It had not.
The portico was still empty when we stepped back outside, and Sadie’s strawberry scent was nowhere to be found among the array of foods kept warm on the god tech table. A quick glance toward the expanse of green between where we stood and the tower didn’t yield any sight of her either.
“Sadie! Sadie! Where are you?”
Tadhg was already on the High Palace’s front lawn, yelling out for the female bear we’d hoped to make our queen.
By the time I reached him, the Mad Mountain King gleam Tadhg always fought so hard against glowed hot in his hazel eyes.
“I shouldn’t have made it seem like a choice and left her alone,” Tadhg bit out between clenched teeth. “She’d been so upset about Declan not being there, I’d prioritized trying to get him to come ’round.”
Bitter regret shone in his eyes, followed by a hard squint of anger. “We should have done this in the fortress, like I said. We need to hunt her down, drag her back here, and make her understand what we mean when we tell her not to run from bears.”
That declared, he cupped his hands again to yell out, “Sadie, if you’re in vicinity, you need to show yourself.Now!”
That last word tore out of his throat on a bearish roar.
This was not good, verging on catastrophic. Sadie had run. And Tadhg was no longer trying to control his Mad Mountain King instincts.
This was what Tadhg hadn’t wanted. Why he wasn’t there when Sadie first woke up.
After it became clear that Declan wasn’t going to run the negotiations like he’d always done for our trio, Tadhg had recused himself to the sitting room “to breathe so that I don’t get overeager and show her the Mad Mountain King side.”
He’d done an admirable job during that first meeting. Staying calm, even when she tried to run.
But now his bear hummed beneath the surface, glowing in his eyes as he cupped his hands to yell out, “Sadie! Sadie! Where are you?”
Couldn’t say I blamed him. My own bear growled low in my chest as I pulled out the old GoNoTo phone I’d kludged into a remote control and monitor for all the kingdom’s atmospheric and infrastructural god tech.
But now I had two problems: getting Sadie back here and making sure Tadhg stuck to the original plan.
Hold on.…
I lifted an eyebrow at the perimeter report I’d pulled up on my screen, then grabbed Tadhg’s arm to get his attention and make him look, too.
He shoved my hand away. “No, no, I shouldn’t have ever agreed to your approach.” At this point, his voice was more bear than human. “The stakes are too high—hold on, are you trying to say the tower hasn’t been accessed since you came through hours ago?”
The bear glow in his eyes abruptly ceased, and Tadhg broke off his rant to snatch the phone I’d been waving in his face. His pupils dilated as he racked focus on the time stamp for the tower’s access log.
“But how is that possible?” he asked. “If she didn’t run, where is she?”
“Hi, here I am! Here I am!”
As if in answer to Tadhg’s question, the smell of strawberries hit our noses, right before we turned to see Sadie emerging from the hedge woods.
Relief slammed into me at the sight of her shuffling across the lawn toward us, an assortment of branches jutting from both pockets of her adorable strawberry-print dress. Her thick, wavy curls blew back in the manufactured breeze, which had been scheduled to shift toward the lake earlier in the hour. That explained why we hadn’t been able to catch her scent when we came outside.
“Sorry about that,” she said when she reached us. “I went looking for a stick. Then I ran into Brigid’s husband. And I ended up talking to him for a while about your offer, working through all of this.”
Tadhg’s eyes no longer glowed, but the tight set of his jaw told me he wasn’t happy about our Potential talking to another bear.
All his adult life, he’d fought hard against his Mad Mountain King instincts. Had chosen a boring COO life in The Above to keep that side of himself in check.
Yet here he was, straining against the seams again.
Her mere presence cracked his mask. And the idea of her talking to someone else—confiding in a bear who wasn’t one of her kings—threatened to shatter it.
So, even though he was supposed to be the main line of communication for the both of us when it came to Sadie, I brought out my whiteboard and wrote, giving him time to slip back on the affable mask he’d ripped off when he’d thought she’d pulled a runner.
