10. Naomi

Naomi

"Why do I feel so strange?" Amanda asked.

Then, without warning, the strangest scent filled the room. Sharp and primal, cutting through the air like something untethered. And untamed. Sweet, but somehow filthy at the same time. And even though it was just a smell, every nerve in my body went on alert — like the hunters who used dog whistles near St. Ailbe, oblivious to the shifters living nearby.

"Well, fuck," Wild cursed before he and C, the Pirate King, burst into action.

"Get out! Get out!" he yelled at the male wolves gathered in front of the domed glass window. "Everybody but Lorcan and Ronan, get the hell out of here. Now!"

By some invisible decree, a large door-shaped panel of glass slid open, and Wild began shoving his comrades through the newly revealed entrance with an urgency that reminded me of the forbidden TV shows featuring rescue workers.

Most of the males turned tail and ran out like fearful sheep whenever a fox got into their pen. But the disgruntled Pirate Wolf, who'd accused Lorcan of lying earlier, growled and tried to move forward. Toward Amanda.

"Don't even entertain it, lad." C pulled two vicious-looking daggers from his knife sash before the snarling Pirate Wolf could take another step. Rivulets of lean muscle rippled down his tattooed arms as he twirled the unsheathed weapons. "I'm your King. But if you go after her, I'll slice your throat proper."

Go after her? That was when I realized I needed to protect Amanda from… whatever this melee was.

As confused as I was by what was happening, I started making my way toward Amanda's side of the room, instinct telling me that she was the reason for the two kings' sudden need to eject all the males from the strangely domed space.

I blocked out the commotion and focused on getting to my W?lfennite sister.

"What's happening?" Amanda raked a ragged hand down the side of her face, pulling off the hair covering. Perhaps unconsciously. We were never supposed to let ourselves be seen without our W?lfennite bonnets, but Amanda appeared oddly flushed.

"Why do I feel so, so…?" She panted as if she couldn't access the breath it took to finish that sentence.

"I'm coming, Amanda!" I called out, making my way to her as quickly as I could without stepping on any of the unconscious she-wolves stretched out like a river between us.

"Just hold on until the kings deal with the rest of the males, sweetling." Lorcan crouched down beside Amanda, his tone reassuring. "Then Ronan and I will get ye sorted. I vow it. "

"Vow it…" Amanda's voice was barely a whisper. I doubt I could have heard her if not for my keen wolf ears.

She stared at Lorcan, her head swaying listlessly.

Which was why I was completely unprepared when she suddenly surged forward.

One moment, Lorcan was crouched beside her, his face filled with concern. And the next, he and Amanda were fighting.

No, not fighting …

"Get out! Get out the lot of ye now. Before ye catch the fever, and the True King has to slice somebody else like he did that other one!"

I dimly registered Wild's voice in my periphery, issuing orders I didn't understand.

Just as I didn't understand the heavy smell in the air or why Amanda was tangled up with Lorcan in some strange wrestling match that ended with her straddled on top of him.

She appeared to be… I tilted my head to the side. Yes, she appeared to be grinding herself against Lorcan. Her visible side profile had gone utterly slack. But her body moved on top of the large Earring Wolf. With dark intent.

"Amanda?" I stopped wading through the river of passed-out W?lfennites just a few meters away from her. "What are you doing?"

"I don't know!" she cried out. "There's something wrong with me. It hurts! It hurts! "

"It's alright, love," Lorcan assured her, his voice choked but level. "Me and Ronan will make it better in a flash. But before we do, we'll be needing your promise. Stop. Please, ye got to stop."

But Amanda didn't stop. Just kept mindlessly rocking her hips on top of him. "Can't stop! Can't!"

What was she doing to him? Lorcan was nearly twice her size and so much stronger than her, but he knocked his head back against the stone floor, baring his teeth in a grimace that looked a lot like pain.

"Aw, sweetling. Can't take it. Cease." Lorcan grabbed ahold of Amanda's hips to still them. "Cease now, I tell ye, so ye can give us yer pledge."

Amanda cried out again. This time, like a wounded animal. " Please . I need… I need…"

"I understand! But I cannot give ye relief."

Tears pooled in Lorcan's eyes, too, but I sensed they had less to do with frustration and more to do with restraint.

Through gritted teeth, he said, "Not before you give Ronan and me the words we need. Please, sweetling. Repeat after me."

A nonsensical collection of words fell out of his mouth. The language he used sounded like a more lyrical version of the Gaelic the Scottish Wolves spoke.

Yet Amanda didn't hesitate to repeat them word for word, with tears streaming down her face.

"Now, please help me. Please!" she begged the male beneath her when she was through.

"Not yet, sweetling." Lorcan choked out. "You must say the words to Ronan, too!"

Amanda looked toward the only other male wolf now left in the room. Ronan. The shorter, dark-haired Earring Wolf had crouched less than a meter away from Lorcan and Amanda with both his hands braced against the floor like an animal about to pounce.

Nonetheless, Amanda repeated the words she couldn't possibly understand to Ronan this time.

Everything happened so fast after that.

Ronan leaped forward, and Lorcan reached up.

Ripping sounds filled the air, and in a flash, Amanda was naked as the day she was born.

What…? My heart slammed into my throat. What in the world?

Before I could even begin to come up with an answer to that question, Lorcan had lifted his leather kilt and pulled out something I had only ever seen on farm animals.

I blinked. And in that blink, Lorcan hefted Amanda's entire body into the air above him before slamming her down in a way that made his straining staff disappear from sight — and Amanda screamed.

Had he… ?

My mind reeled, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. Was he…?

As I tried to figure out what I was looking at, Lorcan rocked Amanda's hips into his.

"ár ngrá!" he roared, his tight expression releasing into one filled with a strange mix of wonder and ecstasy.

"Ja! Ja!" Amanda sobbed. But then began to babble in W?lfennite about how good it felt.

And that was when I finally understood what had happened. Amanda had gone into heat. The Lupine estrous cycle I'd only heard rumor of prior to this. And now shewas mating with the wolf she'd argued with earlier. Lorcan was claiming her on his staff of flesh. Sex. They were having sex !

A new feeling filled my belly, tingling and strange. Was it disgust? It had to be disgust…

But as happy as Lorcan had appeared to be to claim Amanda as his own, he suddenly stopped jerking his hips underneath her.

"Ronan, come to us," Lorcan commanded, his hands traveling from her hips to the pink cheeks of her exposed backside.

He spread her bottom in a way that made me fully understand the definition of the word "lewd." In an instant.

Then he growled, "Make her ready for our claim!"

To my horror, Ronan dropped down behind Amanda and put his mouth between the cheeks Lorcan held open. He appeared to be licking the hole between her… but why…? My brain tried and failed to comprehend the scene in front of me. Why would Ronan do that?

Suddenly, memories of how they'd spoken to her flashed through my head, rewriting themselves with new clarity before two particular words that Lorcan had said echoed through my mind. Our claim.

No, it couldn't be. My brain refused to consider the possible reason for Ronan licking Amanda's back hole.

He wasn't going to… surely, they wouldn't…

I found out the "forever seared into my memory" way that they would. When Ronan rose to his knees, lifted his kilt, and entered Amanda's back hole from behind with one huge thrust of his hips.

Oh.

My.

Wolf.

I was a bad W?lfennite — a terrible one, in fact. I had zero desire to live under the ultra-conservative rules of the Ordnung. I secretly listened to music, laughed at social media posts, and enjoyed all the offerings of the forbidden internet. Before coming to Scotland, I'd even debated bringing along the secret laptop I'd tucked underneath a floorboard hidey-hole, which I'd learned to make from a woodworking YouTuber.

However, as an unheated she-wolf, I'd never bothered with the more prurient side of the forbidden internet. I knew the ins and outs of normal sex and the many colorful-verging-on-vulgar labels that were used to describe the private parts necessary to perform such acts — like the c-word Wild had used earlier. But I'd been much more interested in learning about the real world through a mix of documentaries, and over-the-top reality shows while I executed my plot to get out of St. Ailbe before I was forced into a wolf-mating, than the ins and outs of sexual alternatives to the missionary position.

This is all to say I was not ready.

I was so, so not ready to watch Amanda not only go into heat but also get claimedby not one but two male wolves.

For several moments, I could only stand there, paralyzed with shock as my brain struggled to catch up to the horror unfolding before my eyes.

Then I remembered myself. Remembered who Amanda was.

Not a terrible W?lfennite like me, but an innocent. An innocent being roughly claimed by not one, but two of the wolves who had kidnapped us .

"Let her go! Leave her alone! Get away from her, you terrible beasts!"

I lunged forward, intending to do whatever it took to get the two horrible males off Amanda — only to be yanked back before I could reach them.

Two hands clamped around the top of my arms like vices. "Do not interfere, Mairinua. This is our way."

Apparently, not every wolf had left. The Irish Pirate King pulled me into his chest and whispered, "Welcome to the world of the Irish Wolves."