Chapter 1 Why Me?
Why Me?
“Ach, c’mon, you useless fleep. Raise yourself out of that depression bed.” My gigantic baby brother Albie crashed into my childhood bedroom with violence on his mind. He raised shades and threw open windows, introducing light and air to a space that hadn’t known either for weeks.
“Angghh!! What the hell, Albie?” I threw an arm over my eyes and was nearly knocked out by my own smell. Nonetheless, I managed to choke out, “Maem said to leave me alone.”
At least she’d told Granni Claudine that.
I’d overheard my mother wearily chiding the old Jamaican bear shifter outside my bedroom door—telling Granni Claudine to let me have my feelings about losing my dream job, even if my step-grandmother didn’t believe in such nonsense as “allowing the fool girl to fester in that room all livelong day and night.”
That had only been a few days ago. Maybe weeks. I’ll admit, time had become a blurry concept since I returned home broke, adrift, and deeply depressed after getting laid off from the WolfNet Gazette for being a little too committed to our slogan: Shining a Bright Light on the Hidden Paranormal.
The walls of my childhood bedroom in Scotland were still covered with posters and pictures of the journalists I’d hoped to emulate someday: Ida B.
Wells, Christiane Amanpour, Nellie Bly, Ronan Farrow, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, and Mark Twain.
Plus black-and-white photos of Woodward and Bernstein and a still of Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman from All the President’s Men.
But now that dream was over, and I’d found that the news org I’d dedicated nearly my entire adulthood to wasn’t any better than the corrupt lupine politicians and businesses we were supposed to be covering.
No matter how long I’d been festering, my twenty-year-old brother had chosen the wrong day for an intervention.
“Get out!” I screeched at him. “Get out! Get out! Get out!”
“Stop yer hissin’, you pitiful feckin’ vampire.
” Unlike Maem, Granni, and me, Albie had grown up in Scotland, and his Highland accent was back in full effect now that he’d returned from uni to do a summer sentry internship at the castle in our kingdom town of Faoiltiarn.
“Uncle Mag and Aunt Tara’re wanting a meeting with ye, aren’t they? ”
“With me?” I croaked as Albie hauled my tired body out of bed and slung me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
Why would the King and Queen of the Scottish Wolves want a meeting with me?
It occurred to me I should probably ask that question out loud. “Why would the King and Queen—”
“Not sure. Dinnae ask.” Albie kicked open the bathroom door and set me down on my feet, fully clothed, inside the tub.
“Here’s the soap, you walking bag of goblin stench.” He tossed an unopened bar of Imperial Leather at me. “Make yourself presentable, in case they want to talk to you about my application to the Royal Wolf Guard.”
With that, he wrenched the handle for the showerhead all the way to the right, hitting me with a spray of cold water that fully woke me up and made me scream words that were strictly forbidden in the WolfNet Gazette’s style guide.
“I’m giving you ten minutes!” Albie called over my outraged shrieks and vows of fratricide.
He stomped out of the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.
Albie loved me, he did. And I loved him back.
Which was why, after the water warmed up, I stripped out of my soggy clothes and actually put some effort into looking halfway decent for the meeting with my royal aunt and uncle.
Not that I fully approved of Albie’s months-brewing plan to drop out of uni to join Faoiltiarn’s Royal Wolf Guard, with the eventual goal of working his way up the ranks to follow in his birth father’s footsteps and become the Kingdom Enforcer.
Our maem would not be happy when she found out my baby brother was dead serious about his summer sentry internship and had no intention of returning to the University of Edinburgh to finish up his business degree.
The stepfather I’d called Da—the wolf Albie never got to meet—had died serving as Faoiltiarn’s Kingdom Enforcer, far away from his pregnant new wife who, despite their short time together, never truly recovered from his loss.
But there was zero chance the Irish Wolves would ever return to raid our village for she-wolf brides again—at least not within our lifetimes.
And Albie was my baby brother. If his biggest dream in life was to stay right here in our frozen-in-time Highland village, doing the exact same job his long-ago ancestors would have done, who was I to stop him?
I’d moved to North America in search of a thoroughly modern life, and what had that gotten me?
Back in my childhood bedroom at the age of thirty-two with no job, no mate, and no money.
I hadn’t thought I’d wanted or needed the last two while living for my job.
But I’d learned just how empty my life was after getting summarily dismissed from the WolfNet Gazette.
I was prepared to praise Albie to the high heavens if that was what it took to get him whatever he wanted. After growing up with a shadow of the maem I once had, it was the least he deserved.
However, our aunt and uncle by marriage barely acknowledged Albie for bringing me to them before announcing that I would be dispatched to Ireland—a country that had issued a travel ban on all wolves from or associated with Scotland after the Bloody February Battle that took Da’s life two decades ago.
Apparently, they wanted me to serve as our kingdom’s diplomat for possible peace talks with Naomi, the Queen of the Irish Wolves.
Despite the fact that I…
1. Had only recently gotten back to Scotland after going to college and working in North America
2. Had never met Naomi, the younger sister neither Aunt Tara nor my maem had talked to in over two decades, and probably most importantly
3. Had no idea how to diplomat.
Diplomat-ing was a job that required loads of face-to-face contact and negotiation skills.
In other words, the exact opposite of a holoscribe—a faceless journalist who delivered all their immersive news stories through digital avatars.
Mine had been a purple baby koala named Kiwi that I hadn’t been allowed to take with me after I was scrubbed from the WolfNet Gazette roster.
Hence, my first follow-up question to their unexpected pronouncement: “I’m sorry, but… why me?”
I shook my head at the King and Queen of the Scottish Wolves, who sat in thrones on a raised dais that allowed them to peer down their royal noses as they informed me I’d be heading to Ireland to broker peace talks with the Irish Wolves. In less than two weeks.
King Magnus had been a rugby player when he met Aunt Tara, with a reputation for never backing down from a fight. But suddenly, he was more interested in picking a piece of lint off his belted plaid, which was draped over an old-fashioned tunic jacket.
Leaving my Aunt Tara, who looked extra-queenly today in a diaphanous draped silk gown and golden stilettos, to inform me, “The missive that was couriered to us specifically requested you at this date and time.”
I glanced over my shoulder at my brother, who was doing his best impression of a true sentry—eyes trained straight ahead, like he wasn’t hanging on every single word of the conversation we’d both assumed would revolve around him.
Albie did not meet my gaze. I suspected he believed this still might be some kind of test, and that his application to the Royal Guard depended on me passing it.
Just in case he was right, I asked, “Can Albie—” I cleared my throat, remembering what he’d told me about wanting us to use his full name now that he was technically an adult. “Can Alban the Second join me?”
“No,” Aunt Tara answered, nearly before I’d fully gotten the question out. “Obviously, I’d rather send our twin sons to handle this matter. Rory and Cormac have trained all of their lives to act as our kingdom’s representatives.”
She cut her eyes to the side, visibly fuming, before letting out a sigh that somehow managed to be imperious and long-suffering at the same time.
“But as I said, it can only be you. You—and you alone—must meet with the Irish Bears, who will then escort you to talk with my little sister, the Queen of the Irish Wolves.” Her voice took on the same tone Maem’s did when dealing with the kids who sniffed glue in the schoolhouse where she still taught.
“You specifically coming alone was part of Sadie’s conditions for facilitating these talks. ”
Sadie…
A memory flashed through my mind of Granni’s daughter, a bear shifter who’d been captured by the Scottish Wolves and held for interrogation, strapped to my bed, when I was twelve.
She and Granni had raged at each other before Sadie was rescued by a small army of Irish Bears, and Granni never heard from her again. Was Sadie meeting me exactly once as an innocent little girl the reason she’d said it had to be me?
Also…
“Sadie sent this letter—not your sister?” I asked Aunt Tara out loud. I was no longer being paid a pitiful wage to dig up stories about the powers that be, but my holoscribe instincts came back online in an instant.
Tara’s beautiful face darkened, and she slipped back into her frank Canadian accent to say, “Listen, here are the questions Magnus and I want you to ask my sister, along with terms we’d be willing to accept for an official peace decree between our two kingdoms.”
Okay, I guessed this Ireland trip wasn’t so much an invitation as an order.
One I supposed I could have turned down, but I sensed something behind the request that made it impossible for an unemployed holoscribe like me to do so.
A story.
Instead of telling them, “Hell, no—I’m way too busy festering in my depression bed to go on weird side quests,” I pulled out the NanoTab I always stowed in the pocket of my cargo pants before leaving the house and started scribbling notes with the stylus.
That was my first mistake.
[Secure Kingdoms Network - Encrypted Message Thread]
Sadie: Naomi, hi-hi! The courier we sent just came back with word from your sister.
Naomi: Don’t call her my sister. She’s dead to me.
Sadie: Okay, well, the dead Scottish Queen got back to me.
Naomi: What did she say?
Sadie: I thought you weren’t interested.
Naomi: Sadie.
Sadie: She said YES! Dorcas will be coming here in just a couple of weeks!!!
Naomi: Good. The Final Prophecy can finally be fulfilled.
Sadie: Yes. Thank the three gods.
Sadie: Naomi?
Naomi: What?
Sadie: Are you ever afraid that we’re not doing the right thing?
Naomi: I don’t waste time on feelings anymore, only action. But if I did allow myself to feel, I’d be more afraid that we’ll have gone through all this trouble and it won’t change anything.
Sadie: Do you believe the three serpent gods are false prophets?
Naomi: I don’t believe in anything anymore. You know that. But if there’s a chance this will work—that Sea’s and Wild’s deaths will actually mean something if we do this—then we have to try.
Sadie: I’m not so sure.
Naomi: Feel uncertain as much as you want. But make sure Dorie Scotswolf’s at the Three God’s Lake on the designated date.