Chapter 4
Linnea woke warmer than she had been in months, and with a heaviness pressing into her that her sleep-fogged brain took seconds to identify as a body beside her.
The fog cleared, and the previous night returned. She was still processing when the weight beside her shifted and vanished. The wolf's paws thumped lightly on the floor before walking from the room.
Linnea lay in the warm hollow he had left, staring at the ceiling for a count of ten while remembering how to be a person. Her stomach growled, and she slowly sat up. She needed all the caffeine she could get before she figured out how to contact Havi.
Coffee first, the gods later.
Linnea rubbed her face and headed for the kitchen. She stopped dead in the doorway, a soundless little choke lodging in her throat.
Fenris was standing in the lounge room with his back to her. His hair was a long, dark fall between his shoulder blades, and the silver scars that crisscrossed the breadth of his back looked like rivers woven across a map.
He was also buck ass naked.
Oh, YES, her wolf purred in delight. LOOK AT ALL THAT.
Linnea's brain shut down. Blue screen of death. Total system failure.
And because the Norns were cruel and had a terrible sense of humor, he started to turn.
Linnea slapped both hands over her eyes.
"Towel," she said, her voice a strangled whisper. "Please, get a towel or something immediately. Check the bathroom. I would be eternally grateful if you would like… cover all that up."
There was a long pause during which her wolf made a series of suggestions Linnea wasn't going to entertain. Somewhere from the other side of the room came a rusted little laugh.
Great. Fenris was laughing at her. Like an asshole.
"Shut up, you jerk," she snapped, her face burning behind her hands.
Still laughing, bare feet went past her and down the hall. The bathroom door clicked, and only then did Linnea lower her hands. She pressed her forehead against the doorframe and took several careful breaths.
Oh well, that was the best way to wake up, her wolf said again, more dreamily. Did you see the size of his massive…
Stop!
I want it. It's ours now. I've decided.
Stop it. Not ours.
"Fuck." Linnea banged her forehead once against the doorframe for emphasis and went looking for clothes that might fit him.
Linnea whispered another prayer of forgiveness as she went inside Havi's room and rummaged through his wardrobe.
Havi was, with all due respect, a big war god, but Fenris was the son of a giantess, and looked it.
The math was not mathing in the clothes department. Nothing in there was going to fit him.
She gave up on the wardrobe entirely, took the largest bath towel she could find from the linen cupboard, a thick gray thing big enough to wrap around two people, and hung it on the bathroom doorknob from the outside.
"There's a towel big enough here," she told the door. "Nothing of Havi's will fit you, and I doubt the towels in the bathroom can either. This one on the door is the best I can do. Please come out wearing it."
There was a small silence from inside before a voice cleared and said, "Thank you… I don't know your name."
"Linnea," she replied awkwardly.
"Thank you, Linnea."
She fled to the kitchen, her face flaming like an idiot, and put the coffee on. She found eggs and milk in the fridge, and both were still in date.
"Scrambled eggs it is," she muttered under her breath.
I have some eggs he can scramble, her wolf said.
That doesn't even make sense.
Does too, you just have no imagination.
She ignored the commentary and cracked eggs into a bowl. She placed a pan on the heat and poured scrambled eggs into it. She didn't think about the naked god. Or the laughter that skittered over her skin.
When Fenris came back into the kitchen, he had the towel wrapped around his hips. He padded barefoot to the barstool and sat at the counter.
She poured coffee, set the cup in front of him, and as his fingers closed around the handle, his knuckles brushed hers lightly. Her wolf, who had been keeping up a constant joyful internal commentary all morning, threw her head back inside Linnea and howled so loudly she jumped in surprise.
"Sorry. Coffee's hot," she mumbled.
Fenris's eyes flicked to her face. He considered her with a careful curiosity, and focused back on the cup. She scooped eggs onto two plates and pushed his across the counter.
"They are eggs," she said when he stared at them. "I'm sure you've had them before. Probably thousands of years ago but maybe not like this… and I'll shut up now."
Fenris's mouth twitched, and if she squinted, it was almost a smile. He picked up the fork she had set beside the plate, speared his eggs, and ate them. The towel slipped on his hips, and he resettled it without looking down.
Linnea stared into her own coffee and reminded herself that she had seen half-naked men before. Literally all the time when she was in Ulfheim, because shifters had zero problems with nudity.
"Have you had a shower before?" she asked after finishing her eggs.
Fenris stopped chewing and shook his head.
"Come on, I'll show you," she said. "Bring the towel."
She walked him to the bathroom, flicked the light on, gestured at the shower, and tried to explain what it was to a god who had been bound underground before plumbing had been invented. She turned the tap, and hot water came out of the wall in a sudden rush.
Fenris watched the water with patient consideration before putting his hand under the spray. He seemed mesmerized as water ran over his fingers and steam rose around him.
"Verdict?" Linnea asked.
He nodded once, slowly, and she took that to mean he liked it.
She showed him the soap and the shampoo in a tall green glass bottle on the shelf because the All-Father was apparently bougie about his hair product. Fenris took the bottle in his hand, lifted it to his nose, and sniffed, inhaling the eucalyptus and mint like it might explode.
The sight of the world-eater of Ragnarok, Fenris Lokisson himself, standing barefoot in a gray towel and sniffing Havi's shampoo with the grave intensity of a connoisseur finally made her crack.
Linnea burst out laughing before she had the sense to hold it in. Fenris gave her a confused half-smile. "Sorry, I'm sure he has more. Use as much as you want."
Linnea showed him the small cedar-lined sauna attached to the bathroom, which Havi's house magic also kept warm. She gestured into the heat, said something brisk and impersonal about leaving him to it, and shut the bathroom door behind her.
Linnea made another coffee, and she drank half of it standing at the counter with her eyes closed, and her wolf, who had finally simmered down to a low, excited buzz, was now interested only in the closed bathroom door.
She needed to contact Freya or Havi. She had a feeling Aunty Alruna would know how, but she wasn't sure she wanted to ask the queen in case the gods didn't want her involved.
Havi's cabin had a landline because he was old and contrary, and it lived on a small table by the front door. She went looking for an address book, a notebook, a scrap of paper, anything that might point her at a number for him or Freya.
Havi's cabin was insultingly tidy. There was a small leather-bound journal in a drawer that turned out to be six pages of fishing entries from last summer.
She put her face in her hands because she was going to have to do this with magic. She had been a volva for nearly two years, so surely she could call her own goddess on the metaphysical landline if she dared to.
Gudrun had taught her how to do the trance work, or dream walking, so she could reach out and act as a bridge between the gods and Midgard. She had never dared do it outside of training, and she was about to have to try while a Norse god showered in the next room.
"This is my life now," she informed the empty cabin. "This is what my life is."
An hour later, she was still debating what to do when she heard the bathroom door open.
Fenris had the towel back around his hips, his skin pink and flushed with sauna heat, his hair clean and wet, falling past his shoulders in heavy black waves that dripped at the ends.
His scars stood out across the warm flush of him, ankle to wrist to chest to throat, every one of them bright as a trail of moonlight.
Instead of a fearsome god, he looked like a disoriented man whose hair and beard were a wild mess of tangles.
Linnea found herself saying, "Would you like me to help cut all of that for you?"
She gestured vaguely at his head with what she hoped was a brisk professional manner. Her wolf, who had been mercifully quiet for the last half hour, woke up with a sound of interest and started wagging her tail.
Fenris hooked his foot around the leg of the kitchen stool, pulled it out, and sat down on it. He lifted his chin, and he gave her one of the few words he was willing to spend. "Yes."
Linnea was too surprised by his voice to move for a moment.
Fenris mistook her response for something else because he cleared his throat and added, "Please?"
"Okay, stay right there." Linnea couldn't stop the smile from spreading across her face as she got up and went to look for scissors.