“Everything you did was tocontrol me!” I shot back with bear in my voice. “And now you’ve colluded with ‘these kind people’ to lock me away in another room.”
My mother’s eyes flared. “This is a situation of your own making this time, Sadie Ellis. All you have to do is tell them what they want. Then we can let you go, and the Scottish Wolves can get the rest of the brides and?—”
“What, Claudine? What do these Scottish Wolves plan to do when they find those brides who may not even want to return here?” I bared my teeth at her. “Knock them out and drag them back to Scotland in chains, too?”
If the wolves' Secret Kingdom was anything like the bears’, I already knew hose brides wanted to be there, just like I wanted to be back in my own Secret Kingdom more than anything.
“No, I’m sure they’d talk some reason into those silly girls’ heads,” Claudine insisted with a shake of her own head. “And do not call me by my first name. I am your moth?—”
“You are the female bear that lied to me and manipulated me my whole life. Be happy I’m not calling you worse.” The chains leading from the wrist shackles rattled when I yanked on them so I could sit up when I declared, “If you want to survive what happens when I figure out a way to break out of these chains, you will not refer to yourself by that name again.”
Claudine’s mouth dropped open. “You’re threatening me now? And why do you smell like a strawberry-rhubarb pie? More than one ingredient. Are the rumors true about those Irish shifters making you girls sleep with two at a time?—”
“The rumors are true, but I didn’t sleep with two Irish Bears,” I assured her.
Claudine let out an audible breath of relief. “Thank goodness, maybe we can?—”
“I mated withall threebear kings,” I gleefully informed her, relishing the scandalized look on her face. “And I have no doubt the other two are already on their way here to rescue us. If I were you,Claudine, I’d let me out of these chains so I can make the case for letting you and the nice people who took you in live when they get here.”
Claudine stiffened, fear replacing some of the know-it-all sharpness. “Hamish, Leora, Dorie… They have nothing to do with this.”
“You made them part of this,” I ruthlessly shot back. “When you conspired with the Scottish Wolves to kidnap my mate and me and bring us back to Faoiltiarn. Now let me out of these chains.”
“No, obviously we need to keep you here, make you see reason?—”
“Do you love him?”
Claudine blinked. “What?”
“That male who convinced you to come up here. He’s smitten with you. Definitely interested in eating more than your apple doodles.”
“Dutty girl!” Claudine’s entire face flared with scandal and shock. “Who are you talking to with this mouth?”
“Mmm-hmm.” Now it was my turn to suck my teeth. “Are you smitten with him back?”
Claudine fretted her hands. Wiped them on the front of her blue dress. Then: “He’s a fool.”
“Obviously,” I agreed. “But are you smitten with him back?”
Claudine shook her head. “Silly nonsense wolf, batting his eyes with a bear. Nothing can come of it.”
This time, I just stared at her. Let the silence be my accusation.
“The way he looks at me…”
She trailed off, but it was easy for me to translate for her. “It makes you feel safe. Seen. Chosen.”
Claudine’s eyes softened with recognition as I labeled what she was feeling.
But then she shook her head like someone coming out of a daze. “I don’t… I don’t think I deserve it.”
“I know you don’t,” I assured her. “So deserve it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Give in to the soft feelings you’ve been fighting all your life.Let me go,” I clarified. “Prove to me there’s someone worth sparing under all that psychosis.”
She drew back her shoulders. “You think I have a mental illness?”
