“What’s happening?" Astrid was cut off by Amanda's confused voice. "Where am I? Where are you takingme?”
That was all the warning we got before the smell of the newly awakened she-wolf's heat blasted into our noses.
“Fucking hell!" Frey cursed behind me, and the tingling disgust immediately refilled my stomach.
But I ignored it as best I could to answer the innocent she-wolf lying prone on the quilt cot. "Listen, I’m so sorry, Amanda. But I couldn’t let you continue to suffer, and according to the doctor, there will be dire consequences if you don't complete your heat cycle. So we're taking you somewhere to allow Lorcan to, ah… finish what he started.”
Amanda stared up at me, her expression stricken.
I felt like the living embodiment of the poop emoji as I explained, “But it’s only Lorcan. I negotiated that only he would be allowed to mate you. And after that’s done, you don’t have to marry him. I promise you, we’ll figure out how to get you out of this situation.”
“Why would you make a promise to one of your subjects that you cannot possibly keep?” Sea asked. The dry note of amusement had returned to his voice.
I swiveled my head to glare at him. “Do not underestimate me?!”
“Lorcan?" Amanda asked, drawing my attention back to her before he could answer.
“Yes, Lorcan." My defiance wilted into shame. Had I really let the Sea King distract me from explaining the deal I'd had to make to save Amanda's life? "I’m so sorry, but your body can’t take much more of this. Giving you over to Lorcan is the only way to save —”
“Lorcan? Lorcan?" Amanda cut me off before I could finish explaining my decision. "Why are you inside my head?”
I blinked, then realized that Amanda wasn’t talking to me but to the male who had mated her earlier.
Further adding to her confusion, she was the only child of non-heat-mated wolves, so she didn’t know that those who went through a heat like my parents had for their second and third daughters could talk to each other through the wolf equivalent of ESP — as long as it wasn't over too far a distance. The habitat must have blocked out Lorcan’s ability to communicate with her this way until now.
“Where are you?” Amanda asked the voice, her eyes welling up with tears. “Oh, my wolf. It hurts, and nothing helps. I need… I need… what do you mean?”
Amanda cut off crying and scrunched her forehead at whatever Lorcan said. “Where? Tell me!"
She then glanced around and shouted, “I have to go to him!”
“We’re taking you to him, luv,” Frey said to Amanda. “If you stop squirming, we’ll get you there even sooner.”
“She can’t help it,” Astrid said through clenched teeth. “Hell, I’m a doctor, and I’m barely holding on to the urge to push you behind some bushes and shove your face between my legs — and the heat's only in my nose. Can't imagine what she's going through.”
But if Amanda heard Frey’s reassurance, she didn’t act like it.
“I have to go to him!” She threw off the blanket I'd covered with and somehow scrambled off the quilt cot, tumbling onto the emerald grass. “I have to go to him!”
“Amanda, we are taking you to him,” I repeated in Wölfennite in case she couldn’t understand Frey’s thick accent. “You must get back on the —”
Amanda rolled to her feet and, naked as the day she was born, took off running before I could stop her.
But nottoward the cottages.
Toward the hill where we’d seen Wild trying to sedate the big black wolf.
“Amanda!” I screamed, running after her.
Dublin
Humans believedme to be the CEO of Norwolf, a centuries-old stout that originated in the brewery of Winston Normanwolf just a few months after that competing Irish brand, which we will not name — though if we do have to mention it, we refer to it as "that St. James Yeast Infection."
No matter the competition, Norwolf has been passed down from Normanwolf to Normanwolf throughout the centuries, and unlike St. James Yeast Infection and seemingly every other beer brand on the planet these days, we remained a privately owned company. Winston's grandson even managed to snag a baronetcy from King George the III.
However, Sir Normanwolf, CEO, was merely the disguise my forefathers and I wore to move about in the world of humans. My fellow wolves knew my real title.
I was the King of Dublin.
