Prologue
PROLOGUE
“You must go to Ireland,” Magnus, the King of the Scottish Wolves said.
“It can only be you,” my Aunt Tara, the Queen of the Scottish Wolves declared. “And this is our only chance for peace between our kingdoms.”
“Nì thu seo airson do rìgh agus do bhanrigh,”King Magnus insisted. I had to fumble with my extremely rusty Scottish Gaelic for the translation: You will do this for your king and queen.
Then Aunt Tara added in her flat, completely unlilted Canadian English: “Dorie, you will do this for your kingdom.”
Less than two weeks later, Sadie, the warm and friendly Queen of the Irish Bears, greeted the private plane they’d sent for me herself. “Welcome to our kingdom! Oh my, you’re all grown up! Are you okay with hugs?”
Eight days after that hug, I was pushed backward into an ice-cold lake, plunged to my certain death.
Only then did I realize…
Not one person…
Not the King of the Scottish Wolves…
Not the Queen of the Scottish Wolves…
Not Sadie or any of the other royals I’d met in the Irish Bear’s secret kingdom…
Not one of them had truly answered my original question.
As I sank into the lake’s dark depths, weighed down by a duffel bag that might as well have been a pair of concrete shoes, I asked that question again, the words bubbling in the water….
Why Me?
“Ach,c’mon, you useless fleep. Raise yourself out of that depression bed.” My gigantic baby brother Albie crashed into my childhood bedroom with violence on his mind. He raised shades and threw open windows, introducing light and air to a space that hadn’t known either for weeks.
“Angghh!! What the hell, Albie?” I threw an arm over my eyes and was nearly knocked out by my own smell. Nonetheless, I managed to choke out, “Maem said to leave me alone.”
At least she’d told Granni Claudine that.
I’d overheard my mother wearily chiding the old Jamaican bear shifter outside my bedroom door—telling Granni Claudine to let me have my feelings about losing my dream job, even if my step-grandmother didn’t believe in such nonsense as “allowing the fool girl to fester in that room all livelong day and night.”
That had only been a few days ago. Maybe weeks. I’ll admit, time had become a blurry concept since I returned home broke, adrift, and deeply depressed after getting laid off from theWolfNet Gazettefor being a little too committed to our slogan: Shining a Bright Light on the Hidden Paranormal.
The walls of my childhood bedroom in Scotland were still covered with posters and pictures of the journalists I’d hopedto emulate someday: Ida B. Wells, Christiane Amanpour, Nellie Bly, Ronan Farrow, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, and Mark Twain. Plus black-and-white photos of Woodward and Bernstein and a still of Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman fromAll the President’s Men.
But now that dream was over, and I’d found that the news org I’d dedicated nearly my entire adulthood to wasn’t any better than the corrupt lupine politicians and businesses we were supposed to be covering.
No matter how long I’d been festering, my twenty-year-old brother had chosen the wrong day for an intervention.
“Get out!” I screeched at him. “Get out! Get out! Get out!”
“Stop yer hissin’, you pitiful feckin’ vampire.” Unlike Maem, Granni, and me, Albie had grown up in Scotland, and his Highland accent was back in full effect now that he’d returned from uni to do a summer sentry internship at the castle in our kingdom town of Faoiltiarn. “Uncle Mag and Aunt Tara’re wanting a meeting with ye, aren’t they?”
“With me?” I croaked as Albie hauled my tired body out of bed and slung me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
Why would the King and Queen of the Scottish Wolves want a meeting with me?
It occurred to me I should probably ask that question out loud. “Why would the King and Queen?—”
“Not sure. Dinnae ask.” Albie kicked open the bathroom door and set me down on my feet, fully clothed, inside the tub.
