25. Leora
Leora
In the end, we made dinner together.
He set the premade pasta I’d come to appreciate the ease of to boiling while I threw together the tomato sauce.
And while we both chopped up the vegetables, onions, and mushrooms I’d bought for the house when Hamish took me to Faoiltiarn’s small market store last week, he told me what happened with Tara.
“So, her plan was to introduce me to another male before my next heat wave overtook me?” I asked when he was done with the story.
“Aye, that was her scheme,” Alban confirmed with a grim shake of his head.
He glowered down at the onion he was chopping.
“As if I’d ever let that happen. Fortunately, that conversation came to a quick end when she paused long enough to give the air a good sniff—hey, what are you doing? Where are you going?”
He frowned after me when I put down my chopping knife and dried my hands off—then rushed to get in front of me when I headed toward the kitchen door.
I pulled up short to tell him, “I think … I think I have to go.”
He shook his head at me. “Go where?”
“To yell at Tara!” I blurted. Then I blinked, a little surprised by the answer to his question myself.
But yes, she had to be dealt with, I decided as I told Alban, “She didn’t just not respect my final decision, she threatened you. With an axe! Who knows what she would have done if I hadn’t already fallen pregnant? She could have seriously hurt you or worse—why are you laughing?”
Alban was laughing so hard it took him a few tries before he could answer. “Because you honestly seemed worried that your million-months-pregnant sister could have hurt me. Nae, mo ghràidh. I was much more worried about waking you up if she made me disarm her.”
“But she has to be dealt with,” I insisted. “I can’t just let her think that’s okay!”
“Well, my Da’s moved to the castle for the duration of our bairnmoon too.
I’m certain he’s not happy about it and kenning him, he’s recruited Dorie for his misery campaign.
They’re probably making your sister regret agreeing to sit on the throne—either that or rubbing it in her face that they got what they wanted. ”
My cheeks heated as I remembered all the non-too-subtle hints Hamish had dropped about me making his son a husband while Alban had been gone. “I hope you don’t think this was my plan all along—to trap you into mateship.”
“I wish that had been your plan all along. Would have saved us some trouble and misunderstanding.” He dipped his chin and flashed me a wicked grin. “But I’ll settle for my wee mate standing up to the big, bad queen for me. I could get used to having someone willing to rise to my defense.”
I didn’t know how to feel. On one hand, there was my uncharacteristic anger at Tara.
I still couldn’t believe she’d burst in on us like that—found out I was pregnant before I did.
But on the other hand, there was the strange pleasure vibrating inside of me because Alban said he could get used to me and that he wouldn’t have let me go, regardless.
For years, I’d lived with Joshua’s resentful looks and him saying things like, “If you hadn’t saddled me with a toothless daughter, I’d find a way to free myself up for someone who deserved to become my wife.”
But here I was, making dinner with a man who knew I had a toothless daughter but still wanted to be with me, regardless of the gender of my next child.
His words from the night before floated through my mind. “There will be no half-measures with me, Leora. If we do this—if you allow my claim, let me heat you, then you become mine. Forever. Tell me you ken.”
Thrilled.
That was how I felt, I decided. I felt thrilled to find myself beside a man who actually made me feel worthy.
“C’mon, let’s finish up with these vegetables you seem to think actually belong in spaghetti.” Alban led me back to the counter and offered me the chopping knife I’d put down.
I took it from him and bit my lip as I secretly let all those elated feelings fill up the holes inside of me.
However, after we finished boiling the spaghetti, we got into our first argument.
Alban wrongly believed that spaghetti was something one made on top of a stove, whereas I knew for sure that it was something you baked in the oven.
However, unlike the few times I’d dared to talk back to Joshua, our argument ended with the male conceding.
“Fine,” Alban agreed grumpily. “Let’s see how casseroling the spaghetti goes.”
Another question floated into my mind as I set the temperature and timer on the modern oven Hamish had taught me to use … after lowering his gun. “You mentioned having an office. Does that mean you have a job?”
Alban chuckled low behind me. “Of course, I have a job. How do you think I keep myself in kilts and shirts?”
“Could I …”
I stood up from the oven—then started when I turned around to find Alban standing directly behind me. So close I couldn’t see anything beyond him.
Another awkward throat clearing. “C-could I ask you what you do for a living?”
“You can ask me anything.” He raked his eyes up my face, then down again, settling his gaze on my lips. “You’re my she-wolf now.”
His.
The word somehow didn’t make me feel like property as I had with Joshua. The exact opposite, actually. Alban made me feel like treasure.
And he was standing so close. If I raised up on my tiptoes and he bent his head a little, I could kiss him again. Like he’d commanded me to do back in the castle library.
“So, are ye going to do it?” he asked, his voice husky and low.
“Do what?” I asked back, barely able to get my own voice up to a whisper.
“Ask after my job,” he answered.
And that was when I remembered the original thread of the conversation.
I clamped my lips with a silent reprimand. Why was I acting so wanton? My heat cycle had already been completed. So, there was no reason to want to feel his mouth on mine again.
“Ah, yes, I will,” I answered, doing my best impersonation of a completely composed wolf. “I’d like to know what you do for a living if you don’t mind telling me.”
“It’s not something I talk about to everyone,” Alban admitted with a grimace.
“But I suppose you should ken as it requires me to travel to the Americas at least twice a year. And I’m not going to be able to leave my family behind.
You, Dorie, and the bairn will have to accompany me, so it’ll be a conversation between the two of us around your beliefs. ”
My beliefs. Oh, yes, those. Truthfully, I’d broken so many of them to get here it felt easy to answer, “That won’t be a problem.”
“Okay, then,” he agreed. “But my job is hard to explain. I’ll have to show you to understand. Come on.”
He stepped back and held out his hand. And after a moment of hesitation, I took it.
I finally got to find out what was behind the locked door I’d wondered about downstairs. And “strange,” as it turned out, was an understatement.
I’d been expecting to find some kind of study—a smaller version of the one at the castle, perhaps.
But stepping into Alban’s office felt like stepping out of the real world into some kind of spaceship.
“This is what I do for about a month or two every year,” Alban said, spreading one arm toward the strange office’s back wall. It and a third of the floor space were painted a strange neon green and littered with tech I couldn’t even begin to guess at.
“Wow!” I said enthusiastically. Then: “What exactly am I looking at?”
“It’s a capture-motion set for your mate,” a female voice answered.
Then another female’s voice added, “You know, for when a Viking skirt just isn’t enough.”
“Excuse me?” I asked. Not just because I didn’t understand even a sentence of that explanation. But also because I had no idea where the voice was coming from.
“Over here! Girl, please turn around. We want to see the woman who managed to nab the Viking Werewolf!”
The Viking Werewolf?
I turned to my right and saw not one woman but two peering out at me from the office’s opposite wall, which appeared to double as some sort of screen.
The women staring at me were both Black, but not sisters, I suspected. One was older with snow-white dreads pulled into a bun on top of her head. Her face was even plumper than mine, and she had intelligent eyes that assessed me up and down.
The other also wore her hair in a bun, but it was much smaller and composed of hot pink braids.
Both sides of her head were shaved down to the scalp, and she wore a row of hoops in one ear and what looked like a small stake in the other.
Her face was much thinner and a bit lighter than the dreadlocked woman’s, and she also looked to be a bit younger.
“Oh, my gosh, you are too cute!” The older woman crooked her head at me as if I was a doll she’d found in Alban’s office. “Are those freckles?”
Before I could answer, the one with hot pink braids said, “You don’t sound Scottish. Where are you from?”
“I’m from Canada,” I answered carefully. “Where are you from?” I asked, even though their flat, frank accents had already let me know they were probably 100% American.
“Michigan,” the younger one answered with an eye roll. “Where they do not grow men nearly as hot as your new mate.”
“How did you know we were …” I began to ask.
The younger one answered, “Because Alban has disappointed too many VS fans with his No Relationship stance. I’m assuming if you’re actually up in his house, heat must’ve happened.”
“Oh Alban, your fans are going to be so jealous,” the older one said, casting her eyes to where Alban was standing slightly to the left of me.
“But the Real VS are going to be thrilled that you’re finally locked down.
Between you and me, they didn’t love me spending even a few hours a year with an unmated wolf—especially one who looked like you. ”
“Excuse me?” I said again. This time with a lot more alarm. “Who’s the Real VS and why are they upset about …?”
I was so confused I couldn’t compose a coherent question. But the younger one got my gist.
“That’s what we call Tee’s fated mates since her husbands are, you know, actual Viking shifters who time-traveled here from the Viking age,” she explained. “Unlike your mate, who’s just pretending to be one.”
Okay, I’d heard of fated mates. And I was aware that, for some reason, there were fifty portals in the States part of North America through which wolves could travel to meet their fated mates.
But …
“You have more than one husband?” I asked the older one, my voice becoming a bit weak.
“Yeah, everybody knows that about her. Even the humans.” The younger one squinted at me. “Where exactly are you from in Canada?”
“A place where they don’t know that,” Alban answered, stepping in front of me. “And Iggle, what have I told you about popping up on my screen without warning me first?”
The one with hot pink hair looked to the side. “That I should definitely do it anytime I want because we pay you a shit ton of money to be the face of Viking Shifters?”
Alban picked up a small remote control and waved it at her threateningly. “I never should have let you install this infernal screen into my house.”
Several minutes of arguing and explaining later, I came to understand that Alban was the “cover and motion-capture model” for something I’d heard of but had never actually played or seen: a video game.
Tee, the older woman, was the inventor of an apparently very popular series called Viking Shifters. And ironically, Tee had met her actual time-traveling Viking husbands after, not before, releasing the series to market.
Anyway, a drawn Viking who looked like Alban—but even more grizzled with much longer red hair not only appeared in the video game but also on the cover of the box it came in, along with several pieces of merchandise which could be bought online.
“And that’s just the official stuff,” Iggle told me as I turned over a video game box in my hand. “Trust me, you do not want to see the Rule of 34, the Viking Shifters video game. You will never be able to unsee all of that.”
“What’s the Rule of ...” I began to ask.
“Goodbye, Iggle and Tee!” Alban pressed the button on the remote before I could finish my question.
“But you don’t even have a phone!” I said to Alban later as we ate the baked spaghetti.
“Alright,” he’d conceded after a few bites, “the casserole version is clearly superior.” I guess I was riding high on the win because I could no longer resist the urge to tease him about his strange job overseen by a she-wolf boss with two husbands.
“What do I need a phone for?” Alban asked grumpily. As if his being the face of a modern video game and his refusing to equip his house with a landline didn’t conflict in the slightest.
“If your office held that huge of a secret, now I’m wondering what’s behind the locked door upstairs,” I grumbled.
It was a good-natured joke. But Alban stilled as if I’d walked over his grave.
Then he asked, “Do you really want me to show you?”