Alban
“I heard about Naomi and the others,” Leora said as I closed the door to the library behind us. “That you searched and searched but weren’t able to find them.”
I paused mid-action. So that was why she’d asked me to come in here with her. I should have kent.
Still, I made myself close the door the rest of the way and faced her like an honorable male.
Only to be met with the surprise of her soft body pressing into mine and her arms wrapping as far as they could go around my waist.
“I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what you’re going through.” She laid her head against my chest and squeezed as if she were trying to wring some of the sadness out of me. “The ride back here must have been awful.”
It had been awful. And though I wasn’t the type to indulge myself in self-pity or go round asking for hugs, holy feck. Having her arms around me felt nice. I let myself sigh into the first bit of comfort I’d been offered in three weeks—truly in over a decade if I thought about it.
There had been a hug or two from Gail when I returned from the desert. But then she’d left, and Da was more of the “go mad or go on, but don’t ever talk about it” type.
Something cracked inside of me. Something that made me dip my face into her braids and hug her back just as tight with both of my arms wrapped around her. She was the only thing that made any sense in this current storm.
But then she pulled back, ending the hug I wanted to go on forever. It took all of my remaining reserve not to paw at her when she stepped out of my arms.
“Listen, I know this isn’t the best time to bring up the subject of us living with you. But Dorie hates the castle. She finds it too big and overwhelming. I hoped letting her go to that all-boys school would help her acclimate. But that’s not working out either.”
“Why not?” I found myself hyper-focusing on Dorie’s school issue, even though there were plenty of other problems on my plate at the moment. “Did one of them say something to her? Threaten her in any way? Hurt her?”
I wasn’t in the habit of going after children, but their fathers were fair game if they hadn’t taught their sons how to properly interact with a girl.
“No, no, nothing like that.” She held up both hands in a calming motion.
“They’ve actually been quite welcoming and nice.
But I don’t love that Dorie’s favorite pastime has become wooden sword fighting.
And she keeps asking me if I can make her a pair of pants so that she can take part in the games they play during recess. ”
I nodded, calming down a bit. “Aye, a long dress wouldnae fare too well in a pick-up match of football or rugby.”
“Exactly. And I don’t want to complain. But I’ll admit …” Leora gave me an embarrassed grimace. “I’m so bored while she’s away at school. I don’t have much to do without my teaching duties.”
An image hit me like a lorry. Leora standing in my kitchen, just like when I saw her last—but this time with her belly swollen. Her smiling up at me with contentment in her eyes when I came through the door because she’d soon have something else to occupy her while Dorie was at school. Our bairn.
“So, what do you think?”
I didn’t realize Leora was still talking until she asked me that question. I’d been so busy pining for things I could never have. I hadn’t been listening to a word she said.
She mistook my pause for hesitancy. “I know letting us stay in your cabin is a big ask. And I’m seeing now that I should have let you get settled first after such a long, unexpected trip.”
She fretted her hands over the tartan skirt I gave her. “We can talk about this later—yes, later. I’ll just …”
She ducked her head and started back toward the door.
“Hold on.” I stepped in front of her before she could slip past me. “You want to come back to my cottage?”
My stomach clenched. What if …
What if Da hadn’t been completely wrong? What if Leora truly did want me, as I could not help but want her?
What if this bonnie she-wolf had actually chosen me above all others?
To be the male she walked around Faoiltiarn with—the one she’d let help finish raising her daughter?
The one she’d let touch her the way I’d been imagining ever since she transformed from a broken wolf into a luscious female in my bed.
My heartbeat turned into pagan drums at the thought, and I stared down at her, my wolf panting inside of me as I waited for her to answer.
Leora fretted her hands in that adorable way of hers with her eyes glued to the antique rug beneath our feet.
“I mean, I just explained the situation. Very awkwardly, but yes, Dorie refuses to move to the castle. So, I was hoping we could return to your cabin at least through the upcoming winter holiday. She’d really like that. ”
I had always been a valorous wolf. I’d served proudly. Without a second of thought, I’d hunted those Irish bastards across the sea, and if not for their complete disappearance, I would not have hesitated to engage with them in a fatal battle.
Yet a terror like none I’d ever felt before filled my chest. It clogged my throat, and made me choke up as I asked, “You … you want to spend Christmas at my cottage?”
“Is that so hard to believe?” she asked with her eyes still glued to the floor. “Wolfennites don’t celebrate Christmas quite like you do. We celebrate it twice. Once on Christmas Day, and again the day after.”
She fretted her hands again. “Anyway, we have customs—customs that Tara wouldn’t necessarily be open to accommodating.
And your cabin is really cozy—not overwhelming like the castle.
I could bake some things for traditional Christmas and make a big meal of Dorie’s favorites for Second Christmas. And yes …”
She finally lifted her beautiful brown eyes to meet mine. “We’d really like to return to your cabin. Is that okay?”
Was that okay?
Elation and panic warred inside of me.
Leora needed to be warned off. I was everything Gail accused me of in that letter she left behind. Too rough. Too intense. Unhinged when it came to protecting what was mine. Leora deserved better than me.
But I had never, never in my life, wanted anything—anyone more.
Was that okay?
The truth was Leora could ask me to stand on my head and walk those proverbial five-hundred miles The Proclaimers made so famous. I’d do it. I’d do anything to make her my she-wolf.
“Like I said before, I know this is a big ask, but …” She reached into the pocket of her skirt and came back with a wad of folded pounds. “Tara gave me some money to spend around town. I’d be happy to give you all of it as a rental fee. Is that enough?”
That was when the penny dropped—when I realized out loud, “You want to stay in my cottage. Alone—just you and Dorie. Without me.”
She blinked as if the idea of us all staying together there again had never occurred to her.
“Well, there’s only one bed at the cabin,” she said, her voice taking on a careful note.
“And with everything happening in Faoiltiarn, I knew you wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving town as the Kingdom Defender.
I just figured you wouldn’t mind Dorie and me staying at your cabin in the mountains while you were taking care of things down here. ”
Here was the saddest thing about this situation … she was right. Absolutely right.
After what happened with the Irish Wolves, there was no way I could live out my winter at the Brother’s Cottage as originally planned.
I didn’t even ken what I’d been thinking when I’d been ready to agree to spend her two-day version of Christmas up in a cottage that was only truly meant for Kingdom Defenders.
Actually, I did ken what I was thinking—that I’d do anything to make this she-wolf mine. Anything. But of course … of course she didn’t want me in that way. How could she?
…you’re obviously no longer fit for any she-wolf. I can’t even imagine you as a father.
Gail’s written words washed over me as I said, “Nae. The answer to your question is nae.”
Confusion flitted across Leora’s face. “No, you won’t be staying in town, or no, we can’t have the cabin?”
I could tell I’d heavily disappointed her, and it wasn’t her fault that I’d assumed things I shouldn’t have. Still …
“Nae, you cannae have my cottage,” I answered. “You and your daughter will just have to settle for this fine castle that’s somehow not good enough for the two of ye.”
Leora’s lovely face fell, and she drew back in a way English writers of auld would have described as “fully aghast.”
“That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m very grateful for my sister and everything she’s done for me,” she insisted with a hand pressed to her chest. “Also, I should explain—”
But there was nothing left to explain, was there? I turned and headed for the door without giving her a chance to finish with whatever she wanted to tell me.
I’d been ready to give up my sanctuary for her. Change all of my plans to fit her and Dorie into my solitary life.
What had I been thinking? I was such a fool. Such a fool.
“Alban,” Leora called after me. “Alban, could you please come back so that we can discuss this?”
The answer to that question was nae as well.
I slammed out of the library, all the images I’d spun of us together warping in my head like a film gone bad.
All I wanted, all I needed was to return to my townhome and finally open that bottle of whiskey. Not the good kind, but the 1.75L bottle of that Clan MacGregor swill I’d gotten for Da on my last trip to the Tesco Superstore a few towns over.
Unfortunately, my plan to drink myself silly was once again cut short when I found my men waiting for me in the castle’s grand foyer.
“So, how did it go with the king and queen?” Malcolm asked.
“Look at his face. Obviously, not too good,” Gavin answered his best mate before I could.
“And, then the other sister decided to chew him out, as well,” another search party member pointed out. “Can you imagine? She’s a looker, too, just like both her sisters.”
“That she is,” Gavin noted with a glance back toward the library door. “How old do you ken she is? Because she just became the most eligible she-wolf in town.”
You’d think my wolf would have gotten it by now—that Leora didn’t belong to us.
But it reared up inside of me and made me ball up my fists as I growled. “Too old for ye. Ye will nae talk to her. You will nae—
I cut off when a wave of scent hit my nose—hit all of our noses. Like a stun grenade, the kind of thing we threw into enemy spaces before breaching with guns.
The smell was so disorienting it took me several nostril-flaring moments to realize what it was.
But I soon did—along with every other unmated male in the foyer. It had been years since such a scent erupted in Faoiltiarn, but we all recognized it. On a primal wolf level.
A female. There was a female in heat.
And that female was Leora.