“How couldye?”
I moved to block her path before she could attempt that daft move of lunging forward to grab the yellow-haired she-wolf again.
To my great disappointment, she stopped just short of running into me, which gave me no reason to use holding her back as an excuse to touch her. And, with the other she-wolf's heat in my nose, I most certainly wouldn't have minded that. But I had to settle for, “Surely, ye didn’t think yer hare-brained scheme to deny my Wild Wolf his rightful second claim would actually work?”
“It wasn’t a hare-brained scheme,” she insisted, just as Sea came jogging over the hill after her in that ridiculous blue king cape. Shelooked to him as she always did when the choice was between the two of us. “You gave me his promise that she could have her heat cycle completed by just Lorcan.”
“Couldis the main word there, Flower,” I pointed out, drawing her angry brown eyes back to me. “Yer Wölfennite gave my Wild Wolf her pledge. And from the looks of it, she'd decided for herself to do the right honorable thing as opposed to fighting her mates and running scared.”
I punctuated that last bit with a pointed look so that she’d know that I wasn’t just talking about the yellow-haired she-wolf she kept trying to protect. “What business have ye got trying to stop her from behaving with honor.”
“Behaving with honor?” Our Flower screwed her head back as if she were winding up to truly let me have it.
But then a new scent drifted into the air. Faint enough that I might have missed it if I hadn’t been standing so close to her.
“What do you know about —” she began to ask. Only to be cut off by my audible sniff.
“What…? What are you doing?” she demanded when I dropped into a crouch and snuffed my way down her body.
The answer to that question was making sure I wasn’t hallucinating. But I wasn’t! The scent was coming not from the she-wolf being claimed on all fours by Ronan behind me but from our Flower herself.
“Ye’re fucking aroused, aren't ye?” A new kind of outrage took over my tone. “How dare ye come at me acting so self-righteous when ye’re just as turned on by this situation as yer two kings?”
“What?”Her eyes widened with shock, and she glanced between Sea and me. “No, I’m not aroused or turned on by anyof this! That’sdisgustyou’re smelling. I’m sodisgustedright now.”
“Disgust?” I barked out a laugh at her blatant lie… only to cut off when her expression remained insulted.
By the old gods, she actually believed every word she was saying.
I exchanged a look with Sea.
We didn’t have the power to communicate with the mind tongue yet like Ronan and Lorcan would after Ronan threw his long-delayed knot into the yellow-haired she-wolf. But I was fairly certain the Sea King understood every word written across my face
And, in case he didn’t, I let him know my thoughts out loud. “This is the naive she-wolf ye thought we had to tiptoe around lest she outwit us?”
"Are you calling me dumb?" Flower asked, placing her hands on her hips.
"Well, I'm not calling ye clever!” Unlike Sea, I wasn't afraid to tell her the truth. "And I'm most certainly not mistaking ye for any kind of worldly mastermind if ye truly believe that'sdisgustleaking from your cunt."
Flower gasped.
Sea rubbed at his temple as if I were an incoming headache he was trying to fend off. “Wild…”
Before he could finish that thought, the phone ring went off somewhere underneath that king cape he’d decided to wear for what was supposed to be a short escort into the bayside village where all the non-farming Sea Wolves made their home.
Surprise flitted across Flower’s face at the sound, and she turned to ask him, “You have reception in here?”
“Ye know what reception is?” I inquired with a snide tone, bringing her attention right back to me. “Care to tell us about that phone we found in the pocket of yer hand-sewn dress?”
Yeah, I knew I was needling her, but she’d turned me into a schoolboy with all this ‘denying her kings’ business. I’d do anything to get her attention — even if it was bad.
Sea must have caught on to what I was up to because he held the phone toward me. “It’s Dublin. Why don't you talk to him while I negotiate things with her.”
This turned out not to be a suggestion. Sea slapped the flip phone into my hand and took her by the arm to lead her away before either of us could protest.
“Little busy now,” I answered the call with a surly growl while Ronan and his yellow-haired she-wolf continued to grunt and moan in the background.
“What did you do?” demanded Dublin in his posh city wolf accent.
