I couldn’t tell immediately what they were carrying through the door. But maybe I knew.
Suddenly, I was in the foyer without remembering having decided to move.
I arrived just in time to see them set a clear glass container down near the base of the grand staircase.
No, not glass. God tech. The sheer, smudge-less perfection of the encasing let me know that a special piece of equipment fromour secret kingdom stores had been dispensed for this delivery—without my permission.
I opened my mouth to demand answers, yet again.
Then I saw her.
Everything...
Everything inside me—the air traveling to my lungs, the blood pumping to my heart, any and all questions that had been rattling around my overtired brain…
Everythingstopped at the sight of the sleeping female inside the crate.
The package.
Tadhg hadn’t wanted me to call her “the package.”
And in that moment, I immediately knew why, even though the god tech case was blocking me from her scent....
Potentials.
That’s what we called outsiders of our kind who might match with us. But the label became singular, received a capital letter, and got a “the” attached when the possibility of matching with more than one king came up.
“The Potential,” Tadhg whispered beside me. “Cian found out about her, and he suspected she was part of the prophecy. Of course, we couldn’t be sure. But we had to try. Even if it meant risking the wrath of the Scottish Wolves. She and the rest of her lot arefromacross the sea.”
The Prophecy….
So, they’d had her kidnapped, I dimly realized. The part of my brain that was still managing to form coherent thoughts began putting it all together.
The cargo boat... the strangely dressed female... this unparalleled beauty...from across the sea.
All that alternative Irish history I’d learned before my ascendency to the throne—I’d never thought I’d use it. But now it gelled inside my head, coming together to paint a clear picture of what had transpired behind my back.
Tadhg hadn’t just learned about this Potential. He’d engaged the Irish Wolves to carry out the prophesied Second Reaping in order to acquire a queen for our kingdom.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Tadhg said beside me. I could sense him standing there, but I couldn’t bring myself to switch my eyes to his face. “The thing is, I knew there was a chance you wouldn’t see what I saw. That you’d try to stop us if I ran it by you first.”
I would have tried to stop him. This was madness. Madness that would send us into hiding from the Scottish Wolves forat leastsixteen months—possibly years.
I could still stop him. I was the High King, after all. The last word in our Tríbéirríthe. The first claim of any wife we chose to take together.
“Sadie!” The she-wolf’s voice suddenly sounded in the foyer with us. I’d forgotten she was even here. “Oh, my wolf! Sadie!”
Sadie.Was that her name? It suited her.
I took in her dark, serene face and the curves that were both plentiful and no-nonsense. She wasn’t a rail, like the future she-wolf queen who’d jumped into the sea. The Potential had a bodyfit for both carrying future kings and having them planted inside her.
Suddenly, my blood started pumping again, rushing to the flesh below my waist. I stood there frozen, but hot molten magma swelled in my chest. As if the serpent gods who’d carved the Wicklow Mountains had awakened and decided to set off their next volcano inside of me.
“What are you doing with her?” The future she-wolf queen demanded somewhere in the distance. “Let her out of that box—mmfff!”
I sensed, rather than saw, Wild clap a knockout drug over his she-wolf’s mouth. He and Sea dragged her out of there, with the Sea King apologizing for the inconvenience.
And still, I couldn’t look away from the female inside the god tech box.
