Page 59 of The Fanged One

"What is it?" he asked, suspiciously. His sister had inherited her sense of humor from Loki, and the Norns only knew what she brewed to keep herself amused.

"Nothing that will kill you. I promise. You're annoyingly hard to kill, so I don't bother trying." She tapped her cup against his. "Skál, big brother. Welcome back."

Fenris drank, and the liquid went from herbaceous bitter to sweet before burning down his throat and chest. He wheezed. "That's…an experience. What did you make it out of? Corpse juice?"

"That is a two-hundred-year old specialty brew made from plants that grow wild here, and tended to by souls for a century, you ungrateful wolf. Drink again, and I promise it will be different."

"Good different or bad different?"

Hel grinned at him over the rim of her cup. The firelight ran along the runes tattooed across her hands. "See for yourself."

Fenris gave in to her teasing and had another mouthful. This time the brew tasted of long summers, the wheat turning golden, and the sweet smoke of midsummer fires.

"Is this…infused with memories?"

"Could be. Fun, isn't it?" Hel replied, taking another mouthful. "Now I want to know about the völva who climbed up your back like a frightened cat. I was good at dinner not to ask outright, so if you don't spit it out now, I'm going to be hurt, and I'll get dramatic about it."

Tell her, his wolf said, the first time it had stirred since entering the hall. She is pack. She will know what to do because you are being a coward.

I have feelings, you know.

Too many thoughts, not feelings.

Fenris traced the rim of his cup with a scarred finger and watched the fire dance. "Her name is Linnea."

"I know that, thank you. I want details, so don't be broody." Hel took off her boots and wriggled her socked feet in front of the fire. "Start from the beginning, Fen. I have nowhere to be. The dead are extremely patient."

Fenris gave in and told her the stripped-down version of the cult that had wanted to wake him too early and had needed the blood of a grown wolf who had never shifted, so they had taken Linnea and bled her at the foot of his slab.

Hel listened with a small smile when he got to the part about the lullaby that had come down into his dreaming when nothing else could reach him, and about waking up to the smell of cloudberries and honey and hot magic.

"My wolf says she is my mate, Hel," he said and drained his cup. "I don't know what to do."

The teasing had dropped clean off Hel's face, and what was left was the patience that weighed souls and wasn't in the habit of being surprised.

"The girl who can't shift at all is the mate of the Great Wolf," she said slowly.

"Not that her shifting matters to me, but yes. My wolf got one good smell of her and declared it on the spot," Fenris replied. He held out his empty cup to her, and Hel filled it from her dark bottle.

"The Norns have a sense of humor after all." A grin tugged at her mouth. "I do like Linnea already, and the fact that she has you so moonstruck makes it even better. Does she know?"

"No, I haven't told her."

"Fenris, you can't be serious," Hel said, making him flinch.

"It's complicated, little sister. She has been hurt deeply in the past, as have I, and you know that as soon as I claim her, she will be a target for my enemies in the future. Loving a god is hard, but being bound to one is choosing to never be safe again," Fenris argued. "It wouldn't matter if I wanted to tell her because Havi and Freya and fucking Ragnarök forced us on a quest. It's bad enough that Linnea is here with me, where I don't feel like I can keep her safe. I'll not put a target on her back by making her mine in front of everything that wants to stop us. And she..."

He stopped his rambling and ran his hands through his hair, tugging at the short ends.

Say it, the wolf told him. You think it loud enough every night.

"She had a father who beat her bloody for not shifting and called her a mistake to her face. She has a wolf locked behind a wall she built herself, because that was the only way to keep it safe from him. She thinks she was never worth choosing, Hel," his voice came out rougher than he meant it to. "If I tell her what she is to me, and she rejects me because she doesn't want it or thinks she doesn't deserve happiness, it will destroy me."

Hel reached over and put a hand on his shoulder. "So that is the actual reason for your silence, under the noble bullshit about targets and quests. You're afraid she will look at you the way Sunniva did."

Fenris had told Hel about Sunniva's fear and horror of him the last time he saw his sister before the binding. He had told her because she was the one person he could be vulnerable in front of. His sister never forgot anything.

"Sunniva loved a man," he said after a few deep breaths. "She didn't love that I was a monster god. I let her go, and I went into the ground because that hurt less than watching her flinch every time I came into a room. She called me a monster to my face and turned her back on me. That was before the whole world thought I was the great evil that would bring about Ragnarök."