Chapter ELEVEN
–Kaia–
I CAN’T BEGIN to explain how strange it was to find myself walking between two towering medieval Irish warriors toward a castle over a thousand years in my past, having agreed to become their prisoner.
It was one for the books, for damn sure.
Yet I wasn’t scared.
If anything, I was determined.
Frightened for my cousins but mostly determined to do whatever it took to protect them.
Especially Naya, given she’d run alone during her second shift.
I should have returned to the city and dragged her to New Hampshire. Held her at gunpoint if I needed to. Anything to keep her safe. With me and together always.
Now, here I was, not with her.
Nowhere near her and Storm, for that matter.
Instead, I tried my best to take one moment at a time and not panic in general because I felt how dangerous this era was without seeing it firsthand.
Felt it through my wolf and connection with Tréan.
I suspected, even through my growing connection with Bain.
We might have only just met, yet my inner beast merged with his in ways that felt alarming yet natural.
While tall, muscular, and broad-shouldered like Tréan, he had a different vibe.
A teasing, flirtatious nature, he was careful not to turn my way so he didn’t upset or, should I say, disrespect Tréan.
There was something a little sinful about him, too.
Where Tréan was all brawn and heroic protector, Bain had a naughty undercurrent I couldn’t quite lock down. Combined with his looks, I suspected he was used to women fawning over him.
Even though I felt no attraction to him, Bain was just as hot as Tréan with his deep, dark, smoky gray eyes.
His thick black hair was pulled back, and his beard suited his rugged, masculine features.
He was dressed similarly to Tréan in black and carried just as many weapons by the looks of it.
Namely, the monster battle axe strapped to his back.
“’Tis time,”
Tréan said softly before I could ask the endless questions still percolating in my mind.
Why had his brother Callum acted like he did earlier, wailing mournfully and stalking off? If Bain had sensed Naya, had Callum sensed Storm? Was my other cousin in danger outside of the obvious? Then there was this whole Presenting Me As A Prisoner thing.
What did that mean exactly?
I soon found out when Tréan stepped in front of me, met me in the eyes, and said he was sorry.
This was temporary.
“I promise, mate,”
he swore, the struggle in his gaze not all that comforting.
“This is only so believable word travels swiftly to our enemy.”
I had no chance to respond before he chanted away my fur cloak and manifested the last thing I saw coming when he snapped a collar around my neck attached to a rope.
“Are you friggin’ kidding me,”
I exclaimed, astonished.
“Did you seriously just put a collar on me attached to a damn leash?”
It only got worse when Bain pulled my arms behind my back and tied my wrists together.
Oh wait, it did get worse when I suddenly had a gag over my mouth.
“’Tis all right, mo maité,”
Tréan said gently.
“’Twill be temporary.”
“’Twill better be,”
I fumed telepathically, rounding my eyes at him.
“Because this is absolute bullshit.”
Narrowing my gaze, I reminded him what I was all about.
“No man owns me.”
Although he tried to remain serious, the corner of Tréan’s mouth twitched in repressed amusement.
“It better be,”
is what you meant to say as ’twill means it will so you can see how ’twill better be would be—”
“Shut up,”
I bit back, glad my internal voice had as much bite as my actual voice did.
“Your right to school me on my medieval vocabulary ended the moment you brought me back to this era without my permission.”
Bain chuckled and joined the silent chat.
“I like her.”
“Well, I don’t like you.”
I glared over my shoulder at him.
“What kind of brother ties me up and gags me?”
Amusement flashed in his eyes.
“The kind determined to protect our pack and, in turn, you, new sister.”
It was odd having a conversation like this with a relative stranger, but again, every minute that ticked by made me feel closer and closer to Bain.
Calling him my brother seemed normal when it should have seemed crazy.
Crazy wasn’t off the table, though, because I felt like I was heading in that direction when I kept on with this charade without fighting back like any woman in her right mind would.
Especially when I allowed myself to trail after Tréan, who held my stupid leash.
Bain walked beside me with a blade as if keeping me in line.
If all that wasn’t enough, Callum’s impressive mahogany-colored wolf with flecks of tan and gray melted out of the woodland and fell in on my other side, clearly a show of support.
He didn’t say anything telepathically, and that was okay.
I didn’t say anything either when I noticed the blood spatter on his pelt.
There was no need to ask what happened because my wolf knew.
He had hunted down whatever demons came for him when he sniffed me earlier.
While my human half wanted to demand answers, specifically if his demons had anything to do with Storm, my inner beast kept me quiet.
Respected whatever his wolf was going through.
Seeming to sense that, his wolven eyes met mine ever-so-briefly before he looked ahead again.
As much as I didn’t like my current position, I felt oddly grateful for the men around me when two more sizeable wolves appeared through the forest ahead of us, and my inner beast bristled in warning.
It didn’t like them.
Not how they looked or smelled.
Their scent reminded me of Niall’s. Corrupt and slimy. Like rotting roses. Having clearly just hunted in a more vicious manner than Callum, both had blood dripping from their muzzles, and they definitely felt off somehow.
As Bain and Callum had done, they lowered to Tréan in submission.
“Stand and shift,”
Tréan said, his voice commanding in a way that turned me on when that’s the last thing I should feel right now.
“I’ve captured a wolf that will give me much power over our enemy.”
The wolves shifted into two medieval warriors who were sizeable but not as large as Tréan and his brothers.
I inwardly cringed when their eyes raked over me with appreciation, and they inhaled a little too deeply for my taste.
Interestingly, the fact they were catching my scent in more ways than one didn’t bother me so much as them blatantly disrespecting their alpha by doing so.
I might not be all that happy with him at the moment, but I knew Tréan deserved better than that.
Knew that, like me, he lived to protect those he cared about.
“She’s newly made,”
one of them said, sniffing again as if catching my scent on the breeze.
His wolven eyes flared.
“And of Tadc’s bloodline.”
“Yet suited to mate with ye.”
The other sniffed the wind as well.
When his lecherous gaze lingered on my cleavage, I wanted to whip a blade into his ball sack.
“Ye have caught a grand prize, indeed, alpha.”
It somewhat registered that they spoke in Irish Gaelic, but oddly, I heard it in English, and I had a feeling they would hear my dialect in their language until I spoke their tongue fluently.
It was sort of alarming how I knew I would learn their language—that it was already coming to me through my bond with Tréan.
“I have caught a grand prize and intend to make her worth our while.”
Tréan gestured ahead.
“Go rally everyone in the courtyard so they might see her.”
The men nodded with unmistakable relish, eyed me one last time, then vanished into the woodland.
“Stellar pack you have so far,”
I muttered into Tréan’s and Bain’s minds, having no idea if Callum heard me too.
“I take it those are some of the bad guys you’re trying to weed out?”
“They are,”
Tréan replied, his internal voice like a soothing balm on my raw nerves.
I might be tough, but the two I’d just met left a bad taste in my mouth.
“Though fools, they will be useful when they carry word of you back to my enemy.”
“Ah, so they’re the little Viking dragon girl haters,”
I surmised.
“Two of a few,”
Bain replied.
“The one you will soon meet, however, is far worse.”
Callum’s wolf made a low, rumbling growl that wasn’t necessarily threatening but more disgusted, as if he couldn’t agree more.
I was about to ask why this soon-to-be banished wolf was worse when the forest gave way to verdant green hills nestled in the heart of more trees.
My breath caught at the sight of the wooden castle steeped in fog, sitting proudly on the highest, sweeping slope, complete with a border wall and moat.
Sturdy, strong, and angular, it was massive.
Impressive as the first rays of dawn broke over the treeline. It didn’t have the bones of a majestic fairytale stone castle with sweeping towers and turrets but the stalwart, weathered-by-time feeling of an ancient ship that had long sailed stormy seas.
I liked it.
A lot.
It felt like me somehow.
“For someone raised in such a difficult way, you think poetically,”
Tréan mused into my mind.
“I had no choice,”
I murmured before I could stop myself, but I knew he would know soon enough if he didn’t already.
He would see every moment of my life.
Understand that when we were children, I had to learn how to tell stories to help Storm and Naya get to sleep because we couldn’t afford books.
I inhaled deeply, pulling in the scent of sea salt on the cool, refreshing wind.
Listened to the sound of distant crashing waves in an ocean I couldn’t see from here but knew was just beyond the woods behind the castle.
Autumn was right around the corner, but summer hadn’t let go yet.
The closer we got to the castle, the stranger I felt.
Almost as if I’d been here before.
That it had been waiting for my arrival.
Or was that Tréan who had been waiting? Because somehow, he and this place he called home felt like one and the same.
I might have been on guard as we started over the drawbridge, but I still marveled at everything, from the portcullis we passed beneath to the moat and the sturdy workmanship of the walls and gate.
Who knew I’d be driving away from the Boston skyline yesterday morning and walking into a medieval Irish castle over a thousand years in my past less than forty-eight hours later? And on a damn leash, no less.
Sure as heck, not me.
Yet, for all my awe and disbelief, I sobered up quickly when we entered the courtyard, and I saw the crowd I’d drawn.
My inner beast had sensed the wolves stalking through the foggy hills outside, eyeing me with curiosity, but these weren’t all wolves.
Most were in human form and as foreign-looking as any medieval person would look to a twenty-first-century time traveler.
And every last one fell to a knee and lowered their head to Tréan, giving me an even better appreciation of how respected he was.
Revered even.
Yet, genuinely liked, too, it seemed, when he tossed the end of my leash to Bain and boomed, “Rise, my pack, for I have missed you!”
I had fully expected some great, commandeering, kingly speech from him, but it seemed Tréan did things differently because the next thing I knew, Bain and Callum stood closer to me, clearly my guards, as Tréan fell to a knee and held out his arms to numerous children who raced into them as well as a few wolf pups.
He laughed and embraced them, making my heart race in a whole new way, before he stood and greeted his people, embracing many or clasping them on the shoulder.
“What is this?”
I murmured into any mind that would bother answering me.
“What am I looking at?”
Seriously.
Because I thought after the kingly speech, there would be some heavy-handed alpha crap going on.
Tréan would parade me around like his hard-won prize and their salvation, then his creepy mutinous wolves would be off to work their mischief, but no.
This was anything but that so far.
“You are looking at Tréan,”
Bain responded with affection and pride in his internal voice.
“You’re looking at why he is our alpha.”
“I don’t get it,”
I said.
“This isn’t what I expected.
Aren’t leaders supposed to be badass and ruthless?”
“When they need to be,”
he replied.
“Yet they also need to be a friend and protector.
Trusted like they are your own.
Loved like kin. That is how it is with wolves. He will be strong and ruthless when ‘tis time, but you might not like it so much.”
“Like it? Maybe not.
But I can take it, and I’ll bet you’re figuring that out because we’re bonding, too, right? Just in a different way than I am with Tréan.”
“We are,”
Bain confirmed.
“Yet still, you might be surprised by your response to how tough he’s about to become.”
It seemed he didn’t have me figured out at all.
I knew tough guys.
I’d been around them my whole life.
Yet, as it turned out, I was looking at this from the wrong angle, and frustratingly enough, he was right.
Seen clearly when a stunning woman with dirty blonde hair pulled back into multiple braids sauntered into the courtyard as if she owned the place.
Obviously a fighter with a long, lean, fit body yet just enough curves to make most eyes turn her way, she shot me a filthy look in passing as the crowd parted to give her access to Tréan so she could pull him into her arms.
I’d long avoided two things: commitment and jealousy.
Both served no purpose, and one always went hand in hand with the other, so it was a win-win to avoid anything that made me feel vulnerable or act foolishly.
Yet it seemed my long-held rules didn’t work here.
Not one bit, because it took more strength than I had to hold back.
Plotting my every move, I intended to shed my chains, snag a blade off Bain and do bad things to the bitch she wouldn’t see coming when her lips locked with Tréan’s.
Fortunately, I suppose, Bain tugged the rope attached to my collar, warning me that would be a bad idea, and Callum—silent brooding wolf he’d been up to this point—rested a mighty paw on my foot, making it clear he would take measures I wouldn’t like if I made one wrong move.
“I don’t like you either,”
I snapped mentally, hoping he heard.
“Just so you know.”
Of course, he didn’t respond, but I swear I caught a ripple in his fur.
I was too new to wolfhood to know what that meant, but I’d find out eventually.
Something told me the big bad wolves on either side of me were going to be part of my sphere going forward in a way I needed to pay attention to.
They would be the brothers I never had, and there was no way to know what to make of that because, right now, they were still strangers.
“You will thank us later for stopping you,”
Bain said.
“If you do anything foolish, it might ruin Tréan’s chance to handle Blaithin how she needs to be handled.”
I had no chance to ask what that meant before Tréan pulled back abruptly from the kiss and shook his head.
They exchanged words I couldn’t hear, but based on the growing anger in her eyes and the redness of her face, she didn’t like what he was saying.
Every fiber of my being tensed when Blaithin unsheathed a blade, aimed it at Tréan’s chest and roared loud enough for all to hear.
“You dare to exile me? Your woman and most loyal subject?”
She was his number one mutinous wolf? Really? I hadn’t seen that coming.
Sensing Blaithin could fight well, I growled into Bain’s and Callum’s minds, “Let me go.
I can fight and help him.”
Tréan might have proven he was a good fighter in New Hampshire, but I didn’t like his vulnerability right now.
Especially when I spied the two slimeballs I’d met earlier edging closer.
“Our alpha does not need your help,”
Bain replied, sounding amused again.
“He needs no one’s help.
Only your compliance right now.”
“Is it because of her?”
Blaithin fumed at Tréan, gesturing my way with not just disgust this time but pity, sniffing derisively as if she found my scent unsavory.
“A newly made pup? She will never be able to satisfy you, and you know it.
You would be bored of her within hours, as you are with all females but me.”
The hell he would.
I was damn good in bed.
I bristled with jealousy again and hated every minute of it, yet my eyes grazed over the numerous women standing in the courtyard.
How many of them had he slept with? And did he really tire of them so quickly? Given my own rather sketchy past with men, I knew better than to be curious and irked, but there was no stopping my frustration.
I noticed the children had been ushered away, and the crowd had grown silent.
Quiet enough to tell me they knew things would only escalate between Tréan and his woman, as she called herself.
“You are right, Blaithin,”
Tréan replied, loud enough for all to hear.
“I will tire of her, but still, if she gets me what I want, I won’t hesitate to make her mine and grow stronger through the Fated Mate Cycle, and we both know our enemy, Tadc, would not want that.”
He unsheathed his blade and perked his eyebrows, taunting her.
“Especially not if my mate is of his blood.
Just imagine how helpful that will be for me?”
How helpful? Add it to my growing list of questions because I didn’t much like what that implied.
It sounded like all Tréan’s sweet assurances could be part of an ulterior plan.
That I’d been duped, and now here I was, all tied up and gagged like a proper little idiot.
And what Tréan said next only seemed to drive that fact home.