Fear snaked through me. I pushed it down to confront them anyway.
“We are a non-violent community who have exempted ourselves from all matters of outside violence and politics," Amanda said as I came up to stand behind her. "So, on behalf of my Wölfennite sisters, I demand you bring this vessel to a stop right now and release us from your hold — why are you laughing? Don’t laugh at me! I’m serious!”
“Serious about what?” One of the Earring Crew — by far the largest and bulkiest male in the group — paused laughing just long enough to wheeze out, “Exempting yerself from the Second Reaping?”
He slapped his knee as all the male wolves gathered around him practically doubled over for laughing.
I bristled, and Amanda yelled, “That’s not funny. You’re not funny!"
Tears filled her voice. "We’re far from home, and you have no right to treat us this way!”
The burly Earring Wolf trailed off laughing and tilted his head towards Amanda with a look that wasn’t entirely unsympathetic. “Aw, sweetling, I’m not trying to upset ye. Just having some fun. This situation is difficult for us lottoo, ye'know."
He stepped closer to her, keeping his head carefully bent to avoid the ceiling. "Have ye any idea how long Ronan and I have been made to wait for a feek mate like ye? But I’ll say right now, ye were certainly worth the time we spent yearning for ye. Isn't she, Ronan?”
“I agree, Lorcan.” A much shorter Earring Wolf with darker hair stepped forward, “Never imagined she’d be so pretty. Like a wild yellow rose with this hair, aren’t ye?”
The one who’d been called Ronan reached a hand up to touch one of the many locks of blond hair that had fallen out from underneath Amanda’s bonnet.
“Don’t touch me, you filthy beast!” Amanda screeched, pushing his hand away. “Only my mate is allowed to touch me, and you are the opposite of the male who will one day secure my heart and hand in marriage.”
If Ronan was offended by her rejection, it didn’t show. He continued to beam at her like she was a holiday gift he hadn’t been expecting while the one called Lorcan said, “For now.”
Amanda shook her head at him. “What do you mean for now?”
“We’re the opposite of the lucky maleor malesyou will mate.For now.”
We’re not sexual deviants like the Irish…
A shiver ran down my back as Gavin’s words echoed inside my head.
Amanda’s voice sounded like it was giving out as she asked. “What… what do you mean by that?”
"What do I mean by that?" Lorcan tucked his thumbs into the waist of his kilt. His expression remained sympathetic, but hisvoice was more confident than steel as he answered, “Ye will certainly find out, won't ye?”
The back of Amanda’s neck flushed, and she swayed dangerously.
I barely jumped forward fast enough to catch her when she fell into a near faint.
She was no longer the self-appointed leader of our group. More like a scared child on the verge of passing out from all the new concepts she was being made to process.
“Naomi, what do they mean?” she asked me, her voice weak with confusion.
My belly tightened with the knowledge of certain things I’d read and heard about on the forbidden internet. Things Amanda’s cloistered brain wouldn’t be able to handle.
“Leave her alone,” I said, glaring at the two barnyard cats who’d decided to play with her. “Amanda can’t take your teasing. Have some compassion!”
I said this, knowing that my defensive words would probably earn me another derisive round of belly guffaws. But instead of laughing in my face, all the wolves who’d been doubled over less than a minute ago straightened up at once. One even hit his head on the ceiling in his rush to stand like a soldier in one of the war movies I’d watched to familiarize myself with human history. What was it called? Attention — yes, they appeared to be standing atattention.
“We’re sorry, Amanda!” the big one who’d goaded Amanda so meanly bowed his head toward her, hunching his shoulders. “I did not mean to upset you with my actions.”
“You didn’t mean to upset her,” I repeated as I helped Amanda stand back up on her own two feet. “What exactly did you thinkwould happen when you kidnapped us and threw us underneath a boat? Which, by the way, is never an ideal waynotto upset somebody — especially Black somebodies!”
The wolf soldiers stood in sullen silence, looking even more contrite.
But Amanda shook her head at me. “Why would you and Sadie being Black make this situation any more upsetting for you?”
I paused, recalling how our village school's limited history lessons mainly focused on the persecution of a prophet from Nazareth. In the Wölfennite timeline, the death of that prophet was followed by a steady devolvement of the human race into worldly evil until a few hundred years later when our founding ancestors establishedthe first Wölfennite colonies after getting expelled from their ultra-conservative Amish and Mennonite communities for transforming into wolves during full moon nights.
