Page 41

Conversation and Other Threats

Sadie

“I miss Declan and Tadhg, but I also never want your turn to end.”

I confessed this to the Shadow King while we floated in the dark expanse of his throne room, curled around each other in lotus position.

Golden balls of soft light that he referred to as metaphorical knowledge orbited us like planets, along with an organic altar that he’d constructed himself out of stone, sticks, and moss after engaging the Irish Wolves to deliver me to the Tríbéirríthe, as the three bear kings called themselves in Irish.

I didn’t know how much time had passed since my arrival, but I had the terrible feeling it was coming to an end.

“Time is merely a construct of the Big Laptop,” the Shadow King answered.

“What do you mean?” I asked, not quite understanding, even over the mate bond.

“This sequence we’re in can last a paragraph or be split over several pages. It is not necessarily for us to know. Or remember.”

Our bond bites pulsed, glowing in the dark, and then I understood as he understood how easy it was for even the most meaningful of events to be montaged.

Milestones, pasts and futures, entire lives could be reduced into a single sentence.

Or not even written down at all.

“You’re scaring me.” This had been the best, most mind-expanding week of my life.

But… “ Are you saying I might not even remember this conversation? Or everything else that happened here?”

“It is up to the godsnake.”

The godsnake.

That was what he called the writer behind the Big Laptop.

Because whoever it was caused all our strife but was also responsible for all our joy.

I’d been going to church my entire life, but for the first time, it felt like I was actually receiving a true message.

The true meaning of existence.

At least ours.

My eyes filled with tears at the thought of not being able to remember this time.

These feelings. “I don’t want to forget this conversation, but what if this entire week is reduced to a paragraph?”

The Shadow King reached out to snag the altar he’d built for me out of its orbit.

“I thought for much of my life that I lived inside a sentence. That perhaps I was a side character in someone’s fantasy story.”

He positioned me on top of the altar he’d grabbed, laying me on my back.

“As of late, though, evidence is pointing toward us living out a romance—a somewhat unorthodox romance, but still, an experience like this week would not fit that type of story.”

He wrapped vines of ivy around my wrists.

…

“However, those kinds of authors can be kind when it comes to endings.”

He then secured my ankles to keep me there upon his altar, spread out to him like an offering.

“Perhaps our godsnake will let you remember this conversation. In flashback, maybe. When you most need it, you’ll be reminded that we’re on a journey toward a happy ending.”

Then the time of words was over.

The magic cross scraped over my heated skin as the Shadow King began kissing his way down my body for paragraphs upon paragraphs of worship.

When

I

most

need

it…

.

I awoke with a soft gasp, bound yet again.

Not on the Shadow King’s altar this time but in a bright and sunny bedroom with bookshelves, pencil drawings taped to the wall, and a computer desk covered in stuffed animals that probably used to be on the bed.

The bed I was now chained to with shackles instead of ivy.

“Magnus is asking that you try with her again, Deenie.”

A muffled voice floated up to me through the floorboards, older and a little reedy.

“He’s getting nowhere with her mate in the castle dungeon. He’s still in bear form and refusing to switch back.…”

“Did you not see me try to talk some sense into her, after they brought her in, smelling like an entire strawberry-rhubarb pie?” My mother’s voice shot back.

“It’s been two days of her just looking right through me whenever I try to talk with her about what happened to the other brides. Feels like she’s giving me the bad eye. I’m telling you, it’s hard to even be in the room with her.”

“Can I try?” a much younger voice asked.

“Nae, Lil’ Dorie!” the older male answered.

At the same time, my mother answered.

“Absolutely not, child. Go on outside now and leave the grown folk to their talk until I’m done making this breakfast.”

Footsteps pattered, then my mother’s voice came again.

“I don’t know how to get through to her. I’ve never seen her this bad.”

“Have you considered opening with an apology?” another feminine voice asked, soft-spoken and sweet.

“Or maybe some food,” the older male suggested.

“You could’ve asked me for anything, including the moon, after those apple doodles you made last week. Best cookies I ever had. No offense, Leora.”

“None taken, Hamish,” the younger feminine voice answered with a soft chuckle.

“He might have a point, Claudine.”

“Are the two of you right in the head?” my mother answered.

“I’d be afraid she’d try to bite me on top of the bad eye!”

My nose suddenly filled with the smell of apples, and I lifted my eyes from the floorboards to find a little girl creeping into the room with her finger raised to her lips.

“Don’t tell them I came in here, okay?” she whispered.

The girl was maybe eleven or twelve, with curly brown hair and light-beige skin.

She was dressed in jeans and a sweater, but her freckled face and sharp brown eyes reminded me of a woman I knew well.

I found myself blinking at her, then asking, “Are you related to Naomi?”

“She’s my aunt, but I’ve never met her because you all were kidnapped before I could,” the girl answered.

“Hi, I’m Dorie.”

That meant the other voice had to belong to Leora, the oldest Hamilton sister, who was wolf-mated and sent away from St. Ailbe with a male from another Wolfennite community when Naomi and I were around Dorie’s age.

“I’m Sadie.”

“I know,” she answered with a proud smile.

“I smelled your bed when my maem and I went to get Aunt Naomi’s things from the Exchange House. And you’re all we’ve been talking about since you came back.”

I glanced ruefully at the reinforced chains I’d tried but failed to break free from.

“I wish we were meeting under better circumstances.”

“Me, too,” Dorie answered with the sincerity of a child.

“You’re very interesting.”

She stared at me for a beat with wide-eyed wonder.

Then she asked, “Will you tell us where my aunt is? And the other Wolfennite Brides? My da is in Ireland, looking for them now. I miss him, and I really want him to come back.”

My steely resolve didn’t waver, but a flutter of guilt went off in my chest. Dorie looked a lot like how my children with the three Irish Bear Kings would.

And I could already imagine them missing their fathers when they took trips.

But…

“I’m sorry. Like I told your king, any brides who want to come back will be returned in the spring. You just have to be patient.”

Dorie let out a sad little breath.

“I don’t think they can be.”

“Dorie, girl, what did I tell you about not coming in here?”

My mother’s sharp voice in the doorway made the little girl jump.

“Oh, I was just… just…” I didn’t want to accuse this child of being a terrible liar, but she looked just about everywhere before awkwardly and obviously going over to the bookshelf.

“Getting my math book! For school!”

“Mmm-hmm.” My mother gave her an up-and-down look and sucked on her teeth.

“Well, the breakfast casserole I made is out of the oven. Better get down there before that bottomless stomach you call a grandfather eats it all.”

“Yay! I love your breakfast casserole! It’s even better than Maem’s!” Dorie cheered.

To my shock, she threw her arms around my mother’s shoulders.

“Thank you, Granni!”

“I’m not your grandmother, child. When you asked what people from Jamaica call their grandparents, I was only giving you information. We’ve been over this.”

“That’s what Senair used to say,” Dorie answered with a wide grin, flashing her little but sharp canines.

“The audacity of you. I swear, I’ve got a shoe with your name written across the bottom of it!”

Nonetheless, Claudine gave the girl a squeeze back and even placed a kiss on top of her head.

“Now get. I’m not about the habit of letting food go cold because little girls want to be disobeying.”

“Okay, see you downstairs!” Dorie said with a happy chirp before dashing out of the room.

It was like watching a rattlesnake be nice to a baby chick.

I had no idea how to process what I’d just seen.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Claudine said, her voice going from affectionate to testy.

“These are kind, decent people, and they’ve been letting me stay here. Cooking for them is the least I can do.”

I stopped looking at her like that, but only so I could ask, “Do they know you’re a bear, or do you plan to keep lying to them like you did to me all my life, too?”

“So, you’re talking to me now. You done with all the bad eye?”

I didn’t answer because I doubted I’d ever be done with that.

And eventually, Claudine admitted, “They know. That son of Hamish’s had it all figured out by the time I came here looking for you.”

She shifted from foot to foot.

“And I wasn’t lying. I was protecting . Everything I did was to protect you.”

“Everything you did was to control me !” I shot back with bear in my voice.

“And now you’ve colluded with ‘these kind people’ to lock me away in another room.”

My mother’s eyes flared.

“This is a situation of your own making this time, Sadie Ellis. All you have to do is tell them what they want. Then we can let you go, and the Scottish Wolves can get the rest of the brides and?—”

“What, Claudine? What do these Scottish Wolves plan to do when they find those brides who may not even want to return here?” I bared my teeth at her.

“Knock them out and drag them back to Scotland in chains, too?”

If the wolves' Secret Kingdom was anything like the bears’, I already knew hose brides wanted to be there, just like I wanted to be back in my own Secret Kingdom more than anything.

“No, I’m sure they’d talk some reason into those silly girls’ heads,” Claudine insisted with a shake of her own head. “And do not call me by my first name. I am your moth?—”

“You are the female bear that lied to me and manipulated me my whole life. Be happy I’m not calling you worse.” The chains leading from the wrist shackles rattled when I yanked on them so I could sit up when I declared, “If you want to survive what happens when I figure out a way to break out of these chains, you will not refer to yourself by that name again.”

Claudine’s mouth dropped open. “You’re threatening me now? And why do you smell like a strawberry-rhubarb pie? More than one ingredient. Are the rumors true about those Irish shifters making you girls sleep with two at a time?—”

“The rumors are true, but I didn’t sleep with two Irish Bears,” I assured her.

Claudine let out an audible breath of relief. “Thank goodness, maybe we can?—”

“I mated with all three bear kings,” I gleefully informed her, relishing the scandalized look on her face. “And I have no doubt the other two are already on their way here to rescue us. If I were you, Claudine , I’d let me out of these chains so I can make the case for letting you and the nice people who took you in live when they get here.”

Claudine stiffened, fear replacing some of the know-it-all sharpness. “Hamish, Leora, Dorie… They have nothing to do with this.”

“You made them part of this,” I ruthlessly shot back. “When you conspired with the Scottish Wolves to kidnap my mate and me and bring us back to Faoiltiarn. Now let me out of these chains.”

“No, obviously we need to keep you here, make you see reason?—”

“Do you love him?”

Claudine blinked. “What?”

“That male who convinced you to come up here. He’s smitten with you. Definitely interested in eating more than your apple doodles.”

“Dutty girl!” Claudine’s entire face flared with scandal and shock. “Who are you talking to with this mouth?”

“Mmm-hmm.” Now it was my turn to suck my teeth. “Are you smitten with him back?”

Claudine fretted her hands. Wiped them on the front of her blue dress. Then: “He’s a fool.”

“Obviously,” I agreed. “But are you smitten with him back?”

Claudine shook her head. “Silly nonsense wolf, batting his eyes with a bear. Nothing can come of it.”

This time, I just stared at her. Let the silence be my accusation.

“The way he looks at me…”

She trailed off, but it was easy for me to translate for her. “It makes you feel safe. Seen. Chosen.”

Claudine’s eyes softened with recognition as I labeled what she was feeling.

But then she shook her head like someone coming out of a daze. “I don’t… I don’t think I deserve it.”

“I know you don’t,” I assured her. “So deserve it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Give in to the soft feelings you’ve been fighting all your life. Let me go ,” I clarified. “Prove to me there’s someone worth sparing under all that psychosis.”

She drew back her shoulders. “You think I have a mental illness?”

“Of course, you know what psychosis means.” Bitterness rose like bile in my throat as I realized, “You hid behind your translation of scripture and the Ordnung. But you’ve always known more than you let on while purposefully keeping me ignorant and blind.”

“Stop, just stop! I’m not some kind of evil mastermind,” Claudine insisted. “I was a girl, barely older than you and completely abandoned after a one-night stand I shouldn’t have ever agreed to!”

Her voice faltered. “I was all alone, with no family in Canada. My own mama was too disappointed to talk to me. Trust, she didn’t drop everything to come to me, like I did to follow you over to Scotland. And I had no way of tracking down your father. It was like he disappeared into the ether. Again.”

Claudine’s eyes went glassy, as if she’d time-traveled to the past. “And I really didn’t know what was happening when both you and me started shifting in my tiny studio apartment just a few months after I gave birth to you. No daycare. No way to work during a full moon.… I did what I had to do after I scented that pack of wolf shifters at the farmer’s market—where I was working part-time because I couldn’t hold down a nursing job anymore. I was barely holding on…”

Claudine folded her arms under her chest. “You’re acting like I had a plan in all this. But you destroyed all my plans. Everything I’d worked toward.”

I sighed. Remembering that plane conversation with Declan.

“I think it must have been very scary to wake up a bear one morning,” I said to her. “And I know there’s a reason—several of them—for why you did what you did.”

“Thank you,” Claudine started to say.

“But Claudine, none of those reasons were valid,” I let her know. “None of your excuses will ever make up for how you raised me to think I was unlovable, dirty, and not worth even a speck of softness or your love.”

“I loved you,” Claudine insisted. “I loved you so much. I just…”

Claudine stopped, and I could tell the truth had finally caught up with all of her excuses.

I’d forgiven Tadhg. In the end, it was easy to give him another chance. But I’d never, ever forgive her. And I believe this was the moment when she finally saw that.

“I know you probably don’t know much about bears, but you’ve got to be smart about this,” I advised. “You and your friends have kidnapped and held hostage a bear. A pregnant mama bear, whose mate and cubs you’ve put in danger.”

My eyes glittered with barely contained rage as I informed her, “So please believe me when I tell you, I will not hesitate to murder you and everyone else in this house save that little innocent girl if you do not let me out of these chains by the time I count to five.”

Claudine unfolded her defensive arms, her eyes going wide. “You can’t be serious!”

I blinked as serenely as my moon god and answered, “One…”

“Sadie, listen to me.…”

“Two…”

“You have to understand why I?—”

“Three…”

“But…”

“Four…”

Claudine fished the key out of her apron pocket and let me out.

For the rest of my life…

Whenever I came upon a dilemma that appeared to have no answer.

When one of my children yelled at me in a hormonal fit, raising their voices at me in a way that both reminded me of Claudine and sparked thoughts of how I would never, when I’d been their age…

When waves of the bad kind of shame rose like ghosts that could be banished but never fully exorcised…

Whenever I was put in a situation that required giving myself grace that I hadn’t been conditioned to ever have…

I imagined that sound. The metal release of shackles unlocking.…

And the answer became apparent.

The patience was found.

The shame was evaporated.

And grace was put back on like the crown I could suddenly feel myself wearing as I rose to my feet. So much taller than my mother than I remembered.

No more words.

Claudine could no longer even meet my eyes.

In fact, she lowered her own and dipped her head.

In a way that felt like a bow.

And she did not lift it again as I left the room and walked down a set of stairs to a cozy living room with a fireplace that actually emitted heat and smoke that wasn’t merely a scent.

Dorie was nowhere to be found, but the massive man with hair the color of dirty snow and crazed eyes stood at the front door. With a shotgun raised.

“Hamish, don’t!” Claudine called out behind me.

Right before there came a sound I’d only heard on the digital wall and inside my mind when the climaxes with my kings were particularly good.

An explosion.

Followed by the urgent ringing of church bells. The same kind we used back in St. Ailbe when a tornado was coming our way.

And just like that, the rest of my Irish Bears’ love story was reduced to an…