Page 32

An Unexpected Visitor

Hamish

Faoiltiarn

“Senair?” Dorie, Hamish’s new granddaughter, asked as they were finishing up their morning ride on the horses, in that Canadian way of hers, where she just said his name without spitting out her question.

If Hamish didn’t like the sound of her calling him grandfather in Scottish Gaelic so much, he might have fussed at the twelve-year-old granddaughter he’d unexpectedly gotten for Christmas, with another pup on the way now that Alban had mated and married her mother.

As it was, he indulged little Dorie with a patient, “Yes, granddaughter mine?”

Her light-brown face tilted up to him, more somber than usual, especially when she was out riding.

“Do you think we’ll ever see Aunt Naomi and the others again? I’m afraid to ask Maem because I know it makes her sad.”

Sweet child, always considering her mother.

This was why it was impossible to fuss too much at her about her inefficient question-asking.

Still, Hamish had to be careful with his words.

Alban—who Dorie had already taken to calling Da—had warned him over and over again to protect the girl’s feelings.

She’d already been through so much with her abusive birth father.

“Well, what do you think?” he asked with a gruff-but-gentle tone.

He’d been trying to soften his speaking voice as of late, now that there were she-wolves living in his and Alban’s house.

“Da says we’ll get them back, no matter what. But the boys at school say we never got the first stolen brides back, and it’s unlikely we’ll ever see these lost brides again, either.”

Dorie’s shoulders sank a bit.

“I saw Aunt Tara crying in Uncle Magnus’s arms the last time I went to the castle stables,” she said.

“She didn’t see me coming around the corner. But she was telling him it was all her fault and she had no idea how to break the news to everybody back in Canada because she knew they’d flip.”

No doubt.

Tara was lucky that the Wolfennite community she’d gotten to agree to the exchange didn’t believe in technology, or the gig would’ve already been up for their new queen.

Hamish had no idea how Tara would clever her way out of this jammy.

But one thing was for certain.

..

“This is why it’s never a good idea to discount children,” he told his thoughtful granddaughter.

“You often get the right of a situation without even having to grow up.”

“But what does that mean?” Dorie asked.

“Which one of them is right?”

“Well, what do you think?” he asked her back.

“I think…” Dorie worked her jaw, her thoughts clearly churning.

“I think... Da should stay here in Scotland. Not go to Ireland looking for them again. We’re happy, the four of us. And the Irish Wolves’ leader said they’d let any brides who want to come back return in the spring.”

Hamish nodded, agreeing with her conclusion.

But...

“Knowing the male your Da is, do you think he can do that?”

“No,” Dorie answered, her voice miserable as they rounded the corner that led to the main road toward the Faoiltiarn gates.

“But I have such a bad feeling about the February trip. I wish there was a way to—Do you smell that?”

She broke off, straightening in her saddle and lifting her nose with an audible sniff.

“Is that Wolfennite named Sadie back? There’s an odd smell in the air. Do you think…?”

Dorie had a crackerjack nose.

She could even smell something as sensitive as the sex of a baby before the mother did.

But the issue with having an exceptional sense of smell was that sometimes you forgot to use your other good senses.

Like your eyes.

Hamish, with his average sense of smell, didn’t forget to scan the distance for the source of Dorie’s scent.

And when he did, his entire world came to a halt.

Standing at the town’s gate—where a 24/7 sentry had been posted ever since the second Irish kidnapping—stood the most mesmerizing female he’d ever seen.

She wore a plain blue dress and black bonnet, like all the other Wolfennites.

But she was maybe twice as old as one of their brides.

Short but sturdy, with eyes that might have been large if they weren’t squinted up in suspicion.

Her accented voice floated back to their ears.

“Listen to me now. My name is Claudine Ellis, and I’m here to see my daughter, Sadie,” she was telling the sentry.

“It’s taken some kind of misery and paperwork to even get here. You will not hold me up, little boy. You will be taking me to my daughter, Sadie, right now.”

“Sadie’s Maem seems mean,” Dorie whispered beside him.

“I agree,” Hamish whispered back to his dearest granddaughter.

Then he climbed down from his horse to introduce himself to the female he already knew, deep in his bones, would change his life.