I wake up alone the next morning, the bed empty and cold, my body aching.
Not with need—thank goodness—but with a bone deep soreness. Like I’ve been run over by two trucks.
Or fucked well and hard by them.
Speaking of which…
My curiosity drives me downstairs in nothing but the skin I was born in. Like the eye contact thing, I’m shocked by how awkward I don’t feel in my body now as I follow the scents of my mates. Like them seeing me naked is just the same as me seeing me naked, just, you know, hotter.
Also, I can no longer smell my cousins or their mates in the house. They must have taken the opportunity to get out of heat range when all three of us finally fell asleep after a night of back-to-back heat sessions. I imagine they’ll stay in town for tonight’s full moon and then head back to their respective kingdoms.
However, all thoughts of my cousins blank out of my mind when I find Olafr and FJ in the family room, naked and hacking their right arms back and forth through the air.
It says something about the magnificent nature of their bodies, that it takes me a few moments of staring at their ripped bodies swing Wii controllers before I realize…
“You’re playing Viking Shifters!” I gasp, ripping my eyes away from them to watch the two Vikings on the screen hacking away at each other with their huge swords.
They both whip around, Wii controllers poised, bodies tense with surprise. And I realize they must have been so involved in the Wii version of the game, which allows you to use the controller like a sword, that they didn’t smell or hear me come in.
“Put down the remote!” I tell them with raised hands. “The Wii version doesn’t have a three-player mode.”
With confused looks, they both lower their controllers.
Then FJ informs me over the three-way link, “You must make shields for this game, Varra. No worthy Viking would ever go into such battle without—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alisha’s already yelled at me about the no-shield issue. At length.”
“Then why—”
Before I let him rope me into the same “preserving historical accuracy versus gameplay aesthetics” argument I’ve been having with Alisha and various fans ever since Viking Shifters came out, I cut him off.
“So,” I say, raising an eyebrow at them. “You just decided to spend the morning playing my wildly inaccurate video game?”
“No, Varra,” FJ answers, his face all serious. “Did we mean to fetch for you some food, when we heard the sounds of sword fighting. Then did we find these North Wolves fighting upon this rectangle. And did Olafr remember watching the children play this game when we did make our walk, and so did we agree to play one game so we might know you better, but then…”
He trails off in the confused manner of a new player coming out of his first gamer thrall.
I throw him a sympathetic smile. “How many rounds did you two end up going?”
“Verily did we lose count. I have won all fights, but Olafr has after each victory insisted we wage yet another battle, so he may have the opportunity to finally defeat me.”
“I am mightily vexed this day that having been Ever the Wolf, know I not as well as my brother the sword,” Olafr confesses over our three-way link.
I incline my head to him and screw up my face. “So that’s the thing you’re going to decide to be mad about after spending nearly your entire life as wolf? Seriously?”
Before he can answer, FJ crows, “Even if you had trained as a Viking warrior for as many winters as Father, would you not beat me as this game.”
Wow. FJ is apparently having no trouble with the modern custom of trash-talking.
Olafr’s eyes slit in a way that lets me know the sequel to their clinic fight is about to break out if I don’t step in.
“Don’t worry about, O,” I say, getting between him and FJ. “I have a few tricks I can teach you before we leave for your time.”
I expect Olafr and FJ to smile and protest respectively, but instead they both stare at me with twin looks of shock on their face.
“What?” I asked, wondering if “tricks” means something different in their time.
“You plan now to return with us?” FJ asks me out loud, as if he doesn’t trust the mind link after what he just heard.
Oh…I guess we hadn’t exactly talked about that yet. Not since that day on the bench when I informed FJ there was pretty much no way in hell I was going back to his cold-ass time.
I peep up at them shyly. “Yeah,” I say. “I was thinking after this whole heat business is done, I could make some arrangements.”
I still don’t love the idea of a life without videogames. Or of freezing my ass off in Viking Age Norway. But the alternative is staying here and serving as an incubator for the Detroit kingdom.
One path has me still able to do my job but in a soulless marriage, and the other leads to two Viking Wolves.
Both of whom are now looking at me with such adoration in their eyes, it feels like my heart might give out under the beautiful ache of their combined stare.
“You do honor us, Varra,” FJ tells me out loud, his voice rough with feeling.
“You do honor us,” Olafr repeats inside my head.
No more video games then. Olafr picks me up in his arms, leading the way back to FJ’s third-floor room. Where they spend the rest of the day showing me just how happy they are about my decision.
I wake that night in a room bathed in moonlight—overheated and starving.
Overheated but—I say a silent prayer of thanks—not because of my heat. I’m wedged between two large male bodies beneath a heavy down duvet. My forehead rests against Olafr’s wide back and my bottom…
I shift uncomfortably against FJ’s long, pulsing length.
“You are not yet ready for two.”
His ominous words come back to me in a tangle of confused emotions. Was he saying what I think he was saying? Because if he was, he was right. I am not ready. As much as I’ve been enjoying our sexy back-to-backs, I’m pretty sure I am nowhere near ready to take both of them on at the same time. Going at it with one brother while the other watches—multiple times—has already been a lifetime’s worth of mind completely blown. I can barely imagine...
I quietly clear my throat and scoot away from FJ as discreetly as I can.
Big mistake. That small movement puts my pussy in direct contact with Olafr’s ass. And cue the heat scent eruption. Hot lust fills up the place where the hunger used to be, empty stomach be damned.
“Did I not say you would come to regret your lack of food when you did refuse to take the night meal after you were done with Olafr?” FJ’s voice creeps into my head, smug as a nagging auntie.
“Yeah, you did. But cut me some slack. I’m not going to prioritize eating when his dick was still inside of me.”
I feel FJ sigh, his chest heaving up and down against my back. “Varra, you must give more care to yourself now than you have afore. This includes nourishing your body when the time is right.”
He opens our mind link to include Olafr. “Wake, Brother. Our she-wolf has need of us again.”
The bed shifts up and down beneath Olafr’s weight. The next thing I see are his eyes, glowing and amused.
“Your wolf is back in charge, I see.” Our last round of sex had been little more than a pictorial back and forth of doggie style with some over the shoulder kissing thrown in. Not that we needed much verbal communication when the sex was so good, it had me roughing out an apology email to the makers of 300 re: my scathing online review of the unrealistic sex scene between Gerard Butler and Lena Headey. Thanks to that last heat session, I now truly understand why some sex just needs to be depicted in slow motion with sweeping music playing in the background.
“’In charge’…I know not the meaning of these words.” Olafr says, his glowing eyes narrowing with confusion.
“Uh, running the show. Taking the lead.”
Understanding dawns in the form of a wide grin across Olafr’s face. “Yes, my human is at rest, well-tired after our last loving. My good fortune, because now can I finally be with you.”
I know exactly what he means, though in a completely opposite way. I can’t count the number of times I’ve woken up after a full moon, on some random street in our gated community, cold and shivering and wanting nothing more than to return to my suite, pee, shower, and crawl into my warm bed. Because my wolf was finally turned off. Or “at rest,” as Olafr puts it.
“There’s something I still don’t understand,” I say to his wolf now. “Why? Why did you remain in wolf form all these years, sacrificing your human, if you weren’t wolf-bound?”
A deep, weighted silence fills the room…and I can tell from the way the three-way link suddenly stops humming inside my head that they’re talking privately.
The silence is about to enter “this is getting awkward” territory when the link suddenly flips back on and Olafr’s voice appears inside my mind, unusually somber.
“When I was in my fifth winter, did our aunt seek us out. She was a wise woman, a sorceress, a soothsayer, and a person of great import in our village. She told us of a vision…a dream that came to her on the night of a horned moon. In it, she beheld the coming of a great and terrible enemy beneath Freya’s purple lights, one who would raze our village to the ground and slaughter all within, including our mother and father. She saw my human struck down, mortally wounded. Our village destroyed. My parents given over to death. All of this would come to pass, she explained to us, if I did not sacrifice my human.”
I blink at Olafr. “Wait, so you stayed in wolf form since you were five? All because your aunt had a bad dream?”
“It was more than a bad dream, Varra,” FJ says behind me. “Our aunt’s vision did come to pass. And if not for Olafr fighting in wolf form, because he knew not his man, we wouldn’t have discovered the flying serpents weakness. Many more if not all of our warriors would have been lost to the enemy, with little hope of retreat. For Olafr did show us through his great sacrifice that in this battle our beasts served us better than battle axe or spear.”
Olafr nods in agreement with his brother’s words. “And would I do the same again to keep the ones I have love for safe. For naught of what my aunt foretold came to pass on that terrible day. Our parents do still live. And my human was wounded, but not mortally so. And because they took my example, many of our warriors did shift and make escape to the mountain.”
“But your poor human!” I insist, unable to see the sunny side of this story. “You never let him out to play. He never had a girl or got to do all the stuff male shifters do before they marry. And now you’re sharing a mate...”
“Do you imagine me unlucky because I’ve known no other female than you?” Olafr’s smile softens in the moonlit room. “My aunt told us only a fated mate could save our village. We thought she meant one of our mates, mine or my brother’s. But now we understand her meaning true.”
He brings a hand up to stroke one of my yarn locs behind my ear. “We were too young to understand that she gave us her well-guarded fated mate spell because she knew we were meant to come here and claim you. And in truth, Varra, I had never the desire to mate with any she-wolf before we first did meet.”
“Okay…” I say, finding all this a little hard to believe. My brain is working overtime, trying to process everything.
“You have agreed to come back with us, yet you still do not believe we are destined.” It’s a statement, not a question. And the big bad wolf looks hurt by the realization.
“I—” I struggle to find the words to explain how I’m feeling. “It isn’t that I don’t believe it. It’s just that this is way outside my comfort zone. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“You would deny our predestined bond again,” FJ’s deep voice sounds like a threat with his breath against my ear. And I feel his hand descend to my mound. “Even as your body calls to us with its heat scent.”
“No, I’m not trying to deny anything, I just—”
I cut off when FJ spreads my pussy lips wide with his thumb and little finger, while the three middle fingers go to work. Plunging in and out of me, making my pussy quiver and tighten around them.
“Do you still also have fear of returning with us to our village?” he asks, his breath hot against the back of my neck now. “Because we have no flushing toilets?”
“Or indoor heating,” I croak, barely able to speak while his fingers move inside of me.
“Ah, you have fear of the cold. I see…” FJ turns his mind to Olafr. “Brother, now has the time come for us to show our mate why she has no reason to fear the cold—here or in our village.”
Olafr captures my mouth in a kiss. And his hand finds my breasts as his brother continues to work me below.
“You will never be cold between us, Varra,” I hear him say inside my head. “This you must believe.”
Oh, I believe. Boy, do I believe. I am definitely not cold. In fact, it feels like my body is on fire as I kiss Olafr back while undulating my hips into FJ’s hand.
But then they both stop. FJ’s hand lifts, settling on my hip at same time Olafr pulls back from our kiss.
The younger brother pins me with his glowing stare while the older one asks inside my mind, “Are you cold now, Varra?”
I shake my head, unable to look away from Olafr. “No, not all,” I admit, softly.
“Will you have us now?” FJ asks out loud.
Yeah…hell, yeah. Is he kidding? My head goes up and down in a frantic bobble. Having one guy stop just as your body is gearing up really sucks. But when two guys stop just as your body is gearing up, while you’re in heat? Well that is just downright shitty. I feel like my entire body is one giant sex organ aching to be filled. “Please, don’t stop.”
FJ places his hand back where I want it, only to pause again.
“Brother, Varra, behold the full moon,” he says, his voice full of awe. This is a sight we three have never witnessed as humans.”
This is true. Once a mating heat has begun, we wolves won’t shift again until three moons after the baby is born. So with true wonder our eyes drift to the large picture window across the room to take in the sight only our wolves have beheld before this. The full moon, which I’ve only ever seen in photos and on TV, takes my breath away. It sits low on the horizon, so big and bright it almost seems to be blessing our strange coupling.
“In our land, we would take our marriage vows under such a moon,” FJ says inside our heads. “We three in our human forms, while the rest of the pack circles us inside their wolves, howling blessings for our union to the sky above.” He pauses for a thoughtful moment. “Unless I am much mistaken, this day is Freya-Day—Friday. Freya is our goddess of marriage, Varra. With the full moon above, it is a doubly auspicious day for the taking of vows.”
He pauses once more, and this time I can feel the weight and meaning behind his words when he again asks, “Varra, will you have us?”
Olafr also turns to face me. And I begin to realize where this is headed. They want me to promise myself to them. To marry them here, under a full moon, in the way of their pack.
“We would have your answer on this,” Olafr says quietly inside my head. “Will you have us, Varra?”
They don’t need me to make any vows. I’ve already made up my mind to go back with them, our strange mate connection seems to tighten in that moment. Like good code made stronger with the right edit.
I can’t explain it—even to myself. But the moment is unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. We are bound together…three wolves under the benevolent watch of our beloved and mysterious moon. How can I not say yes? How can I not make strange vows to these two while bearing witness to our first human moon?
And so I do.
“Yes.” I say aloud, turning my head to hold the gaze of each of them in turn. The fact that I can hold their gazes at all is more proof of the miracle we’ve created within our mating bond in my mind.
FJ cups my upturned face, kissing me as he says inside my head, “And so do we take you as our she-wolf. So will you be ours, always.”
I kiss him back, my body heating with a new warmth that doesn’t have anything to do with my heat. In fact my heat fades into the background as we seal our vow with a kiss.
Then I feel Olafr’s hand on my other cheek. He turns my head, so I can kiss him. And I wonder at how differently they taste. FJ more like frost, Olafr more like the forest. Neither better than the other. Just different.
“And so do we take you as our she-wolf. So will you be ours always.” Olafr says inside my head now, also giving me his vow.
Theirs always. Yes, I answer. Not with my mind or my voice, but with my heart. So loud, I’m sure they can hear the single word resonating in the air, along with my renewed heat.
“Raise your leg, Varra,” FJ says inside my head as I kiss Olafr.
I do as he says, like a puppet with no mind left of her own, expecting him to take me from behind. But then, oh God…
FJ’s hands tighten around my hips and he presses me down onto his brother’s length, forcing me to take all of him in one hard push.
“Receive my brother’s wolf,” he growls inside my mind, as Olafr starts fucking me. “Know him as your mate, as you now know his human. Give him your wolf. Hold nothing back from us, Varra.”
I cry out, unable to stop myself from participating in this lewd act, even as I realize it goes beyond taking turns with them. FJ is holding me while his brother has his fill. It is so wrong. But my body could care less, because it feels so insanely right…
My wolf is going crazy, releasing massive amounts of heat as Olafr’s wolf rocks into me and FJ’s large hands bite into my hips. Then FJ raises one hand to turn my face. He captures my mouth and kisses me over my shoulder.
So wrong! I think as his tongue delves deep into my mouth while his brother fucks me, each thrust short and shallow thanks to how little room either of us has.
Olafr and I both yell out. My body is so confused by all the sensations, and I have no idea whose climax has triggered whose. But it rolls over us in waves, making me scream against FJ’s lips…
…and then Olafr knots inside of me.
I scream out loud, gritting my teeth as another orgasm sends me right back over the edge of sanity.
I’m not sure how long it takes me to come down, but I know the exact moment Olafr unknots from me. Not just because he pulls out, but because of how quickly I’m yanked away from him.
The next thing I know, FJ is on top of me. He wraps one of my legs around his waist, his teeth sinking into my left shoulder. And as if to brace itself for a coming invasion, my body immediately releases a new round of heat.
Just in time to welcome FJ, as he pushes into me, hot and hard.
“Think you I will ever tire of this, Varra?” FJ asks inside my head. He seems angry with me, his voice tight with accusation as he drives his big body into mine. “Think you my brother or I could ever want another after having this with you? A true union like none we have ever known? No, you are ours. And ours will you always be.”
“Yes,” I say on a gasp. “Yours.”
“Always,” FJ repeats. Then he looks me deep in the eyes and tells me out loud, “I would have these words from your tongue. Ours always.”
“Yours always,” I cry, and then to my astonishment, I’m overtaken by a third orgasm, bright and full as the moon outside the window.
FJ also comes undone, yelling out and knotting inside me with one final thrust as he shoots what feels like a river of semen into my soaked pussy.
And then…
…he smiles down at me bright as the moon above.
“Ours always,” he whispers inside my mind as he rolls us together. In an instant, we’re once again on our sides, my pussy milking his dick in tugs so hard and long, I’m not entirely sure the action won’t make me come again.
Olafr nestles in behind me, kissing the shoulder FJ bit like a healing balm.
“Ours always,” he says sleepily.
I have never in my life felt so warm. Or so cared for.
“Yours always,” I say, resting my forehead against FJ’s chest and pressing my shoulder into Olafr’s lips.
And I swear it feels like we really did just get married. Like we’re official somehow, because of a few words uttered while fucking under the light of a full moon.
Have I mentioned this whole situation is off-the-charts weird? Because it totally, totally is.
Totally weird, I think on a yawn. Then I once again fall asleep feeling safer than I ever have before in my entire life.