7. Sea

Sea

"I tell ye, we should've stopped in Dublin like I suggested earlier."

I couldn't disagree with Wild. At least not physically.

The rest of my Sea Wolves had anchored the boat to the dock closest to the small cargo plane we'd be using to complete the final transport of the Second Reaping. But instead of commanding the effort, I sat on one of the trawler's side benches with my head hanging between my knees. Not because I suffered from seasickness. My Viking wolf ancestry would never have abided that particular human weakness.

Regardless, my wolf was thrashing furry inside my throat. I feared if I didn't keep my head with my eyes squeezed closed — if I so much as glanced in the direction of the hold where the stolen brides were being watched over by a small contingent of our most trusted warriors — if I dared to do anything but press my chin to my chest while sending up prayers to the three gods, it was certain that my wolf would eject from my body like fur-covered vomit.

The beast inside me didn't like that she was out of sight. Didn't trust even our most dedicated warriors not to touch her. Ever since we'd sailed away from the Scottish kingdom town, my wolf had been inundating me with images of tearing out their throats and swallowing down their eyeballs merely for glancing at her while she slept.

Yet, I couldn't go down to the hold to grab her. I had zero faith that my beast could be trusted if left in a room alone with her.

My wolf jumped forward again at that mere thought, eager to shift and claim the banríon as his own. Jayzuz! If he was this bad on the trip, what would life become once I got her back to the secret kingdom?

"Want me to tie yer pretty hair back so that ye don't getsick all over it?" Wild asked somewhere above me.

"I'm fine," I insisted.

"Ye're not fine."

"If you're in need of somebody to fuss over, consider directing your energies to securing the Tríbéirríthe potential for transfer."

"If we'd stopped in Dublin, we could have kidnapped the City King, too."

Wild's voice was closer now, letting me know he'd sunk into his preferred crouch to lecture me further instead of taking my suggestion. "Or we could've brought her to him. Let Lorcan and Thorin handle the transfer to the secret castle."

"Don't!" I choked out. To Wild and myself. "We must stick to the original scheme."

Save for that confrontation with the Scottish Enforcer, the Second Reaping had gone seamlessly. While one contingent of our warriors confronted the Scots in their great hall, another, much larger group lay low at the entrance to the hidden tunnel the Scottish Wolves didn't think we knew about. Just as the Tríbéirríthe's source had promised, while the males in the hall fought off the smaller group as best they could with only their fists as weapons, the unmated she-wolves had been diverted to the escape tunnel.

There, the larger force plucked them up like lambs herded into the wooling barn before jabbing all the unheated she-wolves with the knockout needles my sister Astrid had provided us with before we set out on our mission.

So far, nearly everything had gone exactly to scheme. But if I let myself draw a mental picture of the female Wild had chloroformed back at Faoltiarn, I'd lose my wolf for sure.

Wild thought I'd insisted on sticking to the original plan because I was too rigid. But the reality was I'd been white-knuckling our first scheme because I was too weak. It was a miracle I hadn't lost my head after spotting our long-prophesied queen from afar. I certainly could not imagine hanging on to my wolf for the duration of a dubious side quest.

"Dublin isn't like me," I reminded Wild as best I could with my wolf straining to burst out. "He has plenty of access to human women. He's not mate-starved. Who knows if even the sight of her will sway him? And besides, he's the most exposed of all the kings in a proper city filled with CCTV. Where do you think the Scottish Defender will go looking first when he fails to track us across the Irish Sea?"

My wolf thrashed with renewed force at the mention of the Scottish Defender. He wanted to kill that maggot, too. Spray the world red with the blood of any who even thought to take our banríon from me.

Mine! Mine! Mine! It chanted while I struggled to keep it down.

"That's another reason to collect him. If the Scottish Defender comes looking, best that the male who knows about but refused to undertake this mission isn't there if ye ask…"

Wild suddenly trailed off and the air shifted in front of me as he jerked to his feet and said, "Hello, there. Didn't expect to see ye up here."

The stilling of my wolf told me who "ye" was even though she was standing down wind, too far away for me to smell. I raised my head to find our queen, also the most beautiful she-wolf I had ever sighted, regarding me with sharp brown eyes.

"What's wrong with you?" she demanded.

There came a sudden shrinking sensation within me, like all the air had been sucked out of my lungs.

I didn't — couldn't answer. Not because I was struggling with my wolf. But because it had abruptly cowered down into the deepest recesses of my body. The overwhelming presence I'd fought to contain all this time collapsed in on itself, leaving me hollow, like an empty vessel.

Meanwhile, I could sense our banríon's wolf staring at us. More angry than scared.

Was my wolf…? I struggled to find the word; my inner beast had folded in on itself, small and silent as it could manage, like a pup avoiding a scolding.

Intimidated . Yes, that was it. Was my ultraviolent wolf — who'd wanted but had never actually encountered our fated mate — actually intimidated by the she-wolf standing in front of us?

I stood up carefully, not quite trusting him to stay down.

But if anything, he scooted even further down into my stomach. I could sense him covering his eyes with his paws, embarrassed to have been caught acting the fool by the ethereal she-wolf.

It seemed he had been rendered into a nervous school pup, and I straightened up with the wholly unfamiliar feeling of being completely and effortlessly in control of my own body.

"So, are you not talking to me either?" The freckled brown beauty snapped. "Like the ones down below?"

"The ones down below are not allowed to speak or look at ye directly," Wild explained.

"But you are?" She looked between Wild and me, her expression a mix of irritation, confusion, and impatience.

"Of course," Wild answered with a mocking bow of his head. "We are yer kings."

She glanced around at all the other wolves on the deck preparing the trawler for offloading while doggedly avoiding looking her way, and her sharp gaze flickered with confusion. But then she reset.

"Good, I guess you're who I was sent to find." She took a step back and cleared her throat, her eyes widening with fear — before narrowing with determination. "Why have you kidnapped us? I don't know what beef you have with the Scottish Wolves, but we're not part of it. The W?lfennites are a gentle community, and I suggest you let us go before the North American Lupine Association finds out about this."

"Is that so?" Free of my thrashing wolf, I found myself letting out a hum of amusement. "According to our intel, your community, as you called it, operates outside the umbrella of the North American Lupine's Association's protection. And as for the Scottish Wolves, yes, they'll look, but they'll never find you. Just as they never found the she-wolves from the First Reaping back in the 1500s. "

Her eyes flared with outrage. "So, you're just going to haul us off to wherever you're taking this boat without giving us any say in the matter?"

Wild grinned in a way that was more fang than smile. "Sorry, we didn't engage in a polite letter-writing campaign like that Scottish lot did. Not our way."

Wild stepped to her, leaving only a sliver of space between them as he ran his nose along her neck — as close as he could get without touching her. "This will have to serve as yer invitation to live with the Irish Wolves for a spell."

To her credit, the brown beauty stood her ground. Her jaw locked, but she refused to shrink away from Wild or let on that she was intimidated by his closeness.

"So, it's true. We've escaped our fates in Canada just to fall into something even worse." Doing her physical best to ignore Wild, she addressed her grievance to me. "What's your plan then? To throw us in cages and impregnate us against our will at the next full moon?"

Underneath her withering gaze, my once-defiant wolf shriveled even further inside me, this time with shame.

In my albeit limited experience, unheated females could be tricky.

The gods designed them to experience very little desire until the conditions were right for them to go into their first heat. However, male wolves were designed for ultimate imprinting when they sensed their one true mate. This meant that while males often fell for their mates at first sight, she-wolves often either didn't realize on a completely conscious level they'd met their lifelong partner — or worse, simply didn't feel the same way. Before the Heat Laws took effect, this incongruence of deeper feelings before heat was often resolved with a wolf mating .

But the Terrible Belfast Mess had taught us how bad an idea that was, when it nearly started a civil war among three of our then four kingdoms. The fallout had left me to reason with our prophesied — but still unheated — queen as best I could, given her ignorance of both our ways and her role in the Prophecy.

"It is true we have stolen you from the Scottish Wolves, yes," I conceded. "But we will not mate you against your will."

My royal face reddened. It felt ridiculous to say this out loud with Wild snorting down her scent, his eyes glowing like the predator he was underneath his human overlay. But still, I felt duty-bound to tell her, "We've a set of guiding rules in Ireland referred simply to as the Heat Laws."

She scrunched her pretty face. "What does that mean?"

Wild raised his head from his aggressive scent work to answer into her ear. "It means ye're safe from us. At least until yer wolf tells us otherwise."

She tightened her jaw and turned to address Wild directly for the first time. "I promise you, my wolf will never tell you otherwise."

Wild tipped his head and got directly in her face. "If ye're trying to make me even more excited about claiming that sweet cunt of yers, keep talking, Flower."

According to the Tríbéirríthe source's report, the W?lfennite she-wolves had grown up so cloistered that they didn't know much modern slang. But our Mairinua must have understood every word of Wild's vulgar reply.

She finally shoved him from her, shouting, "You're disgusting!"

Or at least she tried to shove him away. Wild barely budged under her tremendous push. Just replied, "I'm also yer king. "

Instead of further engaging in their argument, she took another hugely deliberate step away from him.

"Wild," I said before he could close the space between them again. "Let her have her room. She is not used to us yet."

At his True King's command, Wild remained where he was. But his gaze stayed on her, feral and glowing, like a beast tracking prey.

She glanced at him warily before turning to face me again.

"You should know," she explained, her gaze studiously affixed on mine, "we do not believe in or adhere to awolf hierarchy. Moreover, our community hasn't had a non-mated she-wolf go into heat in nearly three decades. First pregnancies occur exclusively with wolf matings. Even my sister, the Scottish Queen, was wolf-mated — accidentally wolf-mated. But still…"

"Are you trying to convince us to change our Heat Laws to allow for wolf matings, then?" Wild asked with a considering look.

"What? No! I'm explaining to you why this plan of yours will not work." She threw Wild an irritated glance before turning back to reason with me. "If you're serious about not forcing us into cages on the full moon, you should just let us go."

"Just the W?lfennites?" I said more out of curiosity than consideration. "Should we keep the Scottish she-wolves we nabbed, then?"

"No, you should let all of us go," she answered without hesitation. "I don't know what kind of mental gymnastics you did to justify pulling this kidnapping business a second time on that poor Scottish community. But they are still indelibly scarred by what happened back in the 1500s. And it's the W?lfennites' fault that they weren't able to defend themselves against your attack. The Scottish she-wolves deserve to go home even more than we do. And if you turn this boat around and drop us back off, you can end this here. We'll be shaken, but no one will be hurt. "

No, my wolf was no longer thrashing inside of me, but my human was struck speechless, nonetheless.

"Did ye hear that final argument to serve as our banríon, Sea?" Wild's mouth spread into his first sincere smile of the conversation as he gave echo to my own thoughts. "Upset as she was, she calmed herself and got right to gabbin' sharp on behalf of her subjects, she did. Effortless bit of queenin' if ye ask me. And when ye add that bit in about her being best mates with the Tríbéirríthe potential, I don't see how Dublin would find it any different."

She glanced between Wild and me. "I don't understand."

Despite the fierce wind whipping my warrior braids to the side, a gentle breeze flowed through my chest as I told her, "We like the way you advocate for your people — all your people."

Her expression became hopeful. "Oh! Does that mean that you'll let us go?"

Until Wild informed her, "It means he's never letting ye go, Flower. Ye've convinced him not to, surer than sure."

He spoke no lies, but I cursed Wild for the way her beautiful face crumbled.

"No, no! Y ou have to let Sadie out of that box!" she insisted."And you must take us home."

She looked at me, her eyes pleading for mercy and reassurance that I would be more reasonable than the feral wolf who had to be commanded not to overwhelm her.

But even with my wolf now cowering inside of me, I felt compelled to insist back, "We are taking you home, Mairinua . And Wild spoke true, we will never let you go. Especially after having met you properly face-to-face.

Panic flared in her eyes.

And as much as I would have liked to have erased it, I let it sink in.

The sooner she understood the situation, the sooner she would come to accept it.

However, full acceptance was not exactly what happened in the next moment.

Her gaze cut to the side. To the large mansion standing beside the small airfield we were planning to head to after our wolves brought up all of the passed-out she-wolves in the hold below.

"No, Flower, don't —" Wild began to say, following the direction of her gaze. And I jumped forward, willing my cowering wolf to lend me its speed.

But too late.

She sprinted toward the railing, and before either Wild or I could grab her, she slapped her palms together and arced her body over the trawler's side.

The next thing I heard was a huge splash.

And the sound of Wild saying, "Well, fuck," behind me.