17. Dublin

Dublin

Humans believed me to be the CEO of Norwolf, a centuries-old stout that originated in the brewery of Winston Normanwolf just a few months after that competing Irish brand, which we will not name — though if we do have to mention it, we refer to it as "that St. James Yeast Infection."

No matter the competition, Norwolf has been passed down from Normanwolf to Normanwolf throughout the centuries, and unlike St. James Yeast Infection and seemingly every other beer brand on the planet these days, we remained a privately owned company. Winston's grandson even managed to snag a baronetcy from King George the III.

However, Sir Normanwolf, CEO, was merely the disguise my forefathers and I wore to move about in the world of humans. My fellow wolves knew my real title.

I was the King of Dublin.

So when I found a large Scottish wolf in my office with a massive hunting knife, threatening to kill me, I did what every Dublin King before would've done under the circumstances .

Cooly offered him a drink.

"What'll you be having, then?" I asked, turning my back on him to approach my office side table bar. "I've whisky, red wine, water, and of course… it's always the right time for Norwolf."

I pointed to a vintage tin sign on my wall that featured a 1940s cartoon version of Norrie Norwolf, our mascot wolf. In this depiction, he wore a factory uniform and pointed to a clock that read 11:45 a.m. with one hand while extending a pint of Norwolf stout toward us with the other. Our long-time slogan, "IT'S ALWAYS THE RIGHT TIME FOR NORWOLF," took up the rest of the frame.

Ah, yes, those were simpler times when everyone thought drinking on a factory job was a right good idea.

The huge Scot just squinted at me. Then growled. "You've already got a coffee."

"You're right." I dumped half my coffee into the waste can that Scrubber Steve hadn't got the chance to empty and uncorked a bottle of Midleton Very Rare. "This conversation most certainly requires whisky. Want one?"

I interpreted the male's low growl as a no thank you. But after I filled my coffee cup with "the water of life," as we called it in Ireland, I poured a couple of fingers of Midleton into a crystal tumbler anyway.

"Just in case you change your mind," I said, setting it down on my desk in front of the guest seat before I sat down in my office chair. "Alright then…"

I took a sip of my whisky and coffee before asking, "Might as well tell me why you've really come."

The Scot regarded me with a heavy scowl. "Is that your plan, then? To pretend as if you have no idea why I'm here?"

Jayzus Christ, this morning was off the rails. I took a larger swig of my no-longer hot coffee. "Seems like the best course of action considering…"

"Considering what?"

"I truly have no idea why you're here," I answered honestly. "Or what you want that's worth putting a tranquilizer dart in an innocent janitor."

"Innocent." The Scot gritted his teeth. "Not as innocent as the fifty-plus she-wolves you lot stole from our king's wedding reception!"

I stilled. Then set my paper cup down to rub at the instant headache that formed when I found out what those two fools pulled off without me. " Fucking hell . I told them not to do that."

"You told who?" The Scot shook his head. "Aren't you the Irish King?"

"Oh, I forgot. We've been enemies so long, you've no real idea how Ireland works anymore."

I dropped my hand and heaved a weary sigh. "Listen, we don't have one king like you and England and pretty much every other country in Europe. Guess you could say we're more like the states — except not as regional. We've three kings these days. I guess you could say we're divided by land, sea, and city. I'm the City King. And I told the other Land and Sea Kings it was a bad idea when they tried to float the idea of a Second Reaping past me."

"Reaping. That's what you call it?" The Scot sneered down at me. "As if you're harvesting our she-wolves? "

"From what I understand, they weren't strictly yours," I pointed out. "I'm fairly certain that's why the other two kings could justify kidnapping your exchange brides to themselves, even if I could not. They said something about you hosting a group of Canadian fundamentalists."

The Scottish Oak Tree stared down at me in a way that made me suspect that he still might try to slice my throat with that hunting knife.

Ah, Jayzus. I leaned forward, muscles coiled tight, ready for a fight I'd trained for but never thought I'd actually have to take on — not as the latest in a long line of beloved Dublin Kings, who just so happened to also be the biggest employer of wolf walkers in all of Ireland.

But then, the Scottish Oak sank down into the guest chair with a heavy plunk. "They're called the W?lfennites. And they're anti-everything. No tech. No electricity. Won't even ride in a car without religious clearance. Our king thought that would make them a good match for us in our remote highland kingdom village. But obviously, your other two Irish Kings thought the same."

His face hardened with the memory. "They waited until we were defenseless, then stole those she-wolves away from us with a particularly specious promise to return any of them that dunnae want to stay here with them next spring. We've been searching for days now without a single sign. We tracked them all the way to a plane in Wicklow, but then it was like they disappeared into the ether."

A weary look passed over the Scottish Oak's face. But then he reset it to demand, "Tell me how to find them."

"No idea," I answered, truthfully. "Our kingdoms have been kept fairly separate due to… well, some events that happened a couple of decades back."

"Events" was one hell of an understatement. But this wasn't a reality series, and this fellow wasn't here for a recap of the Terrible Belfast Mess.

"You just said you met with them before they carried through their plan," the Scot said as if he'd caught me in a lie.

"That meeting wasn't exactly scheduled with a calendar alert," I told him. "The Sea King sent a merlin — like, an actual falcon to my office window with a note attached to its foot and a time and place to meet. Had to write a note back on printer paper, poke a hole through it, and attach it to the thing's leg with a rubber band. You should have seen the time I had of it."

I chuckled. The Scot did not.

"Where exactly did this meeting you were invited to take place?"

I didn't hesitate with my answer, considering it was those idiots who put my wolves and me in the position of having to explain their actions in the first place. "At the Ballymactyre Stone Circle."

His frown deepened. "Already searched that town and every other one with some Gaelic form of wolf in the name."

I nodded. "I could see why you'd go with that plan. But all of your lot was founded exclusively by Vikings, whereas some of our lot's been here from the Bronze Age — maybe before. We've forgotten how long we've been here. That's how old we are."

The Scot glowered at me. "Your point being?"

"My point being, the Irish Wolves have abandoned more towns than you've founded at this point," I answered. "And with wolves technically being extinct here in Ireland, we're most certainly out of the habit of letting any and all know about our whereabouts."

"Hmm, s'pose that's true." Apparently, changing his mind about the whisky, the Scot set down the hunting knife and picked up the glass instead. "Though, I had a gut feeling about Ailte Faoilmar."

I scrunched my forehead. "Those cliffs south of Galway? No one's allowed there. They're a protected site, on the verge of crumbling down."

"Aye, that's what the human guards blocking the place from both the land and the water told me. But the thing is, the rock face looked just about flawless to my eyes. Almost like a picture postcard. No signs of deterioration whatsoever. We have one-hundred-year-old mountains in less better shape than those supposedly thousands of years old cliffs."

I shook my head. "What are you trying to say?"

The Scot looked at me for a long, hard moment. Then, instead of answering my question, he asked. "If they're only using merlins to communicate, explain this!"

He slapped a phone with a shattered screen down on my desk. "We found this in one of the empty lorries they used to throw us off their trail. But no one in our village has a phone this nice — not even the Scottish Prince. And it wasn't one of the accounts we were given by the kidnapped Scottish she-wolves parents to trace."

"Somebody just tossed this in an empty truck?" Now, it was my turn to frown. "This is the latest GoNoTo Phone. My ex-girlfriend was upset because she wanted one for Christmas, but it won't be available in the British Isles until next year. They're only being sold in the U.S., China, Japan, and Canada right now. So this is basically thousands of euros chucked out of a window."

The Scot picked the phone up again. "Why would an Irish Wolf have an expensive GoNoTo phone that you can't yet get or use here? "

"The obvious answer is they wouldn't." I drummed my fingers against the desk, also pondering the mystery. "But you had a village full of Canadian guests, didn't you? And you only need a WiFi connection to get the internet to work."

The Scot shook his head. "Like I said, our Canadian guests don't believe in technology."

"Unless one of them did." I reached for my desk phone. "Want me to ring one of my IT fellows? We could break into it — see who's right about who it belongs to."

"Nae. That won't be necessary." The Scot stuffed the phone back into his kilt bag. "We've got a tech genius back home I can consult about this. Nae way, I'm letting some Irish bawbags have a crack at an important piece of evidence."

Well then. Apparently, our friendly conversation was over.

But I felt compelled to tell him, "The Land King is…"

Feral. An old gods zealot. Technically a sociopath. I settled for "… what he is. But the Sea King is not without honor. If he was the one who made you that promise, then the unwilling brides will be returned in the spring unharmed, just as he said."

Another hard look. Then, the Scot abruptly stood up.

"I won't slit your throat," he appeared to decide and announce at the same time.

As if I would have allowed that. He snatched a pen from the cup I kept beside my desktop in one hammy hand and began writing numbers on a sticky note. "Here's the number to reach us at if those other two kings of yours send you any more merlins. Name's Alban Scotswolf."

I stood up and stoically extended my hand for a shake. "If you're ever in the market for a Scottish distributor for Norwolf beer, you know I'm the king to ask."

Alban scoffed at my offer of a handshake. But in the end, he left me there in the office without making me employ any of the boxing or martial arts skills I'd acquired over the years.

So that was exactly one thing that had gone well in the last few days. Startled exclamations began flaring up outside the office door Alban had left open.

"Where did you come from?"

"Holy hell, check the size of him."

"He looks Scottish. But I thought we were supposed to be mortal enemies. Hey, lad, are you Scottish?"

Alban didn't answer. And I barely breathed until I heard the ding of the elevator arriving to take him away.

But as soon as our medic revived the downed custodian with smelling salts and another guard confirmed that the wolf who'd somehow snuck into our offices had left the building, I locked the door and unlocked the office safe hidden behind the tin of a stout-loving Norrie.

Another trick my ancestors, who'd been successfully dodging and/or secretly reforming various tax codes for centuries, taught me. If you want someone to believe your story about being an innocent and blameless brewer, make your story as close to the truth as possible.

Everything I'd told the large wolf I suspected to be the Scottish King's enforcer was true down to the merlin sent to my windowsill.

But I left out the part about how unnecessarily dramatic I thought the Sea King's communication methods, considering we kept burner phones for emergencies. Well, at least Sea and I did. I couldn't say how Wild communicated while he and the rest of his hunter-gatherer subjects were walking all over Ireland on some ancient stone circle ritual path from eons ago.

I pushed the call button on the one number stored in the flip phone. However, to my surprise, it wasn't the Sea King who answered.

"Little busy now," Wild's growl of a voice came down the line as opposed to the reasonable baritone of the Sea King.

In the background, I heard unmistakable feminine cries. Someone was having sex. No, not having sex. Being claimed .

My heart stopped.

Was Wild…?

Had he and Sea…?

"What did you do?" I demanded with a sick feeling in my chest.

"Ye know exactly what we did."

I couldn't see Wild, but I could hear the feral smile in his voice.

"We saved our kingdoms from ruin and found our queen. Now the only question is, when will ye get yer head out of yer ass and join us as the prophecy intended?"