Page 7 of Delinquent Dette (Empty Nests #7)
Sten
So much for the bath. Sten licked at his claws and lay out in the rising sun, letting the heat soak into his dark scales.
Frikka, his slender form all fine lines, freckled with pearlescent patterns at his flanks and a dusting of pearl at his belly, the epitome of Nidhogg Dettes.
In his shifted form, he was a beauty beyond all, and not too bad in his flesh, either.
Beauty was only scales deep, though. Inside, the Dette was strong and brash, if not a little unobservant.
Sten watched Frikka’s secret hoard. Every year, it grew and one less Bhaldraithe was counted in the census.
Sile had his ways of dropping silent hints.
Half the known world viewed his Loki-forsaken mate as a Drake killer, a menace and immune to the justice he deserved.
Sten could only hope Frikka’s heart healed when he filled his oath.
After all, there were none left by the name Bhaldraithe. He’d snuffed out an entire clan.
When Sten shifted back, Frikka followed, all pale skin and golden hair cut into a choppy coif. He ran his hands through the locks and let them fall messily. “We have company.”
Sten rolled his eyes and followed. There were no surprises when one’s mate could see tomorrow. As if on cue, the door’s bell clanged, a garish and loud thing meant to summon them even from the back fields.
Frikka, naked as the day he hatched, opened the door and stared Colborn down. “Yes?”
“Could you perhaps give me the recipe for—” Colborn halted when Frikka marched off, eyes staying purposefully away from Frikka’s body with the confident ease of one who no longer found other Dettes beautiful.
“This Dette you brought.” Frikka glanced at Colborn.
“He wasn’t a rescue at first, but… He became one and he chose us.” Colborn fidgeted. “He finished his estrus and needs—”
“Vritra?” Frikka opened the larder and stared at a few sealed tins.
“Yes.”
“And you treat this one very well?” Frikka stared him down.
“How is that even a question? We treat all Dettes well! Now about that recipe, I needed your one for—” Colborn flustered when Frikka took two metal tins from the cabinet and thrusted them into his chest.
“Crazy Dette! I need the recipe for—” Colborn halted again as Frikka gestured toward the tins.
“I scent pleasure on you. There is no fear. There is love in you. This Dette has beaten you down and owns you. Take your seashells and I’ll be by after a few days to have tea.
I assume it’s his first clutch and he will need questions answered.
” The Dette smelled as old as Frikka, perhaps a little older, but the lingering scent didn’t hold much experience to it.
Colborn nodded once, whispering a confused thanks before leaving, walking a stilted path back to his estate—not even on one of their prized horses. The fool.
“Frikka?” Sten walked up behind him and rested his firm hands over slender shoulders, tracing fingertips across sculpted muscle. Had he spent the winters in leisure, he’d have not been so firm. Sten was no fool, merely quiet.
“Yes.” It wasn’t a retort, but an answer to the unspoken question. He opened a tin, took a cookie, and bit into it with a crunch. “But do not get your hopes up. I’ve hungered for shells when I had too many blanks.”
“Of course.” Sten drew his hands back. They’d never spoken of trying for another clutch, but they did not take precautions that Sten was aware of.
It was a Dette’s choice to bear eggs or not, he believed.
It was not his belly or his energy put into whelping pups.
But to hear him certain of a clutch as he was, and unenthused…
“Do you not want them?” The words hung in the air like curled ashes after a fire, floating down with glowing embers, ready to set the world ablaze.
“More than anything,” he said with a whisper, and on the edge of it came tears. Frikka was not an emotional Dette even at the worst of times. “But something bad will come. It will come and we will survive it. No matter what, because there is a beautiful day beyond this storm.”
Sten’s stomach twisted. “I will hold your hand and watch you burn the world down around you. I will protect you from yourself. I will cheer when you triumph and wash the blood from your hands.”
Frikka stared at his fingers, scars on his knuckles and callouses that hadn’t been there when they’d had their first clutch. “Only one thing ever washed the blood from my hands and it was Thor’s tears. He washed the blood away, and it meant nothing in the end.”
Sten pulled Frikka to his chest and tucked the Dette’s face into his neck with a harsh sigh of frustration. Riddles. Seers spoke in riddles and lies, and Loki worked his magic through his fickle Dette. “Whose blood will be on your hands next?”
A long stretch of silence spanned the moment as Sten tightened his grip. Frikka shook in his arms, dropping the last of his cookie as it fell to the floor in crumbles. “The gods themselves will be to blame, I’m certain.”
***
Weeks later, the Dior den’s Dette birthed a full clutch of eggs, but Frikka did not confide his own status, though Sten saw his belly swell by the day. He wore looser clothes and ignored any mention of it.
So, when Hallr returned from his sojourn with more tales of flowers and a hope for the future, Frikka smiled for him. “You’ll prove them all wrong, someday.”
“I doubt it. They hate me, for the most part. I cannot search for answers if they don’t let me speak to the Dettes!
How do the physicians ever learn if they cannot question them?
How am I to learn if they won’t speak to me?
” Hallr thrusted his leather journal onto the table, the pocked surface of it stretched thin over notes, parchment, dried flowers, and the odd leaf.
“Your father brings that herb and flower home to me sometimes. It is potent and helps with a Dette’s cycle.”
“But nobody knows where it comes from and I’ve not yet found a fresh blossom anywhere!” Hallr sighed and slumped. “The Vritra will let their secrets die with them. I’m satisfied that flower and the mating blossom are one and the same, if not in the same clada.”
“Then go visit with the Dior den’s new Dette. He’s a high Vritra with a new clutch, so mind the Drakes. You have my social skills and it shows.” Frikka kissed Hallr’s cheek and sent him on his way. A mission doomed from the start.
After that moment, Frikka stayed in their cavern, eating only what he needed to feed the growing eggs.
Questions of how many were met with shrugs, and Sten wished for the world that he could bring the Dior doctor over.
That he wasn’t attached so fiercely to his mate and their eggs.
Because Frikka had an illness, something dark in his mind eating away at him by the day.
A clap of thunder woke Sten in the night. He glanced around in darkness and sniffed until he caught an unfamiliar odor, something close to blood. Frikka had woke and curled to his side a few feet away from Sten, his clothes kicked off and body shaking. “Frikka?”
Sten hadn’t been permitted to be with Frikka when he laid their first clutch.
It had been a show for the gothar, witnessing him produce six beautiful eggs and five perfect blanks.
It had been the best laying they’d seen in years, the ease of which he passed them and how little he cried out.
Sten had been proud, then, not knowing he had a future with the Dette.
What happened that night was not the sweet laying twenty-six years ago. It was harsh and brutal. Frikka shifted and bled, passing egg before blank, crying out at every push.
He sobbed in his draconic form, their minds unable to unite as Drake could with Dette. They were not mated. Sten was so tempted to mark him so he could, but Frikka would never forgive him.
So, in the middle of a summer storm, Frikka birthed six full eggs and five blanks, the largest laying he’d heard of at the time.
Lightning struck, Thor, shaking the skies with thunder. Rain hammered the house above and great winds whipped. It was like their first clutch all over again, the rage of the gods above and blood below.
“Not yet, please,” Frikka pleaded as he shifted and lay with them. “Please.”
Sten stared at their clutch, his heart sinking in his chest.
There is a beautiful day beyond this storm, Frikka had said.
But that wasn’t the storm.
That came months later.