From all around, male wolves spill from their huts and longhouses with swords, clubs, and axes in hand.
Shouts of confusion go up because it is still dark and even with their wolf vision, they can see no ships in the frozen sea, nor any armies marching through the mountain pass.
“Come they will under Freya’s purple lights in the five-and-thirty winter of our fenrir not yet. An enemy who will kill so many of our wolves and fell Olafr’s human. And will they the future of our fenrir and his queen take.”#p#分页标题#e#
Aunt Bera’s words once again float through his mind, and he notices Olafr sniffing the air toward the east. Olafr, so long a wolf, has a nose keener than any other in their village.
But now he himself also smells it. A foreign scent, sharp and acrid like fire and brimstone, and it comes from the forest that lines the east side of the village. The forest that stands between his village and a range of mountains so large and onerous, no one should have been able to climb them. Especially in mid-winter.
But then there comes a terrible flapping sound. Like the wing beats of a flock of birds. But deeper. And slower. And much, much louder.
Suddenly the dark purple morning is cast completely in black. As if a god has cupped a hand over their village, blocking out the light. But no, it be not a god…
With his heart inside his throat, Fenrisson, Ever the Man, looks up.
And in the sky he spies a strange and terrifying sight. Winged serpents! At least twenty of them, each longer from head to tail than two of himself, the tallest Viking in the village.
“Oh…my…God!” Myrna cries beside him in their mother’s language, her defiance giving away to true horror.
And inside his head, does his brother say, “The enemy in no longer coming. For they are already here.”
3
So that happened. I jerk my controller to the left and right, watching my humongous, red-headed Viking avatar fight a dragon horde on the full wall LED screen in the main room of my suite. This is the game’s Boss Level. The level before the level that gets you all the prizes. The somewhat hidden truth is Iggle programmed in at least two different ways to blast through this level without swinging your sword even once. But today I have my Viking slashing and stabbing anything scaly with a sword.
I’m in that kind of mood, and I take all sorts of pleasure in watching a shitload of dragons fall beneath my virtual sword as I violently thumb the controls.
“Tiara, what the hell you doing in here?”
My Dad and Evelyn are at my door. I can see them standing there out the corner of my eye. But I ignore them, taking out two more dragons in lieu of answering.
I might—might—have been able to get away with this if it were just Evelyn at the door. But I soon hear the sound of Dad’s motorcycle boots stomping across my cork floor—its muting effect is no match for the huge biker alpha.
He comes to a stop, looming over where I’m sitting on the floor, my back resting against my bed as I play my game. Like I’m still a teenager and don’t have nearly $100,000 worth of state-of-the-art game chairs waiting just a few feet way. Or a fiancé who, as it turns out, is way more into my twin brother than me.
“I don’t even believe you’re in here playing when you should be downstairs at your engagement party,” Dad growls above me.
“Engagement’s off,” I answer without taking my eyes from the grisly wall-to-wall dragon carnage going down on the LED screen.
“What?!?!” I hear Evelyn screech from the doorway.
But Dad just says, “Give me a minute with her, Ev.”
“But she’s trying to call off the engagement! And she’s sitting on the floor in Valentino!!”
She’s right about the inappropriateness of me sitting on the floor. When I rushed in here, I’d snatched up the controller and dropped to a seated position. Going immediately into the game like a kid on a mission instead of the founding CEO of a game company. But at this moment, I wish I was still a kid. Playing my video games and dreaming of the day I’d become a successful grown-up video game designer.#p#分页标题#e#
Technically, that dream came true. I’m very successful now with my own company and the game I’m currently playing has broken all sorts of sales records. But the grown-up part…
The image of my brother Clyde pounding my fiancé’s ass flashes into my mind.
…yeah, the grown-up stuff isn’t going so well.
“I said give me a minute with her,” Dad repeats to Evelyn.
No more protests, and the next non-videogame thing I hear is the muffled click of Evelyn’s heels walking across the cork floors. Dad isn’t the kind of wolf whose orders you question more than once. Even if you’re his mate.