Muffled clunks sounded from all around. Locks closing, maybe, all at once? Alarm bells sounded inside my head as I asked, “Suss what out? What’s going on?”
“The Scottish Wolves.” All the room's windows tinted to black, casting Tadhg’s face in shadows as he informed me, “The Scottish Wolves are at our dock and headed toward the house.”
Secret Kingdom
“The Scottish Wolves are here.”
I barely had time to fully comprehend Tadhg’s words before my wish to be free of the dining room was abruptly granted.
Instead of blocking me from leaving, Tadhg suddenly dragged me out of the space where I’d woken up, past the glass coffin, and across a sitting room, where a fire roared in the hearth.
“Wait! Just—wait a moment. Where are you taking me?” I yanked back, heels digging in with everything I had.
Another secret I’d been bade to keep by my mother.
“Never show the male wolves how strong you truly are again,” she’d chided after I bragged about bringing back the largest sheet of ice from the lake for the community ice house. “Bad things will happen if they ever find out you’re stronger than them.”
But the Scottish Wolves were here. To rescue me from my kidnappers.
It felt strange to finally go against my mother’s orders and employ my full strength to yank my arm from the Mountain King’s grip.
And even stranger when it didn’t work.
The Mountain King hauled me along like the rag dolls I used to make out of old dresses before I figured out how to carve.
With what appeared to be very little effort, Tadhg pulled me up to a set of ceiling-high double doors, similar to the ones that led into the hall where Tara and Magnus’s reception had been held. But instead of wolves carved into the wood, these had large, gleaming knobs shaped like bears.
Knobs Tadhg didn’t even have to use. The doors swung open for him on their own, as if his presence alone was command enough.
The sentry-less opening might have come off as dramatic, if not for what lay behind them.
Not a ballroom, but a circle of stones tall as buildings loomed over a dirt floor with tufts of grass scattered about. Bright sunlight poured onto the structure, bathing the giant rocks in majestic light.
Had we gone outside?
No… I realized, looking up. The entire ceiling was made of glass, which explained the copious amounts of sunlight in this room.
If nothing else.
My mind kept spinning, even after Tadhg stopped in front of a slot between two of the standing stones and pulled the chain with the bear medallion from beneath his T-shirt.
“I’ll handle drop off,” he told the Shadow King’s bear, who had followed us into the otherworldly standing stone room. “You make sure the house is fully locked down. I doubt they can hack their way through god tech, but it’s been a while since we had to flip all the security buttons on this place. Could you make extra certain?”
The Shadow King answered with a nod of his large black head and lumbered back toward the still-open double doors.
Meanwhile, Tadhg pulled me through the stone’s opening with a grip stronger than any I’d ever known.
Bears. We were all bears. And while a female bear could easily best a male wolf, there was no way I could take a male of my own species.
This latest confirmation of what I truly was tumbled inside my chest as Tadhg hauled me deeper into the standing granite structure and raised his medallion to one of the stones.
“Stop! Where are you taking me?” If I couldn’t use my no-longer-superior strength, I had nothing left but words. “You said you wouldn’t do anything without my…”
I blinked, and the wordconsentfell like a pebble out of my mouth when I found myself standing in pitch black.
For a moment, I was as blinded as if I’d closed my eyes in my windowless room back in St. Ailbe.
Then my night vision kicked in, along with my sense of smell. I was inside another room now.
