Page 77 of The Fanged One

Like I'm the one who can't handle his own fangs, his wolf grumbled.

"You saw me shift," he replied. "You could barely look at me after."

"I couldn't look at you because I was small and afraid. That was my fear, and nothing you did deserved it." Her sadness radiated out of her, and Fenris fought to stay in his chair. "You wore a man's shape so a frightened girl could love you, and when the shape slipped and showed me the truth of what you are, I wasn't big enough to make peace with it. That was never your failing. It was mine."

She is right, his wolf said begrudgingly.

Fenris made himself ask the thing he had carried unanswered for an age. "What happened to our children?"

"They are with me." Something like joy moved through her face. "All of them. They came to me when their time came. They grew old, and were loved. You didn't fail them either. Havi kept his word to you, and we all had good lives."

Fenris hadn't allowed himself to wonder about them in centuries, because every road that thought took arrived in the same place: that whatever hardship or heartache they had was because of what he was. To hear instead that they had lived full lives and passed gently at the end was a mercy he hadn't known how to ask for.

"They have your stubbornness," Sunniva said with a fond grin. "Our eldest used to set his jaw exactly the way you are setting yours now, when you have decided to suffer over something."

He smiled back. "I don't suffer over things."

She laughed, low and sweet, and for a breath the dead hall and the long years fell away, and she was only his wife, amused at him across a table.

The laugh faded, and the gravity came back into her face, and she arrived at last at the thing she had crossed death to tell him.

"There is a woman with you. Gray eyes. She hasn't stopped touching you since you came into Niflheim, as though she's making sure you are still there."

Fenris cleared his throat. "Sunniva… She is my mate."

"A mate who isn't afraid of you." She said it as if it were the most important thing she had ever given him, and perhaps it was. "Not the way I was. I've watched her watch you, wolf and god, and the ending of the world, and she has looked at every part of it and chosen to stay. You are afraid to claim her because you think she will make my mistake?" Her hand tightened on his. "She isn't me, love. You aren't the danger you have spent an age believing you are. Claim her, if she will have you. Ask her properly, so the yes is hers to give. Stop punishing yourself for something that was only ever mine."

She lifted his hand and pressed her lips to his knuckles.

"Live, Fenris," she said against his skin. "That is the whole of the blessing I wish for you. Live, and let yourself love. Don't build a shrine out of me. My peace doesn't depend on your loneliness, and I wouldn't rest easy if it did." She set his hand back down on the wood and let it go. "Go to her, love, while you still can. If you don't, you'll regret it for eternity."

She folded her hands into her lap, composed again, with nothing left to say. He was being released, and he didn't know how to handle it.

Fenris stood up. "Thank you, Sunniva."

"Take care of her, Fenris. Love her."

"I will." He turned to find Linnea, the weight off his shoulders finally gone. He scanned the hall, but he didn't spot her.

Across the hall, Ciara still had her arms around her laughing parents. Layla folded in with them, the four of them lit with joy. Near them, Tor stood against the wall with Arne, both of them looking grim. Layla spotted them, called out, and waved, and both the males shrugged off whatever had upset them and went to join their mates.

No Linnea.

"Where is my mate?" he whispered.

Find her, you fool, his wolf said, on its feet now, every scrap of boredom gone out of it.

Hel's warning about the trials rattled through his skull, gentle and without mercy, the way only family knows how to be. They will lie, trick, and tell the truth all at once because they are built to reach inside you, yank out your fears, and reveal your weaknesses any way that they can…

Confronting Sunniva was a fear he didn't know he had, and while they had been pleasant to each other, it had scraped at parts that were raw inside him. Seeing her hadn't felt like a trick, but there was no way to tell if it really had been her, or just a version of her that Niflheim had pulled out of his subconscious.

If Sunniva had been his fear and unfinished business, what had Linnea experienced? He didn't know because he had spotted Sunniva and hadn't checked to make sure his mate was okay before going to her.

"Who did she see?" he whispered, dark shame washing over him.

He thought of the story Linnea told him the night before, and every other horrible thing Skari had done to her. Did her father come for her when his back was turned? Or had it been something else?

She was out there alone, in a country built to take the living apart, with a shade that could tear out all her fears, and he had left her alone.