Her Viking Wolves(111)

However “my female’s joy,” as FJ referred to it, never brought much relief. I, the Detroit princess who’d always known better than to cry, now often fell asleep weeping into my pillows. The ones I refused to wash because they still smelled like my Viking wolves.

Funny, when FJ and Olafr first came into my life, I’d desperately wanted to get rid of them so I could get back to work. But now that they’re gone…work is the last thing I want to do.

Instead, three months pass with me parked in front of the TV, binge-watching Vikings over and over again, trying to remember every single thing Olafr and FJ had said about it. Even though my tattoo is long healed, it feels like a painful wound on the back of my shoulder. And for three months, I barely eat. Barely sleep. Barely do anything that doesn’t involve me crying and longing for the other two-thirds of my soul.

Then one day Alisha calls.

I was vaguely aware she’d gone to Norway during her spring break. Presumably because she’d been planning to all along, but more likely because Clyde put in a call because he was worried about the mental state of his twin sister who’d pretty much locked herself in her rooms.

My heart soars when I see Alisha’s name flash across my screen. And I answer the phone immediately.

“Alisha!” I gasp into the phone. This is literally the first call I’ve taken in three months.

“Hi, honey…” she says.

Hope flares in my chest. Alisha never calls me honey. She’s an academic and not touchy feely like that. Maybe that means…

“Please tell me you found something. Anything.”

“Ah, well…the Norwegian Pack has been very kind to me. They’ve given me full access to their historical archives and…” She’s back to sounding like a professor now. “So far I haven’t been able to find any mention of dragons beyond a tale of a great battle between the dragons and the wolves. And human archaeologists have been finding our Uthbert swords buried all over the place. This gives me cause to believe FJ and Olafr must have succeeded in ridding Scandinavia of the dragon shifters, and the warriors they gathered must have gone on with the swords to fight and live beyond that battle. It also means the swords blended in with their Damascus steel counterparts just as planned. Do you know they’ve even found a few cases of knock-off Uthberts?”#p#分页标题#e#

“That’s awesome!” I say, gripping my phone tighter. “They won!”

“Yes, but…” Alisha takes a deep breath, as if she needs more air to say the next few words. “I also found mention of FJ’s father and his dark beauty relocating to a cabin in the woods soon after their land was rid of dragons.”

“That’s good,” I say, grabbing on to that. “That’s exactly what FJ wanted. For his parents to retire and live out the rest of their lives in peace.”

“Yes, well, I wish the verse had stopped there,” Alisha answers. “But unfortunately there’s another line…about the sadness upon their hearts because all three of their children were lost, never to return.”

I start shaking my head, denial going up like a force field around my soul.

“That doesn’t mean they died.” I remember what FJ told me about the different dialects and how many of Ragnar’s exploits on Vikings were actually deeds accomplished by other human Viking kings and, in a few cases, werewolves.

“Couldn’t ‘lost’ mean a bunch of things? Like maybe they were lost because they came back here?” I ask Alisha, my heart nearly unhinged with desperation. “Or maybe since all of this is based on stories passed down through the generations, couldn’t this mean they got a few things wrong?”

There is a long, heavy pause. Then Alisha says, “Actually Tee, you should understand that taking a cabin in the woods wasn’t just something Viking kings did when they retired, like Granddad. Many did it as a sign of deep mourning, kind of like when someone takes a sabbatical at work because of the death of a loved one. Also, possibly because of Chloe’s influence, the Viking wolves started keeping very good records after the reign of her mate. Especially when it comes to the king line. So now we know for a fact that the Fenris Chloe married was the fourth of his line. However, according to the Norwegian pack records, he was also the last of his line. After the Dragon battle comes the age of Fenrit and Randulfrson, the son of Fenris’s beta, a valiant warrior who fought well in the battle against the dragons becomes the new king of the North Wolves. I actually knew the guy, he was a really good kid, at least when he was younger…”