25. Naomi

Naomi

"Any more questions before we leave?" I asked the other she-wolves gathered in the mini-classroom of chairs, couches, and floor blankets I'd set up in the habitat's common space.

Since Astrid had dropped off the wedding invitation disguised as a mandatory group date, I'd done my best to…

1. Explain the underground world and ah… alternative customs of the Irish Wolve's secret kingdom.

2. Fill in the considerable gaps in our basic sex education. The Scottish she-wolves helped me as best they could, but it was still a huge undertaking, considering we were all unheated. The old saying, the blind leading the blind, had come to mind several times while I…

3. Prepared them as best I could for the "group date" to the Kingdom Castle.

Knowledge is power — I'd read and heard that often on the forbidden internet and had even made it the screen saver on my contraband laptop .

So, I'd spent the days before the new moon educating the W?lfennites as best I could. Which apparently wasn't good enough. I knew I had utterly failed my mission when several hands shot into the air in response to my question about whether they had any more questions.

And the first query out of Orpah's mouth was, "Exactly what is a group date?"

"Um…"

The truth was I wasn't sure myself. Astrid hadn't returned to the habitat since serving us with wedding invitation. Not that she'd been great at answering any of my questions before that. Or even allowed to.

Fiona stepped in to answer Orpah's group date question. "It's basically when a bunch of people get together, have a few pints and a chin wag. The hope is by the end of the night, a few new couples will be made."

"Pints?" Priscilla, who also had her hand raised in the air, fretted her lips. "Do you mean alcohol? Amanda wouldn't like that. It's against the Ordnung ."

"Seriously? This Ordnung shite again?" Kirsty, one of the Scottish she-wolves, rolled her eyes."We're going to her wedding to two feral wolves. I think we're a wee bit past these rules you've been hanging on to from Canada."

" Wild wolves." I felt compelled to correct Kirsty. "You can also call them the Nature Wolves since their pack dates back from before the Bronze Age."

Miriam squinted at me, her shrewd, foxy gaze narrowing with suspicion. "You learned all that in less than an hour outside this habitat? "

"Um…" My face heated . I hadn't told anyone about the letters Sea had sent me , just passed on the knowledge I'd gained from them. Well, everything except for the Sadie explanation. That was just too strange and shocking to fully convey to ultra-cloistered she-wolves who were already taking in a ton of new information.

"Amanda is very devout!" Priscilla insisted to Kirsty, saving me from having to answer Miriam's question. "Now that she has completed her heat cycle, I'm sure she'll return to the rules of the Ordnung."

Kirsty just shook her head. "Alright, what part of marrying not one but two Irish lads are you not comprehending here, Prissy?"

"Yes, Leah, I see you have a question," I said, pointing at the W?lfennite in the front row before Priscilla could get in yet another squabble.

To say she hadn't taken the news of Amanda's pending double-husband marriage well was an understatement. She'd been painting an unnecessarily saintly picture of her best friend ever since and doggedly arguing in her defense if anyone tried to disagree.

"Yes, I have a question." Leah scrunched her brow. "Will slavery come up on this group date?"

Worried looks all around as the W?lfennites, who'd been kept mostly ignorant of history outside the bible until I'd set up my impromptu classroom, shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

"No, no, nothing like that," I assured them.

"Then why did you teach us about it?" Orpah asked, her expression truly flummoxed. "That particular subject was upsetting — I mean, incredibly disturbing! "

I pinched the bridge of my nose and mumbled under my breath, "Not nearly as disturbing as having to live with your ignorant…"

"What are you saying?" Hannah, one of the W?lfennites, sitting on the front row of blankets, asked. "I can't quite hear you."

I clenched my teeth into a cheery smile to remind them. " Knowledge is power . And we need all the power we can get so that all of us make it through this wedding without going into heat. So please, follow my instructions to the letter so that no one else ends up like Amanda."

Even more hands went up into the air.

"What if we do go into heat on our group date ?" Esther, the W?lfennite sitting next to Priscilla on the couch, asked with a fearful squeak. "How will it work, being mated by two wolves at once?"

"Oh, I'm sure they take turns," Fiona assured Esther in that jolly way of hers — and with way more authority than she should've had, considering the circumstances. "From what I can work out, Amanda was claimed by one of her mates while we were sedated and the other one quite a while later. For all we know, they might not even do the claiming in the same room!"

For all we know…

My stomach twisted, remembering the scene no one but me had been awake to witness. I just didn't have the heart to correct Fiona and tell them that Amanda had been taken by two wolves at the same time while all the other kidnapped she-wolves lay unconscious.

"Main point: if the worst happens and you go into heat, just remember to keep your wits about you so that you only have to mate one wolf. One ," I reminded them. "It's very important that you only give your pledge, as they call it, to the sole wolf of your choosing. Don't let them use your heat confusion against you like they did with Amanda."

Nods of solemn agreement met my emphatic words, but I could see the dread in their eyes.

It matched the bloom of anxiety in my chest.

"In fact…" I took a deep breath and pushed my fear of getting further educated by Wild to offer. "If any of you want to abstain from tonight's event, I will support you. Do not worry; I will fight for your right not to participate in this ridiculous group date. Just raise your hand."

I was completely serious, but instead of jumping on my offer, the she-wolves, with their hands in the air, snatched them down. An awkward silence stole over the room until Fiona declared, "Well, I, for one, could use some fresh air. Any excuse will do."

Murmurs of agreement filled the air as quickly as the hands had come down.

"It's not truly fresh air," I reminded them. "It's more like some kind of tech that I can't really explain air."

"Well, maybe if one of us Scots took a look at it, we'd be able to explain it to the lot of you," Kirsty said, her voice taking on a helpful tone it did not have when she was needling Priscilla. "I studied for half a year at university in Glasgow before deciding to move back to Faoltiarn, you know." She nodded around the room with a look of great authority before adding. "Computers."

"Did you actually study computer science, or are you just bragging about knowing it exists?" I started to ask, then waved my hands in front of my face before she could answer. "You know what, never mind. It doesn't even matter. Whatever's going on here isn't just computers. This secret kingdom runs on something way beyond that — like alien tech or some kind of advanced quantum science that doesn't yet exist."

Kirsty regarded me with a deeply pitying look. "I'm sure it would seem that way to you, having never encountered the kind of superior technology I did during my half year of uni."

I glared at Kirsty, but ironically, Priscilla cut me off before I could fully out myself as someone who'd taken several advanced courses in actual physics while she'd been on her way to dropping out of university.

"We really should check on Amanda, make sure this is what she really wants," Priscilla insisted. "She is our sister no matter what fate has befallen her."

I couldn't disagree with her there. I nodded along with all the other worried W?lfennites.

"Nae, we wouldn't want to abandon Amanda," Fiona agreed with her own sober nod before adding, "And I, for one, am looking forward to a meal made by someone other than myself. I bet they have right nice desserts at the castle proper!"

The murmurs of assent grew even louder, and Miriam had to raise her voice to ask her next question. "Do they all come in pairs like the ones who took Amanda? Or can we mix and match? For example, if I went into heat and wanted to pair that handsome Sea King who came in here with one of those Wild Wolves you mentioned."

I did not anticipate her hypothetical. Or the strange, angry feeling that pinched my gut when she spoke about going into heat with Sea.

"Ah, I do believe the Sea King is already spoken for," Kirsty told Miriam with a grimace. "Did you not see the way he looked at our de facto leader when he helped with Amanda? "

"No, I didn't," Miriam said to Kirsty before turning back to me with a hard, aggressive blink. "Is that true, Naomi? Do you want to call dibs on the Sea King?"

Suddenly, everyone's eyes swung to me.

"N — I… n — yes, I mean, no, no, most definitely not! " I insisted after a couple of false starts.

And weird… I wasn't even a true believer. So, why did I feel like Judas denying Jesus?

Anyway, I cleared my throat. "Like everyone else here, my only goal is to get through this so-called group date without accidentally going into heat. The Sea King has promised to deliver anyone who remains unheated back to Scotland in the spring, and I am most definitely going to be taking that trip."

Why would you make a promise you cannot possibly keep? Sea's voice dropped into my head. Dark and unbidden.

Shoving his voice from my mind, I gritted my teeth to remind the she-wolves around me, "If you remember what I taught you, we can all make it back to Scotland unharmed."

But not unscarred.

Flashes of Wild's head between my legs pulsed again like an erratic heartbeat.

"What's that smell?" Hannah, the she-wolf closest to me, audibly sniffed. "It's like a lighter version of when Amanda —"

"They're here! They're here!" one of the W?lfennites called out before she could finish.

My heart sped up at the announcement. No more questions. Everyone rose from their seats to run over to the windows, where a pack of wolves dressed in gold-trimmed white tunics and fur mantles stood on the other side of the glass.

It was time.

And as hard as I'd worked to prepare the habitat she-wolves and myself for this group date, I didn't feel remotely ready.

Especially when I found Sea staring at me on the other side of the glass.

My breath caught at the first sight of the male who'd written me all those intimate letters. Was it possible he'd grown even more devastatingly handsome in the days since I'd last seen him?

He looked every bit the Viking King, and his intent to claim me shone clear in his amber eyes.

Oh God, Naomi… don't go into heat. Don't go into heat. Don't.

My pulse quickened, but I couldn't look away from his golden gaze as I wondered what tonight would have in store for me.