Alban
I kept my mate up late on Christmas night—frantic to reclaim her after a whole day of having to put up with the other male wolves ogling her at the town-wide celebration supper.
None of them dared to express their jealousy or even tease me about being the luckiest wolf in Faoiltiarn.
They kent better. I didn’t share any kind of mental bond with them, but I was fairly sure they’d guessed what I would do if any unmated male so much as let her name pass through their unworthy mouths.
Still, I saw their covetous looks. Even when Leora took the stage before Christmas supper to lead the kingdom in a solemn prayer for the safe return of our unheated she-wolves, her sister, and the rest of the St. Ailbe brides. And it was hell on Earth to allow them to get their eyeful.
Then halfway through supper, Leora excused herself from the royal table and went off somewhere with Tara.
I tried not to be a psycho about her leaving my sight in a castle packed with male wolves. I ken none of them would approach her with my scent clinging to her every pore.
Iain slid into Leora’s abandoned seat to update me about his research into the Irish Wolves’ situation.
“A couple of weird things have come up,” he told me. “As I said before, that Irish billionaire wasn’t home when they landed, but I decided to have a look around his camera system anyway. It took about a century to earn an invitation.”
I’d worked just enough with Iggle and Tee to guess that was his Scottish geek way of saying he’d hacked into Declan McMahon’s security system. “What did you find?”
“Nothing,” Iain answered with a shake of his head. “Everything from that day has been erased, or someone turned the cameras off. Either would have been smart on the Irish Wolves' part. But …”
“If it took you over a month to crack in, how did the Irish wolves manage to do it?” I finished, easily guessing what he’d say next.
I frowned, remembering how that old-school Hunter Wolf of theirs was dressed in a bear skin coat as if we were still living in the Viking Age.
Also, the raiding party who’d taken everyone but the queen—they'd covered themselves in rabbit pelts to disguise their scents instead of using a modern cologne like Keinwulf.
“They only used auld tactics to pull off their mission,” I said to Iain. “I don’t see any of them breaking into a million-dollar security system. We need to take a second look at Declan McMahon.”
“I came to that conclusion myself, too, and that's what brings us to the second weird thing.” Iain shifted on the bench seat and leaned further in to tell me, “As far as I can tell, Declan McMahon is taking a hiatus from his company. I can’t find any online reports of him anywhere. And he was supposed to attend Davos with his two business partners, but all three of them pulled out in October.”
My skin prickled. “Just a few weeks before the Second Irish Wolves Invasion.”
“Exactly! And get this, when I dug further into Declan’s business trip, I found out the plane was re-routed mid-flight.”
“To where?”
Iain’s shoulders sank. “Still trying to find out. I’m also looking into his business partners.
But the three of them got rich off of the payment processing software they invented, so you can imagine invitations to snoop into their personal business are hard-earned.
I’ll keep on trying until the February trip, though.
Meanwhile, this is what I’ve managed to come up with so far … ”
I listened carefully to what Iain had to say about Declan’s business partners, Tadhg Ryan and Cian Mahoney. Apparently, they were Declan’s rugby teammates from university who’d helped him grow his KaCh$ng app into a multi-billion-pound business before any of them had broken their thirties.
But none of them had any of the sure markings of a wolf trying to navigate the human world: mysterious disappearances during the full moon, rumored drug problems, last names that included “Wolf” or some form of the Gaelic for that word, or mates that they’d married after a whirlwind courtship.
Tadhg had even divorced his wife a couple of years ago, a British model that he’d met at a full moon party in Koh Samui, Thailand. And according to Iain, “He failed to go completely mad as my da and Uncle Hamish did for years. Far as I can tell, he didn't even take a day off of work.”
So no, the KaCh$ng billionaires were definitely not wolves, but it seemed beyond the realm of possibility that they hadn’t actually helped the Irish Wolves pull off that kidnapping before their own mysterious disappearances. So, the question became, why?
I might have gone on discussing the subject with Iain for even longer, but shortly after Iain dropped the divorce nugget, I noticed my mate hadn’t returned yet, and she’d been gone for nearly an hour.
So, without so much as an “excuse me” to Iain, I left the table and tracked her scent to the library where I found …
Nothing. Just her and Tara sitting on one of the reading couches. Not the same one we’d completed Leora’s heat cycle on, I noted. That couch seemed to have disappeared from the room. Knowing Tara, she’d probably burned it.
They were having such an intense conversation, they didn’t notice right away that I’d entered the room.
“It’s your decision to make,” the queen was saying to Leora, her face emphatic. “You’re not in Canada anymore, I don’t see why you have to—”
Tara cut off when she saw me standing there in the doorway. And even more disturbing than that, Leora’s side of the mate bond abruptly went mute.
Before I could form a mental question to ask my mate, though, Tara surprised the hell out of me. She heaved herself off the couch and gave me a traditional greeting.
“Kingdom Defender, good day,” she said with a formal nod and a glance back at her sister. “I hear that you have plans for a wedding on New Year’s Day.”
“Aye.” My answer was one stingy word because I suspected her sudden adherence to tradition had something to do with her not wanting me to marry her sister on January first.
I suspected correctly.
“I was trying to convince Leora to wait a little longer,” she said in a careful tone that could almost be mistaken for a graceful suggestion.
“Perhaps until after the second Ireland trip. If it’s successful, I know Naomi would appreciate being able to see our oldest sister get married.
I think it would make Leora so happy to have both of her sisters there. ”
I didn’t feel insulted. The queen kept her tone respectful enough, and she was right to play the Leora-happy card. Her sister’s happiness was my number one mission in life.
This line of conversation might have relaxed me. However, Leora’s side of the mate bond remained mute. Our wedding date hadn’t been all they’d been talking about. Leora was keeping something from me.
“I would like that, too,” I said to Queen Tara, straining to maintain a civil tone. “But as I told Leora, I can’t leave her here pregnant with my bairn without her becoming my wife in the eyes of the law.”
“Because then she’s not allowed to leave Faoiltiarn without your escort while pregnant,” Tara pointed out, all that fake grace seeping out of her expression. “Every single right she has under the New St. Ailbe Ordnung disappears once you’re officially married, and we revert to Faoiltiarn law.”
I crooked my head at the banrigh. Apparently, my father had been wrong.
Our queen had gotten around to reading through the Faoiltiarn rule book after all.
That escort law was one of the older ones, made back in a time before cars and other modes of safe transport when anything could happen to a vulnerable she-wolf in the dark.
But that wasn’t why I wanted to marry her sister before I left for Ireland in February—at least, it wasn’t the only reason why.
I tried to come up with an answer that wouldn’t scare the queen or my mate.
But then, it turned out I didn’t have to say anything.
“Tara, we talked about this.” Leora stood up from the couch to come to my defense.
“He’s not trying to own me like Joshua. He’s my mate, and he’s protective.
Magnus goes with you to Edinburgh for your hair appointments, and you lived there alone for years before the two of you met.
Do you really think Alban wants me, a she-wolf who doesn’t even know how to use a smartphone roaming around Scotland by myself?
I don’t even want that for me. I’m fine staying here until Alban gets back from Ireland.
And I want to marry him on New Year’s Day. ”
Leora took her sister’s hands in hers. “For a wedding gift, can you please just be happy for me?”
Tara frowned down at Leora. Then glared at me. Hard.
But in the end, she gave in with a “Fine, I’ll add your New Year’s wedding to the post-dinner Christmas announcements. I suppose it will cheer everyone up after I tell them about Gail deciding to move back to Glasgow and leaving us high and dry without a teacher until further notice.”
The Gail announcement didn’t come as a surprise.
Her husband was currently serving out a multi-year sentence for assault and attempted heat coercion in the dungeon below the castle.
The humiliation of the situation had to be a whole nother circle of hell in a town like Faoiltiarn.
I doubted Gail would have stayed even for the remainder of the year if not for her iron-clad contract and the money the kingdom had already paid her upfront.
My ex was leaving, and Leora, the only she-wolf I wanted, would officially become mine on New Year’s Day. I should have been happy—ecstatic even that my mate appeared as eager to marry me as I was her. This was the exact opposite of my parent’s doomed-from-the-start relationship.
But I didn’t like how her side of the mate bond had stayed muted all throughout supper. And though she smiled big and bright when Dorie and Hamish led a standing round of applause for our wedding announcement, she didn’t relax her hold on the bond. She refused to let me in.