16. Naomi

Naomi

Welcome to our Secret Kingdom.

I had never in my life seen anything like what lay beyond the archway located just beyond the sightlines of the habitat — which turned out to be exactly what I'd suspected. A five-story slope of glass curved into a wall that stretched at least five hundred feet above us.

That, I had been expecting.

The rock wall disappearing into what appeared to be a horizon of clouds, I had not.

I say "appeared to be" because I knew what I saw couldn't be right.

If my eyes were to be believed, then our half-dome habitat sat nestled inside a kingdom of rolling hills as far as I could see. There were pastures that looked like something dreamed up by a Photoshop whiz who wanted to depict where the Elves and Hobbits might have lived in Tolkien's tales.

There was even a castle, sitting in the distance, just beyond a small village of thatched houses overlooking a turquoise bay. If the wooden boats bobbing against the bay's white sand shores were any indication, it could be reached by foot or water.

There was water in this place. And even more oddly, despite the fact that it was November, I felt completely comfortable in nothing but a t-shirt. The air had the same climate-controlled feel as inside the habitat, set to an ideal, temperate level.

But how?

As I took it all in, I kept asking myself… How could any of this be?

We were undergroundin some kind of cavern. I was sure of it. My wolf senses told me the earthy smell was coming from above — not beneath my feet. And rock — a mix of limestone and granite. I could smell it everywhere.

But I could not see it.

All I saw was the gleaming kingdom. So bucolic. If I still had my phone, I could have taken a picture and sold it as a wallpaper image labeled "fantasy kingdom."

No one would ask where it was. Because no one would believe it was real.

Was it real?

"We're taking her right over here…"

I didn't realize I'd stopped dead in my tracks until the Sea King tugged on the blanket and got me moving again. "Wild and I figured it'd be easier to put them up in one of the cottages."

He led us out through the archway in the direction of the postcard-like village lying just a few yards away, down a gently sloped hill.

The cottages, like the sky, the grass, and the castle, gleamed under the sun. Impossibly vibrant and clean. Unlike the white community buildings in St. Ailbe, which looked beaten and weathered within a couple of seasons of their construction, the secret kingdom cottages had a uniform and perfect beauty. They looked as if they had been freshly constructed and painted just a few days ago by the village's inhabitants.

Or maybe by some kind of artificial intelligence? The suspicion sprouted in my head like a weed among a confusion of plants.

"Got any more questions you'd like to put to me?" Sea asked as we walked toward the impossible village with Amanda laid on the blanket. His voice sounded smug as if he had guessed I'd have this reaction to my first sight of the place he called the secret kingdom.

He guessed right. I had so, so many questions, all dying to get out.

But I gritted my jaw and turned to address them to Astrid instead of him. "How is this possible? We're underground, right? I can smell it. And I feel it in my wolf bones."

"You're not wrong exactly," Astrid answered with a sympathetic look. "We're in what the Wild Wolves call "the below."

"In a world constructed by the old gods," Frey added. "Even most of the Irish Wolves don't know about it. No way I'd ever have gotten to come here if I hadn't married into the family secret."

She regarded Astrid with a fond look, but her explanation confused me even more.

"The old gods?" I repeated. "How old? And how did they manage to…?"

I trailed off because I had no idea how to qualify the sight before me. I could feel and hear the swish of the grass underneath my feet, so it wasn't a hologram. But something told me it also wasn't real. In the end, I settled for "…make all of this? "

Astrid shrugged. "No idea. Truth is, I'm pretty much a tourist here, too. I grew up in Belfast, and that's where Frey and I live when I'm not being called in to help with births and whatnot."

"But you know, there is one person you could possibly ask," Frey pointed out with a smirk. "He's standing right beside you, my Nothing Queen."

"What did you call her?" The faintly amused tone disappeared, and Sea whipped his head to squint at Frey.

"Oh, relax, Brother mine. It's an inside joke your sister-in-law was calling back to, is all," Astrid answered in the same tone of voice I used to needle Tara.

"What sort of inside joke?" Sea demanded to know.

"The type that stays between the three of us," Astrid began to answer — only to break off and squint at a point beyond Sea in the far distance. "What's that other brother of mine up to, then?"

I followed her gaze to a hill overlooking the town where Wild appeared to be…

Now it was my turn to squint. Was he chasing after a large black wolf? With something glinting in his hand?

"Appears Ronan didn't take the news well," Sea said, looking in the same direction. "Looks like he probably tried to sedate the lad, and Ronan shifted to get away."

Oh, God. My heart dropped. "Ronan was so upset that he'd rather become a mindless beast who could easily do irrevocable harm to one of his pack members than give up his claim?"

Astrid frowned. "Something like that. Should I go help…?"

"What's happening?" Astrid was cut off by Amanda's confused voice. "Where am I? Where are you taking me?"

That was all the warning we got before the smell of the newly awakened she-wolf's heat blasted into our noses.

"Fucking hell!" Frey cursed behind me, and the tingling disgust immediately refilled my stomach.

But I ignored it as best I could to answer the innocent she-wolf lying prone on the quilt cot. "Listen, I'm so sorry, Amanda. But I couldn't let you continue to suffer, and according to the doctor, there will be dire consequences if you don't complete your heat cycle. So we're taking you somewhere to allow Lorcan to, ah… finish what he started."

Amanda stared up at me, her expression stricken.

I felt like the living embodiment of the poop emoji as I explained, "But it's only Lorcan. I negotiated that only he would be allowed to mate you. And after that's done, you don't have to marry him. I promise you, we'll figure out how to get you out of this situation."

"Why would you make a promise to one of your subjects that you cannot possibly keep?" Sea asked. The dry note of amusement had returned to his voice.

I swiveled my head to glare at him. "Do not underestimate me?!"

"Lorcan?" Amanda asked, drawing my attention back to her before he could answer.

"Yes, Lorcan." My defiance wilted into shame. Had I really let the Sea King distract me from explaining the deal I'd had to make to save Amanda's life? "I'm so sorry, but your body can't take much more of this. Giving you over to Lorcan is the only way to save —"

"Lorcan? Lorcan?" Amanda cut me off before I could finish explaining my decision. "Why are you inside my head?"

I blinked, then realized that Amanda wasn't talking to me but to the male who had mated her earlier .

Further adding to her confusion, she was the only child of non-heat-mated wolves, so she didn't know that those who went through a heat like my parents had for their second and third daughters could talk to each other through the wolf equivalent of ESP — as long as it wasn't over too far a distance. The habitat must have blocked out Lorcan's ability to communicate with her this way until now.

"Where are you?" Amanda asked the voice, her eyes welling up with tears. "Oh, my wolf. It hurts, and nothing helps. I need… I need… what do you mean?"

Amanda cut off crying and scrunched her forehead at whatever Lorcan said. "Where? Tell me!"

She then glanced around and shouted, "I have to go to him!"

"We're taking you to him, luv," Frey said to Amanda. "If you stop squirming, we'll get you there even sooner."

"She can't help it," Astrid said through clenched teeth. "Hell, I'm a doctor, and I'm barely holding on to the urge to push you behind some bushes and shove your face between my legs — and the heat's only in my nose. Can't imagine what she's going through."

But if Amanda heard Frey's reassurance, she didn't act like it.

"I have to go to him!" She threw off the blanket I'd covered with and somehow scrambled off the quilt cot, tumbling onto the emerald grass. "I have to go to him!"

"Amanda, we are taking you to him," I repeated in W?lfennite in case she couldn't understand Frey's thick accent. "You must get back on the —"

Amanda rolled to her feet and, naked as the day she was born, took off running before I could stop her.

But not toward the cottages.

Toward the hill where we'd seen Wild trying to sedate the big black wolf.

"Amanda!" I screamed, running after her.