I had to hand it to my brothers. Given an opportunity, they could certainly take advantage. I'd gone hunting for one month. One.

And we'd existed here without interference from the outside world for a millennium, but there they were. And here she was.

A human.

“Fenris,” my mother warned.

I ignored her, not even kicking the snow off my boots before I strode to the twins who'd made my life harder since the moment of their birth.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

My mother slapped her hand against my chest. “Leave it.”

I sucked in a breath to argue and stopped. Oh no. My mother's eyes widened, and then she smiled. It was the most dangerous smile I’d ever seen in my life. In my younger days, it would have made me quake in my boots.

It smelled like summer in here. Like heat, and sunshine, and the forest right before the rain. I closed my eyes, letting the scent wash over me. As one, my brothers turned, blocking the sight of the human from me, but I ignored them. They were big, but I was bigger. And they were two, but I was older, smarter, and a lot faster. Planting one boot on the ground, I leapt up.

My mother cried out, not in fear, but instead calling, “Don't break anything!”

Using my momentum and weight, I knocked aside my brothers, tackling them to the ground. For a blessed second, I saw blonde hair—bright like the sunrise—and a wide-eyed freckled face. My brothers were on their feet in seconds, moving as one. Together they grabbed my arms, dragging me toward the door.

This wasn't what I expected. My goal was to knock them aside and get closer to the human and her mouth-watering scent. To figure out what it was that appealed to me in a way that bypassed all my thoughts and went straight to my desires.

They dumped me unceremoniously in a snowbank, but I was up again and at them.

I had to get inside. It was my only goal.

“Dammit, Fenris!” Grim yelled, pushing me back.

“I got him,” Raynor huffed, his broken voice even more hoarse when he was out of breath.

He has me? Hardly. Putting all my muscle behind it, I tackled them, one arm across each of their chests, and slammed them into the ground. As I reared back, ready to get to my feet, a bucket of freezing water slapped my face.

“Enough.” My mother thrust the bucket into my chest, knocking the air out of me. “Stay outside. I need to clean my house, and I need to do it without worrying you're going to freak the human out.”

“Mor—” I used the name for my mother I hadn’t said since I was a child.

“If you want to make a good impression, give her some space. She doesn't even understand you.”

I stopped, her words piercing the haze of my determination. I didn't want to scare her, and I didn't know why I was acting the way I was. Her scent had clouded my mind and driven me insane.

“We need her out of here,” I ground out, backing away from the house where temptation lay. “Use the radio. Alert the authorities, and we'll drop her in a clearing far away from here.”

“You can't!” Grim argued, but I held up my hand.

“I'm the eldest. The decision is mine. Something isn't right with her. Get her out.”

Without waiting to hear another word from my brothers or mother, I ran. With the human's scent still teasing my nose, I barreled through the snow, putting as much distance between us as I could.

I made it as far as the rocky shore before I had to stop. As I’d run, things had become clearer. There was no other explanation for my behavior.

I’d scented the human, and I’d had to be closer. I had to see her.

Beneath my skin, my magic hummed. Stripping off my jacket and clothes, I let the frost overwhelm me, covering my skin in a hard layer of white. But the ice didn’t touch my heart. I put my hand over it like I could ease the growing ache, but it was impossible. Now that I’d recognized the human for what she was, I needed to return to her.

Impossible.

I couldn’t. There had never been a human skaoi before. And then there were my brothers. What was happening with the twins? Why would they be so protective of my skaoi?

Unless, she wasn’t mine.

She had to be. There was no other explanation for my behavior.

And yet it couldn’t be.

I would have to deny the bond, deny the pull of my magic to a human who had none. To bond to a human would put all the Jötnar at risk. In this age of technology, when humans had more than telephoto lenses and could transmit their proof of our existence across continents in less than a second, such a bonding was all the more impossible.

So why did my magic quake and twist at the idea of denying what I felt?

Behind me, footsteps dislodged the rocks, kicking them into the waves. “What do you two want?”

“She’s our skaoi,” Raynor announced, speaking for himself and Grim.

I turned to glower at my brothers. Grim’s arms were crossed. He wore his magical form, covering himself in his ice, as did Raynor. They were as off-balance as me to appear like this in daylight. We were usually in better control of ourselves.

“She can’t be your skaoi; she's human,” I argued, leaving out the part about her being mine as well. As out of control as we were, the declaration would only bring discord. On second thought, I could use a good fight. “And she’s my skaoi.”

“Impossible,” Grim blurted, eyes going white. Good. He was getting angry.

“It’s true. But none of us are bonding to her. She has to go back.”

“No.” Raynor’s eyes were as white as Grim’s. His hands clenched, the white darkening, becoming thicker, harder. Protection for the battle he was about to initiate.

“I’m sending her back. It doesn’t matter who she is, what matters is what she is. No Jötnar will bond to a human. It will be the end of us.”

“No,” Grim replied, and threw himself at me.

We rolled, the water crackling where it met our skin. Ice formed then disintegrated as it was smashed by the waves. I got him under me and drew back my fist, but Raynor tackled me.

The fight began again. Grim waited for an opening to slam me into the ground, and when it looked like I would have the upper hand, Raynor tossed himself into the fray. Unlike the other fights we'd had which generally ended in a draw, something spurred my brothers on. When I thought they’d exhausted themselves, they worked in concert. When Grim needed a breath, Raynor fought harder.

I’d always been bigger and stronger. This was the first time they’d ever given me a true fight. One I wasn’t sure I could win.

The air was filled with the sound of ice breaking, of one, or both, or all of us flailing in the water. Grim and Raynor faced me and leapt. One went high and the other low, and my head hit a rock, cracking against the surface. My vision dimmed, and my coordination slowed.

“Give up,” I told them. “No matter how long this lasts. If you pound me into nothing, it still can’t happen. Imagine the damage her presence could do. Imagine what the elders would do when they learned of her.”

“You’d give her up without a fight.” Raynor growled.

“I’m being realistic.”

“You’re being a coward,” Grim countered.

“Am I?” I asked. “We bond to her, and what then? What happens when the tribes come to pay their respects and they see a human? A woman weak and unable to protect herself. They’ll turn her to dust where she stands. She has no magic, no power. And then there are our children. Would they be human or Jötnar? How would they protect themselves against stronger giants? Do you see the impossibility of it?”

As my words filtered through the haze of their anger, the fight left my brothers. Their skin turned from white to pink. The magic inside them left them looking the way I’d last seen them at the cabin—clad in furs and skins.

“It’s not impossible,” Raynor whispered, though I could see now he believed as I did. He continued to deny the knowledge that we were not meant to bond to our skaoi. Not for our own well-being, but for hers, and those of our children. “It shouldn’t happen this way. If the gods chose her for us, we should be with her.”

“Maybe we aren’t meant to be with anyone,” Grim interrupted. “A skaoi for both of us?” His gaze held Raynor’s. “It was too good to believe.”

His earlier certainty bled completely now, and Raynor nodded. “It was.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. It hadn't been my intention to break my brothers’ hearts, but there was no other way for this to end. Inside my chest, my heart cracked. I felt my magic surge inside me, a frisson of power beneath my skin turning to ice. I had merely seen the woman’s eyes, and it gutted me to know she couldn’t be mine. What would my brothers feel, who I knew had touched and held her?

“Do we return?” Grim asked, his voice as husky as Raynor’s. I nodded.

“We protect her and mother tonight, and in the morning, we bring her to the clearing.”

“And then what?” Raynor asked.

“Then we try to forget.”

From my brothers’ faces, they believed such a thing as unlikely as I did.