Chapter 4 What. The. Devil Emoji.
What. The. Devil Emoji.
Fenrir Variant Omicron: We are headed back. Please prepare the East Residency.
Fenrir Variant Upsilon: Back? We did not catch her. Tell us we did not catch her.
Fenrir Variant Omicron: We cannot tell us that.
Fenrir Variant Upsilon: Fenrir Prime will not be happy.
Fenrir Variant Omicron: We are aware.
Fenrir Variant Upsilon: If we insist on being defiant, be defiant. Do not bring her here. We must hide her.
Fenrir Variant Omicron: Where?
Fenrir Variant Upsilon: Somewhere Fenrir Prime won’t find her.
Fenrir Variant Omicron: Where would that be? Her burn is one of a kind. And we patrol daily.
Fenrir Variant Upsilon: By the fire star, we have done nothing by catching her, only shown Fenrir Prime we cannot be trusted while moving her time of death to a later turn.
Fenrir Variant Omicron: Not catching her was never an option for us. Fenrir Prime should have noted that before issuing the impossible order.
Fenrir Variant Upsilon: What if she is too clever again? Nothing good will come of bringing her here.
Fenrir Variant Omicron: There is nowhere else. Prepare the East Residency.
Fenrir Variant Omicron: Prepare the East Residency, Upsilon.
Fenrir Variant Omicron: Upsilon?
Fenrir Variant Upsilon: Is she awake?
Fenrir Variant Omicron: No, we disced her as soon as she fell into our arms.
Fenrir Variant Upsilon: We will prepare the East Wing.
Fenrir Variant Omicron: Many thanks. We are grateful for—
[TRANSMISSION ENDED]
Transcript from Episode 5 of Kiwi Koala’s HoloImmersive “Inside the Black Box” Series? (Copyright: The WolfNet Gazette).
Kiwi: So, you’ve said a fated mate spell—either by accident or to get yourself out of a sticky situation—and now you’re stuck in a foreign time and place.
No dramas, friends! Your favorite koala Kiwi’s got you sorted!
Here are the…
[sfx: crowd yell and graphic] Top 8 Things To Do If You Find Yourself Stuck In Another Time Period!!!
Kiwi: ONE! Don’t freak out.
Kiwi: TWO! Suss out WHEN you are. First things first, yeah? Because that will deeply affect how you’re going to approach NUMBER FOUR.
Kiwi: THREE! I mean it, friend, stop freaking out! In fact, if you’re still freaking out, go straight back to number two.
I woke up on a bed of furs in a dark cavern pierced by radiant beams of moonlight from an opening high above.
And I was not alone.
A swell of panic rose in my throat when I saw the male sitting at the foot of my makeshift bed.
A very, very large male. Even kneeling in seiza — that formal Japanese legs-tucked-under, back-erect position I'd spent a miserable two days coding Kiwi into for a holoimmersive about Hokkaido Wolf Samurais — he was enormous.
But this guy had it down perfectly.
Wait. I knew him. The fog of my sleep faded away.
White hair. Emerald eyes gleaming in the darkness. This was the male who’d caught me when I fell through the portal. The one who’d smelled like fire and made something erupt in my lower belly before I passed out.
Was this my fated mate?
He was giant, I realized. Even in this position, he towered, casting a long shadow over me. He had to be even taller than a bear shifter.
But he wasn’t hulky like the Mountain King or my brother. He wore nothing but a pair of black pants, and every muscle was carved sharp by the moonlight. In his perfectly still position, he looked like a marble statue with a bonfire burning inside of it.
I blinked. Like most wolves, my vision was excellent, even at night. But there was something about this guy that made me doubt my eyes.
He was ethereal in a way that gave me that uncanny valley feeling of early 2020s AI. Perfectly symmetrical, with glossy white hair. As if someone had designed him to look like a human. But gotten it slightly wrong. His proportions were too perfect. The symmetry unnatural.
He wasn’t human. My nose confirmed it. However, he wasn’t a wolf, either.
So what is he?
The question typed across my mind like vintage keyboard strokes. Along with, Why is he just sitting there, so eerily still?
Somehow, I worked up the courage and enough saliva in my dry mouth to say, “Hello?”
He didn’t answer.
I rose into a sitting position, then quickly regretted letting the fur slip down when the cold air goose bumped my skin.
I was naked. Even worse, it was freezing in a near-arctic way I wasn’t used to after a week of perfect secret kingdom summer.
I pulled the blanket back up to my chin. Then frowned again when its scent hit my nose.
The fur smelled like an animal I couldn’t identify.
Where were my clothes? The duffel bag with all my supplies? Had he taken them? Or had they been lost in the portal?
I tried again.
“Hello?”
Still no answer. His head hung, fully bowed. I might have thought he was asleep, or even frozen to death, if not for those emerald-green eyes emitting a faint glow.
I swallowed. Looked to both sides. We were in some kind of cavern—or maybe a very large room with round rock walls. The space was completely devoid of furniture, save for my fur-blanket-floor-bed setup.
“Hi,” I tried again. “Do you speak English? Are you my fated…”
I trailed off. Even after spending an entire year documenting and reporting on all the fated mates in President Nightwolf’s privileged family line, I still found it hard to believe that I’d apparently had to utter a fated mate spell to get out of dying.
But a holoscribe was going to holoscribe—and figure a way out of wherever and whenever this was. So, for the good of the story I could only hope I’d eventually be able to sell to a very eager paranormal news outlet, I asked, “Are you my fated mate?”
“By the fire star, you should not be here.” His voice was disconcerting, to say the least. A scrape of glass over burning coals.
But my heart soared with hope.
He speaks English! Oh, thank god! He speaks my language! I was hugely relieved—even if he did so with an unsettling glass-and-smoke accent.
This could have gone a lot, lot worse.
In my research, there was almost always a major language barrier when a wolf traveled through time.
Even if it was within their own country.
As I learned when I trekked all the way to Norway for my holoimmersive on Ola NAME’s time-traveling fathers, things got confusing real quick when Old Norse met the modern version.
But he knew modern English, so it might be possible I was still in the current century—maybe even on the same continent.
“You can understand me! All the happy face emojis!”
First rule of time travel, Kiwi’s algorithmically modulated chipper Australian voice reminded me from my memory. Ask him WHEN you are.
That’s right! I eagerly reached out and touched his arm. “Can you tell me exactly when I am? And where? And then maybe we can—”
“You should not be here!”
The words came out on a roar.
In an instant, the giant male was no longer kneeling in seiza but knocking me onto my back.
And putting a knife to my throat.
Oh god, oh god, oh god!
In not one story I researched had someone been so upset about getting an unexpected fated mate that they killed them upon arrival….
My heart beat like a drum.
I didn’t dare talk, though, or even beg him not to kill me. The edge of the knife pressed into my throat, threatening to break skin if I so much as breathed too hard.
Then, just as quickly as he’d jumped on me, his heavy weight lifted away.
“You… should not be here.” The smoky words came out less angry this time. Almost sad.
He was right.
My heart thundered in my throat at the enormity of it: falling through time, being caught by my possible fated mate, and now… whatever this effed-up situation was.
I sat up carefully, uncertain of what my next move should be but pretty sure it should involve running in the opposite direction of the guy who saved me—then tried to kill me.
My muscles tightened as I prepared to edge to my feet for a mad dash.
But then the white-haired giant’s hand snaked out and grabbed hold of my wrist, twisting it so that the soft side of my forearm was exposed.
“What are you doing? Are you crazy? Don’t…!” I shrieked, only to trail off when I noticed that his bare torso was… odd.
The giant had no nipples. Nor a belly button. Only shimmering pale skin covered his chest, and his stomach was lined with light ridges. It kind of looked like horizontal scales. But a vertical bulge, long and thick, distended his navel-less lower stomach.
I squinted because it kind of looked like... but you couldn’t have one of those inside your stomach. Could you?
“You will sleep again.”
Like a magic trick, the strange male produced a flat, shiny black disc in his other hand out of thin air.
He pressed it into the soft skin of my inner forearm.
A cold bite flashed up my arm, sharp enough to make me gasp.
“What is…?” I started to ask before my words slurred, making it impossible to form a sentence.
Then, suddenly, it was impossible to keep my eyes open.
What. The. Devil Emoji?
That was my last thought before I passed out again.