Page 25 of Valkyrie Restored

I didn’t give him time to respond, turning on my heel and racing to the bow. I’d lose myself in the repetitiveness of the chore while my brain tried to figure out how I’d survive with these new changes. How I’d handle possibly losing the two most important people in my life.

By the time Arran docked the boat, I had most of our equipment broken down and washed, ready to be packed up for our next trip out. The bachelor party stumbled on shore, carrying their prized fish, ready to be filleted and cooked by one of the chefs at the local hotel before the men ate it for supper. That was if any of them were still awake by the time it was ready. From the amount of beer and other spirits they’d consumed on the trip home, none of them were currently feeling much pain.

After shepherding our clients to shore where they were met by someone from the hotel, Arran helped me to put the last few things away before he snagged a couple of the leftover beers, handing me one.

“We need to talk.” He lifted the bottle to his mouth and drank. As much as I didn’t want to, I couldn’t stop my gaze from settling on his neck, watching those muscles move as they swallowed the liquid. I knew what those muscles felt like when they swallowed my cock, bringing me to the heights of passion. With each swallow, the harder I became. I bit my lip.Oh goddess, I’m going to miss him.

I took a drink from my own beer as I tried to get my emotions under control. I wasn’t a child. I was hundreds of years old. I could handle a breakup. I refused to cry, to let him see how this was going to devastate me after all, I was happy for him. And Elin. I’d been telling myself from the beginning how great they were together. They both deserved happiness.

Once I felt like I’d be able to say something without begging him to stay, I opened my mouth. “Yeah, I guess we do.”

“I’ve been getting closer to Elin, spending many of my nights with her.”

I nodded and took another sip of my beer. It was what I’d realized only hours before. I don’t know why it had taken me so long to see it. All the signs were there. But I guess I’d been too wrapped up in Elin myself to see what was happening with my husband.

He stared at me as if he waited for me to speak, but what did he want me to say? That I was happy because I was, somewhere inside me. But it would be easier to feel once I’d gotten over the hurt.

When I didn’t say anything, he sighed. “She’s my fated mate, the one designed to carry my young, to be cherished by me. At first I thought that it was just an attraction since it had been so long since we’d had a woman between us who liked us both. But then after I tasted her and then ravaged her the next day like an animal, I knew who she was to me. And the more time that I spend with her, the deeper I feel her. Here. In my chest. I can already feel when she experiences strong emotions and when she’s in danger. Something she’s experienced a couple of times, but thankfully never amounted to much.”

I blew out my breath. He looked so earnest, so happy, I had to offer him my support. I knew if the roles had been reversed, he would have put aside his own feelings to support me. He was always doing things like that for me. I mean he was the one who’d pushed to get Elin over for supper because he thought she was good for me. Something I now wasn’t so sure I was happy about. At least I’d have my memories of her body, how she clenched around me, marked my back with her nails when I pushed her over the orgasmic cliff.

“Th-that’s great. I’m so happy for you. You deserve to have a fated mate like Elin. She’ll give you strong children.” I was so proud of myself. The words came from my mouth without so much as a waver and sounded believable.

He clinked his beer bottle against mine before draining it. When done, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and I nearly moaned and cried. Two sensations I’d never experienced before at the same time. “What about you?”

I nearly choked on the beer I’d just put in my mouth. “Ex-excuse me?” I couldn’t even begin to understand what his question meant.

“Is Elin your fated mate? Because I have to say you’re acting like she is. You’re cranky—more so than normal—when you don’t see her for days. And you’re anxious about what’s happening with her when you’re not with her. Unless you want to try and tell me that wasn’t why you were pacing the boat deck this afternoon. I know this has been your longest stretch away from her.” He shrugged, but his carefree attitude didn’t fool me. It was in the tightness of the lines around his lips, the way he gripped the neck of his empty beer bottle with his fingers, they gave him away. My answer to his question was extremely important to him. I just didn’t know what he wanted to hear.

“I, um, I thought so, but then this…” I motioned towards him. I couldn’t say the words. I couldn’t say that Elin was his fated mate. It would make it too real, too final. I wasn’t ready for that.

He reached across the space between us to grab my hand. “I know she’s your fated mate, too. I think, that maybe, she’s the one who will bring us together. That she’s the piece we’ve been missing.”

A surge of excitement, of hope rose in me. Could this be true? Could she beourfated mate? I wanted so much to believe it, but wasn’t multiple fated mates rare? And the ones I remembered seeing as a colt within our extended family were between one stallion and two or more mares. But even they’d been looked at as oddities. Or maybe that was just how my young mind had processed it.

He pulled me closer, pressing his chest against mine. “I think that if we take her together, mate her properly at the same time, that it will make us all fated mates. It will close the circle.”

I nodded. It made sense in some weird way. Or maybe that was just my hope talking, but at this stage, I’d take just about anything. Anything to not lose them from my life. But then the full meaning of his words hit. He said “mate properly”. To do that, we’d have to tell her about who we really were.

Oh, fuck.

17

Elin

Something was wrong with me.I didn’t know what it was, but I was almost concerned enough to consider contacting my original doctors in Greece to see if what I was feeling could be related. I felt… unsettled. It was the only way I could phrase it.

These past few weeks had been different. I didn’t get to see Hurrit much and I missed him. Every time I went out into the woods or walked along the shore or through various fields of wildflowers, I looked for him. I almost wished for weird, dangerous things to happen to me because he was almost always there when they did. If I hadn’t had some of them happen without his presence I would have wondered if he wasn’t the cause. But that was just stupid to think he’d cause me harm just to get me close to him. That wasn’t who Hurrit was. He had a protective streak a mile wide. It was his love language even though being protective wasn’t one of the official five.

But when those crazy things happened—a giant snapping type turtle that attacked me on the lake shore, a pit of snakes that materialized amongst the wildflowers, and the birds that seemed to want to get close to my hair—Hurrit never arrived. Each time, I managed to escape, or the attacking animal gave up when I didn’t show any outward fear. It started to concern me. Whenever I mentioned these occurrences to Daisy in a roundabout way, she always scoffed and asked what books I was reading. While pits of snakes were well known during breeding times in the early spring, they didn’t occur in the dead of summer like this one had been. Nor did they just magically appear from one day to the next. The locals all knew where these snake dens were because the snakes returned year-after-year to the same place.

And while Hurrit never came tosaveme, it never failed that Arran showed up at my workshop or house that evening, asking me if anything weird happened that day. Many of those visits, he came with food or fresh fish, and we’d make supper together before falling into bed where he made good on his promise to make love to me slowly, allowing him time to learn every millimetre of my body. Many times.

I often wondered if I was just a stand-in for Hurrit who was so busy taking out tours into the wilderness that he was rarely home. Not through the way Arran treated me, but because there were some nights that Arran didn’t stay over, telling me that he expected Hurrit to come home late that night. I’d always nod and give him a kiss goodbye when he left, but inside I was breaking. It only served to remind me that as much as we were together—Arran and I with the occasional evening with all three, and the rare occasion that Hurrit and I were alone—that I was the addition, the extra. They were married and had a relationship together that was more important than what they shared with me.

I pushed away the final jar of moisturizer and sighed. I’d started my day early, gathering up lots of stock to deliver to various stores along Lake Winnipeg that sold my items. And I’d made up a number of starter kits to deliver to a few stores in Winnipeg that contacted me, requesting more information. But after my first few deliveries, both stores in Winnipeg contacted me, requesting to reschedule our meetings. So without needing to head all the way into Winnipeg, I returned home and decided to fill in my free time by creating some new products with some of the flowers and plants I’d found in a couple of baskets outside my workshop almost a week ago. I couldn’t say for sure, but I was pretty positive they came from Hurrit because they always seemed to arrive the morning after Arran didn’t stay with me. It made the gifts both heartwarming and heart wrenching.

And today as I finished jarring up the moisturizer, the gifts felt heart wrenching.

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