Page 83 of The Fanged One

"Yes, I'm serious! Sunniva was my wife. I loved her the way you love someone you choose, with the human part of yourself. My wolf never once claimed her. It tolerated her for my sake and then hated her when she learned what I was and rejected us. That's why I agreed to be bound and let Havi look after my children instead of me." He looked down at his scarred hands. "Linnea is my mate. She has been since before I knew her name."

"What?" Ciara said flatly. "Did you ever bother to fucking tell her any of that?"

"No?"

"No." She breathed out through her nose. "You absolute idiot. I should push you off this cliff right now on principle. You let her walk this whole deathtrap thinking she's someone convenient you settled for, and then today she watched you reunite with the love of your life, and you never once told her the truth!"

"I meant to tell her when it was safe," Fenris replied stubbornly.

"It's never going to be safe! You're in the ass end of Niflheim, about to try and walk through a door nobody has come back through."

"I told Tor and Arne. I was going to tell Linnea after we got Loki."

Ciara's eyes shone, and her fangs dropped. "Tor and Arne knew?"

"They swore to stay out of it."

"You all deserve to be fed to Níðhöggr. I'm going to kick their asses when we get home for this fucking shit." Ciara huffed, short and unimpressed. "Here's what you are going to do. For a start, do not dump it on Linnea tonight. She is raw to the bone. You hit her with 'don't be sad, you are my mate' when she can't tell up from down, she'll decide you only said it to make her feel better, and she won't believe a word of it for the rest of her life. Give her the night to cool off. Let her find the bottom of what she's feeling on her own. When she's ready, you tell her, and you better fucking grovel, Fenris Lokisson. I mean grovel on your knees like your life depends on it because it fucking does. Do you understand me?"

Fenris looked down into the face of the Wolf Slayer and knew she meant every word of it. "Yes, my lady, I understand, but I don't need to be threatened. Groveling is the least I would do to get Linnea not to hate me right now."

"I'm happy to hear it. She's a good one, Fenris," Ciara said, gentler now. "Don't lose her because she needs you as much as you need her. Don't forget that."

"I won't."

"I'm still going to kick all your asses for this when we are out of this fucking nightmare." She patted his arm once and left him to it.

Fenris stayed outside, thinking of all Ciara had said, and every one of Linnea's reactions that day made a sudden and horrible sense.

At the serpent's bowl, her hand had gone still on the cold rim, the grief pouring off her thick enough to taste, and he had known she was one breath from sacrificing a piece of herself she couldn't spare. He hadn't been willing to watch her give it away to a creature that didn't deserve it.

She had sacrificed enough, so he had stopped her without thinking about how she could misread it.

Fenris wondered what she would say if he told her that he had given Níðhöggr the good years with Sunniva. The early ones, before the fear, when he was surrounded by his children and wrapped in her love.

Standing at that bowl, he understood he didn't need them. They no longer hurt, nor did they warm him. The warmth now came from somewhere new. He had fed a dead man's treasure to a serpent and felt nothing as it left him.

Fenris hadn't understood until Linnea was snarling at him that he might have given up the last of Sunniva to buy a crossing for a woman who had already decided she didn't want him.

The wolf rose in him, and for once it was not pacing or keening. It brushed against him, trying to comfort him.

We make her listen. We need to fight for her our way.

"Yes," Fenris growled low in agreement. He had tried to play this whole mess safely so he wouldn't scare her away and had fucked it up anyway.

He was done being careful.

He would get Linnea alone when he could, and he would lay every true thing he had at her feet. If she still chose to walk away after that, she could do it to his face.

Tonight, he would be patient and let her cool off.

Tomorrow, he wasn't going to let her walk away from him again without a fight.

41

The path gave out under Fenris's boots, and the mist that had risen with every step down into the gorge thinned away to nothing.

Ahead, the ground ran flat and barren to a wall of black onyx, the cold coming off it in a slow tide. His scarred eye throbbed the way it did near old, deep magic, and went on throbbing the longer he looked at it.