33. Wild

Wild

Truth was, I'd never had a formal education. My mother taught me and the rest of the young Wild Wolves our letters and necessary numbers before she left us after the Terrible Belfast Mess.

But to my eye, Sea had the look of a schoolboy about him when he tracked me down in the encampment right after dropping our queen back at the habitat.

"She kissed me before I left!"

I was in the midst of dragging yet another Wild Wolf who'd had to be forcibly sedated toward the cart Sea's uncle, Darragh, had parked at the edge of the encampment. I paused, scrunching my brow. "Who? Flower?"

"Yes, Mairinua," Sea answered, picking up the wolf's legs to help me with my haul. " She kissed me before I left her in the habitat."

"Another trick to distract ye?" I asked after a cynical beat.

"No, I think she was thanking me… "

Sea filled me in on his new plan to bring her to the castle.

But I remained skeptical. "Ye truly trust her to keep her promise about not calling in the Scottish Wolves as soon as ye let her loose in the castle?"

"She looked me straight in the eyes when she gave me her word." Sea sounded more boyish than any man carrying a passed-out wolf should. "And she's many things, but she's not a liar."

I didn't think she'd lie either — at least not straight to Sea's face.

A few emotions twisted in my chest as I grudgingly allowed myself to ask, "What was it like? The kiss?"

I suppose Sea wasn't the only one who turned into a schoolboy when our Flower was involved.

"It was electricity surging through my veins," he answered immediately as if he'd been waiting to describe it. "The same as when I finally allow myself to surrender to my wolf on full moon nights. But there was no pain, no struggle. Just pleasurable moments stretching into eternity. Then she pulled back from me and said, 'Bye, Sea,' with this shy, soft smile. Like a peek of sun on a rainy day."

"Alright, alright, I get it, Yeats. Ireland don't need no more poets," I groused. Annoyed. And plenty jealous.

He'd made kissing our Flower sound even better than compelling her to come hard with my face between her legs. What would it feel like to have her pull me in with a soft look instead of hate and annoyance in her eyes?

Sea continued, "I've never been so reluctant to leave a place as I was the habitat after she kissed me. Just about ripped apart my chest to enclose her back in the glass."

The True King sighed — with unnecessary drama if you asked me .

However, his expression soon darkened with a cloud of worry. "She didn't go into heat, though."

"No." I wished I could say I was surprised, but… "The prophecy said she would reunite all three kingdoms.

Sea nodded, clearly ahead of me. "And one of us is still living his least polyamorous life in a city over three-hundred kilometers away."

"Honestly don't feel I can say this enough. Fuck Dublin."

I darkly thought back to the night of the Terrible Belfast Mess. What had Dublin's snobby father called before leaving?

Savages.

"The prophecy would probably be fulfilled by now if he'd been raised to respect our ways."

"This is not good." Sea shook his head. "Figure I have maybe until dawn to act the king before I either go fetch her or risk losing my head to my wolf again. And then, it's only a matter oftime before he refuses to wait any longer. It's mate-starved to the point of near-insanity."

Sea was right. This wasn't good.

I knew Sea had been ignoring Dublin's text about entering peace negotiations with the Scottish Wolves. No way we were giving any of the Kept Brides back before the spring.

But a new plan formed in my head.

"As soon as a few of these lads wake up, I going to put together a contingent to head bag Dublin and bring him back here, whether he's ready to accept the prophecy or not."

"Let's get this business done, then." No more Mr. Noble King. Sea agreed to my new plan without a second of hesitation just as we reached the cart, already loaded with passed-out males. "On three!"

We swung the unconscious wolf a couple of times before flinging him into the back of the cart.

Then we parted.

Sea went to help a few of the elder males lift a hut to place over the triads and couples writhing and moaning atop the dance boards laid down for the Bridal Appeal.

And I continued escorting the other still-unmated Sea and Wild Wolves back to the cottages where they'd be staying until this group heat was finished.

The lads who hadn't been favored by fortune had two choices for how to get to the secret kingdom's main town, where Sea had decided they'd stay until the heat was done: on foot or on their backs, after I jabbed them with one of the many doses of quick sedation I had to administer that night, then threw them in the hay cart manned by Sea's uncle, Darragh.

"You're not bad at this king business, are you?" Darragh said after I tossed the last male wolf who'd "chosen" the needle into the cart. "I'd wondered how you'd get on after your father…"

He trailed off, and I didn't help him along any. On the list of Shite the Wild King Doesn't Talk About, my father was number two, right underneath my mother.

"Anyway, I'll be getting this lot over to the cottages." Darragh picked up the reins for the horse. "If you see my nephew, tell him to return home as soon as possible. Now that the chef and the maor ti are out of commission with their new Scottish she-wolf mate, his aunt and the other elder she-wolves are in a nasty donnybrook about who should be doing what at the castle. "

I had no idea what a maor ti was, but I let Sea know after he got the last mating triads and couples hidden away in one of the huts just as the secret kingdom's version of dawn was cracking the sky.

"A maor ti is a house steward — the head of the castle staff. And I'm happy for him and the chef, but my uncle's right. We're going to have a hell of a time assigning duties without him. Not to mention sorting out meals."

Thing was, I didn't make a habit of giving helpful advice. I was one of those kings who preferred to solve all our traveling kingdom's problems with harsh language and my fists — often both. Still, I found myself pointing out, "Managing the elder she-wolves could be a job ye assigned to Flower. While walking around in wolf form, I heard the other W?lfennites talking about how she had the habitat running tighter than a ship."

Sea grinned. "So you're saying we should most certainly fetch her before heading on to the castle?"

I considered taking the piss about how eager he was acting about seeing Flower again. One kiss had been all it took to completely wrap him around her finger.

But somehow, I ended up just grinning back and saying, "Yeah, let's go get her."

My mood strangely lifted as we left the Wild Wolves camp and its overhanging cloud of heat scent behind.

"Did ye get a hold of the way she drop-kicked that she-wolf who tried to have a go at me?" I asked Sea after we cleared the first rolling hill. "Figure she can't no longer claim she's completely impartial to me. Or us. Threw that she-wolf off ye like she was qualifying for the discus throw at the Olympics."

Sea smiled as if he was remembering it, too, even as he warned me in his most kingly tone, "You will not bring that up when we collect her."

"Got it," I answered with a wry chuckle. "I won't point out her claiming to hate us then going all Bruce Lee when another she-wolf tried for us."

Sea laughed even more heartily than me. But then he sobered to say, "You realize making her hate you every time you open your mouth won't help us any when it comes to completing the prophecy."

"I do, but…" I glowered at the fake grass beneath our feet. "Ye understand why I…"

"Of course, I do — more than anyone else on Earth," Sea answered before I could finish making my miserable excuses for acting like a pure arse every time I got around our Flower. "But she doesn't, and we can't let what happened in Belfast get in the way of what we're trying to achieve here. You, of all people, should get that."

He was right. The prophecy came before anything else. But the past, combined with all the new emotions, clogged my throat. Choking me. Not letting me agree with the True King as I knew I should.

"All we need is Dublin," I insisted. "That will get the prophecy done whether or not I play nice."

"You can bring Dublin back here by force, sure," Sea agreed with a hedging tone. "But you understand I'm not equipped to see this through, so you'll be the one in charge when she goes into heat. We can't have it go sideways, or worse — not happen at all because she's that determined not to let you ride her. What will you do if she refuses to give you her pledge along with Dublin and me?"

Die. Like my father .

The answer dropped into my head with a speed that disturbed me.

"I get it," I bit out. Walking even faster. We were nearing the habitat's archway, and I wanted to be done with this conversation.

"Wild…" Sea started behind me with a warning tone.

"I said I get it already." I waved him off as I passed under the arch. "Be a nice doggie like my eejit wolf — what the hell, Sea. You left the habitat wide open for her?"

My reluctant concession turned into anger as we stopped in front of the door-shaped hole in the habitat's glass.

Several shocked beats.

Then Sea asked, "Did you ever find my wolf knot fastener?"

"No," I answered, my tone flat because I was beginning to understand exactly what had happened here.

Everything Sea told me about their kiss rewrote itself in my head.

Including her promise beforehand not to use the god tech to escape us.

And the sweet, sad smile he'd said she'd given him before saying, "Bye, Sea…"

As it turned out, the True King had been right to trust that she meant what she said about not using anything in the castle to get in contact with the Scottish Wolves.

But he'd been wrong — too wrong about what it meant when she kissed him goodbye.

"She's escaped," Sea said beside me, obviously coming to the same conclusion. But he bit back the panic in his voice to say, "We can track her, though. The closest house is a good few kilometers of mountain terrain away. It'll be no problem to catch up with her even though she has several hours' head start. It's just lucky for us that you warned her about going through the tower with the red door… why are you looking at me like that?"

Did I? Did I warn her? I reviewed my memory tape and did not like what I found… sexual innuendo and threat… but no specific warning.

Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck .

An ocean of regret filled up my ears. Somewhere in the distance, Sea said, "Wild? Wild? You did tell her why she couldn't go into the tower with the red door, right? Right?"