Into the Fire (The Unseelie Court Book 4) by Gwen Rivers (latest ebook reader .TXT) 📕

says as they sit around the fire at the wolf den, “that you are all children of Fenrir?”

“That’s right.” Liam passes around a jug of ale, offering it first to Harmony, who declines it and then to Aiden. “Although none of us knew that before we died.”

“You’re Draugar?” Harmony asks with wide eyes.

The term is met with blank looks.

“You died and then were reanimated?” the seer clarifies.

“Not exactly.” Liam rubs the back of his neck. “What do you know of your brother?”

“Other than that he is currently sitting on the Shadow Throne?” Aiden asks. “Only that he is imprisoned in a mortal body.”

Liam nods. “Fenrir is contained within different mortal bodies. He procreates with others during each lifetime. We are all his children. Gray there is the oldest, at least the oldest of this pack.”

Gray, who has the same multihued eyes, though different shades of blue and green from Liam’s, speaks with a British upper-crust accent. “I was a mortal over one thousand years ago. Fenrir was my mother then.”

Aiden’s jaw drops. “You’re telling me Fenrir gave birth to you while he was a woman?”

Gray nods. “Yes. His name was Kitty. She died of Cholera. It wasn’t until my own death, fifty years later, that I changed for the first time. I was alone and tried to return to my wife. But she had seen me pass as an old man and didn’t understand how I had reverted to this.” He waves down to indicate his youthful form.

“The point of death is when the change overtakes us,” Liam says. “I was Fenrir’s last child, born seventeen years ago. He was male in that incarnation. Hubert O’Leary. We died together in an automobile accident.”

Aiden scents the air but detects no lie from Liam or Gray. “How did you find out, what you are?”

Gray takes his turn with the ale. “After my own death and subsequent rebirth as a wolf, I struggled to adapt. And when my Owen died,” he gestures to a short stocky wolf with a black saddle and a whitetail, before continuing, “I was there to help him transition, to see him through his first change. From that point on, we tried to find as many as we could. But as Fenrir is reborn differently every human life cycle, we never know who he is or who the new progeny will be until the moment of death and resurrection.”

Aiden stares around. There had to be at least a hundred different wolves in the territory.

“You are immortal then?”

Liam shakes his head. “No, we just age slowly. Most go mad before age can show in more than a few silver hairs.”

“And they found you in time?” Aiden asks Liam.

The wolf shakes his head. “No. But the internet has made finding the newly changed wolves easier. Always someone nearby with a camera phone.”

Aiden lets out a laugh. “I guess that’s one good thing about it.”

“Why would you stay here though?” Harmony asks. “Why not cross the Veil? Surely, you would have more room to run in Underhill.”

Liam and Gray exchange a look. “The Veil?”

“They don’t know,” Aiden mumbles.

“Know what?” Liam frowns.

Aiden scrubs a hand over his face. Freaking Fenrir sowing his seed since the dawn of time. Or hatching eggs, apparently. And Aiden had been worried about having one child with Nicneven? If he ever got his hands on the wolf, he’d see the bastard fixed.

Although looking at Liam, Gray, Owen and the others, most of them appeared stable.

Harmony speaks, interrupting his thoughts. “Of course, with no one to introduce you to the hidden realms, you don’t know anything about magic.”

“Magic?” Liam scowls.

Babes in the woods. These beasts knew even less than Nic did when he’d found her.

“How far down the line does the transformation go?” Aiden looks between Gray and his son, Owen. “How many generations?”

“Only two,” Gray says as he skins a rabbit and skewers it over a fire. “My grandchildren all died naturally. No wolfing out.”

Aiden studies them. He’s gone from being the last in his line to surrounded by family. And they are family, even if they are far different than the family he’d imagined.

“So why do you stay here?” Aiden glances around the cave. “Surely you have the means to have something better.”

“We stay here because it is one of the last places we can hide from mortals. And because of our missing one.”

“Missing one?”

Liam’s gaze is distant. “She who lived among us for a time. It is about twelve years ago now. We smelled you near her house before. It’s how we picked up your scent. You smell slightly of her winter apple fragrance.”

All the small hairs rise on his arms. “Nic? You know Nic?”

Gray nods. “She came to us as a child. We spend most of our time as the wolves, this is the first time I’ve regained my human appearance since she left.”

“She was never afraid of us,” Liam adds. “We took her in, adopted her into the pack. The fragile little one, all alone. She smelled of wolf and magic. She didn’t belong and neither did we.”

Even then, at the tender age of six, his Nic had carried a shred of his scent.

“You know where she is?” Liam asks.

“Not at the moment. I’ve been trying to find her scent but it’s been hidden from me.” Aiden lets out a sigh. “She’s my mate.”

The wolves exchange another glance. “What is a mate?”

“You really do keep to yourselves, don’t you?” Harmony adds, looking out over the pack.

Gray clears his throat. “Life is both easier and more complicated as the wolf. Simpler to hunt, to sleep in warmth and relative comfort. The needs of the wolf are few. It’s our human hearts that have suffered. Most of us would prefer not to remember.”

Aiden’s wolf agrees with their assessment. Life is easier on four paws. Perhaps not safer, but straightforward and without any kind of game playing. Animals hunt and sleep and live their lives.

“A mate is a forever partner. One who is accepted by me and