Chapter 19 #2
"Brownies," I repeat flatly, disbelief evident in my voice. "Multiple? One of them was the brownie I was sent to capture today?" I must be losing my mind. He's in my apartment casually mentioning the magickal creature I failed to capture as if they're mutual friends who helped him cook dinner.
He nods, completely serious. "They're also the ones who cleaned your apartment. And they shopped for the ingredients for me for dinner." He gestures toward the pot he's been stirring. "Though I did most of the cooking..."
I take a step forward, weapon still trained on him. "Put the spoon down and step away from the stove."
He complies immediately, setting the spoon aside and taking two steps back, hands still raised. The movement causes the muscles in his chest and abdomen to flex, drawing my eyes downward before I can stop myself. I quickly snap my gaze back to his face, hating the heat that rises to my cheeks.
"Why aren't you wearing a shirt?" I demand, hoping my voice sounds more authoritative than flustered.
A slow smile spreads across his face. Not smug, exactly, but knowing. "The brownies said women on Earth find this garment especially attractive. Grey sweatpants and no shirt." He glances down at himself, then back at me. "Was their information incorrect?"
Brownies. Giving fashion advice. To seduce me.
And damn them, they're right. My eyes betray me, drawn to the sculpted planes of his chest, the way the sweatpants hang dangerously low on his hips.
Focus, Astrid. He broke into your home. He's the enemy.
The very attractive, half-naked enemy standing in your kitchen making food. Get it together.
I open and close my mouth twice before finding my voice. "That's... that's not the point! The point is you're in my apartment! Illegally!"
"I told you, the brownies opened it," he says like that’s a perfectly normal explanation. "And I made you dinner. Beef stew. Old family recipe. You should try it before it gets cold."
He reaches for a bowl on the counter, and I tighten my grip on the gun. "Don't move!"
"It's just a bowl," he says, his tone gentle as if soothing a spooked animal. "For the stew."
"I don't want stew! I want answers!" But even as I say it, my stomach betrays me with a growl loud enough for both of us to hear. I haven't eaten since breakfast, and whatever he's cooking smells absolutely incredible.
His smile widens slightly. "Your body disagrees." He moves to the stove again, keeping his movements slow and deliberate. "Please, sit. Eat something. Then we can talk."
I should arrest him. I should call for backup. I should do anything except what I actually do, which is lower my weapon slightly and say, "Why are you here? Really?"
"To get to know you," he says simply, ladling stew into a bowl. "And to help you understand what's happening."
"What's happening?" I repeat.
"With us." He places the bowl on my small kitchen table, then reaches for a bottle of wine. "Would you like some?"
"This is not a date," I snap, finally holstering my weapon. If he wanted to hurt me, he would have tried by now. Besides, I'm relatively confident I can take him if necessary. Probably. Maybe.
Though the memory of that massive wolf in the forest makes me less certain than I'd like to be.
"Not a date," he agrees, pouring himself a glass. "Just dinner and conversation."
I approach the table cautiously, eyeing the steaming bowl of stew. It looks as good as it smells—chunks of beef, carrots, potatoes in a rich, herb-flecked broth. My stomach growls again, louder this time.
"How do I know it's not poisoned?" I ask, though I don't really believe it is.
He looks genuinely shocked at the suggestion. "I would never harm you, Astrid." The way he says my name sends a shiver down my spine. Soft, almost reverent. "Never."
I believe him. That's the strangest part. Something in me recognizes the truth in his words, feels the sincerity radiating from him. It's the same instinct that made me let him go in the restaurant. The same one that kept me from shooting him when he carried me out of that sinkhole.
Slowly, I pull out a chair and sit. "You still haven't told me your name."
"Fenrir," he says, taking the seat across from me. "Fenrir Thorsson, but most people call me Fen."
Fenrir. The name resonates in my chest like a struck bell. The wolf destined to swallow the sun at Ragnarok. Of course he'd be named after the most dangerous creature in Norse mythology. But Fen... the shortened version rolls through my mind like it belongs there. Familiar. Right.
"Like the wolf from Norse mythology," I say, picking up a spoon and cautiously tasting the stew. It's delicious. Rich and savory and somehow familiar, like a meal from childhood I'd forgotten.
"Yes." Something flickers across his face again, but it’s too quick to identify. "Like that."
I take another spoonful, hunger overriding caution. "Why did you save me? In Missouri?"
"Would you rather I'd left you in that hole with a broken leg?" He raises an eyebrow, sipping his wine.
"No, but..." I set down my spoon, studying his face. "You could have killed me. Should have killed me. I was hunting you."
"And yet you let me go," he counters. “And again today.”
I have no good answer for that. None that I'm willing to share, anyway.
He leans forward slightly, his golden eyes intent on mine. "We both know why, Astrid."
"Enlighten me," I say. Why did I let him go? Because I was scared? No. I wasn’t scared.
"Because you recognize what I am. Just as I recognize what you are." His gaze is steady, unflinching.
The world stops. My carefully constructed reality cracks down the middle. Someone knows.
"I don't know what you're talking about," I say automatically, the lie bitter on my tongue.
"Don't you?" He tilts his head, studying me.
Heat floods my face as the memory resurfaces…
my delirious confession in the sinkhole after he saved me.
"I'm not supposed to heal this fast. No human does.
But I'm not... I'm not entirely human." Words spoken in a moment of weakness, when I thought I was about to die at the jaws of a massive wolf.
Of course he knows. I told him my most dangerous secret, and instead of killing me, he carried me to safety.
I maintain my aim, but something shifts inside me.
I could shoot him. Should shoot him, according to every protocol I've ever followed.
He's a confirmed Class 3 entity in my home.
But then what? There'd be a body to explain, reports to file, questions about why a wolf shifter targeted me specifically.
And deep down, I know why he's here. The same reason I let him go. Twice.
Slowly, I lower my weapon to my side, though I don't holster it yet. "If I wanted you dead, you would be," I say, more to reassure myself than him. "Why are you really here? What do you want?"
"Your trust," he says simply. "To start."
Trust? Is he serious? I was expecting threats, blackmail, some leverage to keep his secret safe. That's how the world works. That's how my world works. GUIDE taught me that trust is a luxury I can't afford, especially with someone who knows what I am.
One word from him to the wrong person and I'm strapped to an execution pyre. He’s a predator asking the prey to trust him not to bite.
I laugh, the sound hollow. "I don't even know you."
"You know enough," he says, and there's something in his tone, a certainty, a connection that resonates in my chest like a struck bell.
The strange electrical sensation that's been humming beneath my skin since Missouri intensifies as he speaks, as if responding to his words.
Or to his proximity. Every cell in my body seems to vibrate with awareness of him.
His scent, his heat, the subtle power that emanates from him like radiation from the sun.
Then the timer on the stove dings, shattering the moment.
Fenrir pulls back, rising to his feet in a fluid motion that makes the muscles in his abdomen flex. "Bread's done," he says, moving to the oven. "The brownies left the recipe. It should go well with the stew."
I watch him, this impossible man in my kitchen, and try to make sense of what's happening. Of what I'm feeling. Of the fact that I'm sitting here having dinner with a magickal being I should be hunting, and it feels more right than anything has in years.
"You still haven't told me how the brownies got into my apartment," I say, clinging to practical questions as an anchor against the tide of uncertainty.
He turns, a half-smile curving his lips and returns to the table with a loaf of fresh bread. "They simply... persuaded the lock to give them access."
"Persuaded the lock," I repeat, watching as he rips off small pieces of the loaf. His hands are large but move with surprising grace, each movement precise and controlled. "Is that supposed to make sense to me?"
He smiles again, placing a chunk of bread on a small plate beside my stew. "Brownies have old magick. Small, but potent. Locks, doors, windows—these things remember when they were trees and stones and minerals. They respond to the right kind of asking."
I take a bite of the bread, which is somehow even better than it smells—crusty on the outside, soft and pillowy inside. "So what you're saying is that my apartment security is useless against magical home invasion."
"Only the brownie kind." His eyes crinkle at the corners when he smiles, something boyish emerging in his otherwise warrior-like features. "They like you, by the way. Said you were kind."
"Kind?" I nearly choke on my bread. "I was literally sent to capture and potentially exterminate one of them today."
"But you didn't." He leans forward, his voice dropping lower. "They see more than most give them credit for. They see what's beneath the surface."
Something in his tone makes my skin prickle with awareness. He's not just talking about the brownies anymore.
"I'm an agent of GUIDE," I say. "That's all they need to know about me."