Alban
Faoiltiarn didn’t need me anymore.
Until suddenly, it did.
It all unfolded like a nightmare.
First came having to navigate the wedding reception in order to do something I never thought I’d have to do again: track Tara Hamilton down and force her to come with me.
I’d realized right away that bringing Leora and Dorie here was not the best set-up for a much too-late reunion between the two sisters.
They’d gotten overwhelmed simply looking at the castle the previous night.
Imagine having to drag them through a ballroom filled with nearly every citizen in Faoiltiarn.
Nae. It needed to be the other way around. My plan had been to simply walk into the wedding and tell Tara to come with me.
But the two guards stationed outside the open doors barred my way inside—both of them this time. They crossed their Lochaber axes in an X to keep me from striding right into the party.
“Got to lose all weapons, mate,” one of them told me apologetically. “Accommodations for the New St. Ailbe lot.”
I glanced down at the Damascus steel knife I always carried on my person.
It sported a finely crafted Celtic knot hilt, and it had been passed down through my family since our first Viking Wolf ancestors landed on the shores of Scotland to raid.
I never left my town house without it. Mostly for practical reasons.
You never kent what plastic-sealed package might require cutting open—or which eejit would need to have something explained slowly with a knife at his throat.
But I was in a rush to get to Tara. So, instead of arguing, I unhooked my leather scabbard and threw it on top of the hill of weapons lying in a pile to the left side of the doors.
Then I face-palmed the two eejits out of my way.
Inside the ballroom, I encountered another obstacle right before I reached Tara.
That large dark-skinned woman I’d noticed earlier on the baseball field. She was even better looking up close. Not just tall—she had generous curves in comparison to the mostly slender New St. Ailbe lot.
However, she smelled … I sniffed and furrowed my brow … peculiar. Almost like a … but no, she couldn’t be … could she?
She decided to have herself a ramble before I could ask. And by the time she was done, I was reminded that I’d already wasted enough time. This large woman was a mystery for another day.
“Excuse me.” I set her out my way and pushed to the front of the receiving line.
Tara blinked up at me in shock.
And Magnus asked, “Alban, you want to have a go at the St. Ailbe brides, too?”
Apparently, the gobs upon gobs of kingdom residents had covered my missing presence in the church, and we were back to this old assumption of me wanting one of their brides. I suppose I should have been relieved.
But I felt nothing but guilt as I told Tara, “Nae. It’s your sister. She’s here with a child asking for you.”
Tara’s face dropped. “Naomi’s here? Is Ellie okay?”
Magnus tensed. “You go to her,” he said to his new wife. “I’ll find Iain.”
It took me a confused second to realize they were referring to the prickly one who must have been babysitting Milly and Iain’s newborn.
“Nae! Nae! Not her.” I impatiently grabbed onto both of their arms. “T’other one.”
“Wait, do you mean Leora? My older sister?” Tara asked. “She’s here? With her daughter?”
“Aye, she’s here. I should have told you earlier, but I—it doesnae matter. Just come. Come with me now!”
I started to pull her and Magnus toward the exit—only to stop when a great shout went up from the direction of the ballroom doors. In Gaelic.
But not the version of Gaelic we used here in Scotland. Another, much more melodic kind.
My blood ran cold when I heard the great shout.
These were the same words that had been repeated in a story we’d been retelling in Faoiltiarn for half a millennium. Over five hundred years had passed since they were spoken inside our ballroom doors—yet every Faoiltiarn wolf in the space understood them all the same.
We are the Irish Wolves. And we have come for your females! the voices shouted out.
Then all hell broke loose.
“I’ll get my wife and the females to the tunnel!” Magnus yelled to me. “You get through the fracas and go find Naomi. She’s upstairs with Milly and Iain’s baby!”
He didn’t say why he wanted me, the Kingdom Defender, to focus all my energy on finding Tara’s sister, but he didn’t have to.
The Irish Wolves weren’t like us. They lived without honor.
According to the old tales from 1503, they’d trapped the entire village in the ballroom during a king’s wedding celebration.
They’d taken advantage of the males’ drunken state to steal the bride and every female they could get their hands on in the village.
Unheated, Mated—even the girl babies.
Without question, I barged through the crowd at the front of the room where the males were doing their best to keep to the contingency plan we’d been drilling for centuries. Not with any genuine sense of emergency anymore with the turn of the millennium. More out of ritual and remembrance.
None of us in Faoiltiarn actually thought we’d ever see this day. But the Faoiltiarn males immediately began fighting—the best they could with nothing but their fists as weapons.
If I didn’t have my orders direct from the King himself, I’d be pounding faces in right beside them.
But as it was, I used the cover of fighting to plow my way to the doors where I found …
The pile of weapons gone.
Feckin’ hell. But the mission remained the same. I took the stairs four at a time to get to the guest suite where I assumed Milly and Iain would have been put.
I assumed right. Muffled voices led me toward the back bedroom. If I’d had any kind of weapon, I would have assessed the situation and maybe tried to sneak into the room. But as it was, I only had the element of surprise on my side.
So, taking a note from Dorie’s book, I grabbed the only useable weapon I could see, a fire poker, and burst through the door with what I hoped would be a disconcerting yell.
Only to stop short as soon as I entered the room.
I had a fire poker in my hand.
But Tara’s pretty young sister had the baby in her arms. And a wolf with glittering eyes had her in a chokehold. With a butcher knife at her throat.
And there was another wolf standing slightly behind that one with his hand wrapped around the arm of the peculiar-smelling she-wolf I’d moved aside downstairs.
He wore black leather pants and a sturdy leather vest in the way warriors used to before the invention of armor.
He even had a baldric with several kinds of daggers tucked inside of it strapped across his chest.
The one holding Naomi at knifepoint looked even more old-fashioned.
He wore a leather kilt and the pelt of a bear with its head still attached over his otherwise naked torso.
We had similar kinds of winter coats here at Dùn Faoiltiarn.
But they all hung in displays, encased in glass.
They were relics leftover from our Viking Wolves’ ancestors.
We never actually used such coats in the current age.
The one holding on to the large, dark-skinned she-wolf had fair skin and knee-high boots made of hammered leather.
But the one with the dagger at Naomi’s throat wore nothing on his feet at all. That, along with his swarthy skin and wiry muscle structure, let me know he was the most ancient kind of hunter—the kind of wolf we used to send out to run down food for the rest of our clan in the winter.
This position was usually assigned to the pack’s most ferocious male—the warriors who could commit to their mission so thoroughly, they were able to camp and hunt in the winter element for days on end without need for comfort or company.
Back when we were Vikings, they might have been called Berserkers.
In any case, nothing got in the way of their season-long hunt, save the spring.
A Sealgair Laoch. A hunter warrior—something else Faoiltiarn had history with—but didn’t use anymore.
Faoiltiarn had chosen to aggressively “stay the same” back in the 1900s. But based on the way these two male wolves were dressed, their pack hadn’t advanced nearly as much as ours since 1503.
“Save the baby,” Naomi commanded from inside the Sealgair Laoch’s chokehold. “Don’t worry about me. Just get her away from them!”
“Stay where you are, Defender,” the swarthy one countered before I could take another step forward.
He spoke English with a deep, sonorous Irish accent, and his eyes glittered with the promise of violence. “If you make me cut her, I’ll gut you and feed your entrails to the forest boar for their supper.”
“So, you ken my title.” I kept both my face and my voice neutral. “Then you also ken that I can’t let you take any of these females out of here without a fight.”
The swarthy one smiled in feral anticipation.
But the one holding Naomi’s arm, said, “Don’t. We discussed this.”
His voice was a lot less animal-like than the other one, but the four quiet words held authority. I could tell he was the leader in the situation when the anticipatory smile dropped from the Sealgair Laoch’s face. Perhaps he was even the Irish Wolves’ king, like Magnus.
With his companion quelled, the maybe king turned his gaze back to me. “Kingdom Defender, this situation isn’t the same as 1503.”
“So, you’re not looking to steal all our females?” I asked him. “Again.”
“Not all of them, no,” he answered in a diplomatic tone.
“We will leave behind the mated ones this time. The ones we do take will be brought back to our kingdom to give our males their consideration for mate hood. But in the spring, they will be given a choice about staying, and the ones who are not mated, and no longer wish to stay with us will be delivered back here to Faoiltiarn. Tell your king he has my vow on that.”
I sneered. “Tell him yerself after I deliver you to the dungeon cells underneath the castle.”
He smirked. “There are two of us. And one of you. We can do this the easy way where you step aside and let us leave,” he offered. “Or …”
The king’s eyes switched from diplomatic to cold in an instant. “We can do this the hard way and risk the life of the precious first baby born to the Faoiltiarn royal family in over thirty years.”
The Sealgair Laoch’s grin returned to his face.
“Either way, she is ours!” he declared, his eyes glittering crazed and violent. “We will not be leaving Dùn Faoiltiarn without her.”
The feral hunter then pressed his nose into Naomi’s hair. And licked his tongue up the side of her neck.
Naomi shuddered with revulsion.
And her peculiar-smelling friend yelled, “Leave her alone!”
Nae, I couldn’t let this happen. I gripped the fire poker and took a step forward despite the hunter’s warning.
But then Naomi yelled, “Stop! I agree to go with them. Just take the baby. Take the baby, so she doesn’t get hurt.”
We all turned to stare at Naomi. Apparently, I’d been wrong about Leora having nothing in common with her sister. I could see now that they would both do anything to protect the lives of their innocent charges.
Still … “I cannae let you make that sacrifice.”
“It’s not up to you,” Naomi insisted, her voice turning razor sharp. “I made sure the rule was included when we put together the New St. Ailbe Ordnung. She-wolves can come and go as they like—without restraint or repercussion.”
Silence, as we all tried to process this unexpected turn of events. Then the peculiar smelling one called out. “I volunteer to go too!”
“No, Sadie you can’t!” Naomi strained to look at the other she-wolf over the butcher knife at her neck. “This is my sacrifice alone.”
The possible king finally recovered from his surprise.
“Going with us isn’t a choice.” He thinned his lips at Naomi, his eyes flashing with a mix of bemusement and annoyance. “You’re both coming with us for this special opportunity either way.”
The she-wolf Naomi called Sadie shot the possible king a fearful glance, but insisted, “See Nay, it’s already all decided. I’m going with you.”
“Okay, then, we’ll be on our way,” the possible king declared. He turned a cool green gaze to me. “If you’ll put down the pokey stick and step aside, Defender.”
I opened my mouth to argue with him.
But before I could, Naomi begged. “Please, just put down the fire poker and take the baby. We volunteered to go. The only thing left for you to do is save the innocent child who never asked to be here.”
Something that looked a lot like guilt flickered through the kingly one’s expression.
Then quickly disappeared.
His gaze hardened with cruel resolve as he asked, “So what will it be, Defender? The she-wolves who have already volunteered to go with us? Or the baby?”