Viper stepped up beside him, wordless, and offered him the dagger. Ward’s hands shook, but he drew the blade and pressed it to his palm. When his blood touched the stone, the runes flared brighter than all the rest.
Fionn’s smile turned knowing. “Even the land remembers your line, druid-born.”
Ward swallowed hard, unsure if that was a comfort or a curse. The runes beneath his blood pulsed once, then twice, then sent a faint shimmer outward like a heartbeat across the stones. Around him, the warriors of the Fianna fell eerily silent in reverence.
Beside him, Viper’s hand hovered low, as if to either shield or anchor him. As if he sensed that if the moment got any heavier, Ward might just float out of his own damn body.
“What the hell does that mean?” Ward asked under his breath, trying not to hyperventilate as the gold light crawled along the cracks in the stone, flickered beneath his boots, and trailed along his body to his arms. In their wake, blue swirling lines appeared, similar to the ones he’d seen on the wolf when he stood as a man. He blinked at them in confusion. Were those tattoos?
What the hell is happening?
“It means,” Fionn said, stepping forward until his massive shadow fell across them both, “that the blood of the druids who betrayed me still runs in your veins… but so too does their redemption.” His eyes—fierce, ancient, and bright with firelight—met Ward’s unflinchingly. “You opened the prison they forged, not with chains of power, but with belief. With knowledge. With sacrifice. You walk the edge of fate, druid. The land knows your name now.”
“No pressure,” Juice muttered nearby, barely keeping a straight face.
One of the warriors—a lanky, flame-haired man who looked like he’d walked straight out of a Celtic epic movie—stepped forward and raised a horn carved with twisting knotwork. “Then let it be known,” he cried. “The Hound’s Grá Croí and his kin have joined the blood-bond of the Fianna. As our brothers. As warriors of this sacred earth. As clan.”
The cheer that followed was a pounding rhythm. First fists against chests, then booted heels against stone, until the entire fortress echoed with a pulse Ward could feel in his sternum. It wasn’t a welcome, at least he didn’t think so—it rather felt as if it was an oath of some kind. He absentmindedly scratched at the inside of his wrist as he watched Viper—the team’s unflinching center of gravity—stand with shoulders squared and jaw set, surrounded by warriors who would kill and die for their king. For them. Forhim.
Then one of the Fianna stepped forward and extended a carved bracer toward him. “Wear this in battle,” the man said. “It will mark you as one of us. None shall strike down who bear our sigil.”
Ward hesitated. Then slowly, he reached out and took it. It was warm—alivesomehow—and as he turned it over in his hands, something subtle and ancient whispered through him. Not magic, exactly. But almost as if it recognized him or his blood. “Thank you.” He wrapped it around his arm and turned it over to close the clasps.
The warrior who had given it to him paused, his eyes going wide. He grabbed Ward’s wrist and thrust it into the air while yelling, “The druid has met his Grá Croí.”
“What?” He’d heard Juice being called the Grá Croí of Trace and his wolf, Bran. But there was no freaking way he could deal with that.
He shook his head. “No—that’s not possible.”
“Everyone, line up,” the warrior yelled. “The druid needs to find his Grá Croí.”
“What, no?—”
“You alright?” Viper asked, watching him closely.
“I don’t know,” Ward whispered back, still staring down at the bracer. “They think I’m… they think…” His brain freaked out completely. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back. “Shit, I don’t know. I can’t be someone’s mate.”
Viper gave a small grunt, a ghost of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Easy. Nobody is going to make you do anything you don’t want to do. I promise.”
Ward glanced past Viper’s shoulder, where excitement was building in the ranks of the warriors as they fell into formations. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know.” Viper nudged him behind him. “But I think we’re going to find out.” He scanned the crowd. “Juice, what the fuck is happening?”
“One of Fionn’s commanders says Sutherland has the start of the mating mark.”
“But I thought he had to meet his mate,” Viper replied, “before the mark can grow. Isn’t that what happened to you?”
“I don’t know, man.” Juice came to stand with them with Trace on his heels. “Mate, can you explain?”
Trace nodded. “Within three, six, or nine days of the birth of a female child, her mating mark will show. The number of days determines the age of the male children we bring to view the babe. The mate will reveal himself because his mark will grow in the presence of the female child.”
Ward recoiled. “They are babies. That is disgusting?—”
“Nothing is allowed to happen until the female is eighteen.” Trace cut him off. “If a mate is revealed before the age of nine, they are betrothed until the female reaches eighteen. Only once, nine times nine years have passed, will the mating bond come to fruition.”
“That’s some medieval shit right there,”
Reaper wasn’t wrong. Betrothals, warriors, and magical bonds were way outside his remit. “What if they don’t find their mate by nine years old?” Because if this was meant to happen before nine, Ward was going to argue that what was on his arm was not a mating mark.
