A weird sensation warmed my stomach, then rose, clogging my throat. I barely managed to choke out, “Sh-sure. Thank you.”
He came closer, and that was when I realized the delicious lemony smell I’d attributed to heaven was actually coming off of him.
His citrus scent filled my nose, bright and sharp. Also, he smelled… different. Not like a fellow wolf. But somehow familiar. So, not wolf. But also, not human… maybe.
Once again, I resented my sheltered upbringing. Only knowing the other community members of St. Ailbe for nearly my entirelife meant I didn’t have the context to suss out the answers to so many of the questions I’d had since making this trip nearly a month ago.
The Shadow King’s eyes fluttered when he got close, and I braced myself for another written question—this time about my odd smell.
Instead, he set the board aside and held out his hand.
Which I took.
Because I didn’t realize everything inside my body would go haywire as soon as I touched his palm. But somehow, it wasn’t upsetting.
It was like being an egg cracked and dropped into a frying pan full of heat and butter.
As he helped me out of the coffin and down from the table, everything inside my body was scrambling and rearranging.
Until suddenly it resettled, and I was standing in front of him. Still an egg. But completely reformed.
“Hallo,” I breathed out with a new feeling inside my chest.
He was even taller than he’d looked when I was sitting inside the glass coffin. To my surprised, I had to tip my head back to meet his eyes, and he hunched a little—like I sometimes did when talking to Naomi, since she was so much shorter.
Only our height difference was worse. The Shadow King had to be nearly a foot taller than me—long, but not overly slender. I sensed muscle beneath the thick cable-knit sweater, and his broad shoulders met the ends of his storm-cloud black hair.
He didn’t return my Wölfennitehallo. Of course, he didn’t. But his eyes…
There was no way to explain it with my limited experience. But it felt like I really was that plate of scrambled eggs, and he was eating me up.
And though his lips didn’t move, I heard the words, “You’re awake. Good.”
The voice was a deep, affable rumble, and it didn’t sound at all like the Shadow King looked.
In the next moment, I found out that was because it belonged to another person entirely when a huge, red-haired male came to stand beside us.
And that’s when I fell right back into that frying pan for another scramble.
He looked a lot like Alban—but also, not at all.
He was around the same size and heft, but he wore a strange cologne that completely blocked his scent. Still, I suspected he, like the taller Shadow King, wasn’t a wolf. Or fully human.
Like Alban, he had thick hair and a lot of bulk. But unlike Alban, his hair was combed back in neat, lustrous waves, his beard was neatly trimmed, and his eyes were a twinkling light brown instead of a contemptuous, stony gray.
Better than Alban, something whispered inside of me as he regarded me with a warm, inviting gaze.
“I see you’ve already met Cian, your Shadow King,” he said. “I’ll introduce myself, then. I’m Tadhg, your Mountain King.”
So,Tadhgwith a long “I” sound—notTadge. And apparently, the Shadow King’s C-i-a-n wasn’t pronouncedCyan,as I’d originally assumed, butKee-ann. And did he say he was also a king of… wherever this was?
I looked around, but all I found were more mysteries.
Not only did I appear to be standing in a dining room with two walls made mostly of glass, but beyond one of those window walls lay what appeared to be a long dirt road with an abrupt end. Almost like some sort of landing strip, similar but smaller than the one we’d taken off from back in Canada.
I’d be fascinated by all these details I was finding out about all at once, if I wasn’t so busy trying not to faint. Because now Tadhg was also looking at me like I was a plate of eggs.
“H-hallo,” I somehow managed to get out.
