7. NORN OF YOUR BUSINESS

7

NORN OF YOUR BUSINESS

"‘ N ot far' is a pile of shit!" Bebe grumbled.

My tongue lolled out as I trotted along at a slower pace than I would have liked, but with Richard hobbling on three legs, we couldn't go at full speed. The break was healing, but he needed food to help fuel the process. The big thing was that we were away from the river and the northern dragon that patrolled the water.

"Not far in the scheme of things. We'll be there in a few hours," I said. "Take in the scenery, enjoy the moment and all that shit."

"Are you sure it's safe?" Claire asked, her voice tinged with fear despite the calm I'd sent her. I couldn't blame her, not really. It wasn't every day you ran into a dragon trying to alternately freeze you into an ice cube and tear you to pieces .

Whatever fear I had was no longer registering. I was numb.

Too much had been thrown at me for me to be overly fazed by what had just happened. But maybe Claire and Berek had been more sheltered than me. Even more than Richard or Ship and Bebe.

No, I was not the normal one here.

Hell, I wasn't even just a shifter, I was some sort of minor Norse god? What exactly would that mean for me now? What was the power that I supposedly had? Not killing dragons, that was for sure.

I shied hard away from those thoughts. What I needed was a hot tea, a warm blanket and a soft chair to absorb some of the impact of figuring out just who and what I was and how I could apparently change the trajectory of what destiny had in store for me.

Tea and a warm blanket could fix this. Right, no problem.

"Safer than most places," I said, coming back to the conversation. "Havoc doesn't know that's where I am from. Neither does Han. Eir said…well she said that one of my friends there, Grant, created a natural hiding spot. Which is why I was safe for so many years. I think it will give us some respite to figure out what happens next."

That was the biggest issue at hand.

What next? What steps would I take to keep all this together? What did I have to do to stop Ragnar?k, save the world, and hopefully not die in the process?

I'd stopped Han from killing me, eliminated the threat of my mother—even if Kieran was still out there, and I had no doubt he'd try to kill me again given the chance—but in all that I had gained Havoc as a hunter. The fate of the world was still tied to my life or death if the way I was being hunted meant anything.

I wanted to sigh and curl up in a corner, to see if I woke up from a long nap, maybe this was all some sort of pizza and beer induced dream sequence.

Instead, I did what I often did. I turned my thoughts to what was right in front of me and took in the scenery.

Alaska this time of year was pretty, and about as warm as it was going to get. Tiny purple and pink flowers dotted the landscape around us, trees were bunched up in tight patches where snow still sat at their bases. Yup, snow and flowers, it was a special combination.

The mountains in the distance were completely covered with snow, and glistened bright white, shining in the midday sun, as if encrusted in diamonds. Not that the sun would be setting any time soon. Not here in mid-summer.

I glanced over at Richard. He was jogging and hopping along, his right hind leg dangling for the most part. Here and there he tested it, then jerked it away from the ground with a grimace. He never complained, never said a word about the pain that I knew he was feeling. But I could sense it all the way through our pack bond.

I pushed some of my energy through to him, and he shot a look at me. "I'm fine."

"Fucking indignant nincompoop energy," Bebe said. "That's what I think. She's your sister, let her help you."

I huffed a laugh. Having Bebe so tightly tied within my new pack was interesting. One, because she could sense the energies as well or maybe even better than me. And two, because Richard grunted and bobbed his head, giving in to her. She outranked him, which meant she was above Ship too.

"She's a demanding one," he said. There wasn't an ounce of anger in his words though.

Because even better than her outranking my brothers, Bebe was my second in command. That was the thing about being in a pack, you could feel where strengths and weaknesses put you in the hierarchy. That way no one argued, and it helped to keep fights to a minimum.

Maybe that was why my own mother had never let me into her pack as an adult, because then everyone would have known that I was stronger than her.

Holy freaking shit storm.

The truth hit me like a blow between the eyes. My whole life, my whole existence…the words blurted out of me.

"Holy shit. Juniper kept me out of the pack because she knew I was stronger than her. Not just to be a bitch, but to hold all her power and to keep everyone else blind to my strength?"

I wasn't entirely sure, but saying it out loud, I felt the truth of it.

"Just figured that out, eh?" Ship trotted alongside me. "That's why she freaked out all those years ago when Mars tried to bring you officially into the pack when you were eighteen. Before that, the only person who would have known was her, being your mother."

"Yeah." I shook my head. "It never would have occurred to me before now. I've never really been a part of a pack as an adult. Not ours at least."

"Never occurred to me either," Richard grumbled. "We thought because you were not Mars' daughter, by blood, that was why. But after her meltdown, even he didn't let you in the pack those last few months he was with us. Maybe he knew that it kept you safer by keeping you out."

Richard wasn't wrong. I'd never actually been part of the pack, except as a child—and children were de facto tied to their parents only, so they couldn't be manipulated by other adults. I'd stopped asking after the fight Juniper had put up on my last birthday that Mars had been with us. Given up on it ever happening and tried to prove myself all that time.

Assumed it was because I wasn't worthy.

Sure, I had bonds to my family, and that was something that I'd worked hard to cut through, but those hadn't been true pack bonds. Likely that's what made it easier to cut the ties.

Those connections had nothing on this interweaving of energy and understanding of one another. Of feeling Claire and Berek, of Bebe's energy and even my brother's. Hell, even that distant connection to Tyr was there.

And I had a feeling it was because I was an alpha, that it was all at the front of my mind.

I shook my head and snapped at a long strand of grass that bobbed ahead of me. "You think Juniper actually made it so I couldn't fully integrate?"

"Would make sense," Berek said. "If she truly learned how to steal mate bonds, it might have come with the knowledge of other types of bonds too. Or maybe…"

I winced. "Or maybe she was looking for ways to cut me out, and stumbled on how to steal mate bonds?" I didn't mention that she'd also tied herself to the tree of life. Not that it had saved her in the end.

"That's what I'd guess," Ship said. "She started looking for stuff not long after you were born, I think. Started bringing in shamans and other pack alphas. "

Bebe kneaded her paws into the ruff around my neck. "Doesn't matter, girlfriend. You've got us now. And we've got you. We've got you ."

Her words soothed some of the ragged edges of my heart, of the past and the hurts that were there.

"Yeah. That we do. Everything she put us all through, everything that happened…we'll heal those wounds together," Richard said.

My heart, man my heart was bursting and I had to keep my eyes locked on the path I was taking because I would have started bawling.

"I got you too," I managed to say without my voice cracking too much.

We all fell into silence as we drew closer to town.

Skagway hadn't changed much since I'd left, not that I was surprised. It hadn't been that long since Ship had walked into my little bookstore and turned my life upside down. If I'd had a bingo card, I wouldn't have covered a single square on it.

But it felt like with everything that had happened, I'd been gone a lifetime.

I was different after the time that had passed, that was what I was feeling. I had changed in more ways than just carrying the sun.

As if thinking of it triggered its strength, warmth flooded through me. Damn, I should have thought of it sooner and I'd have been able to warm myself up. I wondered if I could pass the warmth on to the others .

"This way." I led the group of wolves around the outskirts of town, avoiding all the main roads, and around through the woods to the backside of the bookstore. "Wait here, I'll get the door open."

I shifted back to two legs, buck naked but that was life as a shifter, and crept up the stairs that led to the apartment above. The door was locked, but the extra key was still under the pot of dead flowers that Taini—my previous roommate—had put out what seemed like a lifetime ago. I hoped she and Copper, her girlfriend, were safe. I hoped they were far from here and sitting on the banks of some river at a café, sipping hot espresso and eating warm croissants.

The door opened with a creak—I never greased the hinges, they were another alarm if someone was sneaking into the apartment—and I peered in. "Denna?"

No answer. Not that I'd fully expected her to make it here ahead of us. The ghoul was a good friend, and I'd sent her away before we'd gone to face my mother in Montana. Sure, it had been a bogus message for Grant, but it was meant to keep them both busy, and out of harm's way.

I didn't want my gentle friend being caught in the middle of this mess—again.

I looked back and motioned for the others to follow me up into the apartment. "Keep the lights off for now, until I get a hold of Grant," I said. I needed to let him know we were here, so we didn't set off any alarms. I needed to ask him if it was true he kept the area protected.

Ship and Berek shifted as they stepped into the apartment. Richard and Claire did not. Richard, I understood, he was dealing with the broken leg. But Claire…she stayed in her wolf form which was odd until her emotions hit me solidly in the guts, embarrassment at the front of the list.

"I'll grab you some clothes and you can use the bathroom first." I headed to my bedroom.

Embarrassment rolled through her at the thought of being naked in front of my brothers and Berek at the same time. I couldn't really decipher why, because generally as shifters, nudity was just kind of a part of the deal. We all shifted from fur to two legs nude.

But if I were a guessing girl, I'd have said it was the newness of her relationship with Berek. Wolves could be possessive…in case you hadn't noticed.

Rubbing at my arms I knew one thing for certain.

I needed to find a way to dull down the connection to them all. As it stood, I could sense each of them acutely. Richard's pain. Claire's embarrassment. Ship's worry. Berek's worry. Bebe's worry and what felt like lust? Who the hell was she lusting after now? I stuck my head out of my bedroom to look at her. She was curled up on the corner of the couch, her eyes closed and just the tip of her tail flicking every other second .

Not that I didn't want a pack…but Berek and Claire weren't really mine. It was a circumstance that had pushed them into my circle, nothing more. And I didn't want to hold people to me that didn't want to be there.

I sighed and went back to digging through my closet. I still had clothes here, I hadn't been able to take everything with me when I'd run the first time.

I yanked on a shirt and jeans quickly, then took a set to the bathroom and motioned for Claire to follow me. She padded silently into the bathroom, and I flicked on the light. "There's no window, you can have the light on, and no one will see you."

She bobbed her head and woofed a soft thanks, butting her nose against my leg in acknowledgment. I stepped out and shut the door behind me. "Berek, Ship, I don't have any clothes that will fit so grab a sheet or something. Toga it up."

Ship grunted and made his way to the second bedroom, and a moment later he came back with a sheet for himself, and one for Berek.

"I'll wait." Richard laid on the threadbare rug in the middle of the living room, lowering his head to his paws, a heavy sigh sliding from him. His leg would heal, but it would take at least a full day. And I had to believe we had a full day before we had to move.

I had to hope that Grant could do what Eir thought he could.

Bebe flicked her tail, as she watched Richard lay down, wincing as his back leg bumped, her eyes narrowing. "You are being stupid. You should at least let your sister help you with that. Let her float you some more energy."

"I will be fine, Bebe. My sister is also still healing if you hadn't noticed," Rich growled.

She huffed and a flash of annoyance laced with…concern…and a healthy dose of attraction. I stared. She wasn't serious, was she? No, she might have a tiny crush on him, but that was it, she barely knew him. I mean…no, I had other problems that required my attention.

Bebe's love life was so far down my list of concerns right now, it about fell off the page.

"I'm going downstairs, there's always food in the office fridge."

No one responded to me, not even Bebe. Everyone was exhausted, that came through loud and clear.

Besides, I needed a few minutes to myself for several reasons.

I needed to call Grant and find out how big his range of keeping us hidden was.

I needed to see what I could find in the books in the store on what I was hoping would help me understand my situation.

Last but not least, I needed to try and numb the bonds between me and Havoc, and me and Han. Even if Grant could hide me, they would have still sensed my general direction.

Han I was pretty sure I could numb out, I'd done it before with some success.

Havoc, I was not so confident I could quiet those bonds. Even thinking about him made the connection between us spike and throb. I gripped the railing and had to breathe through the onslaught of need.

"Not now," I hissed, the railing crackling under my hand as I squeezed for all I was worth.

Moving through the dark, I was down the rest of the stairs and into the bookstore before anything else came through from Havoc. Breathing in, I could easily pick up the scents of paper and ink, book glue and the faint tang of coffee still lingering from the morning.

Warmth spread through me, and not just because I was inside and out of the cold. This was home, this was a place that I had felt safe for ten years. Ten years of peace. Of safety, and of knowing that I'd found a place that I belonged.

First thing first. I called Grant, fully expecting him to pick up. He might be able to get the journal back to me. Maybe.

The phone went to voicemail, surprising me. "Grant…call me when you get this. I need that book that Theo has." I didn't leave him a number, assuming he'd see the caller ID. I tapped the phone with one finger. I hoped he was okay .

Crazy to be worried about a vampire, but he was my friend.

Next, I had to dull down the connections between me and the wolves I'd picked up, so I could focus on the task at hand. Everyone's emotions all at once were too much.

I started with Berek and Claire. Looking inward, I found the ties binding us together. Soft, rather thin, like gossamer thin strands that I could barely see. I hesitated, memories flooding through me, things I hadn't thought about in years. Because I knew what it was to be cut loose from an alpha.

Juniper stared down at me. The dirt was cool under my bare legs, the smell of the forest not enough to get through the snot and tears running down my face. My arms were wrapped tightly around my body as I waited here.

"You see?" Juniper all but purred the words. "You cannot feel a connection to the others because you are not wanted. That is how pack bonds work, Cinny. You must be wanted for them to hold tight to you. You must want to be attached to us too." She laughed. "And I can tell that is the last thing you want."

A shudder rippled through my naked body, and it took all I had not to shift back to my wolf form. At least as a wolf, I could run away. On two legs…I was trapped. "I…" I didn't know what to say. I was only eighteen, and my mother had yanked me from four legs to two, just using the power of her voice .

The power of her as an alpha trumped my desire to run away.

"Do you deny it? Do you wish to be tied more tightly to me?"

I couldn't look away from her face and for the first time…I was honest. "No. I don't want to be tied to you."

Her smile stretched across her beautiful face, and she spread her arms wide. "Then let the connection between us be dissolved."

A burn ripped through my soul, a flurry of pain cut through me, and it felt as if I were cast out into an ocean storm, drowning as my wolf howled. We'd never be a part of the pack.

We'd been outsiders, only able to sense Juniper truly as the mother-child bond allowed, but still there had been something. Hope that I'd be let in…

I loved my siblings. I loved Mars. I didn't want to lose them. I curled around my body, protected the tiniest of threads that bound me to those I loved.

Juniper kicked dirt at me as she walked away. "That is the only lesson I will ever give you on bonds, little Cinny. Remember this."

I blinked, back in the present moment.

Juniper had cut through the bonds, but I'd clung to a few strands that barely held together, like spider silk, the familial bonds tying me to my siblings.

When I'd left Grayling, I'd dissolved my connections to my brothers and sister, no problem. Because Juniper had done the lion's share of the work all those years earlier, cutting me from the family. I wasn't sure that my siblings would have even noticed that they'd lost that last thread to me.

"Why now?" I muttered and rubbed my hands over my face. It wasn't difficult to put a damper on the connection between myself, Berek and Claire. I could have cut them loose completely, but they had to want it too.

And that is exactly why it was so difficult. Most shifters wanted to be in a pack. It was what the wolves they carried with them wanted. Very, very few shifters actually wanted to go it alone.

Shifters like Han and Havoc, lone wolves in every sense of the word, and the ones that had the newest ties to me…they should be very easy to remove.

And yet they'd been the most difficult of all, every time I tried to cut them free.

A hiss of air escaped me and suddenly I struggled to breathe. Han couldn't possibly want to remain tied to me. I mean…sure he wanted to kill me, but actually remaining tied to me? Surely, I should be able to cut him loose now.

I looked to the threads between myself and Han.

They were black and green now, muddied like a swamp, and yet the line connecting us seemed to throb with a life of its own. The connection of mates tied together in some shitty sort of destiny. But he'd rejected me. I frowned, eyes closed looking harder at the bond, I reached out and ran a hand over it. It was warm, and thick, sticky almost. Weirdly, it gave off a sense of Loki's energy. Which made sense since he'd created the connection.

I turned my inward vision to the tie between me and Havoc. That was…it called to me, humming with a life of its own the same way Han's did. Only Havoc's tie was a siren's song to wait for him…to let him find me.

The thing they both had in common was the immense girth (get your mind out of the gutter) of the bonds. They were thick as if they'd been developed over years, and not weeks.

Why were they so different than any other bond I'd seen?

My bonds with Claire and Berek, I could see that those could be pulled apart if I wanted to, because they didn't really want to be a part of my pack. They had a pack, they belonged to Havoc, and I'd somehow stolen them away.

But the two wolves who wanted to kill me, those two I couldn't cut loose, and I wasn't going to waste my energy trying to.

I rubbed my hands over my face again. I was trapped by them both, unable to escape them any more than I'd been able to escape Juniper when I was a little girl.

I took the next half an hour layering every bond that was attached to me, whether it was pack or mate, and muffling it. I buried them deep within me, so there was no more forward connection.

Imagining I wrapped the bonds in concrete, then buried them under six feet of earth, the connection faded to a mere pinprick. It wouldn't give me much warning if one of them showed up, but they also would struggle to find me.

I could almost feel Havoc's rage, like one last gurgle as I shoved his connection away from me.

"Best I can do," I whispered, wiping the sweat from my forehead.

And even with me putting all my effort into blocking the bonds with them, I could still sense Havoc and Han in the distance.

I could only hope that they couldn't sense me. That Grant's vampiric abilities were going to keep us all safe.

"I'm so damn screwed," I whispered as I opened my eyes. With barely a thought I released myself from Claire and Berek. Easy, because they didn't really want to have ties to me. Not with everything that was happening, and they had a pack already. Two down.

I swallowed hard and looked at the bonds between me and my brothers and plucked at the strands. Tried to unbind them from me.

They held. Tears leaked from my eyes. They wanted to stay tied to me and it dissolved a little of the fear that sat in my belly. I wasn't alone. My brothers—blood or not—were choosing to stay with me.

I didn't bother trying to unbind myself from Bebe. That wasn't about to happen. I did however damp her down a little, so I didn't have to feel her lusting after my brother for god's sake.

Shaking a little, having done as much as I could with the bonds, I found myself headed toward the historical section of the store instead of the kitchen like I'd said.

I paused at the front door.

A notice informed me that Bob and George were on vacation and wouldn't be back for another week. That at least gave us a home base for a few more days. And it kept my human friends out of the crossfire, a relief and one less worry on my plate.

Continuing on, I let my fingers trail the spines of the books, reacquainting myself with the feel of the leather and bound cloth, the raised letters of favorites. Calm slid through me, the quiet slipping under my skin and soothing the edges of ragged fear that had been chasing me. The very back corner of the store called to me.

In the semidarkness, the only light came from the security cameras that were scattered around the room. It was enough for me to see by, and in a few short minutes, I had three books on the Norse. Mythology, history, and pantheon .

I took them to my chair, curled up and started reading. The first book was "Norse Gods and their Roles in Ragnar?k" which was great, until it wasn't. It really, really wasn't. And here I thought things couldn't get worse…how wrong I was. Much of what I was reading was so new to me, and horrifying in its details of how the world would end—especially now that I was living it. That there was no hope, that there was no way to escape Ragnar?k.

Han and Havoc…they'd been hunting the sun and moon and once they were caught well, that was the end of things. Jor would raze the world. No one would survive. Fire and destruction to the max.

I skimmed, absorbing the material as fast as I could, not only because I knew my time was limited, but because the words were not exactly warm and fuzzy feeling as they leapt off of the page and pretty much slapped me around. As far as the legends went, there were no happy endings of any sort.

I picked up the second book, " The Mythology of the Baltic States, " skimmed it as well, my heart pounding erratically. Not good, none of this was looking good.

I all but tossed that book down and scooped up the third book. "To Follow the Norse: becoming a Viking."

The early Vikings and their belief systems were wrapped around the Norse, and the book gave me a glimpse into how the gods wanted to be treated. How they viewed the world, and how they liked to be worshiped.

Like gods. I huffed a laugh at the simplicity of it, "Why the hell write a book about the fact that gods are dicks, and when you don't treat them as such, they ruin your life?"

I said the words out loud and groaned, folding forward so my forehead touched my knees. This was the shits. The absolute shits. There was very little about Tyr, Havoc, Han…certainly nothing about a daughter of destiny named Cin.

My one real hope was that Grant would be able to get me that fucking journal.

"Hey." Bebe butted her head against my hanging arms to get my attention. "What did you learn? Something good?"

I groaned again. "Unless I'm missing something important, I learned that we are well and truly fucked, Bebe."

She let out a hiss. "Seriously?"

I took a breath and tried to put everything I'd learned into a few simple sentences.

"Ragnar?k is inevitable, there is nothing in any of these books about stopping it. There is no clue about how we can stop the world and all the realms coming to an end—only how to speed up the end." I ran a hand over my face. "The Norse gods themselves aren't strong enough to stop what's supposed to happen. It's why Havoc and Han are the way they are, it's like everyone is bound up in a big web, with some giant puppet master pulling the strings."

I stayed where I was, folded at the waist, the stretch and burn of my muscles giving me something to focus on.

"Well, we just need to find the puppet master then. Right?" Bebe leapt up so she sat on my back, her miniscule weight pushing me a little deeper into the stretch.

I blinked.

Find the puppet master.

That was…"That's fucking brilliant, Bebe."

"Of course it is. I'm a cat and a woman, two of the most brilliant creatures on this spinning rock. I don't know why you're surprised." She curled up on my back, but I sat up and dislodged her. I reached for the book on the Norse gods and flipped through it until I found what I was looking for. Running my finger down the page, the words seemed to glow in the semi-dark.

"Bebe, the webs of fate are bound and made and spun by the Norns. They are the three weavers of fate, seeing the future, cutting lives short, and all that sort of shit. They are associated with strings. Like puppet masters . But more than that…" I tapped the book. Could it be that easy after all? I doubted it, but the idea of going to them felt…right. "They would know if there's a way to stop this. If they can see the future and the paths offered, then they would know what I need to d o!" I was certain that was my answer. The Norns. I had to talk to the Norns.

"Assuming they aren't the ones making it all happen." Bebe snorted.

I ignored her for the moment as I searched through the books again. Because knowing that I had to find the Norns, and then actually finding them, were two very different things.

A scuffle of a footstep snapped my attention to my left. Shipley stood there, still wrapped in a sheet, but he had a plate of food in his hand.

"You need to eat. It isn't much, but Berek found the deep freeze and your stash of meat. Claire whipped it up with what they could find leftover in the pantry down here. It's pretty good for scrounging."

He grabbed a chair and sat down next to me. I took the plate and breathed in the smell. I'd been so wrapped up in my reading that I hadn't even smelled the food cooking. Food I'd promised to bring them all.

A pasta dish loaded with cream, marinara, baby tomatoes and shrimp, parmesan sprinkled over the top. I took a bite and let out a soft sigh. "This is good. Thank you."

"I know, I had two plates already." Ship laughed.

"Did Richard eat?" I asked.

"Yes, we found some steak in the freezer, dethawed it enough that he could chow it down while me and Berek set his leg. He'll be better by morning, I think. The run on it didn't help."

I nodded. That much protein and fat would help Rich heal fast. I should have told them to do just that, but the pull to the books had been too strong. The need to know how to get myself and my family out of this mess was more important than anything—even an injury like a broken leg could wait.

I shoveled the pasta and freezer burned shrimp into my mouth, talking around the mouthfuls. "I think I know where I need to go. I just…" I swallowed a whole cherry tomato and choked on it. Ship slapped me on the back.

"What do you ‘need to just'?"

I cleared my throat and wiped at my watering eyes. The hunger had been held at bay by all the emotions, the fear, the injuries, but now I was ravenous. "Can you get me another plate?"

Ship looked at the empty plate then back to me. "You'll tell me what you found?"

I nodded.

But the truth was…I wasn't sure that anyone else could come with me. Not where I was going.

And man, were they going to be pissed when I told them I had to leave them behind.