Page 37 of The Fanged One

The wife must have been extraordinary. The kind of woman a god of wolves chose had to be bright and strong to be worth thousands of years in a void and every silver scar on his body.

Linnea tried to push back the tides of her insecurities crashing over her. She had a wolf locked inside of her with magic she couldn't figure out how to free, and she had never been enough for anyone.

You are not a wolf. You are not anything. You are a mistake, Skari snarled in her ear, and it was so real she could smell the beer he always had on his breath.

Her wolf was silent. The running commentary, the wagging, the wanting, all of it pulled down into a place Linnea couldn't reach.

The walls of the kitchen were closing in around her, her heart beating too fast as Skari's screaming continued in her head.

Tor's eyes flicked to her face for half a second. She could tell from the way his mouth tightened that she wasn't hiding it as well as she should.

"Excuse me," Linnea said, pushing back from the table. "Got to use the…bathroom?"

"Down the hall," Von replied, pointing.

Nobody stopped her as she walked out of the kitchen with her spine straight and her hands tucked into the sleeves of her sweater so no one would see them shaking.

Von's bathroom was ridiculous enough to push some of her dark thoughts back. Black tile, brass fixtures, a mirror framed in carved wood that looked like it belonged in a king's bedroom, and a soap dispenser shaped like a sea serpent. She locked the door, turned on the cold tap, and pressed her wet hands to the back of her neck.

She shut her eyes and focused on the box breathing she’d learned in trauma therapy.

"This is stupid. Your father is dead. You're fine. You knew this dalliance with Fenris couldn't be serious before it started," she whispered under her breath. She had known on the dance floor when Fenris kissed her, and she knew it again now.

She could still choose to enjoy whatever this flirtation was. She could have it for as long as the quest lasted. When it ended and he went back to Asgard or wherever gods went when they were done with mortal women, she could remember it as all part of the adventure. She didn't have to make it bigger than it was.

Linnea looked at her own face in Von's mirror. Her eyes were dry. Her color was fine. She rolled her shoulders back. Magic danced under her skin, sparking through her eyes, and seeing it was what she needed to remind herself who she really was.

"Fuck this pouting. You're a völva, doing what the gods asked you to do. You have a wyrd to fulfill, and that never included keeping him," she told herself sternly.

She waited a beat for her wolf to snap or snarl at her. It didn't come. It had retreated again somewhere so deep that Linnea couldn't hear her at all.

Good.

The silence was better and helped her focus on her real job. That was getting Von's help to find Loki. It wasn't fucking about with Fenris, and it certainly wasn't getting feelings over him.

Linnea dried her wet hands on Von's very expensive towels and went back out. She might have always disappointed her shit parents, but she would die before disappointing her goddess.

19

Fenris was told that the chest from the back room was Frankish, sixth century, and packed with vellum.

"Carefully, my god, carefully," Von said from the other side of the library, hair tied back in a knot already losing the will to stay up. "If a single page crumbles, I'm lying down on this floor and staying there until next week."

Fenris set the chest on the trestle Arne had hauled out of the hall and lifted the lid. His sensitive nose was bombarded with the scents of old leather, dust, and the chalk-and-salt of vellum kept too dry for too long.

"I love this missionary," Von said, already at his elbow. "The writing is half-Latin, half-runic, like he was trying to pretend he wasn't also afraid of the older gods. Unfortunately, I don't think it is what we are looking for. We are hunting Norse hands today, not French panic."

Von patted his shoulder and went off again, calling out to Layla and Ciara for an update and waiting for their confirmation. The shaman was moving among them like a giddy child, somehow coordinating them all. Fenris couldn't help but be impressed. The gods were right to send them to him.

"Arne." Von's voice carried from beside a glass case. "Up the stairs, my handsome prince. Two flights. The cabinet on the left. Third drawer from the bottom. Bring me the fragment with salt stains on it."

"Your wish is my command," Arne teased.

Von waved him off. "Yes, yes, hurry up. I have no time to flirt with you today."

Across the room, Layla was at the long oak table with sleeves shoved up, going through a stack of bound notebooks Von had set in front of her. Linnea sat beside her on a stool, her fingers careful on the paper. From this angle, Fenris could see the small, loose curl of hair at the back of her neck where her sweater dipped. He looked away before he was caught staring.

Linnea was working and laughing at something Layla had said. She hadn't met his eye since she had come back from the bathroom, and he hated it.