Chapter 36
Sigurd
The feast lasts late into the night, just like the ones back home.
We’re drunk when we get back to the mansion we’re staying in, but we’re happy, and we can’t keep our hands off our mate. We burn off a lot of what we ate and it’s almost dawn when we finally pass out. But it doesn’t matter. We can sleep as late as we want.
Or we could have before we had three babies to care for. They wake us up after a few hours, and we let Avery sleep while we walk to the nursery. My brothers and I are all tired and while the alcohol is leaving our system, we’re still feeling it.
“Come here, kid,” I murmur as I pick up Vivar. “You hungry?”
Vivar just cries, so I fix him a bottle of formula and sit down. That shuts him up immediately and he starts guzzling the formula like I was guzzling mead at the feast. Definitely my boy. I can’t wait to teach him how to be a warrior, even if he never has to fight like we have.
“So, how are we feeling about Midgard 13 after the feast?” Erik asks, sitting down with Revna in his arms.
“It’s a nice place. I’ve found nothing here that concerns me,” Ivar says. “Other than what Avery told us about their genetic engineering.”
“Yeah, I can’t believe they felt the pull toward their mates and just… did away with it,” Erik says. “But even more unusual is that they had to do that to begin with. We lost that long ago, and they’re more advanced than us.”
“Not just more advanced, but they have she-wolves,” I say. “Not sure how I feel about a woman who can keep up with me on four paws.”
“Our history is full of fierce women warriors who could best men on the battlefield. Not those with Fenrir’s Mark, of course,” Erik smirks. “Still, that intrigues me as much as everything else. We don’t even have legends about she-wolves.”
“At the end of the day, it’s all because of Morlock and his people,” Ivar says. “Fenrir might not have been the only wolf who was cloned. There could have been she-wolves who came with him but didn’t survive long enough to pass on their gift.”
“Yeah, I assume they didn’t send the same clones to every world,” Erik says. “Would explain why some worlds know nothing of our kind. Why on others, we’re just legend and myth.”
“And here, we see what we’re capable of,” Ivar says. “Maybe if we’d stopped pillaging and plundering our neighbors, we could have had a world like this. One where we had medicine that would prevent a plague from spreading.”
“Raiding allowed us to advance as far as we did,” I admit, shaking my head. “A lot of our technology came from things we learned on other worlds while we were pillaging and plundering them.”
“Yes, but if we look at what happened here, we can see that it stifled the growth of our world as well as the ones we raided,” Erik argues.
“Being constantly raided by Viking wolves forced our neighbors to adapt for war, just like we did. Here, they took a different path, and it was a technological singularity for them.”
“Doesn’t mean their way is right and our way was wrong,” I growl.
“We’re just different. We have our ways.
They have theirs. What will they do if a more advanced civilization shows up?
It could easily happen. We were always worried about that once we started traveling the stars, even if we couldn’t get very far. ”
“It’s a concern, definitely. Midgard 13 hasn’t developed the trillinium compound, despite all their advances. I’m sure they could, but I guess they never needed to,” Erik says. “When they fought the Intergalactic Alliance, it was before they were using the laser weapons they have now.”
“We didn’t really develop it either, brother,” Ivar chuckles. “We just stole it.”
I lean back, cradling Vivar while he drinks from the bottle.
“At some point we have to make a decision. Either we’re staying, and if we are, we need to let the people back home know.
If we aren’t, we need to figure out how to deal with the Intergalactic Alliance.
Or at least the warship parked over our planet. ”
“This would be a good place to raise our children,” Erik muses. “They’d have good lives here. Never know struggle. Never know war. It’s not the future we imagined, but it’s one worth considering.”
“I just fucking hate the thought of abandoning our home. Everyone was expecting us to bring mates for them,” Ivar sighs. “If we don’t return, they won’t even have a ship. In a few generations, they could be primitives again, barely able to understand the technology that existed before the plague.”
“If they even find a way to reproduce,” Erik says. “But maybe there’s another way. What if we could convince President Haggard to allow all of them to come here?”
“We promised them viable mates, and there are plenty here,” Ivar says. “It just means they won’t find their true mates. They won’t have what we have with Avery.”
“We don’t even know why we feel the connection to Avery that we do.
It doesn’t really make sense for our mate to be born so far away on a planet none of us have ever visited,” Erik says.
“I’m sure it has something to do with the clones, but there’s still a genetic marker in humans that isn’t common across the universe. ”
“Whatever it is, it guided us to our mate. I will not question it,” I grunt.
“But even if we bring back a dozen human women, there’s no guarantee they’d be mates for them like Avery is for us.
They may still never find what we’ve found, regardless of what planet they spend the rest of their lives on. ”
“I’ll go to our ship later today and speak with the others back home,” Ivar says. “I’d like to discuss it with them before I bring it up to President Haggard.”
“That’s for the best,” Erik agrees. “If they’re not willing to relocate, then there’s no reason to ask President Haggard to extend his hospitality more than he already has.”
“And no guarantee he will, even if they’re interested in relocating,” Ivar continues. “There’s still an Intergalactic Alliance warship to deal with, and he mentioned he doesn’t want more trouble with them. They respect their treaties here.”
“Not enough to turn away four fugitives,” I say. “Seven if you count the kids.”
“He said we’re brothers because we have Fenrir’s Mark,” Erik counters. “Which means that despite all their technology, they still feel some sort of connection to it. To their wolves.”
“I don’t think we should make any concrete decisions while we’re this worn out,” I say, setting the empty bottle down beside me. “Vivar’s already asleep now that he’s finished eating.”
“So is Revna…” Erik glances over at Ivar. “Tove, too. Maybe that means we can get some rest as well.”
We carefully place the babies in their cribs. Despite how exhausted we are, we still linger in the nursery, watching them sleep. Three miracles, just like their mother. Despite everything we’ve been through, I’d go through it all over again just to be standing right here.
“Alright, let’s go back to bed before they wake up and see us staring at them,” Erik whispers.
We turn and walk out of the nursery. When we get to the bedroom, Avery is fast asleep. She looks like an angel right now. So fucking beautiful. If I wasn’t so tired, I’d wake her up and fuck her back to sleep. But I shouldn’t disturb her. She needs her rest too.
After we get into bed, I toss and turn for a while.
I don’t usually have a lot on my mind. That’s changed lately.
I want to believe we could have an amazing life on Midgard 13, but I’m still a warrior at heart.
The thought of retiring my hammer for good, putting my shield on the wall like decoration, dressing in a suit every day and never putting on my armor again…
It feels almost blasphemous, yet you can’t really be blasphemous if there are no gods to hear your prayers.
But Avery’s happy here. I can’t ignore that.
This planet is closer to the one she knows than Midgard 21 will be.
That’s our home, not hers. We’d take care of her, because it’s our way, but would she truly be happy?
Her happiness means more than my own. The safety of my children means more than old traditions and customs.
We still have obligations to our people, though.
We can’t just abandon them. There’s no way to know how long the Intergalactic Alliance warship will stay parked over Midgard 21, looking for us.
They were there a long time while they waited for us to go extinct.
They didn’t leave until they thought we were.
Without mates, it’s only a matter of time until our children are all that’s left of Midgard 21.
We can’t let that happen. It’s not fair to them.
This is more responsibility than I ever expected to have.
But none of it can be ignored.