Alban
When she-wolfs get pregnant, both they and their mates cease being able to turn for an entire twelve months, even during full moons.
This was how we were designed on a biological level—our creator’s way of ensuring a she-wolf reaches full gestation and that she has someone on hand to protect her while she is at her most vulnerable.
So nae, I couldn’t turn. But like the beast I could no longer access, I paced back and forth inside my cage—the dungeon cage I’d stupidly let Magnus coax me into when he told me they were “having a problem only you can solve with our prisoner.”
The town only had one prisoner in its dungeons at the moment. Evan—that Glasgow tadger who was currently serving out his sentence for attempting to take my mate by force.
It might have been given more time in a court outside our land.
But the human world had funny notions. Like basic rights, three meals a day, cots, and yard time.
One of our years alone in a pitch-black Faoiltiarn dungeon with only a bucket to piss and shit in and eating two meals of porridge a day felt like ten in the human world—or so Magnus had insisted.
It still hadn’t felt like a good enough punishment for me. And I’d been more than eager to solve that problem for my cousin. With my fists.
Too eager, as it turned out. I didn’t realize I was walking into a trap until I was all the way inside the pitch-black dungeon cage, and Magnus said, “Sorry, Alb. We couldnae think of any other way to contain you while we got this unfortunate situation all sorted out.”
Contain me?
The loud clang of the steel door coming down rang through the dark space before I could turn around to ask the question.
“I choose you, Alban.”
I’d been literally left in the dark, and Leora’s words echoed in my head as I paced back and forth. Like the wolf, I couldn’t become.
I also had unwanted company. The scritch of claws against the stone floor let me know my next-door neighbor was waking up from his mid-day nap.
Oftentimes, prisoners chose to spend as much of their sentence as possible in wolf form. That was the best way to keep warm in the unheated space—not to mention getting a decent night's sleep on the hard stone floor.
I’d heard that proper city wolves had a harder time than us kingdom ones holding on to their humans when they were in wolf form.
I hoped that meant the tadger next door wouldn’t recognize who’d been thrown down in the dungeon with him.
Perhaps he’d stay in wolf form until I figured out why Magnus put me down here in the first place.
No such luck.
The sound of a wolf snorting air told me the other prisoner had caught my scent. A long pause. Then came Evan’s human voice asking, “Is that … is that the Alban Scotswolf? Down here in the dungeon with me?”
I didn’t answer. But I suppose my silence was reply enough for him.
“I can’t believe you’re here.” Evan’s voice floated over to me from the neighboring cage, chock full of glee. “Here I am, serving time with the perfect male Gail constantly compared me to.”
He pitched his voice to a high falsetto.
“Why can’t you be responsible like Alban?
she’d say whenever I spent too much on a night out with the boys.
Alban would never have let that happen, she said, when I gave a pair of muggers our wallets—as if I should’ve tried fighting them off on a street filled with humans.
And, you should have heard the way she sang her ‘Woe is Me’ song after I lost my job because they caught me embezzling.
Whined on for hours about how she should never have left you.
How marrying me was the worst mistake of her life. ”
He made a scoffing noise. “I’m pretty sure that was the real reason she all of a sudden decided it would be a good idea for us to move to her middle-of-nowhere hometown—she wanted to shoot her shot with her “oh-so-noble” Alban Scotswolf.
But did she thank me for trying to take pretty Leora before you did?
No! She left me here to rot in this dungeon! ”
“You think I give one feck about you or Gail?” I asked, even though this was all news to me. “Keep my mate’s name off your tongue.”
“Or what?” Evan countered with a snicker. “You’re going to beat me within an inch of my life again? How? You’re locked away down here, same as me. I just wish I knew for what.”
Evan giggled—actually giggled like a villain from one of Iain’s comic books.
“It would give me something to focus on until I get out of here. I can already picture me tracking Gail to wherever she ran off to and telling her all about how her saintly Alban Scotswolf ended up in the same dungeon as me.”
This time I didn’t answer because, like my dungeon mate, I had not a clue as to why I’d been put down here. Actually, that was information I wanted to ken too.
Until, suddenly, I didn’t.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs, and once again, Magnus appeared with a lit torch.
“Thank feck.” No longer caring what the other male overheard, I called out. “Magnus, why the hell did you lock me down—”
My question cut off when I spotted the male, standing slightly behind my cousin. He was a few inches taller than Leora, with dusty blonde hair and a thin, hollow face. He wore a plain black jacket and a round-brimmed felt hat.
He was also sporting an eye patch.
Eyes … we’d been warned growing up. You must be careful with them. They were the only thing a shift can’t fix. Even Odin, our ancestors’ old god was said to have an eye patch.
This male wasn’t Odin. I’d never seen him before in my life. But I recognized his scent. As it was the other half of Dorie’s.
This was Joshua. Leora’s so-called Benefactor.
The one who was supposed to be dead.
Everything inside of me iced over.
“What are you doing here?” I growled at him.
“I asked your king the same thing,” Joshua answered, his voice terse. “But apparently, there’s some law in your land that makes this wholly unnecessary meeting a requirement.”
No … no … my mind threatened to collapse. There was only one law that would make such a meeting necessary. An old one that went back to our Viking ancestors.
If a male was thought lost at sea or killed on a raid and his she-wolf remarried, the first male could reclaim her—as long as he agreed to leave the village with the female and told her second male of his intention to do so face-to-face.
Joshua let out an aggrieved sigh—right before confirming my worst nightmare. “I’m here to inform you that Leora has fulfilled the requirement to ascend to the position of my wife and will therefore be returning to Canada with me.”
“Like hell!” I shook the cage’s steel bars as if I didn’t ken a wolf had never managed to escape this place in the centuries that had followed its construction.
I was powerless inside this dungeon. Still, I roared. “Leora is my she-wolf. Under my protection. She won’t be going anywhere with you—especially with my bairn in her stomach.”
Joshua shrunk away from my anger like the coward he was. But only for a moment before he straightened back up with a smirk. “That baby is the only reason she’ll be allowed to become my wife. In fact, she begged me for the opportunity.”
Nae! Nae! This wasn’t happening. Leora had agreed to return to Canada with Dorie’s father?
To marry him. Instead of me.
“I’m sorry, Alban,” Magnus said, his voice grim and quiet. “Believe me. Tara and I tried to talk her out of it. But she—”
He didn’t get the chance to finish his explanation.
I couldn’t turn into my wolf, but beast out I did. I roared and ranted. Threw myself into the bars again and again, uncaring of how much it hurt or how futile it was to try to get out. I threatened Joshua with every form of evisceration known to both wolf and man.
“I’ve done my part, Magnus,” Joshua said, his face an unsympathetic mask. “I’ll now return to Canada with Leora and Dorie. I’m sure she’ll thank me profusely for saving her from this unhinged devil.”
Magnus gave me one last sorrowful look before escorting him away. His hands were bound by the law. But I could tell he’d hoped actually seeing the male he was up against would change Joshua’s mind about ripping Leora away from me.
It hadn’t. And I could yell and threaten as much as I wanted. But in the end, they left me down in the pit with nothing but my despair and the sound of Evan’s gleeful laughter.
Still, I continued to roar bloody murder. Even after Joshua and Magnus disappeared up the stairs and the black returned to pitch.
I would hunt him down, I continued to promise myself. I would end him and his father and anyone who aided him along the way. I let myself be swallowed up by a glowing red all-consuming rage, and I lost all time until suddenly, I came to, lying on the floor’s cage.
Had I turned somehow? Nae, my throat box was raw, and my entire body radiated with residual pain from throwing my huge body into the steel bars over and over again. If I had turned, the wolf would have fixed everything that was wrong with me.
The physical stuff, anyway.
“Not so noble now, are you?” Evan called out from the next cell. Apparently, he was still awake.
But he wasn’t the reason I’d come out of my rage fugue, I realized in the next instant.
There was someone else … someone else down here with us in the dark.
I jumped to my feet and sniffed at the air. “Da? Da? Is that you?”
“Aye, ye overgrown rocket," a voice answered in the dark. "Now pipe down, or I’m not going to help ye out of this mess.”