Epilogue #2
So, she was at the bank … of course. Of all her projects, updating one of the oldest (albeit secret) banks in the United Kingdom was closest to her heart. And that’s exactly where I finally found her…snuggled up with the town’s treasurer.
“Hi!” she said, jumping out of her seat when she saw me fuming in the doorway of the Faoiltiarn Treasury. Just a few weeks ago, the bank had been little more than a desk and a cash box in front of a large vault.
But now it had a partner’s desk with an array of ten monitors on top of it. They were stacked so high, I could barely see my wife and the male wolf behind them.
“It’s not what you think!” she said at my furious look.
“I see. Ye aren’t in here with the treasurer, setting up yer new invisible money system when ye were supposed to be with me?”
“Okay, it is what you think.” She conceded with an apologetic grimace. “But can you please stop calling it invisible money? It’s digital money that we can pass back and forth just like paper, which means Willie and I are literally bringing this place into the current century—”
Four months ago, I had decided to give my she-wolf anything she wanted and promised to never, ever lose my temper with her again. Four months ago, I’d found it charming and even teased her about how quickly she’d taken to Faoiltiarn after all her resistance.
But this particular morning, I had had enough. “It is our wedding day!” I roared. “Can you set aside the village for one bloody second and pledge your troth to me like a normal bride?”
“Well, looks like it’s time for me to go, Willie,” Tara said, rising from her seat and walking around to the front of the desk.
She wore her wedding dress, the one the Faoiltiarn tailor assured me she’d picked up over an hour ago. It was the first time I had seen her in it. We’d agreed the wedding would be a mix of my traditions and hers, but this gown was all Scottish.
It featured long tulle sleeves and an empire waist, a style that would have passed as fashionable in this century and the two before it. The dress would have worked as is, but the tailor had laid the Faoiltiarn tartan over it in the auld way, and it neatly framed her swollen belly on both sides.
Tara looked nothing short of breathtaking, but without a further word to her or the treasurer, I took her by the arm and hauled her out the front door.
“Bye, Willie!” she called over her shoulder.
“See you at the church then,” Willie called back.
“I’m sorry,” she said, once we were outside. “I only meant to talk with him for a few minutes, but I guess I got distracted.”
“Bad enough Milly insisted we not see each other for a full twenty-four hours before the wedding,” I grumbled. “Now I have to share ye with another man on the day itself?”
“Yeah, you should be really concerned about a wolf old enough to be my grandfather, who—quite frankly—I think has a crush on your dad. Not sure how to break it to him that Valentina and Lachlan have barely left the bedroom since they came back for our wedding.”
I didn’t laugh, which made Tara roll her eyes. “Okay, I’m sorry not getting to sex me up for a couple of days has put you in such a terrible mood, Ri Faol.”
“That and your tardiness—to your own wedding, I might add!” I said as we passed Iain’s old house, which my brother had been disgruntled to find converted by Tara into a café and town Wi-Fi spot in his absence.
She peered at Iain’s former home and bit her bottom lip with a wicked smile. “Well, there’s a sturdy stone wall right over there. We can solve one of your problems right now, but it might make us even more tardy for the ‘wedding of the century.’”
I stopped, my wolf standing up along with another part of me at the suggestion …
TARA
Which is how we ended up arriving over an hour late to our own wedding.
We entered the church, looking rumpled as if we’d been caught in a gale force wind, and we smelled strongly of sex.
However, the formerly grumpy groom passed the hour-long ceremony with a beaming smile upon his face.
And everyone agreed he couldn’t have looked happier to finally marry his queen.
“For someone who said she didn’t want to be queen of our land, you’ve gone out of your way to give the clishmaclavers stories to tell for years to come!” Iain said as we waited in the hallway outside the castle’s ballroom.
The formally clean-shaven tech billionaire still sported what he called his “traveling beard,” and his dark shaggy hair had grown nearly past his collar.
But whatever accent he’d lost during his world travels with Milly came back in full force within a week of them returning to Scotland for their baby’s birth.
The first child born in Faoiltiarn during the current century.
“I’m just glad there’s finally a scandal to replace when we broke into Iain’s house,” Milly said with a chagrined smile. “Who knew there were towns in Scotland that still had bards?”
Both Magnus and I laughed, too chuffed to be bothered by the fact that our late arrival and the reason for it might literally be committed to song. I was also grateful for a little alone time with Iain and my best friend after such a hectic week.
In honor of the mail-order brides’ visit, I had opted to incorporate a few of my pack’s traditions and a few of his Scottish ones.
After the wedding, we’d crossed the small stream bisecting the village in Faoiltiarn and New St. Ailbe twice for Scottish good luck and tomorrow morning, Magnus and I would rise early to wash our clothes together as the St. Ailbe Ordnung commanded.
But since there would be no pictures taken at all today, the wedding party had a chance to relax before the reception (to which the Faoiltiarn males wouldn’t be allowed to bring swords or so much as a dagger).
“I’m just glad we got married here instead of my village,” I said. “Those weddings are no joke. Three-plus hours. In High German, no less!”
“If you think that’s bad you should try going to an Indian wedding,” Iain said.
“Two to three days of celebrations and you cannae understand a bloody thing the priest is saying during the four-hour ceremony. Truly, it will make you reconsider taking on unwed programmers, just so you don’t have to lose years of your life attending their weddings. ”
“Had a Greek teammate get married in one of those Macedonian Orthodox ceremonies,” Magnus said.
“It went on for ages with them calling for us to sit and stand every ten minutes. Still have nightmares about it. Like, I only think I went back to my real life. But in actuality, I’m still at the Macedonian wedding.
Similar to purgatory or one of those Black Mirror episodes. ”
“Beggin pardon, Banrigh …”
A young male by the name of Donnan approached, interrupting our discussion.
He bowed quickly before saying, “I’ve a few questions about this Sarah.
My da said she-wolves are more likely to go into heat if you show an interest in what they like.
But when I asked Sarah what she likes, she wrote back listing her favorite activity as butter sculpture. Is that some kind of joke, then?”
I grimaced. “I’m afraid not. Where we come from, the annual butter sculpture competition is a bit like your Six Nations.”
Donnan stared back at me, wide-eyed and very confused. “Yer saying there’s violence and gameplay involved? This is some type of sport … with butter?”
“Well, not exactly,” I answered with a sympathetic look.
The eligible male villagers were definitely still playing catch up.
Magnus had pre-apologized on the plane ride back to Scotland for the amount of awe I’d have to put up with because of my twin pregnancy.
But that abject awe for me and my incoming twins had only lasted until he announced the imminent arrival of twenty plus nubile she-wolves in search of mates.
The village males immediately switched from awestruck subjects to nervous young men. Which was understandable, I supposed. Much like the visiting she-wolves, most of them had never left their village and hadn’t practiced their interested—but not too aggressive—flirting skills on any outsiders.
It wasn’t any wonder then that no less than eight males came up to me before the traditional Grand March to get intel on the newly arrived she-wolves.
“I thought this would be easy after writing back and forth with Orpah, but now I’ve no idea what to say to her …
” another male lamented, sounding like a fretful schoolboy even though I was pretty sure he was older than me.
It seemed the prospect of actually talking to the woman he’d written to for months was doing his head in now that he was only standing a few feet away from her.
“Try saying ‘hello,’ mate,” Magnus advised. “It really does work.”
“You can also offer to show her your horse,” I added, even as I mentally acknowledged how ridiculous this would sound to anyone outside the village.
“And where’s this sister of yours?” Gavin, a striking wolf in his mid-twenties, asked after waiting with his ridiculously handsome best friend, Malcolm, to speak with me.
“We talked with the other wolves and turns out none of us got a letter from her. But she’s the prettiest of them all, and now we cannae find her anywhere. ”
I gave the two would-be lotharios a dry look. Why did I have the feeling there was some kind of bet riding on who my younger sister would give the time of day to first?
“Oh, yeah., sorry …” Milly said behind me. “She volunteered to take care of our daughter during the reception, so she won’t be coming,”
The males’ faces fell.
“And why would she go an’ do that?” Malcolm demanded. “What’s the point of her coming if she’s not even going to meet with us? She’s wasting our time and the kingdom’s money!”
“I suggest you think of her as more of a chaperone,” Magnus advised, his demeanor toward the younger men cooling considerably. “And if I were you lads, I’d focus more on connecting with the she-wolves than ranking them. Or else you’ll end up wasting everyone’s time.”