Asherah narrowed her eyes. “The past?”
“Yes.”
Arturo clenched his fists at his side. “I’m going to count to ten, and someone better explain what the fuck is going on in my house!”
“T’is is Chaos, Arturo. We can—”
“Zahara, your place in my heart is great, but this is still my home. I want her to explain what the hell she is doing here.”
Zahara went silent, her eyes snapping with warning at the Alpha for interrupting her.
“It is better if I start in the past, as all things should. My name is Nanshe.”
Asherah gasped, and Carlo noted her reaction as the woman gave her name.
“Why was she calling you Past?”
“Because I am the Past. I am prophecy. I have not spoken my name for many millennium, Carlo of the Moretti.”
Nanshe. Something in the name ... it roared through him. Memories of salty air and magnificent boats gilded in gold slipped into his head. A city with high walls made of sandy stone. He’d seen nothing like it.
What the hell am I seeing?
“The past. One you will one day understand.”
Arturo slid his hands into his pockets. The positioning may have appeared casual, but Carlo knew he contrived it to look that way as he prepared to attack. There was no wolf more deadly than his Alpha, besides, perhaps, Carlo. “Why are you here? And why do you have my wolf pinned?”
“Because he is mine, and my sister wants you all dead. I saw how you won it. Moments are past but now future. In the past, he came to me, as I had to do what I must, the history of life repeating over and over again. She tipped the scales.”
Dominic growled. “Speak plainly and less in riddles.”
Asherah cleared her throat. “If I may, Past?”
Nanshe bowed her head in a regal move that set Carlo’s teeth on edge even as it turned him on. Queen ... Goddess.
What the fuck am I thinking?
“Of who I am. Who I once was. The past is always what truly matters.”
Yeah, like that made any sense.
“You know of the Norns? The holders of Fate: Skuld, Verdandi, and Urd?” Asherah looked around, addressing everyone in the room.
Dominic nodded. “It’s mythology.”
Asherah shook her head. “You know now that it isn’t. Skuld is the one who kept me confined. She is the Future, seeing what shall be; Verdandi is the Present, seeing what is; and Urd is the Past, what once was.”
“Okay,” Kalinda cocked her head and looked to Nanshe, “are you Urd or Nanshe?”
“Both,” Nanshe replied. “I was once Nanshe, and now I am Urd. Humans marked out names with time, and so we have adopted that.” Nanshe looked down over Carlo, her ruby eyes bright. “But I didn’t want you to call me what I’d been given, but the name I’d been born with.”
“Wait, what does that even mean?” Silva whined.
Nanshe shook her head. “I cannot tell you more. It’s all I can give you on my past. The place of the Norns is ... one of more power than you could ever understand.”
Yes, it was Chaos.
Dominic shifted closer, stepping a bit in front of Arturo, a gesture of protection. “Your sister wants us dead?”
