Chapter 16 The Wolf Queen of the Gods
The Wolf Queen of the Gods
Twenty years ago…
If Sadie had one regret about the events leading up to Bloody February, it was not going straight home from Scotland. The community bear army had just invaded Faoiltiarn to save her from Alban Scotswolf’s house and break Declan out of his jail cell.
After navigating a sea of doubt and regret, she and Tadhg had finally exchanged bond bites, officially making the four of them a quad and fulfilling the prophecy of the Irish Bear Queen.
They were so giddy, so drunk on finally being whole, they’d sent the rest of the villagers on ahead.
For an entire night, they’d holed up in the honeymoon suite of a hotel, pledging their love and celebrating the restoration of their quad in ways that left Sadie sore, bruised, but happier than she ever could have imagined.
She’d grown up ostracized and confused in her narrow-minded Wolfennite community. But now she could see the rest of her happy life laid out in front of her like a road of gold that never ended.
By the time they landed at the Wicklow estate, Sadie’s chest felt fit to burst as she walked hand in hand with Tadhg, her hulk of a Mountain King, and Cian, her ever-silent Shadow King.
“Right,” her High King, Declan, who was leading the way, declared. “First, we’ll feed our Sadie. Then one more round of celebrating. Then we join whatever festival they’ve no doubt already started around our lake.”
Sadie laughed at the thought of her husbands actually delaying their appearance at a kingdom-wide celebration just to spend more time in bed with her.
Seriously, how lucky could one girl who didn’t even know she was actually a bear until a few months ago get?
But then, just after they walked through the mansion’s doors, Declan extended his hand to the Mountain King and said, “If I could have my pendant back, Tadhg.”
Tadhg stopped. Frowned. “What do you mean? I don’t have your pendant.”
“What do you mean, ‘What do you mean?’” Declan also stopped walking and turned all the way around to address his fellow king. “Did you not gather my bear pendant with all my other things?”
Sadie, too, was confused. Declan had shifted as soon as he and Sadie were captured during a visit to her old Wolfennite community, to keep from having to answer any of the questions of Alban Scotswolf, the Faoiltiarn Kingdom Enforcer.
Declan’s tactic had worked—Alban had not only given up on grilling both of them, he’d left Faoiltiarn to resume his futile search of Ireland’s Above for the Irish Wolves and the Wolfennite Brides they’d stolen.
Neither Alban nor his warriors had even been there when the bears invaded.
So it had been easy, under Tadhg’s generalship, to not only save Sadie but break Declan out of his prison and gather what was left of his things.
He’d been forced to borrow a t-shirt and pair of sweatpants from Tadhg for the plane ride home.
But he wore the same shoes he’d had on when he and Sadie were captured, and Declan had spent much of the flight back to Wicklow returning business emails on the phone Tadhg had retrieved for him.
But now, something grim shifted across his expression. “I thought you were keeping my pendant safe for me,” he said to Tadhg.
“No, Dec. I wouldn’t have done that.” Tadhg wore the same terrible look on his face. “That pendant is the key to our kingdom gate. I would’ve made sure you had it back. Expeditiously.”
Sadie’s stomach dropped as she realized this was the same pendant they used to press into the stone to open the Wicklow gates.
As their kingdom members sometimes complained when no one was available to let them back in after a trip to the Above, the pendants, which were held by only a handful of people, were the only way to get into their land of secret kingdoms.
Declan cursed viciously, though he tried not to swear in front of Sadie. And the Shadow King dropped her hand. Pulling out his own Celtic-knot bear pendant, he rushed with long strides toward the ballroom where the stone circle that was actually an elevator to their secret kingdom stood.
“Maybe the bears just failed to pick it up,” Sadie suggested as Declan turned to follow behind Cian. “Or maybe they disposed of it because it’s made of silver. I know I don’t…”
She trailed off because her other two kings were already too far gone in the distance to hear what she was saying.
“Let’s hope you’re correct, strawberry,” Tadhg said, gathering her in his arms for a reassuring hug.
She was not.
When they stepped out of the Wicklow tower gate onto the lawn of the lake that separated the three kings’ residences, they found a huge crowd gathered around the High King, all trying to speak at once.
About the Scottish invaders they had “chased off.”
“Came in here greener than grass with swords unsheathed,” Séamus, one of the older villagers who’d remained behind along with the wives and children, was telling Declan.
His voice was reedy, but pitched in a way that allowed him to be heard over all the others shouting to get their High King’s attention.
They didn’t bother to address the pale figure beside him since everyone in the Secret Kingdom knew Cian didn’t believe in talking.
“They asked after the Irish Wolves,” an old lady chimed in, “and we let them know they wouldn’t be getting any intel out of us unless they were wanting to know where to shove it.”
The villagers laughed.
And Séamus finished the story. “The red-haired one that was leading them—had some bulk on him, he did. Could’ve been your brother, Tadhg! Anyroad, he took one look at us and told his army to follow him. Nipped right back to the tower without another word to us.”
“You mean, they ran off with tails between their legs!” another older lady called from the crowd. “If they’d tried to invade us, those of us remaining would have given those dogs a beating, wouldn’t we have?”
The rest of the bears cheered in agreement.
But Sadie and her kings did not join in.
The real story was unfolding in all their minds. Theirs was not the only stone gate. And just getting into the bear kingdom would have been all the intel Alban needed to make his next move.
“Do your pendants…” Sadie started to ask.
“…work on the wolves’ secret kingdom gate as well?” Tadhg finished. His face had become a grim mask. “Yes, they do.”
Sadie’s hand flew to her mouth. “We have to warn Naomi and her kings.”
But by the time they were able to get through to them on their kingdom-to-kingdom communication system, it was already too late.
The Scottish Wolves were practically at their kingdom’s doors. And before Tadhg could re-raise their community army to go to the wolves’ aid, Bloody February was over and done.
Sea and Wild, two of the three Irish kings, had died, and they found Alban Scotswolf with his throat slit in the foyer of the dead Sea King’s castle.
The weeks had blurred after that. Sadie had stayed with her best friend as long as she could, considering she was also pregnant with triplets and the bear gestation period was months shorter than the wolves’.
Naomi had been mostly unresponsive the entire time.
“After Naomi gives birth, she’ll come back to you,” Sadie assured her best friend’s remaining husband, the city king they called Dublin, before she left to return to her own kingdom. “Motherhood will help her heal.”
But even as she said it, Sadie was pretty sure she was lying. To Dublin and herself.
There was a hollowness to Naomi that had not been there before. Her pretty features had sharpened overnight, casting her in the role of someone who would never stop being angry.
The Scottish males who returned empty-handed from the Bloody February campaign assumed Dublin had killed their leader. But it had been Naomi.
And it took years before Sadie was able to blur the image of Naomi’s blood-spattered face standing over Alban’s dead body.
Sadie returned to her kingdom, her kings, her children…
and the quiet guilt of knowing Declan’s pendant had opened the door to everything that followed.
The years passed with less and less contact.
They both raised their children, though Naomi never went into heat again, while Sadie did so three more times.
Then, one day shortly after the fourteenth birthday of Sadie’s oldest triplets, she received a message from Naomi, rushed and urgent.
Naomi: Meet me at the Sanctuary Kingdom Temple. Get here as fast as you can. Come alone.
Sadie did as she asked. Mostly out of loyalty. It had been over two years since Naomi’s last message.
The Naomi she found in the temple’s waiting room was much changed. Her hair was a mess of tangles, and she was skinnier than Sadie had ever seen her.
Her eyes were no longer hollow. They were crazed.
“Naomi, what’s happening? Why did you—”
“Come with me!” Naomi grabbed Sadie by the hand without so much as a hello and led her through a door bearing a sign that said, “Temple Clerics ONLY. No Visitors Allowed. NO EXCEPTIONS.”
“Are we supposed to be in here?” Sadie asked, casting the warning a worried look as Naomi blasted through the door, dragging Sadie behind her.
“All these years, I was trying to figure it out….” Naomi answered like she was picking up from an entirely different conversation.
“I’ve been studying the god tech and its language for over a decade.
Yet, I’m no closer to decoding their language or breaking down how the gods made all of these amazing things that have lasted for thousands of years.
Not hundreds of years, Sadie. Thousands. ”
Naomi’s mad eyes glittered under the hallway’s green light. “Do you know how few human-made materials on Earth can survive a thousand years intact? Even in a sealed environment, you get molecular degradation by the time a millennium rolls around.”
Naomi shook her head. “I just didn’t understand how this could work. And then Amanda stopped by the castle.”
Amanda. That was what Tadhg would call “a deep cut.” Sadie hadn’t heard Amanda’s name in years.