Page 16

Brown Eyed Girl

Tadhg

My “Welcome to the Secret Kingdom” started off strong, but my voice nearly gave out by the time Sadie came stepping out of the house behind the Shadow King.

Holy shite —a phrase I’d best stop using now that I’d notions of queening a modern puritan.

I could barely breathe as she crossed the space to the table I’d set up with all the tea things I’d stress-baked earlier, plus a few extras I’d ordered up from Chef Pascal—who’d only had half a day’s notice that he, his housekeeper wife, and the gardener (who made up their three-way marriage) would all need to return to the High Palace to actually do the jobs the kingdom paid them for year-round without ever asking much of them.

I could tell Sadie was stunned by the sheer amount of food Chef Pascal and Marnie, the housekeeper, had managed to put out.

But not nearly as stunned as me by what Sadie had on display.

The plain blue dress had hung off her like a tent.

This one did not. All that gorgeous dark skin was wrapped in a pretty pink dress covered in strawberries, with a bodice that strained to contain a set of large, bountiful breasts.

And her hair… I’d had no idea what to expect when she arrived in that shapeless frock and black bonnet.

But now I knew.

Her hair fanned out over her shoulders and down her back in a mesmerizing cloud of kinky spiral curls.

I’d thought I had a thing for brunettes before this, but in an instant, my new favorite color became whatever matte shade of black her hair would be called.

I wanted to sink my hands into it.

See if it was as soft as it looked.

Unwrap her like a package and let myself feast.

I silently cursed my sister.

What had Brigid been thinking?

I’d asked her to help Sadie acclimate—not send her out looking like something out of a wet dream.

My cock, which I’d always been able to control in my day-to-day work life, thrummed dangerously as images that would definitely get me sanctioned by HR flashed through my head.

“You’re not staying?” she asked the Shadow King, pulling me out of my stare-fest.

I tore my eyes away to find Cian holding up a sign: Hope to see you later.

He dipped his head to her with a contrite look, then shot me a squint that growled: Do not feck this up.

“You don’t want…” she started to ask, but trailed off when the Shadow King simply loped off toward the tree line without another word.

“Sorry, Strawberry,” I said, apologizing on his behalf as we watched him disappear into the mini woods between Declan’s palace and the lake.

“Shadow King’s not fond of brunch. Or chat. Or sunlight,” I noted when the sun was covered by a patch of remote-controlled clouds that Cian had most definitely ordered up, and the sky darkened.

“Do you think it’ll rain?” she asked, fretting her bottom lip between her teeth.

Aw, feck, Strawberry, don’t do that.

Inside my head, Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” was being remixed over the Boom-Chicka-Wow-Wow of a vintage adult film.

“No, don’t worry about that. We’re good until the daily burst at three on the dot.”

Thank the gods I’d put in over a decade of pretending in the human world.

As I led her the rest of the way to the table, I managed not to walk like a lad who’d be needing a cold shower and a quiet moment with his left hand straight after this meal.

“Figured you’d prefer privacy to staff service, so we’ll need to make our plates,” I explained.

But when she reached for a plate, I stopped her with a gentlemanly smile that didn’t match the state of things in my down below.

“No, Strawberry—allow me.”

I took the plate from her hand and piled it high as I spoke.

“We couldn’t get any solid intel on what you liked to eat, so I just had the High King’s cook prepare every breakfast food he could think of.”

I set the plate in front of her.

“If there’s something specific you’d like, I can ask Chef Pascal to?—”

“No, this is way more than enough,” she said, gaping at the size of the plate.

“I can’t believe you gave me so much food.”

I threw her a curious glance as I started stacking my own plate.

“You’re not feeling the effects of the incoming hibernation season, then?”

“No, I am. I am,” she said quickly.

“I’m just not used to being offered enough food to fully satisfy it. At least not without being accused of outrageous gluttony.”

My bear grumbled low inside of me, and my fingers tingled, wanting to claw out.

Once again, I was glad the bears and wolves lived separately.

Otherwise, those Wolfennites the Irish Wolf Kings kidnapped might’ve gotten a glimpse of the not-so-nice side of me.

Between them and her mother, I could tell they’d done a number on her head.

If they’d treated her like some kind of irredeemable sinner just for wanting more to eat in winter before hibernation set in, how had she managed in the spring, when bears naturally felt higher than average sexual urges?

The thought of her needing to seek relief from a wolf deepened the growl rumbling low in my chest—and doubled the violence I wanted to unleash on everyone who’d hurt her—and any male werewolf who’d dared to touch her before her Bear Kings.

The dark temper I’d inherited from my father threatened to overtake me.

“Can I make you a plate, too?” Sadie’s sweet voice brought me back to the present conversation.

“No, your Mountain King has got it,” I assured her with one of my patented easygoing grins.

“Only wish right now is to watch you enjoy this meal after all we’ve put you through to get you here.”

“Oh—okay.” Her face lit up with a shy smile, and that smile was enough to ebb the violent thoughts as we both tucked into our food.

We ate in companionable silence.

I loved the way she hummed happily while methodically eating everything I’d put on her plate.

I didn’t want a difficult Q&A session to dampen her mood.

Or mine.

Seeing her happy made me happy in a way that required none of the usual pretending on my part.

“Could I make you another?” I asked as soon as she finished her first serving.

It was a question that required no answer.

I was already back on my feet, piling more food on her plate before she could reply.

“Here—take a couple of these as well for later.” After setting down her second serving of brunch in front of her, I wrapped up two medium-sized blueberry muffins in cloth napkins.

“On winter brunch days, I like to tuck a couple away to get me through to supper.”

I held them out, but she eyed them with a hesitant look.

“Do you prefer another kind of muffin? That’s all we have.” I turned back to the tea service, wishing I’d made more treats.

“We’ve also got a few mini-scones, but they’re not all that filling, I’m afraid?—”

“No, it’s not that.” She took the muffins from me and set them down on the table before I could start rummaging through the tea service again.

“It’s just that I don’t understand. Any of this. Why I’ve been—not just kidnapped, but separated from the rest of the Wolfennites and treated so nicely. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

Alright.

I suppose I’d put it off long enough.

I sank back into my seat.

“Looks like we’ve hit heavy conversation time,” I said, trying to keep my tone light—and my eyes from drifting down to that magnificent chest of hers.

There was no way I was getting through this without spewing in my jeans if I let my gaze go there.

“Where should I start?” I asked with more enthusiasm than I actually felt for my first proper negotiation in…

well… ever.

“How about the why of it all?” She set down her fork.

“Why would you have me kidnapped all the way from Scotland? Do you bears also have a population problem you’re trying to solve?”

“Ah, not quite.” I settled back in my chair.

"Unlike the wolves, the Irish Bear community is mostly concentrated right here in our Secret Kingdom. We’ve had little to no interaction with the human world—what we call The Above.”

She fretted that plump bottom lip of hers again, and I had to stifle a groan before it made it to my own mouth.

“So you don’t know anything about the Canadian bear community either?” Her face fell just a bit. “You don’t have a WolfNet or anything like that?”

“Afraid not. Never had the need for it.” I adjusted to face her fully in my chair. “We’ve no laws against turning outsiders, so our numbers have never really dropped. Here in Ireland, finding a proper mate from a nice, non-bear and foreign population pool is the main reason most of our younger subjects head off to university instead of staying here—even though our school system down here’s better than anything you’d find in The Above.”

“But not you?” she asked.

She peeped over at me with a shy look that made me want to kiss it off her face. Let her know she had no reason to ever be shy with her Mountain King.

“No, not me,” I confirmed with a wry smile. “Truth is…”

I was waiting for you.

But it was too early in the negotiation to tell her that. Didn’t want to scare her off.

Out loud, I finished with, “I didn’t even bother looking. Declan, Cian, and I were so caught up in building and growing our company that the next thing we knew, we were closing in on thirty with no prospects between us.”

I literally had a bear of an appetite, but I set my empty plate aside at that point. There was no way I could go into this next part and eat at the same time.

“You see, Sadie, there are two concepts. You might call them legends, depending on your level of belief. There’s The Prophecy, and there’s The Potential.

“The Prophecy involves this tablet we’ve got—goes back gods only know how many thousands of years. Actually, only the gods would know, since they’re the ones supposed to have etched it up for us.”

Sadie’s brow furrowed straightaway, like I’d set a particularly nasty maths problem in front of her.

Well, I was off to a shite start. Could already see the storm of confusion brewing in those pretty brown eyes. But I pushed on anyway. Better to stumble through it now and take many more questions after.

“In any case, The Prophecy predicted that both the wolf and bear kingdoms would receive a bride each, from across the sea. I can’t say I completely believe in that prediction, myth, or whatever you want to call it.

“But there is another one we have—called The Potential. That’s when all sitting rulers of the Bear Kingdom agree to consider one bride as a shared mate.”

I waited for something—anything—to dawn in her expression. But she kept right on regarding me with that same furrowed brow.

I cursed Declan under my breath for refusing to handle this part.

As COO and second in command, I was meant to be the one making sure everything ran smoothly. Negotiations were supposed to be his department.

Nevertheless, I soldiered on.

“There hasn’t been a three-Bear King Potential in nearly eight hundred years. The king’s mother was a Byzantine-era Slav Tsarina—that’s essentially a princess from old Bulgaria. Back then, there were only two ruling bear lines. But she ended up mothering the Shadow King’s line when she fell pregnant with twins soon after giving birth to the High King’s son. It’s said that the first-born twin was slight and long, with dark hair like hers, and the second-born was large and wide, like the Mountain King. Normally, the second-born would have become the High Prince. But…”

I tilted my head, considering how to phrase the next part. Probably not the best idea to reveal that I came from a long line of petty arseholes, but I’d promised to be honest. “But as the twins grew older, the Mountain King began to suspect the High King was the first-born twin’s father, and he didn’t want to hand over his throne to someone who looked so little like him. It’s said that the High King adored their queen so much that he established a third kingdom line rather than cause her any pain because of the Mountain King’s jealous temper.”

I gave a short shrug. “Anyway, bit of history for you to help you process all of this.”

Sadie didn’t appear to fully understand the lesson. “Okay, that explains some of the paintings I saw on the way. But what does this have to do with me, exactly?”

“Most shared queens, including the Shadow Tsarina, have been others–that's what we call foreign bears,” I explained. “But Cian, Declan—that’s the High King, and me… we’ve never found anyone–outsider or other--that even two of us agreed on. So when we learned that you Canadians had your own bear population—and that one had arrived in Scotland—we knew this meeting had to be arranged.”

Sadie’s brow remained knit, but she started working it out aloud. “So you don’t necessarily believe in The Prophecy… but you kidnapped me in order to take a chance on this Potential?”

“Almost exactly.” I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. At least she understood the bones of it—the tangled mess of myth, duty, and procreation.

“The Shadow King is the true believer in The Prophecy. And at twenty-nine, he’s eager to see it fulfilled.”

“I get that,” she said with a rueful twist of her mouth. “I’m about to turn twenty-four, and I’ve been dying for a mate since I was eighteen. I can’t imagine doing five more years of this.”

Then she winced. “Even though… yeah, kidnapping wasn’t the way to go about it. Still, I want to help the three of you out.”

My heart soared. I hadn’t totally fecked this up. She understood. She was on board. Despite her puritan upbringing, she got it.

But then her expression fell.

“I just don’t know how to help. I mean… I only found out I was a bear—what? A couple of hours ago? I don’t even know how to find this Canadian population of bears you think might hold your Potential.”

I stared at her, stunned. And then realized she truly didn’t get it.

“Sadie,” I said carefully, “do you not understand?”

I leaned forward, holding her gaze so that this time there would be no misunderstanding my explanation.

“The Shadow King and I arranged this meeting with you . We sent an army of Irish Wolves into enemy territory to get you . Based on one picture.”

I let that land.

“ You are The Potential. The one we’re hoping to claim. The one we want. The one we risked everything for. You . And no one else.”