Page 37

Birthday Present

In the end, I got what I wanted for my birthday, which had come and gone while I was in a catatonic state.

But it was a few weeks later now, and the private plane ride to Canada was uncomfortable.

Uncomfortable in the bad way.

The Shadow King took my hand as soon as we settled into the soft leather seats.

Declan sat directly across from us.

Neither of them said anything.

Felt anything.

Our bond bites had been weirdly silent since I woke up, and I had the sense they’d closed off their ends of the link.

Probably because I was feeling enough for all three of us.

Ever since coming out of what the town doctor had called “your wee break,” I’d been aswirl in unchecked emotions.

But that didn’t mean I couldn’t still sense their worry as we crossed the Atlantic, headed to get the answers I wanted.

Needed actually. Even more desperately after what had happened with Tadhg.

Whose name we hadn’t spoken.

Not even when Brigid visited with her adorable sons: Gregorio Jr., a beige cherub with a head full of black curls like his Portuguese father, and Cathal, a bald little chubster with steel-grey eyes who her husband Darach insisted would inherit the family’s white streak.

“Look at yer brother, praying for the legacy of genetic mutation for our spare,” Brigid had teased Declan.

“Well, we were both born bald, too,” Declan pointed out.

“But we could do with a redhead in the High King family.”

He and Brigid had started getting along.

That’s how worried they’d been about me.

The exceptionally cute baby nephews also helped patch the rift.

But mostly, it was the worry.

So, I didn’t blame Cian and Declan for being so quiet on the flight.

But that didn’t mean I could put up with it forever.

“We should probably talk about him before we land in Canada,” I said to Declan after the attendant popped back out of the main cabin after telling us we had less than an hour to go until we reached our destination.

To the High King’s credit, he didn’t pretend not to know who I meant.

But his mind stayed carefully blank as he said, “Ask us anything.”

There was only one question.

And it had been swirling in my head since they’d snapped me out of my wee break.

“Why?”

Declan audibly exhaled.

And though the Shadow King stayed silent on all fronts, he squeezed my hand and moved it over the armrest to settle in his lap.

“Short version of the story: His mother tried to run from his father,” Declan said into the tense silence.

“And she died trying. Their relationship was… fraught.”

…

my parents’ marriage was a piece of shite.

They couldn’t talk to each other.

My mam was afraid of my da.

I don’t want that for us.

The solitary few things Tadhg had ever said about his parents blew through my mind like a haunting wind.

Until he locked me in that room, I’d been dealing with a shell of the Mountain King I knew during his turn.

There was no digital wall in the bedroom he gave me, but he’d appeared out of thin air every time I left the suite.

Our conversations were stiff.

Empty.

I’d tried to discuss Canada with him before it was time for me to leave for the palace.

“Are we going to freeze each other out all week or talk about this?”

But he’d shut me down.

“I don’t plan to ever talk with you about that particular subject again, Sadie.”

Sadie —not Strawberry.

It didn’t sound sexy this time.

And the constant watching, with no attempt to speak, felt more suffocating than the digital wall ever had.

So I’d snuck out while he was supposed to be sleeping, just to get some alone time, and I happened to check out the tower.

I still didn’t understand why that one small rebellion had been enough to?—

“It wasn’t small to him,” Declan said quietly.

He leaned across the tray table and took my free hand—the one not resting in the Shadow King’s lap.

“And he wasn’t trying to suffocate you. I think shutting down the topic was the only thing he could think of to stop himself from exploding again.”

“But it didn’t work,” I pointed out.

“No,” Declan said with a sad, bittersweet smile.

“It didn’t work. You still saw the part of him he’d been working so hard to hide.”

The High King opened his side of the bond bite—just enough for me to feel the churn of conflicting thoughts inside him.

Tadhg was his best friend, but even now, Declan didn’t know whether to defend him.

“His father was rather—actually, extremely—controlling. The Mountain King’s line is descended from Vikings. Bears who fought viciously to claim and pillage. The real history of the line has been mostly lost to the annals of time, but rumor has it they stormed their way into the Secret Kingdom, and a king’s throne was offered to them in a desperate attempt to avoid war.”

Declan gave me a knowing look.

“That’s why we have an armorer and a reserve army.”

I hadn’t ever stopped to wonder why such a peaceful kingdom, with seemingly few enemies, had an armorer capable of turning around a whittling knife order in under 24 hours.

But I supposed that explained it.

“Yes,” Declan confirmed off my thoughts.

“The Mountain King line is responsible for our peace. But understand—when something is gained by force, there’s always the fear it’ll be taken the same way. That fear… it seeps down through the generations.”

He paused, choosing his next words carefully.

“For centuries, the Mountain Kings have been known for what we file under the general umbrella of ‘madness’—but it’s more accurately a combination of extreme paranoia leading to controlling behavior.”

Declan shook his head.

“Unfortunately, psychology wasn’t something our parents’ generation had any tools for.”

“None of it was known to me before I bit you,” I admitted.

“Exactly. So maybe you can see how the Mountain Kings came to believe that this jealous paranoia was just… in their blood. And how that belief might have shaped your Mountain King.”

Over the bond, Declan showed me boyhood images of Tadhg through his eyes as he continued.

“Growing up, Tadhg watched his father get worse and worse. Accusing his mother of cheating. Forbidding her from wearing dresses with even modest cleavage. Banning heels. She wasn’t allowed to leave the fortress without permission, and The Above was strictly forbidden.”

Then a clouded memory passed between us—dark and sharp-edged.

“The one time she dared to defy him,” Declan said quietly, “she took Tadhg and Brigid into town for some Christmas shopping. He came for her in public.”

That was an understatement.

The memory played across our bond like one of the TV shows Tadhg had shown me.

The then-Mountain King storming into a toy shop, dragging his queen out by her arm like he wanted as many witnesses as possible to her humiliation.

His voice thundered as he accused her of all kinds of horrible things…

because she’d dared to wear peep-toe flats.

Not even heels. Flats.

It was easy to see why the entire town—and even Declan’s parents—had called him the Mad Mountain King behind his back.

Tadhg had been ten. Brigid, seven.

They’d begged him to stop.

But the Mad Mountain King didn’t stop.

Not even when their mother collapsed to her knees on the cobblestones, sobbing and begging forgiveness for her “crimes.”

Only when she removed her shoes did he allow her to stand.

She walked back to the fortress barefoot.

Her pantyhose were ripped and bloody by the time she reached the main road.

Hobbling by the time she passed the tower next to the palace.

Tadhg and Brigid had been sobbing by then, too.

Declan exhaled hard after the memory faded.

“If you’ve ever wondered why there hasn’t been a shared queen in several generations… that’s the reason,” he said.

“My parents had to interfere. Father pulled High King rank while Mother carried the Mountain Queen into our house. I showed Tadhg and Brigid to their rooms. That’s how Tadhg and I first became friends.”

And Brigid and Declan never quite did.

A few future flashes of her history leaked through into the story.

The string of broken hearts Brigid left behind before university.

The needless teenage rebellions.

The endless tests she put Declan’s smitten younger brother through before finally making a commitment to him and Gregorio.

It made me feel bad for judging Declan based on her words alone.

He understood why she’d been messed up.

That didn’t mean he approved of her marriage to his brother.

But Tadhg… their friendship had been different.

“We weren’t just young co-kings—we became true friends,” Declan said.

“They stayed with us for weeks. Until their father came to the palace and promised never to do anything like that again.”

Declan’s jaw flexed.

“Of course, that promise wasn’t kept. Over the years, the Mad Mountain King got worse. The paranoia fed on him, unchecked. Eventually, she couldn’t take it anymore.”

Declan’s other hand joined the first, folding mine in between both.

“Just a month after Tadhg got accepted to Trinity University, she ran. Went to the tower gate. The kindest version of this story says she planned to come back for Brigid… but we’ll never know. She was hit by a car almost immediately after reaching her first road in the human world. The thing was, she’d married at seventeen, and the Mad Mountain King never let her visit The Above. Supposedly, for her own protection.”

The irony of her tragic end wasn’t lost on me.

And even though I’d never met that female, as a fellow long-cloistered bear…

I felt her in my bones.

“So believe me when I tell you,” Declan said, “Tadhg has always known it was a curse. And he’s spent his whole life trying not to give in to it.”

Declan regarded me with a somber stare.

“He took a job in The Above with me. Embedded himself in the human world. Used his tactical brilliance to execute my business plans. And he never dated any bears—not once. He was so afraid of becoming a Mad Mountain King, he practically gave up his title. I doubt he ever would’ve returned if not for you. And even then, he went out of his way not to become his father.”

Declan reached into my memory, plucking up two moments I hadn’t even realized he’d noticed.

“You asked him how he felt about sharing a queen. You asked him why he didn’t defy me getting First Claim. What he didn’t tell you was that he didn’t trust himself to be with you alone. He always wanted another line of defense between you and his legacy. He had no desire to risk you walking home barefoot and bleeding, the whole town watching.”

A fresh thought jolted through me.

“Then why would Brigid ask me to go into town with her, without his permission?”

Declan didn’t hesitate.

“Same reason I sent him after you. It was a test. He passed it.”

More rewriting.

I now saw what the other townspeople saw when he’d entered the café without warning.

A story possibly about to repeat.

A Mountain King who needed to prove he wasn’t his father.

Pity swelled in my chest.

But I still had to say it.

“He passed that test. And then two weeks later, he turned around and locked me in a room.”

Just saying it made me queasy, made my mind waver and threaten to collapse again.

“I banged and banged. He didn’t let me out.”

Declan’s anger flared as I relived it.

“I’m sorry he did that. And you have every right to feel the way you do. But you should know—the Shadow King and I would’ve said no to your request, too. Bears are extremely protective.”

I turned to my ever-silent king.

“Cian is fine with this. He’s being reasonable.”

“I assure you, he’s not,” Declan said.

“And if it seems like he is, that’s only because he’s blocking you out. Just like I’m doing with the worst of my own feelings about being on a plane to Canada with my pregnant wife.”

“What? No…”

But when I looked over at the Shadow King, he confirmed Declan’s words with a solemn nod.

Which explained the silence I kept feeling from him.

Not the moon’s serenity.

This was cottony. Muted.

A refusal to let me feel the depth of what he was truly feeling.

“Nothing in us likes this,” Declan said—his voice sharper now, less patient than Tadhg’s had been during my training.

“We’re only allowing it because of what he did. It’s his fault we’re on this plane. Otherwise, you’d be home right now, being pampered endlessly until it was time to take you into town for the delivery. None of us would’ve liked you even talking about leaving. And without this bond bite, I don’t know how we would’ve responded, finding you at that tower.”

I bristled.

“Are you saying it’s my fault that he?—”

“I’m saying, he was already on edge,” Declan cut in.

“Even if you only went up there out of curiosity. I know you weren’t planning to leave. But?—”

“I told him that! I told him over and over again as he dragged me back!”

Tadhg hadn’t listened.

Hadn’t said a single word.

Just threw me into my room and locked the door.

“You told him,” Declan said gently.

“And he couldn’t believe you. All he saw was his innocent, cloistered queen, taking the same escape path his mother once did.”

Declan exhaled heavily.

“But believe me—he’s paying for that oversight. You’re pregnant with his child. And you’ve been taken away from him. He knows full well you may never forgive him. That a custody agreement might be the only contact you two ever have from now on.

“And believe me, Sadie—he’s in a hell right now that makes anything your people came up with feel like a cakewalk.

”

“I…” I shook my head, at a loss.

“I don’t know what you want me to say to that.”

“I don’t, either,” Declan admitted.

“But you asked why, and I’m telling you. Because I want you to understand what happened—even if you never forgive him.”

Never forgive him.

Never speak to him again.

Never…

My chest splintered before I could finish the thought.

That was when I started to sincerely regret falling in love with the Mountain King.

There’d only been catatonia, then anger, these past few weeks.

But now my heart wrenched between understanding why he did what he did and despairing that I could never trust him not to do something like that again.

“If you truly wish to trust him, then you must exchange bites.” The Shadow King’s black-silk voice startled me when it slid into my mind without warning.

“It’s the bears’ natural protection protocol. It ensures these kinds of misunderstandings never happen.”

He would know.

His parents had never even fought in front of him.

And Declan’s bonded parents were happily retired to the kind of place bears dream about: quiet woods, no drama, plenty of salmon.

“But Tadhg’s parents were bonded, too.…” I pointed out.

Only to be hit with the truth from both sets of mental links.

They weren’t. The Mad Mountain King had never allowed anyone into his mind—not even his queen.

He’d been too paranoid.

Just like Tadhg had been too afraid to bite me.

“Not just like. He’s terrified of becoming his father,” Declan said, gently correcting me.

“Just like you’re afraid of becoming some version of your mother. The difference is that his worst fear came true. And while that’s no excuse for what he did, it is a reason.”

Declan squeezed my hands.

“And the Shadow King’s right. If you forgive him, you need to talk to him. Not with words. But with a bond bite, the way bears do.”

Was that true?

Some stubborn, aching part of me didn’t want it to be.

But before the room incident, there had only been trust between the current Mountain King and me.

And the kind of understanding I’d never known with anyone.

So, which version of Tadhg was the real one?

The plane touched down before I could decide on the answer.