Unexpected Ultimatum (Unplanned Princess Book 6) Read online

  Unexpected Ultimatum

  Unplanned Princess™ Book Six

  Michael Anderle

  This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  Copyright © LMBPN Publishing

  Cover by Mihaela Voicu http://www.mihaelavoicu.com/

  Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

  A Michael Anderle Production

  LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  LMBPN Publishing

  PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy

  Las Vegas, NV 89109

  Version 1.00, August 2021

  ebook ISBN: 978-1-64971-969-0

  Print ISBN: 978-1-64971-970-6

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Author Notes - Michael Anderle

  Books By Michael Anderle

  Connect with Michael

  The Unexpected Ultimatum Team

  Thanks to our JIT Readers

  Veronica Stephan-Miller

  Deb Mader

  Diane L. Smith

  Zacc Pelter

  Dorothy Lloyd

  Dave Hicks

  Jeff Goode

  Paul Westman

  Editor

  SkyHunter Editing Team

  Chapter One

  Helga squinted at the sunlight reflected off the endless white expanse of the glacier. It was a beautiful late-February afternoon, a perfect encapsulation of the Icelandic winter.

  She lowered her goggles. It didn’t matter how many times she came out to Vatnajökull, the sights awed her. Every time she came, she was grateful for having been born in such a beautiful country. She understood that others didn’t always see the attraction of glaciers, but she’d gladly take the unsullied ice and snow over a beach any day.

  The beach might be preferable to a snowstorm, but for the moment, she was comfortable in her parka, seeing nothing but clear blue ice and the gorgeous sun.

  “Are you going to help?” Magnus called from behind her, irritation underlying his words. “Or are you going to stand around? I don’t want to be here any longer than we need to. I hate fieldwork.”

  His words provided a harsh reminder that not even every member of her team shared her love of the glacier.

  Magnus and the last member of their research group, Aron, had unfolded the spiked tripods that held their instrument packages. Helga was supposed to pull the laptop out of her snowmobile and transmit the data to the monitoring program for the next month.

  She shivered, but it wasn’t the February cold of the glacier that chilled her. It felt like someone or something was watching her. This wasn’t the first time she’d experienced this sensation, but it was the first time she’d felt it when she wasn’t at one special place.

  She surveyed the area, noting any formations of ice or snow that looked unusual. Other than Magnus and Aron, there was nothing alive nearby.

  An absurd possibility weighed on her. It was silly to admit openly, but her words slipped out before she considered the implications.

  “Do you ever worry about offending the Huldufólk?” she asked.

  Magnus pushed in a tripod leg with a grunt. “Did you drink any alcohol this morning before we set out for the glacier?”

  “No. I—"

  “You’re a scientist. How can you believe in invisible elves who live beside humans who will curse us if we don’t respect them? It’s embarrassing.”

  Aron ran some cables from one tripod to another. “I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss them.”

  Magnus stared at him. “You believe in them?”

  “Have you ever seen the polls when they ask people?” Aron asked. “A lot of people still believe in them. The polls suggest the majority of Icelanders do.”

  “Those polls are a national embarrassment.” Magnus shook his head in disgust.

  “No, they are proof of respect for tradition and an open mind. You’re a scientist.” Aron offered a merry grin. “You’re not supposed to make up your mind without evidence.”

  “What evidence?” Magnus scoffed. “Is there an elf body at the university that someone’s been studying? Maybe you should leave our department and go research the elf body.” He motioned around. “We’re here to monitor the glacier, not worry about stupid old legends.”

  Aron plugged a cable into the side of a squat black box, one of their instrument packages. “Why can’t we do both?”

  “Because it’s a waste of time to worry about something that shows no evidence of existing.”

  “How can you be so sure they’re not real? What if they can avoid detection? That’s why they’re called what they are, and that’s what all the tales say. Many say they live beside us but only appear if they choose to.”

  “That’s convenient,” Magnus replied. “It was one thing to fool some idiot a thousand years ago, but how could they avoid detection by modern technology?”

  “What if they simply don’t go where people are?” Aron squatted and tightened a screw on his tripod. “Wouldn’t this be the perfect place for them? Far from the cities and towns? A place where they know humans won’t build?”

  “Listen to yourself.” Magnus threw up his hands. “It’s not the tenth century. If little elves or goblins were running around Iceland, we’d have pictures of them. Specimens. Evidence. Not stories passed down by grandmothers.”

  “That’s only the case if we’re right about everything we know,” Aron countered. “How can you be so sure?”

  “I never knew you were such an idiot. It’s the burden of the believers to prove something like that exists.” Magnus’ gaze flicked to Helga. “You too? I always thought you were more sensible than that.”

  Helga sighed. “I don’t know.”

  Magnus looked relieved. “You brought them up. I assumed too much.”

  Aron nodded, an eager look on his face.

  “I don’t know,” she repeated with a shrug. “I’m not saying I do believe, but sometimes when we’re out at a place like this, I can’t help but wonder. For all we know
, they prefer the ice and the snow and live underneath it. I became a scientist to understand the world, and the more I learned, the more I accepted I knew far less about it than I thought I did. But that’s not why I question myself about Huldufólk.”

  “What, then?” Magnus pressed.

  “My parents and grandparents, if you asked them, would deny they believed in any such creatures, but my grandparents always left offerings and asked for permission before building on their land. Any feature that looked unusual, especially rocks, they left alone. I grew up in Reykjavik in an apartment. It wasn’t like my parents needed to placate the Huldufólk, but sometimes…”

  Her voice trailed off and she sighed. It had been a bad idea to bring up the subject, given the glower on Magnus’ face.

  He folded his arms. “It’s too late to abandon this farce of a conversation. Continue.”

  “When I visited my grandparents’ house, sometimes I felt like I was being watched,” Helga admitted. “Especially at some of the mounds. Not all the time, and more in the past, but sometimes.”

  “Childhood imagination running away,” insisted Magnus.

  “Maybe,” Helga replied. “I still check the house and land every once in a while since my parents are getting too old to go that far from the city.”

  “Do you leave offerings?” Aron asked.

  Helga smiled. “If they’re not real, it can’t hurt, right? It’s not a harmful tradition.”

  “It’s always wrong to believe in a lie,” Magnus said. “What’s next? Are you going to say we have to warn the Coast Guard to make sure a Grendel doesn’t sneak across the sea? It can’t hurt, right? There might be one.”

  “Legends are nothing more than people distilling what they know about the world,” Helga insisted. “Yes, people often get the details wrong, but I think it’s arrogant to dismiss them completely.”

  “Arrogance is insisting that made-up legends and folklore don’t have to be proven to be accepted as fact.” Magnus sneered. “You’re almost worse than him.”

  Aron laughed and slapped a glove to his chest. “That hurts.”

  “I don’t understand,” Helga admitted.

  “He at least owns his idiocy,” Magnus explained. “You won’t say firmly one way or another if you believe.”

  “Because I don’t know,” Helga snapped. She took a deep breath. “I understand what you’re saying, and it makes a lot of sense, but there are also a lot of strange things in science that seemed counterintuitive at first.” She placed a hand over her heart. “Go back a few hundred years and try to convince everyone that diseases are caused by tiny invisible creatures that no one can see with the naked eye. Would it sound any less strange to them? Wouldn’t it sound like magic?”

  “It’s not the same thing.” Magnus jabbed a finger at her laptop. “Get going on that already. If we came all the way out here to set up our instruments but we miss out on hours of data, I’m going to be angry.”

  “Angrier,” Aron corrected. “You’re always angry.”

  Helga opened the laptop and set it on the seat of her snowmobile. She began tapping keys to initiate the data monitoring settings, grateful they’d gotten off the subject of the Huldufólk. That might calm Magnus.

  “Would you have preferred it if this was all done by drone?” she asked.

  “Yes.” Magnus leveled his tripod with a few minor adjustments. “It’s not efficient to trek out here. I care about the data, not seeing the glacier.”

  Aron laughed. “This is why you don’t have a girlfriend. There’s no poetry in your soul.”

  “Shut your mouth, you damned halfwit.”

  “No poetry at all.” Aron smirked.

  Helga continued typing, her wide keyboard accommodating her gloved hands. “We’re all here because we care about the glacier, but it’s a shame you can’t appreciate the beauty, Magnus.”

  “I appreciate results,” he replied.

  The conversation died, replaced by light humming from Aron and the occasional frustrated grunt from Magnus. They still had a long ride back to the village in which they planned to stay overnight before returning to Reykjavik, and as much as Helga enjoyed the natural beauty of the glacier, she didn’t want to snowmobile in the dark.

  “All done,” Helga declared. “I can transmit the program once you finish the hardware configuration.”

  “I’m ready,” Aron reported.

  “I need a few more minutes,” Magnus said, sounding more annoyed than before.

  The air wavered in the distance. Helga lifted her goggles and narrowed her eyes. It was almost like a heat distortion. That wasn’t something anyone expected to see at a glacier at the end of February.

  She pointed. “Aron, do you see that?”

  “About fifty meters out?” he asked.

  Helga looked. “Heat?”

  Magnus frowned and looked that way. “The ice should be too thick here for a hot spring to make it through.”

  “Volcanic activity?” Aron suggested, a gleeful look taking over his face. “Volcanic activity the Institute doesn’t already know about? I didn’t see anything about activity in this part of Vatnajökull.”

  “It was a good idea to bring the full-spectrum instruments.” Magnus looked excited. It was the first time he hadn’t worn a frown in the last half-hour. He stepped away from his tripod. “We’ll all get an easy author credit on a paper.”

  “I don’t know,” Helga said. “This area’s been mapped again and again. We just happen to stumble on new volcanic activity in an unexpected area when we’re out on unrelated research? What are the chances of that?”

  “You believe in invisible elves, but you don’t think we could get lucky and record unexpected volcanic activity?” Magnus sounded disgusted.

  “I don’t necessarily believe—” Helga’s eyes widened. She stared at the sky.

  Translucent ribbons of yellow, blue, and green had appeared overhead. She’d seen plenty of aurorae, but never in broad daylight.

  “That’s not possible,” she whispered.

  “It could be some sort of side effect of the volcanic activity,” Aron replied. He fished his phone out of his pocket and started filming. “A rare confluence of effects.”

  Magnus scoffed. “Maybe it’s the Huldufólk warning us we’ve violated their territory.” Despite his dismissive tone, he also retrieved his phone and started filming.

  Helga followed the aurora with her eyes. “Something’s strange.”

  “Stranger than a broad-daylight aurora?”

  “No, it goes into the ground,” Helga replied, gesturing at the light. “It’s as if it’s coming from the glacier itself.”

  “That’s nothing more than an optical illusion,” Magnus suggested. “It’s reflecting off the glacier. It doesn’t matter. Send the program, Helga. We need to initiate data collection. Whatever this is, it might show up in our readings.”

  Helga ripped her attention away from the strange daylight aurora to enter the transmission command. She licked her lips, nervous until the completion code appeared in her terminal window. She turned back toward the sky.

  “A volcano where there shouldn’t be one and an aurora during the day,” she murmured. “We might get our names on more than one paper.”

  Magnus managed a grin. “This wasn’t a waste of time.”

  Violent tremors shook the ground. Helga’s laptop fell off the snowmobile and landed on its side in the snow. She wanted to grab it but stumbled and smacked her hip into the vehicle. Aron and Magnus both fell, victims of the land’s wrath.

  With a loud, resounding crack, the glacier split. A crevasse shot through it less than twenty meters from where they’d set up their equipment.

  Was it a volcano? Helga barely had time to think before another violent tremor tossed her to the ground and knocked the breath out of her.

  She gasped, trying to suck in more oxygen. The snowmobiles were right in front of them. Another rip in the glacier cut them off from their earlier path of escape. r />
  Helga managed to get to her hands and knees. “We need to get out of here!”

  “What about the equipment?” Magnus shouted.

  “Better to leave it than be dead,” Helga yelled back.

  A stray thought sneaked into her head and overwhelmed everything else. There had been no mounds, but she’d had the same feeling of being watched.

  She wasn’t sure she believed in the Huldufólk. That didn’t stop her from wondering if Magnus was right and they were about to be killed for trespassing.

  Chapter Two

  The aurora vanished, replaced by something far more surprising. Helga blinked several times to ensure she wasn’t being tricked by a reflection. She’d seen a lot of strange things on the ice throughout the years, but nothing close to what she saw then.

  Huldufólk! She might not have been certain she believed in the creatures, but she still had a mental image of them as looking mostly like humans, taller and paler, with coloration that blended with the ice and snow. Pointed ears wouldn’t look strange.

  That wouldn’t have surprised her. The white-and-blue-feathered creature with a sharp white beak and wide solid black eyes was well-camouflaged for the environment, but everything else was off.