“Wait, what?”The stubborn anger fizzled into confusion.“Are you saying that your mom left you to start another family, even though she was already married and mated?”
“Wolf mated,” I corrected. “Una was wolf-mated to my father and just my father. She was the prize my grandfather allowed him to choose for himself alone after he took over as the Wild King. But only my father was happy about his choice.”
Yer father chose me. Pointed at me like I was a piece of jewelry at the traveling market. I would never, ever have chosen him.
My mother’s acid-laced answer to the one question I’d asked her about their unhappy marriage echoed in my head as I told my new prophesied mate, “He loved her — that’s why he chose her to mother the next king of the Wild Wolves. But she hated him.”
Even worse than Flower hated me. I didn’t say that bit out loud, but now that I was no longer so singularly focused on the prophecy, the parallels to my mother’s story began seeping through like moonlight in a thick forest of memories.
“Anyhow, it was one of those marriages that corroded like iron left out in the rain with every year that passed. Then, one year, my father decided it would be a good idea to bring my mother along with us to the quarterly meeting. I can still remember the fight they had about it. Her telling him she wouldn’teven know what to do or say at a meeting like that. Him insisting that it was time she took her role as queen of the Wild Wolves seriously. He didn’t know…”
A cold wind blew through me that had nothing to do with the actual elements. “He didn’t know he was setting in place the destruction of his marriage.”
Wild
“What didye mean ye’ve never had rabbit?” my father asked the Dublin Prince, who, at the time, had two more years than my eight on what my people called Inis Altain the auld language. The Wild Island.
I’d not set foot in a proper city at that point. But over the course of the spring quarterly, spent refilling ancient chalices and fetching for the four rulers, it had become more than clear that the Dublin Prince’s version of growing up didn’t look a damn thing like mine.
My father turned to the Dublin King to demand, “What were you hunting for, then, that made us have to push the quarterly back to Monday and fuck up all of our weeks?”
The top of the City King’s forehead reddened, but his voice remained haughty as ever when he answered, “As I’ve already explained, the Noble Masters of Foxhound Association had their annual charitable hunt last weekend. Thanks to the UK ban, we’ve had more international interest than usual from the English nobility, so as the Hunt Chairman, I couldn’t have possibly —”
“Put us lowly wolf kings above those ridiculous horse-riding city humans playing dress-up in their red coats,” Da finished for him.
“Conall, will you stop?” my mother scolded. She only ever used my father’s true name when she was truly fed up. “This is meant to be a lovely last breakfast before we depart. I got up at the crack of dawn to make it for you lot.”
We were all sitting around the dining room table on the last day of the quarterly at Belfast House.
“Cos ye’re so damn in love with that bloody stove top,” Da grumbled.
The Belfast Priest, sworn to Christ, and the City King, who spoke with an accent so posh you might’ve mistaken him for English, both visibly winced at my father’s rough language.
“And what if I am?” my mother shot back, her tone sharp. “When’s the next time I’ll get to use a proper one, travelin’ as I must with the Wild Wolves?”
“As you get to travelas queen of the Wild Wolves,” my father corrected, his teeth gritted. “If the job’s too hard for ye, maybe we ought to try for a daughter at the next full moon.”
My mother went quiet, as she always did when he brought up trying for a daughter — at least in front of others.
At home, though, she’d have had plenty to say. Not unless yer father rises from the grave to force me into another cage with ye.Or: Why, so you can marry her off to whatever prince points at her, same as you did me?And when she’d had too much to drink, she’d scream: As if I’d ever pass this miserable fate on to another innocent girl. I thank the gods every moon you got your heir on the first try, so I’ll never have to let you near me again.
Loud enough for the entire encampment to hear.
Lucky for me da, she’d had nothing to drink during the quarterly he’d dragged her to, even though the Sea King was widowed, and the Dublin King always left his mate at home. Just picked at the remains of the tinned baked beans on her plate.
“The breakfast is much appreciated,” the Belfast Priest said into the tense silence.
“I mean, proper delicious,” the Sea King added with a shy glance at my mother — before remembering himself and clearing his throat. He turned to me instead. “Please tell your mother the breakfast is not only tasty but truly appreciated.”
“Thank you,” my mother answered before I could relay the message. She barely looked up, her voice small, defeated. “It feels nice to be appreciated.”
“Isn’t it, though?” my father replied, his voice tight with mockery. “Isn’t it nice to be acknowledged for all you do? Even once in a while?”
Another thick silence. I didn’t fully understand it back then, but I felt it. The anger that clung to every word, the bitterness that hung between them. Even at eight, I knew something was wrong, even if I didn’t have the words to explain it.
“I’ll teach ye how to hunt proper,” Da suddenly announced, turning back to the Dublin Prince. “Least I can do before you and yer da set off to the city.”
And that was the decision that marked the end of their marriage.
