"He looks Scottish. But I thought we were supposed to be mortal enemies. Hey, lad, are you Scottish?"
Alban didn't answer. And I barely breathed until I heard the ding of the elevator arriving to take him away.
But as soon as our medic revived the downed custodian with smelling salts and another guard confirmed that the wolf who’d somehow snuck into our offices had left the building, I locked the door and unlocked the office safe hidden behind the tin of a stout-loving Norrie.
Another trick my ancestors, who'd been successfully dodging and/or secretly reforming various tax codes for centuries, taught me. If you want someone to believe your story about being an innocent and blameless brewer, make your story as close to the truth as possible.
Everything I’d told the large wolf I suspected to be the Scottish King’s enforcer was true down to the merlin sent to my windowsill.
But I left out the part about how unnecessarily dramatic I thought the Sea King's communication methods, considering we keptburner phones for emergencies. Well, at least Sea and I did. I couldn't say how Wild communicated while he and the rest of his hunter-gatherer subjects were walking all over Ireland on some ancient stone circle ritual path from eons ago.
I pushed the call button on the one number stored in the flip phone. However, to my surprise, it wasn't the Sea King who answered.
“Little busy now,” Wild’s growl of a voice came down the line as opposed to the reasonable baritone of the Sea King.
In the background, I heard unmistakable feminine cries. Someone was having sex. No, not having sex.Being claimed.
My heart stopped.
Was Wild…?
Had he and Sea…?
“What did you do?” I demanded with a sick feeling in my chest.
“Ye know exactly what we did.”
I couldn’t see Wild, but I could hear the feral smile in his voice.
“We saved our kingdoms from ruin and found our queen. Now the only question is, when will ye get yer head out of yer ass and join us as the prophecy intended?”
Wild
A few minutes earlier…
I’ll tell ye, I had a hell of a time catching the wolf Ronan shifted into after I made the eejit mistake of trying to explain to him that he wouldn't be getting his chance to lay second claim to the yellow-haired she-wolf who'd pledged him. Should've gone with my first instinct: stabbed him through the neck with the needle Astrid handed me 'in case of emergency,' and explained the why of it when he woke up.
All my consideration earned me was a workout up and down the rolling hills of the secret kingdom’s back pastures when Ronan made me chase him nearly all the way to the first god tower.
Then, just when I’d finally gotten an arm ‘round his furry neck…
"Ronan! Ronan!" a voice shrieked. "Where are you?"
We looked up to see none other than Ronan's Denied Mate tearing toward us, her privates screaming with heat.
The unexpected, bare, naked sight of her slackened my grip. Just a wee bit, but a wee bit was all Ronan’s wolf needed.
The furry beast surged forward and ran straight for his naked she-wolf, shifting back to his human form right before he reached the mate we’d tried to deny him — wrongly, if you asked me.
That wrong was immediately rectified when they collided into each other, though. By the time I climbed to my feet, Ronan had the yellow-haired she-wolf on her hands and knees, and he was claiming her from behind like — well, exactly like what he was. A wolf who’d been denied his mate for too many hours during her heat cycle.
They were both in human form, but they rutted like animals, with only primal grunts and high-pitched whimpers coming out of either of them as Ronan took her with rough, desperate strokes.
It all happened so fast, you couldn’t blame me for just standing there as the scene played out before my eyes.
Well, most wouldn’t blame me.
“How could you let this happen?” Flower practically screeched when she came over the hill herself and found her Wölfennite and my Wild Wolf completing his too-long denied second claim.
