“Tell me what’s happening?” I demanded since the Pirate Kingwouldn’t let me help her. “Why can’t she break free of him? What’s he doing to her?”
“Did they truly teach you nothing in your community, then? Even the very basics of wolf biology? Of course, he's knotting inside of her.”
My chest tightened. “Knotting? What does that mean?”
Lorcan yelled out before the Pirate King could answer.
"Agrhh!" he half-barked, half-yelled. "By the prophecy!”
His body began to quake and jerk in the same way Ronan's had before.
“It feels so… it feels so…” Amanda sobbed before letting out a blood-curdling scream. Her body went ramrod straight as if she’d been hit by an invisible bolt of lightning. Then she keeled over, crashing onto Lorcan's chest in a complete slump.
Only then did the hands holding me back finally loosen.
“Amanda?”
I rushed to her side to finally give her aid. But she didn’t respond.
And the strange smell she'd been emitting earlier began to fade.
“Amanda,” I whispered, reaching for her neck.
Relief nearly crumpled my knees when I found her pulse still pounding despite her unconscious state. This time, she hadn’t just collapsed against Lorcan’s chest, she appeared to have passed out.
They both had. Lorcan lay beneath her, his mouth hanging open as if his mind had given out mid-yell.
But my relief soon gave way to a darker rage. She was alive, but that didn't erase the horror of what I'd just witnessed.
“You animals,” I shrieked at the two males who’d rutted her like mindless beasts. I didn't care that only one of them was awake.
Ronan shook his head like someone coming out of a daze. Now that the smell had dissipated, the glow had disappeared from his eyes.
He opened his mouth to answer. Then quickly averted his gaze as he had on the boat.
Which gave me a sudden idea.
Using all my wolf strength, I pulled Amanda’s unconscious body from the horrible male who’d claimed her so ruthlessly.
To my great relief, Lorcan remained passed out below her, but Ronan surged forward after me when I dragged her toward a huge display case of dishes. The dark wood piece of furniture was even bigger than the wardrobes my father made — just large enough to hide Amanda from the view of all the wolves on the other side of the glassed-in space.
"C King, tell your queen to give her back to me," Ronan shouted, following in my wake. “She is ours!”
“You can’t touch me,” I reminded Ronan. I propped Amanda's limp body against the wall beside the large case and used my entire body to block him from grabbing her again. “She doesn’t want you. She doesn't want this!”
Ronan let out another angry roar behind me. And I squeezed my eyes closed and braced myself to be torn apart like poor Amanda’s dress.
“Don’t.”
The single word brought my head up, and I peeked over my shoulder to find C behind me. Providing a barrier between us and the wolf trying to get through me to get to Amanda.
The Pirate had held me back before but now was helping me.Protecting me.
The two words dropped into my head, along with three more.Like he promised.
“But, she is ours.” I heard but couldn’t see Ronan past the back of the male he’d call the C King. “You heard her give us her pledge. You all did.”
“She didn’t understand what she was agreeing to because she was in so much pain,” I pointed out between clenched teeth. "This is the exact opposite of everything Amanda wanted. She wanted to mate with one nice Scottish wolf and bring him back to Canada. You ruined everything!"
