Page 11

Wicklow and Other Mysteries

Alban

“Any news?” Magnus asked as soon as he answered Alban’s first call on the satellite phone.

Alban had been issued the sat device years ago but had only recently learned to use it on the boat ride across the Irish Sea to the east coast of what humans now called Ireland.

The wolves, however, had their own name for this country: Tìrarnàimhdean, Scottish Gaelic for “Our Enemy’s Land.”

Alban had spent the past thirty-six hours berating himself for having forgotten, even for a moment, that the wolves of this land had been their archnemeses for longer than Ireland had been nicknamed the Emerald Isle.

“Please tell me you found my sister and all the others.” Magnus must have put the phone on speaker.

Their new banrigh’s voice interrupted Alban’s rueful thoughts.

“Leora and I are beside ourselves.”

Leora .

..

The older sister, whom the queen had only recently discovered had also traveled from her Wolfennite community in Canada to their wolf kingdom in Scotland.

An image of the pretty she-wolf’s open and trusting face, covered in brown freckles, flashed through his mind.

But he couldn’t let himself get distracted by her.

Again.

Instead, he sat down on the edge of the Wicklow hotel room’s bed and delivered his report to Magnus and Tara.

“We’ve just made landfall after tracking them to the west coast of Tìrarnàimhdean. The boat we suspect they took blipped off all visible radars a few hours ago. But it looks like the coordinates stop right at Wicklow, a posh county south of Dublin.”

Alban hadn’t wanted to stop and rest the previous night, but he’d had to allow the other Scottish Wolves he’d brought with him to recover.

It had been over twenty-four hours since they set off after the bloody Irish Wolves who had kidnapped every Faoiltiarn she-wolf of claiming age, along with all the Wolfennites.

Well, almost all of them.

Alban thought of Leora, the queen’s older sister, whom he’d found squatting in his cabin, along with her eleven-year-old daughter, Dorie.

They’d completely derailed his initial plan to live as a recluse.

And he failed to remedy the situation when he’d tried to deliver them to the castle the night prior to the royal wedding…

.

“I suppose we should get going. Thank you again so very much for hosting us, Alban. I’ll wash and return your clothes as soon as I can.”

Alban had been determined to be rid of them and get back to his cabin, where he could resume his previously planned life of solitude.

The pretty, plump little she-wolf had already taken too much of his time—not to mention the kilt he’d had to lend her because she’d wolfed out during the full moon, shredding her black version of the plain W o lfennite dress.

But watching them climb out of the carriage he’d driven them down in had cracked something inside his chest.

“Wait!”

Leora immediately stopped.

“Yes?”

“You’re right. That outfit isn’t good for meeting your sister for the first time in over ten years. Wearing my kilt will give her and the others at the castle the wrong impression. In Faoiltiarn, she-wolves only wear a male’s tartan to show others she’s already been claimed—by the wolf whose kilt she’s sporting.”

“Oh, I didn’t realize... I’m so sorry for putting you in this position. What can I do to make sure no one mistakenly thinks that?”

Leora’s question had gutted him.

Nae, the she-wolf he’d found at his cabin wasn’t his, and he’d called himself every kind of fool while driving her and Dorie back to the house he shared with his father in town.

But now, he could only feel grateful.

Because of his foolish actions, Leora hadn’t been at that wedding.

She and the daughter she’d worked so hard to protect from her former mate were safe—because Alban coveted her, and despite all she’d suffered in her previous life in Canada, Leora had been na?ve enough to fully trust him.

He wanted to ask after her, to hear how she and Dorie were faring now that Leora and her middle sister, the new queen, had been reunited.

But after what he’d allowed to happen to their younger sister, Naomi, Alban knew he had no right to ask.

He hadn’t let himself rest for more than the few hours it took to log just enough sleep to function in the morning.

He didn’t care what the Irish Wolves’ leader had claimed about sending all of the females who wished to return to their Scottish kingdom back in the spring.

Those Irish radges had no idea who they’d crossed.

Alban wouldn't accept anything less than the full recovery of every single Wolfennite bride they’d stolen.

He pulled on his combat boots, balancing the satellite phone between his ear and shoulder as he continued on with his report. “I’ve completed all the wake-up calls, and we’re headed to the last Wicklow coordinates now. Hopefully, I’ll have better news for you the next time we talk. But before I begin my investigation, I have a few follow-up questions for the two of you that I wanted to get cleared up before we leave.”

“Certainly, anything, anything I can do to help,” Magnus replied. “I’ll never forgive myself for not consulting with you first before I issued that no-weapons decree for our reception.”

And as the Kingdom Defender, Alban would never forgive himself for putting Magnus in the position to make security decisions on his own because he’d been up in the mountains.

But now wasn’t the time to dwell on their many regrets.

“Too many things already aren’t adding up,” he told Magnus. “Their infiltration of our kingdom tells me they must have had a source on the inside, giving them names and exact details. Any ideas about that?”

“No,” Magnus answered. “I’d hate to think of any of our people betraying us to our worst enemy. But I’ll have Iain look into it.”

“Good idea,” Alban agreed. Though he hated technology, even he knew that a thorough digital investigation would be necessary to complement his work on the ground. “Tell him to text me anything he finds out, and I’ll do the same.”

“Got it. Is that all?”

“No,” Alban replied. “We also found a smartphone that had been tossed on the road outside the castle. According to Malcolm, it’s a make and model that isn’t available in Scotland yet. Only in the American territories and Canada.”

“Then it has to belong to one of the Irish Wolves,” Tara chimed in. “None of the Wolfennites would have tech like that.”

“That’s what I’m assuming,” Alban conceded. But something about the phone only being available in the Americas didn’t sit right with him. “Those wolves who took the queen’s sister and her strange friend were dressed in old-fashioned clothes. They didn’t look like the kind of people who made international trips to get the latest GoNoTo phone.”

Speaking of that strange friend…

“I also wanted to ask you about your younger sister’s friend, Banrigh,” Alban said, turning his attention to the queen. “The wolves were obviously very interested in Naomi, but they seemed just as, if not more, determined to take Sadie. I’m wondering what a kingdom of wolves could possibly want with a bear.”

There was a pause, and then the Canadian queen spoke, her voice laced with confusion. “What bear are you speaking of, exactly?”

Alban squinted at the phone.

Then Magnus asked his new wife, “Hold on. I didn’t bring it up because I thought maybe it was part of some protection deal or something like that. Are you telling me you didn’t realize the Wolfennite brides brought a bear with them?”

A beat of silence. Then Tara answered, “Wait, are you trying to say you think Sadie is a bear ?”

“She’s your sister’s best friend!” Alban couldn’t keep the frustration out of his voice as he bit out, “Are you truly saying you didn’t know what she is?”

“I mean, I know she smells a little odd, but bears…” Tara’s normal, all-knowing voice faltered. “Bear shifters aren’t a thing. Are they?”

“Yes, they are,” Alban replied between clenched teeth. “When I was in the Scottish Guard, I ran a few missions with the Canadian Bear Reserves. From what they told me, there are more bears than wolves in Canada. And you’ve nae desire to ken how the Russians are using their bear shifters. It’ll keep you up at night.”

“What in the…” Tara said, clearly flabbergasted. “How could this have gotten past me?”

“If it makes you feel any better, moi banrigh , I also didn’t know they were a thing until I played against a few of them on the U.S. team in the lead up to the World Cup.”

As usual, Magnus went out of his way to protect his mate from any bad feelings brought about by her own overzealous commitment to change and her willful ignorance of the shifter world at large after growing up in a cloistered Wolfennite community, followed by years of hiding out in Edinburgh among the humans.

Alban, however, gave exactly zero fecks about the new queen’s feelings. “Here’s the thing about your oversight, though,” he told her, returning them to the subject at large. “Now we’ve nae idea why the Irish Wolves seemed just as determined to take Sadie as they were your sister.”

“What are you thinking?” Magnus asked with a frown in his voice. “That the North American Bears asked the Irish Wolves to kidnap Sadie?”

“I don’t know what to think, actually.” Alban rubbed a hand over his face. “Wish you’d been able to give more answers about this bear business. But I’ll let you know what we find in Wicklow.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Tara’s voice chimed in, as if she were catching up to the information she’d just been given. “Sadie referred to herself as a she-wolf. So did Naomi and the rest of the Wolfennites. And from what Naomi told me, Sadie was just as determined to find a groom as the other brides. If I didn’t know, and Naomi and the other brides didn’t know, there’s a huge possibility that Sadie doesn’t know what she is either.”

Her words landed on the conversation like a wheelbarrow full of bricks.

And though Alban wasn’t a religious man, he found himself tempted to cross himself on Sadie’s behalf. She might not know she was a bear, but the Irish Wolves certainly did, judging by the way they’d known to use one instead of two doses of knockout serum.

An image of the way Sadie had fallen stone asleep in the Irish leader’s arms flitted through his mind like a harsh mountain wind.

One thing was for certain: If what the queen said about Sadie not knowing her own nature was true, when she woke up… wherever she woke up… she was going to be incredibly confused.