This is me being crazy, I know it is. Me still hoping, even after everything I’ve done to move on with my life. I’ve let Fensa and Ola know about their wonderful “heaven fathers” as best I could. They were happy. And I was…if not happy…adjusted.
But now my little girls are probably watching me from the window as I run like a crazy woman through the woods, unable to even wait for Grif to come with me for back up.
I can’t stop. Can’t stop running up that hill, like the weirdest Kate Bush song ever. Even after my feet start protesting inside their flimsy slippers. Even after my lungs give out, making me wheeze as I rush toward the portal. Even then. I can’t stop.
And I don’t stop. Even though I know it’s crazy. I’m crazy. Because it can’t be them. It can’t be…
Except it is.
Two figures appear at the crest of the portal’s ledged off hill. Back lit by the new moon and casting longer shadows than the surrounding trees.
All three of us come to a dead halt. Staring at each other. Them up above. Me down below. Still too afraid to believe.
But then they start toward me and the closer they get, the more I believe. Even though they don’t look like the memories I’ve been carrying around with me. They’re dressed in dingy furs with the heads of the bears they took them from still attached. And they’re both shockingly pronounced, their bodies covered in tight muscle like they haven’t so much as seen a carb in years. Even the red hair beneath their bear hoods isn’t the same. Hanging in long, unchecked tangles along with their unkempt beards.
So much hair. For a moment, I’m scared these are two other Vikings. Or two hot cavemen, looking for some Clan of the Cave Bear action up here on the mountain.
But then they come to a stop in front of me, smelling of snow and fire. And both of them say, “Varra” out loud.
And I hear it, “Varra,” inside my mind, kissing my heart with the word I’d never thought to hear again.
FJ draws me into his arms. “I did say we would return. Did you believe us not?”
I shake my head into his shoulder, unable to form words—out loud or inside our mind link.
But Olafr stands beside his brother and tips up my chin so I have to look at him as FJ holds me. My heart stops. His eyes are no longer glowing.
In fact, except for the Hagrid-level hair, he looks and sounds just like a normal (if heavily accented) wolf when he says, “Please let us hear your voice. For too long this has been all we did want to hear.”#p#分页标题#e#
“All that did keep us going,” FJ adds, his face harsh with memory.
“Yours always,” I whisper. Then I push the words into their minds. “Yours always.”
And the smiles that light up their faces make it easy to see them now, even under all that hair.
Then suddenly there’s no longer any confusion about what’s real and what’s not. I’m on a mountain, being kissed by two wolves in bear furs. First one and then the other, and then the first again, back and forth, with no thought of the cold. We keep each other warm. With our thoughts and our love and our knowing what comes next. The daughters who will consider it a miracle to have their fathers back. The kingdom we will happily run together.
The life we’ll make, now they’re finally home. But first…
“Ah, I think you’re going to want to ditch those coats before you meet your daughters,” I tell them. “It’ll take too long to explain, but their favorite movie right now is Brother Bear.”
* * *
So that happened.
There’s a lot to talk about over the next few hours. The girls listen raptly on the couch as their miraculously recovered heaven father, FJ, tells us the tale. How they left Norway after the Dragon Battle after another wolf village’s sorceress told them the only way to get around a “breaking spell,” as the separation spell was called in their time, was to find another fated mate spell in a language they did not know.
So they’d headed east across Scandinavia in search of another wolf village with another sorceress who would give them the words they’d need to get back to me. Four years. It took them four years before they were able to find someone with a fated mate spell in a language they didn’t know. Four years during which Olafr learned not only their mother’s language, but also how to live as a true shifter, led by his human rather than his wolf. Four years during which they walked and walked. Always searching. Always hoping. Never giving up.
By the time they are done talking, the girls have both fallen asleep. It’s a long story, but short to them. Their daddies were gone and now they’re back. The twins sleep with the serenity of children who have no problem believing dreams really can come true.