“Step back. Form a path!”
With that one command, the males parted in front of me, opening a clear path to a set of stairs directly behind them.
I gingerly stepped forward. And a few wolves moved back, giving me a wide berth as I passed them. But they also nodded in a slow,deliberate way. Were they… I couldn't even fathom it. But it almost looked like they were bowing. To me.
"I'll go with you," Amanda said behind me. "Maybe I can make these so-called Irish Kings see sense."
"Sorry, sweetling. You'll be staying here with us." I heard rather than saw Lorcan step in front of Amanda before she could follow me up the stairs. "Only your sister's allowed to pass."
Again, I had so many questions. However, something told me I’d get no answers from the male wolves, who tipped their heads down when I looked their way but kept their eyes cast to the floor.
My stomach churned with every step up the stairs, a creeping dread crawling up my spine.
The kings.
My mind churned with dark possibilities about how this boat ride would end, and all of them involved cages, locked doors, and the wolf mating I never wanted — for myself or any other Wölfennite.
In the case of the deviant Irish Wolves, possiblymatings.
But I swallowed hard, forcing the fear back. Then I bowed my own head to keep from hitting it as I climbed out of the ship’s bottom.
To confront these ruthless Irish Kings.
Sea
“I tell ye,we should've stopped in Dublin like I suggested earlier.”
I couldn’t disagree with Wild. At least not physically.
The rest of my Sea Wolves had anchored the boat to the dock closest to the small cargo plane we'd be using to complete the final transport of the Second Reaping. But instead of commanding the effort, I sat on one of the trawler's side benches with my head hanging between my knees. Not because I suffered from seasickness. My Viking wolf ancestry would never have abided that particular human weakness.
Regardless, my wolf was thrashing furry inside my throat. I feared if I didn’t keep my head with my eyes squeezed closed — if I so much as glanced in the direction of the hold where the stolen brides were being watched over by a small contingent of our most trusted warriors — if I dared to do anything but press my chin to my chest while sending up prayers to the three gods, it was certain that my wolf would eject from my body like fur-covered vomit.
The beast inside me didn’t like that she was out of sight. Didn’t trust even our most dedicated warriors not to touch her. Ever since we'd sailed away from the Scottish kingdom town, my wolf had been inundating me with images of tearing out their throats and swallowing down their eyeballs merely for glancing at her while she slept.
Yet, I couldn't go down to the hold to grab her. I had zero faith that my beast could be trusted if left in a room alone with her.
My wolf jumped forward again at that mere thought, eager to shift and claim the banríon as his own.Jayzuz!If he was this bad on the trip, what would life become once I got her back to the secret kingdom?
"Want me to tie yer pretty hair back so that ye don't getsick all over it?" Wild asked somewhere above me.
"I'm fine," I insisted.
"Ye’re not fine."
"If you're in need of somebody to fuss over, consider directing your energies to securing the Tríbéirríthe potential for transfer."
“If we’d stopped in Dublin, we could have kidnapped the City King, too."
Wild’s voice was closer now, letting me know he’d sunk into his preferred crouch to lecture me further instead of taking my suggestion. "Or we could've brought her to him. Let Lorcan and Thorin handle the transfer to the secret castle.”
“Don’t!” I choked out. To Wild and myself. “We must stick to the original scheme.”
Save for that confrontation with the Scottish Enforcer, the Second Reaping had gone seamlessly. While one contingent of our warriors confronted the Scots in their great hall, another,much larger group lay low at the entrance to the hidden tunnel the Scottish Wolves didn’t think we knew about. Just as the Tríbéirríthe’s source had promised, while the males in the hall fought off the smaller group as best they could with only their fists as weapons, the unmated she-wolves had been diverted to the escape tunnel.
There, the larger force plucked them up like lambs herded into the wooling barn before jabbing all the unheated she-wolves with the knockout needles my sister Astrid had provided us with before we set out on our mission.
So far, nearly everything had gone exactly to scheme. But if I let myself draw a mental picture of the female Wild had chloroformed back at Faoltiarn, I’d lose my wolf for sure.
