Coincidentally, it turned out to be about power.
Dearest Mairinua,
While I await your letter, hopefully full of details about how and where you grew up, I thought I might tell you more about the wolves over whom you’ll reign after we are joined as mates.
The Irish Wolves' power structure isn’t quite arranged in the same way as the North American Lupine Association, where every state and province has a king. Or even England and Scotland.
The Scottish Wolves are purely descended from the Norwegian Viking wolves who, like their counterparts, raided and eventually settled in the British Isles.
The Sea Wolves are also the descendants of those Viking wolves, and our settlements were founded around the same time in the late 8th and early 9th centuries.
The Irish Wolves, however, are sourced from three different groups. According to our lore, the Wild Wolves were the first wolf walkers, made and placed here by the three gods sometime between the early to middle Stone Age.
However, the Wild Wolves were split into two factions in the early 5th century (over 300 years before the Viking Wolves' arrival in Ireland) by what the Wild Wolves still call "That Patrick Nonsense."
We can't be sure if the 5th-century wolves actually encountered St. Patrick, the (human?) missionary who is widely credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland. But after the now-venerated man's arrival, the Wild Wolves remained nomadic and continued to worship the old gods.
Meanwhile, the converted wolves settled near one of the henges—or stone fating gates, as we call them—to the north near the area that would eventually come to be known as Belfast. Interestingly, these other wolves chose to forego having a king, instead uniting under afigure they called The Belfast Priest until recently when the last Belfast Priest lost his position, and his wolves were merged with the kingdom of Dublin.
Anyhow, this was not an inherited appointment but one that was intuited, like the Dalai Lama or the Avatar from The Last Airbender — not sure if you know either of those references though. So, I’ll stop there.
I am eagerly awaiting a letter from you, Mairinua. Please, tell me more.
I hope it’s not too forward of me to say, but I haven't been able to sleep since your arrival. I lie awake, staring at the ceiling, thoughts of you running through my mind like the tides that shape our shores.
What dreams did you hold close when you agreed to the Bridal Exchange? What kind of mate did you envision before your queen fate took you by the hand and led you here? You’re a clever bird, aren’t you? Not at all what I expected, and yet more than I could have imagined.
When you write me back, share your stories with me—every detail, every moment. I long to know everything about the Wölfennite who hides a phone in her dress pocket.
Since I was twelve, I have been alone, tasked with ruling a kingdom after my father was stripped of his titles and exiled. And even in those long years of solitude, I dreamed of you. I imagined holding hands with my queen as we oversaw important rites like holidays and weddings.
But by the three gods, in person, you are even better than my faceless vision.
You are a queen born and cleverer than a den of foxes. Even as I recover from what happened in my castle, I find myself wonderinghow a parentless wolf like me got so lucky. The Irish Wolves are beyond fortunate to have gained you as a ruler.
You, my Mairinua, are the happy ending I have longed for—the answer to years of waiting.
In the modified words of the British boy band, The Wanted: I am so very glad you came.
Yours,
Sea
My chest ached in a way I did not want to acknowledge. This letter was much longer than the first one, but somehow still too short. I lowered my gaze to that line again.
You, my Mairinua, are the happy ending I have longed for—the answer to years of waiting.
So it wasn’t just about want to breed me because I was the most aesthetic she-wolf in the lot he’d kidnapped. For the first time ever with a male who’d showed interest in me, I didn’t feel like some she-wolf shaped trophy some dude was trying claim to show off to his pack.
A wholly unfamiliar feeling bloomed inside of me… to tell the truth… to explain everything… to open myself to Sea bloomed.
Also, I had so many questions.
What happened to the Belfast Priest, and why were the Belfast wolves merged with the Dublin ones? Why was Sea’s father stripped of his titles and exiled? Who took care of and nurtured Sea after he was named king at the super youngage of twelve? What did this song by the British boy band I’d never heard of sound like?
I eyed the letter paper, sitting on top of the room’s built-in desk, but…
No,no, I wouldn’t write to him. In fact, it was a good and wise thing that I hadn’t sent a letter back with Astrid that morning because I refused to encourage him any further. Sea was a monster — a contradictory, heavily tattooed monster who wrote letters in gorgeous cursive that made my heart pound — but a monster first and foremost.
