone back and forth about this.

But now she ripped it from the looped belt from which it hung, and she didn’t know where the strength came from, but she, Chloe Adams, who was too squeamish to even wring a chicken’s neck, stabbed the crazed wolf in his gray eye.

It let go of her side with a screech of pain. And Chloe followed it, her mind pitch-black with rage over what he had done to her and her baby. She stabbed it over and over again, in the heart, in the other eye, in the stomach, until it let out one last hideous yelp and morphed back into a human form, a young man with unwashed red hair, who she would bet money was Fenris’ cousin.

And only then did she feel the cramping in her pelvis and the dampness. Between her skirts.

“No, no, no, not now,” she cried in realization.

Her water had broken.

* * *

Fenris was closing in on a deer he could smell about half an acre away when Chloe pushed into his mind, “Fenris! Fenris! One of the wolves is after me, it’s trying to—”

And his heart went cold when she cut off mid-sentence.

“Chloe? Chloe?” he asked, already turning around and running the other way, much to the surprise of the wolves he was leading in the hunt. “By Fenrir, answer me!”

The other wolves did not understand what was going on, but nonetheless, they followed him as a pack. Then they heard her scream. And this time it was not in ecstasy as his family had teased her for before. It was a scream of pain.

Fenris ran. Faster than he had ever run without shifting into a wolf as he did so. He had missed shifting over the course of the last seven moons, but never as much as he did now when he was confined to this human body while the woman he loved above all others screamed in the distance.

The other wolves also became compelled by the scream and they left him behind. He hoped to Fenrir they got to her in time, before... no he couldn’t finish the thought. It made his vision go red at the edges.

“Chloe? Speak to me. Let me know you are unharmed, beauty.”

Again, no answer.

And as he ran down the village’s main thoroughfare toward her scent, he could now smell the thickness of her blood in the air as well as the acrid stench of his cousin.

He rounded the corner toward his longhouse and spied his cousin’s human body lying in the distance, eyeless with angry stab wounds in his heart, stomach, and the side of his head. He would find out later his queen killed the large wolf, with nothing but her will to live and her tiny woman’s dagger. And that would make what happened soon after much harder for him to bear.

But at that moment, his eyes searched around for her, until he realized she must be inside the large gathering of wolves.

He shoved through the pack and found his aunt and a few of his family pack members licking the deep wound in her side, cleaning it the only way they knew how in their present form. But even they he shoved aside to get to his bride.

She looked up at him with tears of pain and frustration in her eyes. “Fenris, my water broke. And I’m having contractions. The baby is coming. But it’s too soon. We’re going to lose him.”

He raised her hand, which was still covered in his cousin’s wolf blood, to his lips. “Nay, this I will not allow.”

She breathed hard through the pain of her cramping. “I’m so sorry. I wanted us to be a family so badly.”

“I will not allow it, beauty.” He kissed her hand again. “You said if a baby is born in seven full moons in your time, your magic people might save it.”

She caught his meaning and began shaking her head even before he could fully explain it. “No, no! You can’t send me back.”

He reached into her wedding dress. “I must, beauty. Your wound is deep and your waters have already broken. You cannot shift to heal, and we have no human medicine in the village. There is no other way.”

She tried to slap away his hand, but he managed to unpin the spell. And this was when she began to sob. “No, I don’t want to leave you. And you said you wouldn’t abandon me.”

His heart tore at the sight of her tears and he once again took her hand, holding it to his chest fiercely. “And I will hold fast my promise. I will find a way back to you, beauty.”

“How?” she asked, shaking her head. She then clenched her teeth when another contraction overtook her. They were coming fast now. He could not linger here with her.

“I do not yet know. But I will. I promise you this on my life. I will be your mate and a father to our pup, and we will be as one again.”

He kissed her sweet lips and then her forehead, which was damp with sweat despite the bitter chill of night.

Then before she could protest again, he yelled out to the other wolves to back away from her body, which they did.

With one last longing look toward the woman who had shown him a happiness he had never thought to know, he spoke the words to send her back to her own place and time.

“No, Fenris,” she screamed, but it was too late. The black tunnel opened up just beyond her and sucked her into it as if she were but a pebble on the ground.