Chapter 8
Fenris sat on the rug by the couch and listened to Linnea fight for him.
"...because he is Fenris, Tor. The actual Fenris. Yes, the one who is supposed to eat the world. No, he is not eating anyone. He's in the lounge drinking a coffee like a normal man. Stop swearing at me for not telling you where I was going. Oh my gods."
Tor's voice came through the phone speaker as a low rumble. Fenris caught the words easily. ...not what we agreed when you trained as a volva. Lin, you aren't the gods' personal errand girl, and you already sang to him to keep him asleep...
"I know," Linnea said calmly. "I'm telling you I'm not leaving him. The end of the world is everyone’s problem, big brother, not just the gods’. Meet us at Von's. I'm a few hours out. My clothes are at your apartment, so I'll go there first."
"I'll meet you at Ritual. You can tell Von because he sure as shit won't believe this coming from me. You know how much he loves the All-Father."
"I do, and I hope that means he really wants to help us out."
"Just be safe, okay? Fenri has been imprisoned for so long, he might not be okay in the head."
Fenris laughed under his breath. "That is an understatement."
"If Fenris wanted to kill me, I would be dead by now," Linnea growled out. "I wouldn't be on the phone with you. Use your brain."
Fenris grinned, loving her sass.
"You're my little sister. I'm allowed to worry."
"Tell Ciara I said hi, and Tor? Don't be a dick when you meet him. Of all the wolves in Midgard, you owe him that, and I'm pretty sure that we aren't going to be able to fight Ragnarok without him."
"Have the gods told you why they were so nice to each other when they met? I thought they were all meant to be enemies?"
"I know, but something else is going on." Linnea paused for a long moment. "Maybe, if you aren't a massive dick tonight, Fenris will tell us himself."
"Fine, but if he looks at you funny, it will be on."
"And I'll just laugh as he mops the floor with you," Linnea replied, making the wolf in Fenris preen. "Tor? I like him, okay? Be nice."
She hung up before her brother could reply but didn't come back out of her room.
She fights for us, his wolf said proudly.
Fenris didn't argue with him. He hadn't been fought for in a long time. His wife had stopped fighting for him the day Havi had come down out of Asgard and Fenris had been forced to show her what he really was.
Sunniva had laughed at his bad jokes. She had stood beside him at the loom with their children, and she had been brave, up until she found out about the wolf that lived under his skin.
As soon as he had shown her, she stopped looking at him the way a wife looks at a husband, but as a deer looks at shadows in the forest. Fenris had let her go to the small farm Havi found for her, and he had willingly gone to be bound because, somehow, that hurt less than having his wife scared of him.
But our mate fights for us, his wolf said stubbornly. Mate is not afraid. Mate is volva. Mate is strong. Mate is ours.
She's not ours yet.
The wolf made a small, disgusted sound, dismissing him as an idiot.
Linnea came out of her room with a smile back on her face. "I need to feed you again before we drive to Oslo. It's going to be a couple of hours stuck in the car, so if you want to go and have a run, now is your chance."
The wolf was on its feet before Fenris had decided to stand. "Good idea."
"Just don't scare the neighbors unless they deserve it," she replied.
"I'll definitely make sure they deserve it," he said, gave her a small smile, and shifted.
Outside, the cold air scoured the last of the cabin's warmth from his bones. A shudder of pure release rolled through him, and he shook his massive frame from nose to tail-tip.
He launched himself forward, immense muscles coiling and releasing. He leaned into the motion, head low, the clean air honing the edges of his senses. The world rushed at him in a blur of birch and pines.
His nostrils flared, parsing the air. It was a tapestry of new information. A sharp, artificial sweetness stung the back of his throat that he didn't like.
His ears swiveled, catching a sound beneath the silence. Forty paces east, under a fallen log, a heart hammered like a frantic finger tapping against wood. Rabbit. The knowledge was instant, precise. He dismissed it with a flick of an ear. That small, terrified life was not what he was hunting for.
He came out of the pines and into a small clearing where a stream had cut down between two banks of stone and was coursing fast and dark under a thin lid of ice.
He ran along its bank to its end and back.
On the return, he leaped the frozen pool at the bend, landing clean in the snow.
He ran with his tongue out, with his ears back, with the new-old joy of freedom, until he turned a switchback and found Linnea standing on the cottage porch with her arms wrapped around herself in the cold, watching him with a happy smile.
He bolted to the bottom of the porch steps and looked up at her.
"Come inside and eat if you are sick of playing like a puppy," she told him with a little laugh.
His wolf wanted to play and roll on his back at her feet and have his belly scratched, stick his cold nose under her hand, and grab the hem of her sleeve in his teeth and tug.
His wolf wanted her to chase him in the snow and pin her down wriggling underneath him.
Fenris looked at her, and his half-gray eye, the one that warned him when magic was close, caught on something moving around her.
He knew she had a wolf inside of her, but what he hadn't seen was the shape of the magic between her wolf and her. It wasn't bound the way he had been, but there was a fine pale wall, thin as breath, set there by her own magic.
She had locked her wolf away and cut herself from its form permanently.
She did this to herself, the wolf said. Why?
I don't know.
We need to find out. She's…hurting.
Fenris leaned up against Linnea's legs, wanting to comfort the wolf inside of her. The woman hesitated before gently brushing the snow from his coat. The wolf made a happy little sound, wagging its tail and making her jump as it hit her on the ass.
"Hey! Watch that tail, Mister," she warned playfully, swatting him back. Laughing, she opened the door for him. "Come on, this meat isn't going to eat itself."