PROLOGUE
DÚN FIANNA, TÍR NA NÓG
The feasting hallof Dún Fianna was absolute chaos and Navy SEAL, Michael ‘Reaper’ Rodriguez’s instincts screamed at him to find a corner, hunker down, and start pinpointing targets to eliminate. But this wasn’t like any warzone he was used to, it was wilder, more unpredictable, and almost impossible to wrap his head around.
Gimme a bunch of bloodthirsty tangos in the motherfucking desert any day of the week.
Not that their last mission had been freaking epic either, and it definitely hadn’t been without problems. They were here, for Christ’s sake. Hell, he wasn’t even sure if Christ had even been born yet in this realm. Being whisked out of the way of an exploding volcano via a portal to a parallel universe where ancient Irish myths and legends were a reality was one hell of a mind fuck. His ancestors would be rolling in their graves to insist they’d warned him there was a grain of truth to every ancient story.
Trace shifting into a wolf didn’t confirm it?
Jeez, you’re fucking slow as shit.
His stomach rumbled and he inhaled deeply. No matter where he was, even in Tír na nÓg, the smell of roasted meat was welcome when he was this hungry. Did crossing realm lines count as years or hours? He wasn’t entirely sure, but either way, his stomach was convinced his throat had been cut and he couldn’t wait to wrap his mouth around some meat, STAT.
Do not say that shit out loud, because the boys will never stop fucking with you if they hear it.
They’d been here with the Fianna for days, while their team’s CIA liaison, Taylor ‘Trace’ Reeves reconnected with his Finnian brethren and their High King, Fionn MacCumhaill. The shifter, the strongest hounds of the High King, had remained behind when the Fianna had crossed the veil to Tír na nÓg. While Reaper didn’t begrudge Trace, and his mate, John ‘Juice’ O’Leary, this time with the people Trace and his wolf side Bran been waiting on for at least five millennia, he was ready to go home. Hewantedto go home damn it, before these crazy bastards had another Grá Croí ceremony and one of those brawny warriors started getting ideas.
Reaper snorted. He’d been down Relationship Highway once before. All it had earned him was more black eyes, broken ribs, and dislocated noses than anyone had any right to endure.
Don’t go there…
Nope.
He shook off the spiral he could feel hunting him in his subconscious, before it could get its clutches into him. Sometimes, reminding himself that even the strongest of men can have horrid shit done to them by the person who is supposed to love them was damn hard, especially whenyou didn’t want your teammates to know anything about it.
Across the feasting hall at the table with Fionn was his team commander Kelvin ‘Viper’ Dare and his Grá Croí, archeologist, Howard ‘Ward’ Sutherland, who they’d found on the island where this whole clusterfuck had begun.
I’ve never seen that look on Viper’s face before.
An archeologist with druid magic was not who I thought was in Viper’s future.
It would serve his boss right, if Ward gave him a run for his money, but everything he’d seen so far that came with the Grá Croí bond meant that was unlikely to happen. As soon as that mating mark he was building across his chest—like Trace and Juice—was finished, Viper and Ward would be tied together for the rest of their days.
Poor bastards.
Lucky bastards.
Reaper still wasn’t one hundred percent certain whether he envied them or not, but he figured it was none of his business, as long as neither of his team mates decided to hang up their weapons and roster out of the military, what they did on their own time, was their business. Hell, he couldn’t even decide if this whole Tír na nÓg, the Fianna, high kings, and wolf shifters were part of some wacky dream brought on by some obscure gas the volcano had spat out.
Or, he supposed this could be the Valhalla that SEALs who made the ultimate sacrifice went to. But if it was, he’d kinda hoped to see some of their fallen brothers. As hesipped the whiskey the Fianna called uisce beatha from a cup made from the horn of an auroch, he decided it didn’t matter.
The water of life burned its way down his throat with every sip. He glanced at the horn mug. It was freaking fantastic that those ancient cows had big horns because if there was one thing he needed almost as much as he did food, it was a stiff drink, and shitloads of it.
Before he knew it, the drink sank into his soul, and his foot tapped along in time to the pounding rhythm of the bodhráns. Those hand-held drums he could totally get on board with, because damn they did something to his pulse. He squinted toward the far corner of the smoky feasting hall that wouldn’t be out of place in a Viking longhouse, as a set of pipes joined the Bodhrán, wailing like a banshee calling the dead.
Damn, it’s a good thing I’m out of ammo, because if someone plays that shit in the morning when I’m hungover, I might shoot him and cause an international incident.
But is it really international, though?
Because I’m not sure here counts as international.
It wasn’t important what he called it, something that resembled an international incident would be created if one of those warriors who was moving to the sound of the drums and the pipes like it flowed in their souls, attempted to fire the wailing pipes up before at least midday.
He leaned against a thick, wooden pillar, arms crossed, his back to the wall because old habits died hard, and made a conscious effort to stop his foot tapping. Hewasn’t here to dance or laugh, or celebrate. He was here because Viper had given him an order, and because, apparently, they were all stuck in this mythic clusterfuck until they were sure the Fianna Door worked.
The longer he spent in this feasting hall packed with bodies, warriors in leather and bronze, and women with hair braided like ropes, their skirts swirling as they danced, the more the instincts his great grandmother would tell him was whispers from their ancestors, fired to life. They sent skitters of anticipation and shivers of warning down his back and despite the fire roaring in the hearth, a shiver wracked through him.
