Chapter 18
Tor had been silent for Fenris's entire story, but now he leaned forward and rested his arms on the table.
"And the úlfheenar? We are meant to be your kids or something.
I want to know what the truth is before the rest of this gets worse.
The cult that wanted to resurrect you was stopped, but that doesn't mean there won't be fanatics who will see your return as some kind of sign of their supremacy.
They will all think that they are your army. "
Fenris shook his head. "They aren't. The úlfheenar were Havi's before they had anything to do with me. He gathered nine of his best shaman-warriors and gifted them with the magic to shift. His blessing, his power, not mine. Their children inherited the ability, and so on down the bloodline."
He ran a finger along a scratch in the table's worn varnish and didn't lift his eyes from it.
"When I agreed to be bound, my human wife and our children needed somewhere safe to live.
Havi placed them among the úlfheenar so they could grow up with others who could shift too.
They wouldn't have survived in the human world alone, and my wife had no idea how to handle wolf children. "
"So the úlfheenar were always Havi's warriors, and your children were fostered into it," Ciara said, her breath coming out with a whoosh. "They had been made by magic, not blood after all. I guess it is one less mystery to ponder. I can't imagine how Ulfheim would react to the news."
"I vote for getting someone else to tell them that the myth must have tangled over the centuries while we are away on our epic quest," Layla chimed in.
"Somewhere along the way, the fostering must have become a founding, and the úlfheenar started being called my children directly." Fenris shifted in his chair. "I can see how it could happen. Stories drift. Names blur. Thousands of years is long enough for any truth to become something else."
Tor growled with rumbling frustration. "Linnea almost fucking died because that lunatic cult believed—"
"Tor. Don't start," Ciara said quietly, her hand going to his forearm, and she looked at Linnea.
Linnea had barely heard anything past, Human wife and our children.
The words sat in her chest. She turned them over, and the picture assembled itself without her permission. A wife. Children. He had agreed to be bound for thousands of years so she could be safe and raise their children among wolves.
A wolf would only ever do that for his fated mate, Linnea thought.
The wife must have been extraordinary. The kind of woman a god of wolves chose had to be bright and strong to be worth thousands of years in a void and every silver scar on his body.
Linnea tried to push back the tides of her insecurities crashing over her. She had a wolf locked inside of her with magic she couldn't figure out how to free, and she had never been enough for anyone.
You are not a wolf. You are not anything. You are a mistake, Skari snarled in her ear, and it was so real she could smell the beer he always had on his breath.
Her wolf was silent. The running commentary, the wagging, the wanting, all of it pulled down into a place Linnea couldn't reach.
The walls of the kitchen were closing in around her, her heart beating too fast as Skari's screaming continued in her head.
Tor's eyes flicked to her face for half a second. She could tell from the way his mouth tightened that she wasn't hiding it as well as she should.
"Excuse me," Linnea said, pushing back from the table. "Got to use the…bathroom?"
"Down the hall," Von replied, pointing.
Nobody stopped her as she walked out of the kitchen with her spine straight and her hands tucked into the sleeves of her sweater so no one would see them shaking.
Von's bathroom was ridiculous enough to push some of her dark thoughts back.
Black tile, brass fixtures, a mirror framed in carved wood that looked like it belonged in a king's bedroom, and a soap dispenser shaped like a sea serpent.
She locked the door, turned on the cold tap, and pressed her wet hands to the back of her neck.
She shut her eyes and focused on the box breathing she’d learned in trauma therapy.
"This is stupid. Your father is dead. You're fine. You knew this dalliance with Fenris couldn't be serious before it started," she whispered under her breath. She had known on the dance floor when Fenris kissed her, and she knew it again now.
She could still choose to enjoy whatever this flirtation was.
She could have it for as long as the quest lasted.
When it ended and he went back to Asgard or wherever gods went when they were done with mortal women, she could remember it as all part of the adventure.
She didn't have to make it bigger than it was.
Linnea looked at her own face in Von's mirror. Her eyes were dry. Her color was fine. She rolled her shoulders back. Magic danced under her skin, sparking through her eyes, and seeing it was what she needed to remind herself who she really was.
"Fuck this pouting. You're a volva, doing what the gods asked you to do. You have a wyrd to fulfill, and that never included keeping him," she told herself sternly.
She waited a beat for her wolf to snap or snarl at her. It didn't come. It had retreated again somewhere so deep that Linnea couldn't hear her at all.
Good.
The silence was better and helped her focus on her real job. That was getting Von's help to find Loki. It wasn't fucking about with Fenris, and it certainly wasn't getting feelings over him.
Linnea dried her wet hands on Von's very expensive towels and went back out. She might have always disappointed her shit parents, but she would die before disappointing her goddess.