2. Wild

Wild

The True King eyed the hand I held out,but in the end, did not take it.

"We cannot — we should not do this without Dublin." Sea shook his head while speaking in the auld language. "My father must have been wrong. The Second Reaping will have to wait for another generation."

My stomach soured, twisting with disappointment. There is no word for "no" in the auld language. Yet, the Sea King managed to deny me just the same.

S'pose I should've seen it coming. The way that Terrible Belfast Mess played out, it made sense that he'd want his father to be wrong. Probably in the same way I used to want my mother to change her mind about leaving me and Da behind.

Calling the whole thing off probably seemed like the most logical conclusion to the True King, especially after that useless City King gave the Second Reaping less than five minutes of consideration before kipping away.

I wasn't Sea, though. Believing in the prophecy didn't even feel like a choice that could be made. It was the only hope I had left. Without it, what was I? A king both haunted and cursed, with nothing to show for all the pain that came from the fallout from the Terrible Belfast Mess.

"We're not children anymore, Sea, and the prophecy won't wait on wolf or king." I sneered at the dithering ruler I was nonetheless blood and curse bound to obey in all things. "Besides, way we're going with zero births all around, doubt we'll be spawning a new generation to go a'reaping."

I scraped a hand over my closely shorn hair, memories of the Terrible Belfast Mess clashing with the very modern issue of not having had asingle live birth from my pack in years. "Ye know and I know this is our only chance — our last chance before the Irish Wolves decay into ruin."

Sea's expression tightened, but he didn't give me the courtesy of further argument. Just walked off in the same direction as Dublin.

However, I stood sturdy and sure inside the gates my ancestors built for our gods.

"We're headed to the Cairn of Shadow for Samhain this turn," I shouted after Sea. "Send a merlin when ye change yer mind."

Sea didn't acknowledge my offer. Didn't even bother to look over his shoulder and give me a respectful parting as he continued to wherever he tied up his boat.

But that was fine.

The Sea King traced his blood back a good thousand years beyond our unification under Mairi to the Viking wolves who settled on the Eire coast in the 800s. But my roots ran thousands of years beyond that, to a time before vellum — before iron and bronze — when we carved our tales in symbols upon stone.

The Sea King's nose was full of salt and wind, as we say of the coastal wolves who still could not navigate the land as well as us. He could not smell the inevitable truth the way I did. He thought just because he could (barely) control his wolf enough to keep its glow out of his eyes that he actually had choices in these matters.

But my nose was ancient . I'd sniffed out the truth about him the moment he stepped inside the fating gate.

The Sea King's wolf was close to the surface. Hungry. Desperate. Nearly as feral as those City Walkers claim the Wild ones to be.

Hell, I was four years younger, and being the Cursed King, I hadn't bothered saving myself for our queen. Yet I still felt the primal call to knot inside our fated mate. No amount of hand shandies could satisfy that need.

Patience wasn't my strongest virtue, but my hunting instincts warned me that waiting for the meal Sea's father had predicted would be my best move.

Pushing down my hunger — for now — I returned to my pack, who were waiting for their Wild King just a few kilometers away at the next set of fating stones. They'd temporarily settled for a dry midday meal in what we called "the below."

"What did the Sea King want with ye, then?" Lorcan, my second in command and the Wild Wolves' largest hunter, asked when I arrived.

"I'll tell ye later," I promised before howling in wolf voice to the rest of the pack to continue our yearly trek to the fating stones at Carn na Scáthanna — the barren moor where we would perform three days' worth of rituals to honor our dead and ask the three gods to bless us during the hardship of winter. Truth was, I didn't like thinking of my father, much less honoring him. That was why Samhain was my least favorite of the pagan holy days .

But I led my pack south toward the land the humans called County Clare with the certainty that I would not be leading the ritual this year.

So, no , as they say in the new language, it didn't surprise me that the Sea King refused my suggestion to reap those she-wolves without that cladhartha , Dublin.

Nor was I shocked when a small falcon found us a few days later.

Lorcan plucked her from the air without bothering to fetch a leather armband.

"If you bite me, I'll bloody end you, merlin," he growled in wolf voice before loosening the piece of vellum from her sharp claw.

"Just says, Meet us at the westernmost fating stones after the next full moon." Lorcan flipped the note this way and that before handing it over, confused. "Whoever sent this didn't even bother to sign it. What's it mean?"

It was happening.

After seventeen years, the Cursed King's wait was over. A surge of emotion tightened my chest, and a slow grin crept across my face as I answered Lorcan, "The time for the Second Reaping has finally come."

I let out a howl that reverberated into the distance, raw and unrestrained.

That evening, I rallied my hunters with a short command. "To hell with the Dublin King, then! We ride to the Cliffs of Aillte come the break of the next full moon!"

We were under strict instructions not to bother the Tríbéirríthe's Scottish wolf source. But whoever it was gave us explicit mission details on a single sheet of paper entitled BURN AFTER READING.

For this reason, the day of the Scottish King's and New Queen's wedding found us Sea and Wild wolves lying upon the snow-covered ground in the Highland forest that fronted the Prince of Scotland's cottage.

"He never uses the house anymore," the source had written down for us . "He prefers to stay at the castle with his brother and the heavily pregnant new queen, who also happens to be best mates with the Prince's American wife, who gave birth to the first baby she-wolf our kingdom has seen in years and years ."

While reading over the details in the Sea King's secret castle office, I'd paused at the mention of the wives.

The First Reaping spared no one. Our ancestors took every female we sighted to replenish our desperately low numbers, from the babes in the cribs to the then Scottish King's bride, Mairi — who went on to become the mother of our three kingdoms.

"As I said before when I gave you my conditions, we will only take the unmarried she-wolves of mating age," the Sea King had said when I stopped reading the single-spaced typed-out instructions.

"What if —" I started to ask.

"Then we extract the Tríbéirríthe's potential and let ours go with her already mated life," he'd said. "Dublin was right about this being a different time. I will not reap a young mother or a pregnant bride no matter what that piece of stone says."

We didn't need the City Wolves to pull off the Second Reaping, but at this point, the Sea King was the Wilds' only point of contact with the Tríbéirríthe. We needed him to lead this mission. I had no choice but to agree to his conditions and trust the prophecy to provide the right she-wolf to fulfill it.

So, as instructed, we gathered outside the Scottish Prince's cabin, lying in wait on the dark forest floor. And when the bells started ringing to announce the call to the wedding, we watched the town empty out from our partially blocked view.

Heaps of wolves dressed in kilts and plaids, along with a flock of W?lfennite lasses wearing long, plain blue dresses, passed by the bridge on the other side of the house.

It seemed that every single kingdom town wolf would be attending the King's wedding to his Canadian bride.

Well, almost every wolf. The large, redheaded shifter installing solar panels on the castle roof all morning, did not pause when the church bells rang.

"What's he all about then?" one of the Sea Wolves asked behind us. "Why isn't he joining the rest for their King and Queen's wedding?"

"Who cares?" One of my rougher wolves answered. "While staring at that potato, I can smell all the fresh she-cunt walking by even under all them layers. Ripe and juicy for the mating."

"Remember the ground rules," Sea bit out. "You are not to touch them."

"Before we reach Eire," Lorcan clarified.

"Before they go into heat," the Sea King insisted. "The Heat Laws apply here thesame as at home, and if this scheme works, you'll be wanting your hands and micks later on."

My wolves quieted down after that gentle reminder that their kings wouldn't hesitate to cut off both their hands and private parts if they so much as pressed up against a she-wolf who hadn't gone into mating heat.

We all waited in the dark of the forest. Too excited to be bored, even though there was still a bit of time until the no-weapons reception started, and we'd be free to make our move with minimum violence.

I silently hummed a war song of auld as we bided our time until we could fulfill the Second Reaping.

However, that song came to an abrupt halt when the door to the Prince's house opened without warning. A head covered by the strange W?lfennite bonnet poked out, and I could hear its wearer audibly sniff as she turned her head both ways before carefully stepping out of the cabin when she saw no one.

My heart gave a violent thud inside my chest at the sight of her, then froze like something suspended in space and time.

She pulled an object out of her pocket. Black and shiny and covered in a protective case.

"Hold on, is that a phone ?" One of the wolves whispered behind me. I couldn't distinguish if he was on of the Sea or Wild Wolves. Couldn't even form the words to tell him to shut his gob.

Because everything inside me had stilled.

By the three gods.

My wolf. My breath. Every single nerve. Hell, I don't think even my heart dared to pump blood in the presence of this female.

Time and everything else stopped as I watched the she-wolf check a phone she shouldn't have had, according to the intel about this W?lfennite lot eschewing all technology, including motorized cars .

Something wretched twisted inside me as I watched her. I had somehow already missed and never wanted to introduce myself to somebody more.

Prophecy .

An image of the soft flowers, growing wild and free beside the road suddenly appeared in my mind. Yes, that was what she was. A flower bloomed to life. Like foxglove, sea thrift, meadow buttercups, and that tough roadside gorse rolled into one she-wolf with silky light brown skin covered in freckles.

A few strands of her sun-flecked brown curls hung from her strange bonnet. My hand opened and closed reflexively with the need to touch that hair, wrap it around my fist, and make her hold still while I knotted her from behind. My gut clenched, and ripples of heat coasted over my cock.

She was the prophesied queen. I knew that in an instant.

Ours …

Despite my curse, the word blew across my mind fiercer than the wind upon the Cliffs of Aillte.

"Is that…?" the Sea King began to choke out beside me, his tone low, almost warped.

"Shhh!" one of the wolves hissed behind us.

The hissing wolf was right. I wanted nothing more than to grab ahold of her and never let go. But… "Reaping her early will lead to disaster," I warned the Sea King in as low a voice as I could manage.

The Sea King nodded, his face tight with resolve — until he suddenly jerked forward, and his nose and mouth snouted with fur.

Holy fuck, his wolf was trying to tear out of him!

I barely managed to get on top of him and slapped a hand over his snout as I held him down with all my weight. That was enough to force his wolf back down into his human body.

But I didn't get to him soon enough for our presence to go unnoticed.

"Hello," the voice of our Flower said in the distance. "Who's there?"

Fuckin' hell.