Page 60 of Fenrir

Fenrir’s wolf snarled. Grace hadn’t talked much about her pack, but he’d seen them in her memories. He read the messages three more times.

“Problem?”

Fenrir looked at Loki. “I don’t know.”

“What’s going on?”

“Grace said her old pack is all here in the underworld and that her father has returned, so she had to head up to her packlands.”

“Do you know where that is?”

“Somewhere north of Bakersfield. But… she was supposed to be at work. They wouldn’t all be at Odin’s. So where would she have seen them?”

The idea left Fenrir uneasy. Entire packs didn’t just appear in the Underworld unless something catastrophic happened. Their packlands went back hundreds of years, sometimes more. They wouldn’t just give them up and move away so easily.

Something wasn’t right.

“Maybe Odin knows.” Loki pulled out his phone and dialed.

Fenrir waited, unease settling inside him with every second that passed.

“Hey. It’s Loki. Did Grace make it to work today? Fenrir’s Grace?” Loki looked at Fenrir and nodded. “I see. Okay. Thanks.” He hung up the phone. “Grace was asked to help out Frigg. She had a bunch of refugees show up, apparently.”

Fenrir grabbed his coat and headed for the door.

“I’ll come too,” Loki offered.

Fenrir thought about stopping him, but at the last minute, he didn’t.

CHAPTER16

Grace pulledup to the edge of camp and turned off her car’s engine. She could hardly believe it had been so long since she’d been there. It felt like she’d run to the Underworld just weeks before. But then everything before meeting Fenrir was just a blur.

She scanned the camp. Lights lit up the insides of every house she could see, but no one was outside. Not that there were any of her pack members left. But from how Aldard had spoken, he’d made it seem like rogues had overrun the place.

She rolled down her window a fraction and sniffed the air. The pungent aroma of male wolves was more than present, but there was something oddly soothing about it. She sniffed again and was sure she’d never smelled the males before, and yet… there was something familiar about them.

She listened for any talking or howls but heard nothing. She’d spent hours practicing what she would say when she finally met her father, but none of it seemed adequate. How did you put twenty years of loss and curiosity into a few sentences?

She pulled out her phone and looked at it. She’d had spotty cell coverage since she’d left Los Angeles, but that hadn’t stopped her from leaving a dozen messages and texts for Fenrir. Though she couldn’t be sure any of them had gone through. She had no idea how cell coverage between the realms worked. Part of her thought she should have brought him along, but he was working on things of his own at the moment, and she needed to let him do it.

Grace tried his number, but there was no connection. Growing up, she’d never had a phone, and neither had anyone else she knew, so it made sense there wouldn’t be any signal. She shoved her phone in her pocket and reached out through their strange bond. She got the sense that he was out there but nothing else. That alone comforted her. They hadn’t talked about the new bond, but she got the feeling that if something terrible happened to him, she would know no matter how many dimensions away from each other they were.

Grace got out of the car. The door creaked as she opened it, and in the stillness of the forest, it sounded as loud as a hawk’s screech.

She closed the door and waited, listening and sniffing the air. Again nothing moved, making her gut twist. Maybe the males were on a run.

Grace zipped up her hoodie and headed for the firepit in the middle of camp. They lit the fire for pack meetings and get-togethers. If the fire was lit on a non-meeting day, it was to help any newcomers or visitors to guide them back to camp.

She walked to a smaller cabin on the very edge of the pack lands. The light was on, but no one was inside when she looked through the window.

An eerie sensation settled over the village.

Grace rounded to the front of the house and looked down the path between the homes of the lower pack members. She sniffed the air, and the scent of smoke and burning meat filled the air. She could just see the flicker of the firepit in the middle of the town square clearing. Maybe they were eating.

She strode down the path separating the two sides of the camp and swallowed hard. Her father. She was going to meet her father. She’d never seen a photo of him, but she knew exactly what he smelled like.

He smelled like the cigarettes that permeated every inch of Fay’s house. But it was more than the cigarettes. She’d know his scent because when she’d been little, she dreamed of him coming back to her and Fay and apologizing for what he’d done. On those nights, she’d hugged the one flannel shirt she’d found buried behind the washer in the laundry room one time when she’d been playing hide and seek. For a moment, she wondered what had happened to his flannel.

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