Their responses were… well, not what I was used to.
The decision to speak my sharp-tongued mind had come at fifteen as a defense mechanism against getting mated with any of the misogynistic males in St. Ailbe.
And between the otherness of me being half-Black and what the elders often referred to as “my prickly temperament,” my vocal defense system had worked.
But to hear the Irish Wolves' elders' responses to my sharp answers, you’d think I was the brightest, wittiest, most charming person they’d ever met.
And the feeling that gave me inside my chest wasn’t… well, it wasn’t exactly unpleasant.
After growing up in St. Ailbe, I wasn’t used to such community acceptance.
Or males who didn’t mind that I wasn’t even remotely the subservient, docile mate that nearly every guy in St. Ailbe had been conditioned to want.
Wild happily loped along beside me, occasionally nudging my hand for another scratch behind his ears. And though Sea barely knew me, his voice rang with pride when he introduced me to his only family members outside of Astrid at the party who were actually allowed to converse with me: Darragh — the uncle who’d acted as his King Regent until he turned sixteen, his aunt-in-law, Aoife, and a short, wiry male named Finneas who Sea called his third-in-law.
A strange defensiveness lingered over the fact that they hadn’t pulled Sea into their happy family unit. Still, it was nice tofinally put faces to the names from Sea’s long letters about his life before he decided to steal a bunch of innocent Wölfennites from Scotland.
“So then, the True King tells us you’ve a right keen mind and might have quite a few questions for me,” said Finneas, after Uncle Darragh — who also served as Sea's warrior beta — was done with his whole fealty spiel.
“True King?” I asked.
Aoife chuckled. “You’ll find after you’re officially mated that all Irish royals have at minimum three titles. Our Sea can be addressed as the Sea King, the True King, and the Viking King — especially if we’re doing up one of those pyre funerals.”
“And those are just the official ones!” Darragh added with a laugh of his own. “I’m sure once you exchange your birth names, you’ll also come up with pet ones of your own if ye haven't already.”
I blinked, slightly startled. Was that why Wild kept calling meFlower? Was it his pet name for me until he received my real one? An unexpected warmth filled my chest at the thought.
“Anyhow,” Finneas said, bringing the conversation back around to his original point. “If you’ve any questions about the design of the secret kingdom — or want to have a go at using the god tech to create new annexed villages like the one I heard you lot had built back in Scotland, perhaps the Sea King can escort you over to my office in the castle for a chin wag.”
“Wait.” My heart sped up. “Are you trying to tell me you have access to the tech that made this place? And you can manipulate it to create other structures?”
The answer to that question turned out to be yes… sort of. Finneas and I spent the next few minutes in an exciting but frustrating conversation about his role in using the “god tech.”
Apparently, he was what the Irish Wolves called a Master Builder, a position that had been passed down in his family from generation to generation ever since the Sea Wolves took over the secret kingdom that had been left to the Wild Wolves after the “gods went to sleep.”
That meant Finneas had what sounded like a SIMS level of creation power over the look of the secret kingdom and could actually program certain 3-D structures into its simulated reality — that was the good news.
The bad news was he didn’t actually know how the god tech worked — like, at all.
When I pressed him too hard, he shrugged and said, “S’pose it’s like asking a software lad what makes a computer tick. All I was taught, all I’ve ever known, is how to code the thing and make it work. The god tech is beyond my frame of reference. No wires or understandable hardware I can see. Just a glass console loaded with glowing words in the god language.”
“The god language?” I thought of all the codes and symbols in the cave kitchen. “Is that the same as —”
“Enough of this tech speak, now. It is a wedding,” Sea commanded. But then his gaze softened on me, and he said, “If you like, Mairinua, I can take you to the control room at the castle tomorrow.”
Mairinua? Was that another pet name or one of the titles I would inherit if I were to actually agree to be his queen?
My heart fluttered with curiosity — along with something else I still refused to name as I answered, “I'd like that very much.”
There were more guests to meet after that, including the Master Farmer, who managed the secret kingdom's vast fields, and the Master Shepherd, who offered to give me a walking tour of whathe referred to as "donkey acres of pastures filled with sheep — a few donkeys, too, actually — but mostly sheep."
All this wedding nonsense must have really softened me up. Instead of giving him a sharp-tongued, "No effing thanks," I made a non-compliant sound and waited until he was gone to confess to Sea, "Seriously, after growing up in St. Ailbe, I'd be totally alright with never seeing a farm animal again."
Sea chuckled in response, and it felt weirdly intimate. Like we were some kind of real couple sharing a secret laugh. Even though we weren't. We most definitely weren't.
"It's getting late," I cleared my throat and chose that moment to point out, "And no one's gone into heat. I guess your group date plan was a bust."
"We'll see." Sea's mouth hitched up into a self-assured half smile. That was beginning to become familiar. Then, he unexpectedly let go of my hand. "Wait here for me while I go fetch us some cake."
