Page 5 of The Fanged One

She breathed into the words as she repeated them over and over, letting each one fill her mouth, infusing them with magic until she was chanting them in a trance-like melody.

Open up. Release. Open. It was the smallest galdr Gudrun had ever taught her, and she had shown it to Linnea as a joke when she couldn't get the lid off a jar of jam. The rune above the lintel went warm under her thumb before the lock clicked. She winced and apologized again to Havi in a small, fervent whisper, and pushed the door open.

The cabin didn't have the usual smell of woodsmoke or the dry-pine cleanness of a Norwegian summer house locked up for the winter. Whatever Havi did to keep his wards hospitable, he still did it whether he was home or not. It was warm inside, with fresh flowers in a vase on the table.

Linnea stamped the snow off her boots before taking them off. Fenris materialized at her elbow, and she didn't jump only because she had grown up around wolves who made a game out of trying to frighten her. The snow was melting on his paws, his ears swiveling forward as he looked past her into the cabin. She waited until he stepped inside first before she shut the door behind them.

Fenris went through the cabin the way a wolf went through any new place, which was nose-first and exhaustive. He sniffed the doorframe, the edge of the rug, the boots by the door, the wood basket by the stove, the corner of the kitchen counter, and the door handle of every closed door in the place without opening any of them. He stopped the longest at Havi's bedroom door, his nose pressed to the wood.

"Let's see what we can find to feed you," she said, mostly to herself, watching him as he came back into the kitchen.

Havi's freezer was full, thank fuck. Linnea pulled out some venison steaks and stood at the counter for a moment, trying not to laugh at the absurdity of the situation she found herself in. Fenris was supposed to want to eat Havi in Ragnarök, not ask to see him. She put the venison onto a dish and into the microwave, setting it to defrost.

"Stay here. I need a minute," she told Fenris, who didn't look up from the way the meat went around and around.

Linnea found a small bathroom decorated with paintings of forest scenes. It was dust-free and pristine. She really wanted to know which spells he was using to make his housework disappear. She locked the door behind her and finally got to pee for the first time in four hours. She hadn't been game enough to stop on the drive in case someone saw the giant wolf in her car and called the cops.

Scratch. Scratch. Linnea's head whipped toward the door. Was he clawing at it?

"Go away!" she shouted. There was a short silence on the other side, and the scratching started again. "I'm trying to pee. Go away!"

The scratching continued, and she did her best to ignore it. She finished up and washed her hands and face in warm water. Her hair was a mess, so she unraveled her braid and re-did it. It didn't help. It just made the blue circles under her eyes stand out more.

Feed the wolf. Go to sleep. Figure out what to do after.

Linnea opened the door to the bathroom and stared down at the wolf. "God or not, you need to learn some boundaries, my friend."

Fenris had the audacity to wag his tail and trot back to the kitchen, where he sat on the mat and looked at the microwave.

Linnea took the meat out, chopped it into rough chunks, and the smell of it hit her wolf.

Want, her wolf said, hopeful and undignified.

Not for us, Linnea told her, and got a small, affronted huff in reply that she ignored as she crouched down and set the plate on the floor.

Fenris looked at the plate, then at her, and kept looking at her with the patient, expectant gaze, as if he were waiting for an explanation he decided was forthcoming.

"It's safe to eat. I promise," Linnea said, fighting a sudden, absurd urge to laugh. "I'm not poisoning you. Why on earth would I drive you three and a half hours to poison you in Havi's kitchen?"

He kept looking at her, so she sighed and went through the small ritual of safety by picking up a piece, lifting it to her mouth, miming taking a bite, and setting it back on the plate. He watched her do it with the air of a god being humored by a peasant.

"Dark Hells, it's safe. I swear it! Just try it, or I'll make you go and hunt your own." She picked the piece back up, held it out flat on her palm toward him. "Go on."

Fenris lowered his head and sniffed at the meat carefully. His tongue brushed the heel of her hand, hot and rough, and he chewed once and swallowed. He sat back on his haunches to wait for the next piece. Linnea's palm tingled from the feel of his tongue. She swallowed hard and held out another piece.

Linnea fed him the whole plate that way, piece by piece off her palm, while the dawn turned outside from cold blue to pale gold. He never once touched her with his teeth despite how hungry he must have been.

When there was no meat left, she put the plate in the sink, washed her hands, and decided, on the strength of that slowly accumulated trust, not to fill the silence with any more words than she had to. She took out more venison and put it in the sink to defrost for later. She was wary of feeding a starved creature too much at once because they had a tendency to eat until they threw up. She couldn't find any dog bowls, so she filled a mixing bowl and placed it by the fridge.

Linnea gestured for him to follow and walked him through the cabin without speaking. She pointed to the large couch.

"You sleep there. I'll be down here. I need a few hours' rest before I figure out how I'm going to contact Havi."

She left him in the lounge, checked that the dog door was open if he wanted to go out, and went down to the spare room.

She kicked off her boots, removed her coat, and sat on the edge of the spare bed with her phone in her hand. The signal in Otta was thin but enough for her to have messages from Layla, Alruna, Gudrun, Imogen, and, most of all, Tor.

Bloody hell, her brother had called her eleven times too. She ignored the other messages and brought Tor's up first and typed: