Wolf Bitten

You said I'm playing a god's game, but you should be more concerned about playing a monster's. That's a game I'll win...

I would go to Beorn to save Conn's cohort; a cohort I'd never asked to be part of. I hadn't asked for any of it. I'd wanted my husband, his child, to live and die a mortal life in a time which was almost beyond memory. I hadn't ever asked for this life. Why did everyone seem so able to forget that?

They all wanted to be shocked, to gather around their Sire and shake their heads in disgust at the adulterer. What they didn't get, what none of them understood, was that it was going to hurt me far more than it was going to hurt him. For a millennium, my body was used as a weapon, as a potential way to hurt Leof, or a way to exert control over me, and over Ragnar's terrified recruits. Did they think this was what I wanted?

Yet even I underestimated the damage Beorn could do, and my alarm increased when he whispered the very last thing I expected, "Oh no, you're much more than a vampire. That's what makes you so interesting. Do you remember being queen of Ésageard?"

How could I predict that what I was mattered little compared to what Beorn was? I didn't realise, even as he insisted, "Fenn. For tonight, you will call me Fenn. I don't expect to tell you again. I want my name ingrained on your consciousness until the day you realise that I'm far stronger than your 'king of the gods' could ever be."