A feeling starts deep inside my throat, causing it to burn unexpectedly.
"I'm a monster to you, aren't I?" A voice filled with pain is felt in the octave of my sound.
Odin sighs into the air before green eyes of the ancient forest press me into my spot.
"Of course you're a monster, you're my Half aren't you?" The Wild within him is rising to his surface, his completed full height shadows the inside of the house. His Wild showing me the monster that resides just underneath his layering of skin before his Nature is shuffled back into its resting place.
Odin approaches with the pup in his embrace.
"Charlie, this is Warson," Odin attention now on the small pup in his arms. "Introduce yourself to my mate."
The sound from the very young pup's chest rumbles his sternum. His face turning red with how much of a show he is putting on. All the males in the room look proud of the display Warson is putting on.
"You growl very well. It's good to make your introduction, Warson." Pressing my cheek against his much smaller one, Warson presses into me, having a good smell, his tiny nose sniffing repeatedly as if trying to commit the smell to his memory. Pulling away smiling without teeth, Warson gives me a lifted lip without any manners. A thought occurs will he remember this first meeting as he gets older or will he always think that I have always been here since his birth?
Odin's fingers grip into the base of my neck, pulling me to his cheek.
Skin against skin
Rolling warmth rising throughout my body. Odin pulls away only for his opposite cheek to press firmly into my other cheek, the blood rushing to the surface just to get a feel of his heat. His mouth angling towards my ear, "my monster." It's said very low, with a passion that almost has my blood bursting the vessels it's housed in.
When he pulls away all his family is looking at Odin as if seeing something never displayed before. When my eyes fall to Bryon his vision is only for Luki, who gives him none of that vision back.
Luna Bessa picks Warson up from Odin's arms and nuzzles him before bringing him to his mother. Elska presses her cheek against his before kissing him and making him stay on her hip. He tries to squirm off, so she pinches his ear, just like Aunt Meela does to her younger pups.
"Odin, you've built a solid house." Ryeson is looking around, walking into the bathroom, when he goes to touch the door nob of the bedroom, Odin edges a warning growl that resonates from deep within his chest.
"You aren't to go into there." Odin's sound shifts the air current from within, Ryeson immediately stops and turns around.
"Is this the first time that your family has been into your house?" Asking Odin with curiosity.
"Elska has been in here. She has helped with organizing things that I thought you would find useful. Other than Elska no one else has been allowed to step foot inside our house until tonight."
"Odin wanted you to be the first to see the inside of it." Luna Bessa is speaking out which makes Odin look uncomfortable before he disappears into a room that is hidden behind a sliding wooden door that looked like a wall.
Following him inside, he's grabbing a few chairs that are stacked up against the back wall.
The storage closet is grand, holding rows and rows of mason jars full of all different foods. Hanging cured meat is also strung from the ceiling, and cheeses that look aged in a special area of its own.
Speaking out from inside the room, "Elska did you do all of this food preparation?" Looking at everything that must have taking months to do. Odin walks by with chairs in his hands, letting the side of his body brush against mine, making my head turn to watch the silhouette of him walk away.
"Odin caught and harvested everything I just added yours to my household and then divided it up. It wasn't that much more work." Elska is telling me this while I'm taking stock of everything inside here. Odin's hand brushes across the back of my neck, a fingertip down the length of my arm while going back for more chairs. When he passes me again, that same bare arm slides against my bare arm; a quiver shuffles the skin before it settles down, a quiet gasp of breath tumbles out before my mouth shuts itself tight. My left hand trying to hold the wall for support, ancient greens find mine as soon as my body realigns itself properly, appropriately.
He does things to me, makes me want things from him that are hard to control, hard to deny the want of it.
With the chairs in his hands, he presses his nose to my neck; his family is in the other room, Odin doesn't care. He just stands there breathing me in; his teeth graze over the top of my skin which is shifting once again.
"You need to stop, Odin." Breathless words are coming out into his ear.
"It's hard, Charlie." A low-set agony of sound ushered out before lips faintly touch my neck, the tip of his tongue tasting me. A fire is racing a path everywhere, flushing my cheeks. Even the blood in my veins is quivering from what he can do to me.
Odin inhales at the end of my exhale.
A progression of impulses surging forward only to have the feeling halted in a torturous agony when he pulls himself away from me. An ache settles itself deeply into my lower abdomen making me grimace from want.
Feeling my cheeks, they feel warm as if I am fevered. It takes a minute or two to regain my composure to walk out of the closet. When I do, everyone is seated at the table. Luna Bessa at one end, Odin at the other. Luki on Odin's left, while an empty spot is on his right. Bryon is right beside Luki who puts his hand over his and Luki pulls it away from him. A look of hurt crosses Bryon's feature, but he's quick to put a smile on his face. Elska sits beside me, while Ryeson is at the end with his mother. Warson doesn't have a seat at the table to sit at, he's on his mother's lap but then wiggles off to sit on Odin's lap.
Taking my spot, it feels different not to be at the table my father heads, sitting either between my parents or on my mother's left.
Odin takes his share first, then everyone else helps themselves. When Odin places the first spoonful of stew into his mouth, everyone else follows. Odin spoon feeds Warson from his bowl. Mouthful after mouthful the pup eats.
"Warson, you're like a starved weasel, has no one been feeding you since I've been away?" Odin's teasing voice tickling the young pup's ear.
"He's going through his growth." Luki stating this fact out between bites of food.
"Are you growing?" Odin is nipping at the young pups cheek as if he's the father of the pup.
"Me big male." Warson puffs himself up on Odin's lap with his teeth showing which makes Odin flash teeth to the pup in play.
"Why doesn't he have a spot to sit?" Curiosity is getting the better of me.
"He doesn't get a chair until he's seen five summers," Elska stating this fact out, while she butters a piece of bread, her hand reaching across me, Odin takes it from her to give to her male.
Chewing on my second piece of bread, "Elska this is delicious." No one else says how good this is and when her head hangs down a silly smile touches the corners of her mouth and her face brightens in shades of varying degrees of red. Her cheeks are the warmest of the color tapering down to her neck into a fading pink blush.
Her emotions are impossible to camouflage. "Elska is very competent in everything she does. She will make a wise Elder for the Far North." Now Elska has a tremble of a lip, a hard to hide tremor that makes her drop her fork on her plate and hold her hands in her lap. When she looks up, her sight is off center of Odin's face.
"Do you think so, brother?" Elska gets up from her chair, going to her brother's spot. Her hands on his face, expression serious, a shine glazing over dead sight.
"I would have never said the words if I didn't believe in them." She nods her head, the belief in them she can feel because her whole body is puffed up, her walk is of pride back to her seat.
Looking out the window, I notice Alpha Borson just loitering on the outside of the house. Picking up branches that have fallen and stacking them in a clean pile. He's tidying up the yard in the middle of winter.
Luna Bessa is looking out the window now and then at her mate with her turn downed expression. She doesn't look happy, and neither does Odin when he looks outside. Standing up he fills a bowl and grabs two pieces of bread. Slipping on his boots, he takes it out to his father who takes it from his hands without a word. He sits on a log that's covered with snow and begins to eat the meal in the bitter cold.
When Odin comes inside, he smells of the icy air. Alpha Borson acts as if it doesn't hurt him to be outside this long.
As the meal progresses, the fading day starts to tentacle shadows across the floor.
"Odin, I see no wound on your body?" Luna Bessa is enquiring while eating her stew.
"She picked the easy path." Odin is telling his mother this with a relieved look on his face. Luna Bessa's eyes hold mischief in them.
"My mate holds the scars of my hard path to this day." Luna Bessa 's words make my mouth hang open slightly, while she swallows a piece of her bread down.
"Did you fight him?" Asking this with curiosity.
"Of course I did, every step of the way. Our Far North males like a good fight from their females." Luna Bessa is speaking out while everyone is looking away from her.
The deep forest of his eyes stare at me, and my challenging eyes regard him back before saying, "next time, I'll give him a proper fight." A lifted lip ready to raise up but I stop when Odin's Wild straightens up, his full weight bearing gaze directs into my line of vision where it's me who gasps for air at the crushing force he's using. It's as if he's warning me that my fight might not go that well, against his fight. Odin does not pull the pressure from his full eye contact away; he makes sure that I get just a taste of what his deep War would bring me.
"I used to have long hair past my waist before my mate came for me, dragging me across the ocean, the both of us fighting the whole way here."
"If you didn't want to come, why did your parents allow him to take you?"
"He was difficult to say no to, Charlie. He befriended my mother; she was the key to get my father's trust in him. He also paid a very high gold price for me, the most any female has ever received in my birth pack." Her eyes find her mates who are looking at his family through the window from the outside in. When I take Odin's features in, I realize he won over my mother before anyone else.
We've been played with; my mother has fallen for his charms that were all fake. My heart is aching in my chest, beating rapidly, tightly, it hurts that this might not be real.
"Did you plan that Odin? Win my mother over? Do you not like my mother?" A tinge of nastiness is climbing up my throat at having my mother been played like that. My scowl not to be masked.
"No, I find your mother honorable, she's a good wolf who loves you very much. I couldn't help but be affected by her, eventually. I never thought I would come to understand her, but as time wore on, my regard of her heightened. Victoria is meant to be honored as a mother wolf by me, just as I honor my mother. But yes if you're asking was it my plan, yes, in the beginning, it was my plan to win over your mother, to get her trust so there would be no blood shed when the time eventually came to bring you home. It's best not to have blood shed between us." My hands start to shake now to the point I can't hold my fork. Bryon's eyes find mine, hold with a jaw that looks straining to open with his thoughts.
"If I wouldn't have wanted to come with you, what would you have done?" His gaze is directing to the silver hoop that's anchored deep in the thick wooden beam.
"Your father would have fallen at my feet; there would be no choice but to tear your mother's throat out, Grey would have followed, along with his first born and your cousins. I would have carried you all the way here, kicking and screaming. Then I would have tied you to the silver hoop, that beam can support your fight. I would have left you there till you settled yourself down enough to understand that this is your home now." He's dead serious about this.
"Fortunate for all concerned you came willingly and with great honor. You put away your fears for the unknown to follow me on our new path together." Odin put his hand over mine with outward affection, but I take it away, and that act is not missed by all around the table except Elska oblivious the meaning of it.
Silence at the table is nothing that I have known growing up but the wolves around the table look comfortable in it as if this is normal to have a long period of terrible silence.
"Are you excited to start your training Charlie?" Elska is asking this question with her hand on my cheek, she leans into me, pressing a cheek to me before pulling away.
"Training?" Looking at Odin for a response he's swallowing down his food.
"Didn't my brother tell you, you're starting to train with the females of the pack in the morning. I'm so excited." She squeals out loud.
"Elska," Luki's voice coming across the table to make Elska still her self down. "She's just excited as we all are to see what she can do with the females of the Far North." Bryon is smiling out his words to the table. He hides his teeth, but I know they are right behind lips that want to pull up.
Bryon puts his hand on Luki's back. Luki's eyes half closed, Odin and Ryeson stare at this almost gawking before shifting their eyes away to eat more of the stew. Bowls and bowls are filled up and eaten until the whole batch is completely gone along with the bread.
Standing, Elska gets the plate of cookies putting it in the center of the table. Her hand reaches out towards Odin who puts his empty bowl in her hand. When she comes back, she puts a glass pot of tea in the middle of the table, her hands finding the perfect spot. Luna Bessa takes out a small silken purse from her pocket and puts a tightly woven dried ball into the bottom of the tea pot. Elska goes to the wood stove pulling a case iron kettle off the surface of the stove, pouring hot water into the center of the clear tea pot a tea flower forms. Watching it bloom makes Warson point and wonder at it.
"What color is it mother?" Elska asking.
"It's red," Luna Bessa saying to her daughter.
Watching the flower unfold it's a Red Globe Amaranth flower that enhances vision.
"Do you drink this tea a lot, Elska?" Wondering about this.
"All the time, it's my favorite, I've been drinking it since I can remember." She sips her cup of tea and so does the Luna while eating the cookies I have made. Everyone is taking a cookie except Luki he passes on the dessert.
"Luki, have a cookie." Odin taking the plate in his hand, holding it up until Luki takes the smallest cookie he can find.
"Will this ruin me, Charlie." Luki putting it to his nose while everyone starts to laugh hard and loud as if all the tension is now gone from the room. Tears are coming down Elska's eyes, Ryeson howling holding his stomach. Looking out the window, Alpha Borson is watching his family at the table laughing and laughing in good humor while his expression holds malice when his eyes find mine.
"They're safe Luki." Luna Bessa wiping the corner of her eyes with a napkin.
"It never gets old Charlie, we can laugh now but at the time it was difficult to get past. I thought what a wicked wolf you were to harm my male. But Odin did say it was your way of Retribution; he said he told your mother that you were far from home wandering in the forest. He underestimated how clever you were at such a young age. You made him suffer terribly without even laying a hand on him."
"I had no choice but to tell on her; she was wandering around asking to be eaten by everything with teeth." Odin is ruffling up slightly at the thought.
"I was never eaten, Odin."
"That's because Odin ate everything with teeth around your home." Luna Bessa is sharing this fact.
"He came limping home with terrible injuries at times and a predator hanging over his shoulder." Luna Bessa is smiling at her male that heads the table. Odin's lips are tight across looking uncomfortable again.
Luki takes another two cookies with his tea cup and sits on the couch. Luna Bessa follows sitting almost an arm reach away from Luki. Bryon standing up, walking towards the couch, looking between Luna Bessa and Luki, "your mate would not like my scent all over you and neither would my mate like my scent all over you, so push over Bessa." Bryon addressing the Luna by her first name and it doesn't seem to bother her in the slightest. She scoots herself over to the far end of the couch, while Bryon sits touching Luki who takes a deep breath in. Their thighs are touching, and Luki looks down, before looking into Bryon's eyes.
"We all should go before it gets too dark." Luki is standing quickly and away from Bryon. While I start clear away the rest of the bowls.
"We leave or Night gets us," Warson speaks out, and Odin looks uncomfortable at me with the words his nephew has just said.
"It's time to go," Luna Bessa coming over to me, pressing our cheeks together. Elska puts on her males furs than her own, all of them thanking us for dinner and congratulating on a house well built. Again looking out the window, a crow is staring directly at me. Alpha Borson is walking his family home, carrying Warson in strong arms. The young pup nuzzled into the corner of the Alpha's neck to keep the stinging cold away from his face. Odin is closing the drapes, shutting the sight of everything out.
It's a quick clean up with dishes done and the wood stove loaded with wood, creating an uncomfortable heat inside the small space. Taking a shower first, coming out in a night grown, that's all Odin took from my dresser, nightgowns, no pajama pants, and tops. I rarely at home wore these before but somehow here alone with him, it suits the atmosphere.
Odin has a few candles that are casting the room in a low level of soft light. He has a small bottle of oil he's holding in a darkened container. The lid is off, and it gives off a nutty, woodsy scent.
A fur spread out on the floor, "lay down Charlie; I'm going to give you a massage."
"It's alright Odin; I don't need one." Yet, that ache is there again, the deep tissue discomfort coming from my pelvis. It's been nagging me relentlessly since coming here.
"Why didn't you tell me Elska had a pup? Is her mate here? Did he reject her?"
Odin is tugging at the hem of my nightgown. "Lay down, Charlie. I'll give you a massage, and I'll tell a story."
Pointing to Odin, "turn around." Reluctantly he listens as I pull the night gown off but put it under my head.
Fingertips graze at the base of my spine, "relax, breathe in deep." Odin's voice just behind my ear while fingers start tracing up each bony prominence of my spine to put pressure on my shoulder blades that have my body sinking into the furs he's layered underneath the softest one.
"Close your eyes, Charlie." Wandering hands start to explore my back. The lotion is letting his hands glide effortlessly in a smoothness that I have never felt before. A groan comes out when the layers of my flesh feel comfortable within his touch.
"Relax, deep breath in, now slowly release it." The tone he's using is trance inducing. A kiss placed between my shoulder blades as those hands keep a steady pressure on my flesh. Smoothing out the knots in my back. His sigh is felt on the right side of my neck before he pulls himself away from that spot.
Nothing else is heard except for the occasional pop and crack of a log in the wood stove.
The palm of his hands descends the side of my ribs, down to my hips to rise back to my shoulders. He's kneading the base of my neck as if I am the dough in his hands. A finger brushes the corner of my lips at times before he removes them from my mouth.
He shifts himself over me, the outer edge of his knee touches the edge of my knee. He slides his knee up along my inner thigh to nudge my legs apart. He repeats this movement with his other knee.
Hot heat spreading from the apex of me. Heart pounding furiously in my chest, breathing becoming more of a gasping inhaled motion.
Taking the small bottle of oil he applies more of it to his hands. He starts at my left ankle, to work my the ball of my calf when he touches just above the back of my knee, he once again shift slightly forward to make my legs spread apart further. My needs and want are surfacing with each hand stroke he gives me on the back of my thighs.
I'm inhaling the deadliest of pleasures as his pores dilate letting my Wild smell the deepness of his scent. There is just a signing space between us until Odin presses his chest against my back.
Heat has degree's to it, my blood is almost to the point of evaporation the more we continue forward with this massage.
My heart beat is straining the inside of my chest.
That ache in my lower pelvis is starting to throb with a need now, a want that I need to have met.
My whole body is a vibration of movement, quivering, shaking, trying to break apart from the inside.
Closing my eyes I can't breathe.
He stops his hands from moving for a few minutes when I turn my head his canines showing through his gums, Odin's body is shaking, quivering, muscles shifting in and out of position, eyes dilating from ancient forest greens to an abyss of black.
Turning myself around, reaching behind his neck to try and kiss him he flips me back over to continue this massage.
"I was going to tell you the story of how Warson came to be, wasn't I?" His voice is trying to calm down with each word he says.
"My sister Elska was asked to go for a visit to my mother's birth pack to learn the Art of Knives from the Elder they have there. My mother made the trip with her, and the Alpha gave us assurances nothing would happen to her while she was away from her family." His hands glide to the edge of my sides before feeling every line my back holds once again.
"When it was time to go and get Elska they wouldn't return her to us, they said they were keeping her, we got word my mother's father, mother and brothers died to protect Elska. In that pack, she is called Moon Touched. She is a Prize to all across the Ocean. A male is more common than a female, a female is more prized. Odin's hands are never leaving my skin.
"When we heard this my mother started to rally her females, which their hearts weren't in for a crusade. Morvared sent her crows out. It was much worse than what we thought. Their healer induced Elska's heat to come and five warriors fought for the right to breed her. Once Morvared announced this that's when the Far North females decided to take up silver against the nation across the Ocean." Odin's tension evident in the way he's kneading the flesh on my back, gripping it more, pressing into it almost in a painful way now. The ache in my chest for Elska hurts, imagining what she had to endure at the hands of five warriors taking her as they wanted.
"So outraged was my mother that my father had no choice but to follow my mother into battle. When we landed on their soil, it was our legion against their nation. The females demanding the five warriors be brought to them or else they were coming for them. The Nation protected the five so the females were the ones to take the point and lead a barrage of their War on them. It was hard for us, we are now half of what we have, but the Nation across the sea is no more. They are only memories now, and we left a Tribute for all others so they take us into consideration that this is what the Far North females are capable of if provoked. Our females have never had to go into battle, but they did and now oversea's they are more feared than any Far North male is. That's where I was able to fill the chest for your father. The spoils of war." His voice getting lower, sadder as if he hates the memory of War.
"How is your sister now?"
"She's speaking again, it took her after the birth of Warson to speak. It was as if, not only she was blind but deaf and mute. The healers could only do so much for her. When Warson was born she left him for Nature to take. But when his wails were brought back on the wind, she couldn't let it happen. Her first words she spoke were, get me my male." The curve of Odin's lips presses against the middle of my back before pulling away.
"After those first words, she has come back to us, but still not the same. You're not seeing our Elska like she used to be. It's changed her significantly." Odin lays to my side stopping the massage, trying to put the lid on the bottle but his fingers seem not to be working well.
"Charlie, how does your skin feel?"
"Good, why?" Odin's lips scowl, eyes closed, his fingers turning to fists then he extends them out.
"It doesn't tingle or feel numb?"
"No, why?" My hand instantly going to the bottle of oil, that Odin can't get the lid on properly. Taking a deep smell of it, trying to find the underlying scent that the nutty flavor is hiding.
"What else is in the oil, Odin?" Not sounding pleased with him.
"Something obtained oversea's, you know nothing of it. It makes your flesh numb, so you feel no pain. I put a few drops of it in the oil to test it out, Charlie."
"Why?"
"It's for the Claiming Ceremony." Odin stands, taking the bottle from my hand.
"Why would you use that on my skin for the Claiming Ceremony?"
"It's not supposed to go on the outside of you but the inside of you Charlie. It's to prevent you from feeling any kind of pain." Odin throws the bottle against the Log wall with such force it shatters upon impact, sending debris everywhere.