The answer to that question was yes. But abject shame rendered me unable to reply out loud.
Perhaps Wild sensed the truth underneath my carefully neutral expression. His voice gentled to say, “I imagine yer wait has not been easy on ye. Or yer wolf?”
No, it hadn’t. A cold wind blew through my chest, howling along with my lonely, too-long unmated wolf.
But…
“Dublin’s right,” I reminded Wild with a sunken stomach. “We can’t complete the prophecy without him.”
“He’s right about that bit, sure,” Wild conceded, though it looked like it pained him to say so. “But he’s wrong about one thing. We don’t need him for the Second Reaping. And unlike the two of ye, I have faith.”
His eyes burned with a fervor that matched his name.
“I believe in the prophecy. And I believe that if we find our queen and bring her to Eire, everything will fall into place. I’m with ye, Sea. But the question is, areyetruly ready to do yer part to fulfill the prophecy?”
Wild stepped in front of me, blocking the sight of Dublin’s retreating form.
“What say ye, True King?”
Wild extended a hand, his glowing eyes daring me to make a choice. “Will ye lead us in the Second Reaping?”
Wild
The True Kingeyed the hand I held out,but in the end, did not take it.
“We cannot — we should not do this without Dublin.”Sea shook his head while speaking in the auld language.“My father must have been wrong. The Second Reaping will have to wait for another generation.”
My stomach soured, twisting with disappointment. There is no word for "no" in the auld language. Yet, the Sea King managed to deny me just the same.
S’pose I should’ve seen it coming. The way that Terrible Belfast Mess played out, it made sense that he’d want his father to be wrong. Probably in the same way I used to want my mother to change her mind about leaving me and Da behind.
Calling the whole thing off probably seemed like the most logical conclusion to the True King, especially after that useless City King gave the Second Reaping less than five minutes of consideration beforekipping away.
I wasn’t Sea, though. Believing in the prophecy didn’t even feel like a choice that could be made. It was the only hope I had left. Without it, what was I? A king both haunted and cursed, with nothing to show for all the pain that came from the fallout from the Terrible Belfast Mess.
"We’re not children anymore, Sea, and the prophecy won’t wait on wolf or king.” I sneered at the dithering ruler I was nonetheless blood and curse bound to obey in all things. “Besides, way we're going with zero births all around, doubt we'll be spawning a new generation to go a'reaping.”
I scraped a hand over my closely shorn hair, memories of the Terrible Belfast Mess clashing with the very modern issue of not having had asingle live birth from my pack in years. “Ye know and I know this is our only chance — ourlastchance before the Irish Wolves decay into ruin."
Sea's expression tightened, but he didn't give me the courtesy of further argument. Just walked off in the same direction as Dublin.
However, I stood sturdy and sure inside the gates my ancestors built for our gods.
“We’re headed to the Cairn of Shadow for Samhain this turn,” I shouted after Sea. “Send a merlin when ye change yer mind.”
Sea didn’t acknowledge my offer. Didn't even bother to look over his shoulder and give me a respectful parting as he continued to wherever he tied up his boat.
But that was fine.
The Sea King traced his blood back a good thousand years beyond our unification under Mairi to the Viking wolves who settled on the Eire coast in the 800s. But my roots ran thousands of years beyond that, to a time before vellum — before iron and bronze — when we carved our tales in symbols upon stone.
The Sea King’s nose was full of salt and wind, as we say of the coastal wolves who still could not navigate the land as well as us. He could not smell the inevitable truth the way I did. He thought just because he could (barely) control his wolf enough to keep its glow out of his eyes that he actually had choices in these matters.
But my nose wasancient. I’d sniffed out the truth about him the moment he stepped inside the fating gate.
The Sea King's wolf was close to the surface. Hungry. Desperate. Nearly as feral as those City Walkers claim the Wild ones to be.
Hell, I was four years younger, and being the Cursed King, I hadn’t bothered saving myself for our queen. Yet I still felt the primal call to knot inside our fated mate. No amount of hand shandies could satisfy that need.
