18. Wild

Wild

A few minutes earlier …

I'll tell ye, I had a hell of a time catching the wolf Ronan shifted into after I made the eejit mistake of trying to explain to him that he wouldn't be getting his chance to lay second claim to the yellow-haired she-wolf who'd pledged him. Should've gone with my first instinct: stabbed him through the neck with the needle Astrid handed me 'in case of emergency,' and explained the why of it when he woke up.

All my consideration earned me was a workout up and down the rolling hills of the secret kingdom's back pastures when Ronan made me chase him nearly all the way to the first god tower.

Then, just when I'd finally gotten an arm ‘round his furry neck…

"Ronan! Ronan!" a voice shrieked. "Where are you?"

We looked up to see none other than Ronan's Denied Mate tearing toward us, her privates screaming with heat.

The unexpected, bare, naked sight of her slackened my grip. Just a wee bit, but a wee bit was all Ronan's wolf needed .

The furry beast surged forward and ran straight for his naked she-wolf, shifting back to his human form right before he reached the mate we'd tried to deny him — wrongly, if you asked me.

That wrong was immediately rectified when they collided into each other, though. By the time I climbed to my feet, Ronan had the yellow-haired she-wolf on her hands and knees, and he was claiming her from behind like — well, exactly like what he was. A wolf who'd been denied his mate for too many hours during her heat cycle.

They were both in human form, but they rutted like animals, with only primal grunts and high-pitched whimpers coming out of either of them as Ronan took her with rough, desperate strokes.

It all happened so fast, you couldn't blame me for just standing there as the scene played out before my eyes.

Well, most wouldn't blame me.

"How could you let this happen?" Flower practically screeched when she came over the hill herself and found her W?lfennite and my Wild Wolf completing his too-long denied second claim.

"How could ye ?"

I moved to block her path before she could attempt that daft move of lunging forward to grab the yellow-haired she-wolf again.

To my great disappointment, she stopped just short of running into me, which gave me no reason to use holding her back as an excuse to touch her. And, with the other she-wolf's heat in my nose, I most certainly wouldn't have minded that. But I had to settle for, "Surely, ye didn't think yer hare-brained scheme to deny my Wild Wolf his rightful second claim would actually work?"

"It wasn't a hare-brained scheme," she insisted, just as Sea came jogging over the hill after her in that ridiculous blue king cape. She looked to him as she always did when the choice was between the two of us. "You gave me his promise that she could have her heat cycle completed by just Lorcan."

" Could is the main word there, Flower," I pointed out, drawing her angry brown eyes back to me. "Yer W?lfennite gave my Wild Wolf her pledge. And from the looks of it, she'd decided for herself to do the right honorable thing as opposed to fighting her mates and running scared."

I punctuated that last bit with a pointed look so that she'd know that I wasn't just talking about the yellow-haired she-wolf she kept trying to protect. "What business have ye got trying to stop her from behaving with honor."

"Behaving with honor?" Our Flower screwed her head back as if she were winding up to truly let me have it.

But then a new scent drifted into the air. Faint enough that I might have missed it if I hadn't been standing so close to her.

"What do you know about —" she began to ask. Only to be cut off by my audible sniff.

"What…? What are you doing?" she demanded when I dropped into a crouch and snuffed my way down her body.

The answer to that question was making sure I wasn't hallucinating. But I wasn't! The scent was coming not from the she-wolf being claimed on all fours by Ronan behind me but from our Flower herself.

"Ye're fucking aroused, aren't ye?" A new kind of outrage took over my tone. "How dare ye come at me acting so self-righteous when ye're just as turned on by this situation as yer two kings?"

"What?" Her eyes widened with shock, and she glanced between Sea and me. "No, I'm not aroused or turned on by any of this! That's disgust you're smelling. I'm so disgusted right now."

"Disgust?" I barked out a laugh at her blatant lie… only to cut off when her expression remained insulted.

By the old gods, she actually believed every word she was saying.

I exchanged a look with Sea.

We didn't have the power to communicate with the mind tongue yet like Ronan and Lorcan would after Ronan threw his long-delayed knot into the yellow-haired she-wolf. But I was fairly certain the Sea King understood every word written across my face

And, in case he didn't, I let him know my thoughts out loud. "This is the naive she-wolf ye thought we had to tiptoe around lest she outwit us?"

"Are you calling me dumb?" Flower asked, placing her hands on her hips.

"Well, I'm not calling ye clever!" Unlike Sea, I wasn't afraid to tell her the truth. "And I'm most certainly not mistaking ye for any kind of worldly mastermind if ye truly believe that's disgust leaking from your cunt."

Flower gasped.

Sea rubbed at his temple as if I were an incoming headache he was trying to fend off. "Wild…"

Before he could finish that thought, the phone ring went off somewhere underneath that king cape he'd decided to wear for what was supposed to be a short escort into the bayside village where all the non-farming Sea Wolves made their home.

Surprise flitted across Flower's face at the sound, and she turned to ask him, "You have reception in here? "

"Ye know what reception is?" I inquired with a snide tone, bringing her attention right back to me. "Care to tell us about that phone we found in the pocket of yer hand-sewn dress?"

Yeah, I knew I was needling her, but she'd turned me into a schoolboy with all this ‘denying her kings' business. I'd do anything to get her attention — even if it was bad.

Sea must have caught on to what I was up to because he held the phone toward me. "It's Dublin. Why don't you talk to him while I negotiate things with her."

This turned out not to be a suggestion. Sea slapped the flip phone into my hand and took her by the arm to lead her away before either of us could protest.

"Little busy now," I answered the call with a surly growl while Ronan and his yellow-haired she-wolf continued to grunt and moan in the background.

"What did you do?" demanded Dublin in his posh city wolf accent.

"Ye know exactly what we did," I answered while watching Sea try to gently guide our Flower in the opposite direction of the stone tower.

Proving what I said about needing to use a firmer hand with her, she snatched her arm away and stopped right where she was with a faint, "Don't touch me…"

As if Sea were some beggar who dared to grope her on the street and not her king.

Still, I told Dublin, "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?"

There came several ticks of silence down the line .

Then, unfortunately, Dublin decided to prove himself the weak City Wolf he still was by answering, "No. Norman Kings don't share, and I'm still not willing to abet you in your kidnapping crime."

"Aw, fer the gods' sake…"

"Also, you should know that I was just paid a visit from an incredibly put-out Scottish oak tree," Dublin informed me, his voice tight with the kind of dry irritation only posh nobility wankers could pull off. "A fellow by the name of Alban…"

"Scotswolf," I finished for him. "Fuck. That was fast that he found ye."

I knew that theScottish kingdom's enforcer would be a problem for us. Even with a plane trip to throw him off, he and his clan had gotten closer to the secret kingdom than any Scottish Wolves before him.

Sea and I had spent much of the night watching his contingent of wolves sniff around overhead, and even when they'd given up searching, I'd had a feeling their hunt wasn't over yet. Apparently, Alban'd figured out that Dublin was the King of the City Wolves and had decided to pay him a visit.

"Hold on, you knew a violently angry Scot would be tracking me down at my place of work, and you didn't think to warn me?"

I shrugged. "If you had joined us for the Second Reaping, you would be here with us, claiming our queen as the old gods intended it."

In the distance, our beautiful Flower appeared to have calmed down. She was nodding along with whatever Sea was saying, her expression filled with understanding. Alright, maybe Sea hadn't been wrong about reasoning with her .

"Jayzus Christ, you fucking nutter," Dublin brought my attention back to our conversation before giving in with a "Fine, give me the secret kingdom coordinates. We need to put together a plan for how to deal with the Scottish Wolves."

I began to open my mouth to tell him exactly how to get to us. But then it occurred to me to ask, "How do I know you won't pass this information onto that Scot? For all I know, he's standing right there with a dagger at your neck."

A charged silence greeted my accusation. Then Dublin's voice came back, coarse and quiet. "You truly believe I would betray you and Sea like that?"

I answered him honestly, "You didn't stand with us when it was time to make a move, City King. If I'm being honest, I don't know what to —"

Another betrayal happened before I could finish my sentence.

One moment, Sea was gallantly taking his cape off to hand it to our Flower, who must have told him she was cold — and the next, she was tossing the voluminous piece of puffery over his head.

"She's more clever than you think…" Sea had insisted before he gave in to our Flower's one-mate-only condition.

And I found myself finally coming around to agree with him as I watched her race toward the tower.

She must have sorted out what the structure was about without letting on to Sea. She disappeared through its arched door before Sea could disentangle himself from the cape she'd tossed back in his face.

"I'll call you back," I told Dublin. "Maybe."

"Hold on, you still haven't given me — "

I hung up before the City King could finish.

Sea and I had both been right, as it turned out.

The she-wolf was cleverer than I'd bargained for but too naive to understand what any female who'd grown up in Eire would have in her place.

We all know in this land that you do not run from a Wild Wolf.

Especially if he's a male.

Lest you wish to awaken his hunting instinct.

And awaken it did.

My chest swelled as something deep and feral stirred to life inside me, uncoiling like a beast from sleep. Every nerve tingled with electric anticipation, and my senses sharpened — her scent, her every movement, were now the only things I could focus on.

A low growl rumbled from my throat, giving voice to the hunger to chase, to capture, to claim.

A feral grin split my face as I left Ronan to the rut of his she-wolf as I broke into a running lope toward the door.

I had a she-wolf of my own to run down.