Wild thought I’d insisted on sticking to the original plan because I was too rigid. But the reality was I'd been white-knuckling our first scheme because I was too weak. It was a miracle I hadn’t lost my head after spotting our long-prophesied queen from afar. I certainly could not imagine hanging on to my wolf for the duration of a dubious side quest.
“Dublin isn’t like me,” I reminded Wild as best I could with my wolf straining to burst out. “He has plenty of access to human women. He’s not mate-starved. Who knows if even the sight of her will sway him? And besides, he’s the most exposed of all the kings in a proper city filled with CCTV. Where do you think the Scottish Defender will go looking first when he fails to track us across the Irish Sea?"
My wolf thrashed with renewed force at the mention of the Scottish Defender. He wanted to kill that maggot, too. Spray the world red with the blood of any who even thought to take our banríon from me.
Mine! Mine! Mine!It chanted while I struggled to keep it down.
“That’s another reason to collect him. If the Scottish Defender comes looking, best that the male who knows about but refused to undertake this mission isn’t there if ye ask…”
Wild suddenly trailed off and the air shifted in front of me as he jerked to his feet and said, “Hello, there. Didn’t expect to see ye up here.”
The stilling of my wolf told me who “ye” was even though she was standing down wind, too far away for me to smell. I raised my head to find our queen, also the most beautiful she-wolf I had ever sighted, regarding me with sharp brown eyes.
“What’s wrong with you?” she demanded.
There came a sudden shrinking sensation within me, like all the air had been sucked out of my lungs.
I didn’t — couldn’t answer. Not because I was struggling with my wolf. But because it had abruptly cowered down into the deepest recesses of my body. The overwhelming presence I'd fought to contain all this time collapsed in on itself, leaving me hollow, like an empty vessel.
Meanwhile, I could sense our banríon's wolf staring at us. More angry than scared.
Was my wolf…? I struggled to find the word; my inner beast had folded in on itself, small and silent as it could manage, like a pup avoiding a scolding.
Intimidated. Yes, that was it. Was my ultraviolent wolf — who’d wanted but had never actually encountered our fated mate — actuallyintimidatedby the she-wolf standing in front of us?
I stood up carefully, not quite trusting him to stay down.
But if anything, he scooted even further down into my stomach. Icould sense him covering his eyes with his paws, embarrassed to have been caught acting the fool by the ethereal she-wolf.
It seemed he had been rendered into a nervous school pup, and I straightened up with the wholly unfamiliar feeling of being completely and effortlessly in control of my own body.
“So, are you not talking to me either?” The freckled brown beauty snapped. “Like the ones down below?”
“The ones down below are not allowed to speak or look at ye directly,” Wild explained.
“But you are?” She looked between Wild and me, her expression a mix of irritation, confusion, and impatience.
“Of course,” Wild answered with a mocking bow of his head. “We are yer kings.”
She glanced around at all the other wolves on the deck preparing the trawler for offloading while doggedly avoiding looking her way, and her sharp gaze flickered with confusion. But then she reset.
“Good, I guess you’re who I was sent to find.” She took a step back and cleared her throat, her eyes widening with fear — before narrowing with determination. “Why have you kidnapped us? I don’t know what beef you have with the Scottish Wolves, but we’re not part of it. The Wölfennites are a gentle community, and I suggest you let us go before the North American Lupine Association finds out about this.”
"Is that so?" Free of my thrashing wolf, I found myself letting out a hum of amusement. “According to our intel, your community, as you called it, operates outside the umbrella of the North American Lupine’s Association’s protection. And as for the Scottish Wolves, yes, they’ll look, but they’ll never find you. Just as they never found the she-wolves from the First Reaping back in the 1500s.”
Her eyes flared with outrage. “So, you're just going to haul us off to wherever you're taking this boat without giving us any say in the matter?”
Wild grinned in a way that was more fang than smile. “Sorry, we didn’t engage in a polite letter-writing campaign like that Scottish lot did. Not our way."
Wild stepped to her, leaving only a sliver of space between them as he ran his nose along her neck — as close as he could get without touching her. "This will have to serve as yer invitation to live with the Irish Wolves for a spell.”
To her credit, the brown beauty stood her ground. Her jaw locked, but she refused to shrink away from Wild or let on that she was intimidated by his closeness.
“So, it’s true. We’ve escaped our fates in Canada just to fall into something even worse.” Doing her physical best to ignore Wild, she addressed her grievance to me. “What’s your plan then? To throw us in cages and impregnate us against our will at the next full moon?”
Underneath her withering gaze, my once-defiant wolf shriveled even further inside me, this time with shame.
In my albeit limited experience, unheated females could be tricky.
