24. Sea

Sea

"Well, she didn't argue about your compulsory group date," Astrid said when she and Wild returned to the castle's breakfast room after dropping off the invitation for our first new moon trimate wedding in years. "But she didn't look happy either. And before you start growling at me, still no answer to your other letters."

"That's why writing letters is for suckers. I tried to tell ye, only in-person would do." Wild plopped down at the other end of the six-person table where Frey and I had already started a silent and awkward breakfast.

As they lectured me yet again, he began his plate high from the full Irish breakfast spread the castle chef had set out of rashers, sausages, eggs, grilled tomatoes, baked beans, toast, and black pudding. "If ye hadn't lost yer head so thoroughly, I tell ye, half them W?lfennites would already be heat mooning like Lorcan and Ronan with their yellow-haired whatshername."

"Amanda. Her name is Amanda." Astrid took a very ginger seat in the empty chair next to him .

Across from her mate, but also conveniently as far as she could get from me.

"Whatever." Wild speared several black pudding patties onto his fork before settling back in his seat. "In any case, this wedding's a great excuse to call on old Seamus to teach our unmated lads The Bridal Appeal. Figure this group date might be our best chance to get those kept she-wolves on board before the Solstice Trek."

"The Bridal Appeal? Are you serious?" Astrid scoffed. And her wife snorted around the mouthful of rashers she'd just stuffed in her gob.

"You honestly think a ritual from the 1500s is going to make those she-wolves dislike you any less?" Frey asked with her mouth full.

Wild stabbed his fork into the black pudding, spearing three patties through its tines. "Worked for the First Reaping, 'cording to the tale and legend."

"This Second Reaping, not First," I growled in the wolf tongue with a shake of my head. " No dance in prophecy!"

Astrid and Frey stared at me blankly, then turned to look at Wild at the other end of the table.

"Ye got any better ideas, then?" Wild pointed his fork full of black pudding patties at me. "Other than flat-out ordering them to go on group dates with us? That tactic'll work once because we caught her off guard. But I promise you, Flower will make ye negotiate tooth and nail for every bit of face time after. And, seriously, mate, how much more of this one-sided letter writing do ye think yer wolf can take anyway?"

"Maybe he has a point, Sea. I mean, look at you." Astrid glanced at me — at least, she tried to look at me. Her attempt ended in a miserable fail of averted eyes and a clasp of her hands to cover up her reaction to my strange appearance .

I couldn't blame her for not being able to look directly at me. After what I'd witnessed between Wild and Mairinua in the meadow, I'd barely managed to shove our still unheated queen at Astrid and Frey before I ran back to the castle to lose my head in a place where the servants had known and kept my secret for years.

I'd been hiding away in my room since then, writing letters that Mairinua had yet to answer. So this thank you breakfast for my sister who'd dutifully delivered all the courting missives I'd slipped under my door, was the first time she was seeing me since I told her to escort our queen the rest of the way back to the habitat.

Wild surely warned her before she entered the castle's breakfast room, but I doubt anything could have prepared her to share a breakfast table with someone who now appeared to be a wolf from the neck up.

Letting the wolf out for a wee dander — that was what my uncle called it when my long pent-up sexual needs made me surrender to the primal beast within. I just called it losing my head.

But it was nearly a week later, and I still hadn't managed to fully shift back to human.

The breathing exercises my uncle had taught me to control the wolf shortly after I hit puberty hadn't worked. Neither had the many hand shandies I'd given myself in the castle structures we called "light showers." No amount of seed spilling was enough relief to satisfy my wolf.

Hence the breakfast where I cut into an egg with my human hands while fighting off the temptation to bury my furry snout in the pint of Normanwolf stout that our castle chef always had poured for me whenever I lost my head.

Astrid's wife had started out as one of the guards at the Belfast wolf compound where Astrid grew up, so she hid her emotions well — while also stuffing her mouth with the criminal amount of rashers she'd piled onto her plate. But I could tell Astrid was unsettled to be sharing breakfast with the hybrid version of her brother, the supposedly all-powerful True King.

Who'd turned out to be powerless regarding one particular she-wolf.

Want mate! Want mate! Want mate! My wolf howled inside me, but I pretended not to hear him as I rushed to reassure Astrid.

" Manby wedding ," I growled, unable to access my human vocal cords.

Astrid, having grown up in Belfast, didn't understand the wolf tongue. "What did he say?" she asked Wild.

"That he'll be fine by the wedding," Wild answered our sister with a disbelieving grunt. Then he turned back to me to ask,"But what about the next time she gets yer willy up without bothering to go into heat? And the time after that? The Bridal Appeal is our best chance short of calling in the Dublin King and risking him showing up here with the Scottish Wolves at his back."

Wild had a point, and I was desperate. Even after having surrendered my head, the wolf within me snarled and surged, eager to tear through my human form and claim dominance. My skin prickled as if thousands of tiny needles were piercing through, and the bones in my arms and legs ached with the effort it took not to fully shift under the pressure of the wolf clawing at my insides.

A now-familiar panic rose in my chest, cold and sharp, as I imagined our queen — who was already incredibly resistant to wolf-mating — witness me lose control. I could already see the disgust in her eyes, the scorn she would feel if she ever found out that I was not only a kidnapper but also incapable of restraining the near-feral beast inside of me. I couldn't let that happen .

She had to go into heat. It was the only way to keep my wolf under control now that my future mate was living less than a kilometer away from the castle.

"Yes , " I growled, nodding my furry head at Wild. "Try your idea."

Wild let out a whooping howl.

And once again, our sister asked, "What did he say?"