Some of the brightest minds in the design and home security sectors had come together to build Iain’s state-of-the-art condominium. With a mind toward impenetrable security, code boxes had been attached to all doors in the building, and both human and electronic surveillance covered every square inch of non-residential space beyond Iain’s front door.
After leaving the Holyrood apartment I’d shared with Milly to move into Iain’s place, the condominium’s manager gave me a tour of the facilities and proudly assured me there was no safer block of flats “in all of Edinburgh—quite possibly all of Scotland!”
But to my horror, shortly after announcing Magnus’s presence, the door made an electronic whirring sound and then opened without so much as a “can I come in?” from the wolf on the other side.
“What. The. Hell?” I asked both the “impenetrable” security system and Magnus as he strolled right in with Alban behind him.
Magnus just wrapped his hands around my upper arms like steel bands and commanded Alban, “Find that rifle and get it out of this flat.”
“How did you get in?” I demanded, struggling against his hold. “And why would you send out a press release telling everyone we were engaged? You had no right to do that! Let me go!”
If Magnus were a human male, I would have easily knocked him out cold for daring to touch me without my consent.
But he wasn’t. He was a male wolf, and he had no problem holding me in place. He very decidedly did not let me go, and his face maintained its stone-like expression as he waited for Alban to finish searching the flat.
After a few minutes, Alban emerged from my bedroom with the rifle in one hand and his Land Rover keys in the other.
“Take it back to Faoiltiarn while I deal with her,” Magnus instructed his beta.
Alban nodded in the no-nonsense way of a soldier and left without another word.
Only when the door closed behind Alban did Magnus finally release me.
Then that cocky smile I hated so much sprang across his face. “I should tell ye, banrigh, swearing at your king is unlawful, as is forgetting to bow when he enters the room. Raising your voice in argument to a sovereign is also against our laws. Besides, that’s no way to greet your mate, now, is it?”
“You are not my mate!” I fired back, my eyes blazing with indignant fury.
“I put that bairn in your belly,” he returned. “And like it or not, that makes me your mate, banrigh.”
“No … no, it most definitely does not!” I spat back. “Wolf matings are not bound by mating laws unless both parties give consent. And I do not give my consent.”
“What a progressive nation your Canada must be,” Magnus replied with an arrogant shake of his head, his dismissive tone making it clear what he thought of progressive nations. “But here in Scotland, all matings are binding, especially if there is a child involved. Now Ireland, well, that’s a different matter. But then those crazy fucks have all sorts of unorthodox rules, don’t they?”
He shook his head in a way that put me in mind of the disapproving older wolves in the Canadian pack I left behind. “Anyroad, here in Scotland, my rule is absolute. So, no more games. You must accept that you belong to me, now.”
“Oh, I must, must I?” I flared my nostrils. “You think you can just waltz in here and take charge? That’s not how these things work, Magnus. I refuse to allow you to ruin my life—”
“You put yourself and our bairn in danger, Tara.” he shot back, his tone becoming low and dangerous. “I am trying very hard to give you the benefit of the doubt, especially because you aren’t from here and clearly have no clue how to conduct yourself among Scottish wolves. But bloody Christ, woman, you’d set a monk to cursing God! And for feck’s sake, I am not trying to ruin your life, banrigh. We’ve a bairn on the way, and your behavior—running off when you should be getting seen by a midwife, turning a gun on your mate and his kin …”
“You are not my mate!” I insisted between clenched teeth.
He kept going. “Refusing to accept that you are in a different country with a different culture and different rules.”
Oh, God … oh, God. The feeling of being trapped crashed over me with the suddenness of a fierce thunderstorm on a sunny day.
“Then I will go to Ireland!” I insisted. “It sounds a lot more civilized than here.”
This comment was as much for me as it was for him. I was reminding myself that I still had options and that this situation wasn’t about to become a repeat of what happened back in Canada …
Magnus stilled.
“You think I would let you out of the country or even out of my sight while you carry my bairn?” he asked.
And that’s when I knew …
I knew I was in trouble because instead of answering Magnus, I was overcome with memories of what had happened in Canada all those years ago …
Barbara sneaking over to my parent’s furniture store as soon as they left and announcing in a sing-song voice, “Guess what came in the maaaa-aaaaail …”
Me opening the envelope from Toronto University, a place that—unlike the University of Toronto—did not have a secret program for shifters.
I jumped up and down and hugged Barbara after reading the letter that informed me I’d been accepted. And moreover, I’d been awarded a human scholarship for those in my particularly special circumstance.
Everything I’d been secretly working toward, the alternative future I’d envisioned for myself—all my dreams would come true when I submitted the necessary paperwork to prove my Canadian citizenship.
I closed up shop early with visions of university students swimming in my head.
Gosh, I wished I could tell my older sister, Leora, the news. She used to be the person I trusted with all my secret hopes and dreams.
But I no longer had easy access to her.
Leora had agreed to her wolf mating, and she now lived on the other side of the country on Prince Edward Island with the male she’d been wolf-mated to a few years ago. For she-wolves in our kind of community, that meant she might as well be living on the moon so far as communication was concerned.
Still, I was excited on the bike ride home, busting at the seams to share my news with my parents and younger sister.
I knew they’d be shocked. And the rest of our pack would be completely scandalized.
I didn’t care about those fools, though—only my family. And there was a chance my parents would be proud of me even if my leaving for university went against our pack ways.
Mamm and Daed would understand why I wanted to further my education….at least I hoped they would.
“Please let them be cool about this,” I teenage prayed out loud as I biked toward St. Ailbe our smaller-than-small pack town.
Both my heart and my bike stopped when I reached St. Ailbe’s hand-carved sign, though.
A town car stood beside it, dark and ominous underneath the setting sun. And there was a uniformed man waiting in its driver’s seat. He had his phone raised outside the lowered window, probably trying to get a signal …
A surge of fear rose into my throat. Leora’s mate had arrived by town car, too.
But maybe this town car had ferried someone here for another she-wolf, I thought … hoped to God. Not me.
That was when my prayer changed.
“Please not me,” I whispered as I started pedaling again toward our simple two-story house.
However, my prayers withered like blackberry vines in autumn when I came through the door and found two male wolves waiting for me at our dinner table instead of my parents and twelve-year-old sister.
One of the wolves I knew well. Abel Flosswulf, our pack alpha.
He stood up from the table and regarded me with kind eyes. I remembered him wearing the same expression the afternoon when he came to our home to tell my family that a wolf from Prince Edward Island would soon arrive and Leora would be wolf-mated to him that full moon.
He’d explained that we must leave before Leora came back from her shift at the furniture store. Things would go “easier” for the young couple if only Abel Flosswulf and the chosen male were there when the chosen she-wolf arrived home, he claimed. “And we do not want to cause her any more discomfort than absolutely necessary.”
That conversation had taken place two years ago when Leora was my age, seventeen. At the time, it had been my older sister’s job to mind our furniture store. But that job now belonged to me. And here was Abel Flosswulf waiting for me, just as he must have been waiting for Leora when she came through the door.
The other wolf stood as well …
He was dressed in the same manner as Abel, but his clothes were black and white instead of black and blue. He also smelled different—like the sea and red earth.
His scent unsettled me. The wolf who mated Leora had smelled the same. This male also had the same kind of face. Handsome and open like Leora’s mate, Joshua.
Abel smiled at the younger wolf beneficently. “Tara, I want to introduce you to Joshua’s younger brother, Jacob. Joshua is well-pleased with your sister. His brother has come here in the hopes of gaining a mate with as many positive attributes as Leora.”
“A help-mate,” Jacob corrected in the same version of German we used. “That is what we call the she-wolves who have not yet earned the title of wife with the birth of a son.”
What the … was he serious?
But as my mother had warned me several times, my temper would not be abided by those outside our house.
I didn’t want to get my parents in trouble with our pack leader, so I tamped down my initial reaction and carefully said to Jacob. “It would please me to hear news of my sister. I have written to her many times, but I have had no communication from Leora since her departure. Can you tell me how it goes with her?”
“She is a good helpmate and mother,” Jacob answered with a pleased smile, as if his reply told me everything I could possibly want to know about the sister I hadn’t seen nor heard from in over two years.
I silently screamed on the inside.
Meanwhile, Abel Flosswulf said, “As you know, Tara, most girls your age have already been wolf-mated, and tonight…”
Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no …
I had applied to college to escape my pack’s compulsory wolf mating program. And I’d been accepted.
But tonight was a full moon and I hadn’t yet applied for official permission to leave.
Now it looked like my reprieve had come too late.
The memories of that full moon night crashed down inside of my head like a cold December rain.
But then I reminded myself that Magnus was right. I was no longer in Canada.
“No!” I raised my chin high with defiance to tell Magnus what I’d been too young and scared to tell Abel Flosswulf and Jacob. “No, I do not want to be your mate.”
He flinched.
And then his expression became stone-like. “You have no choice, mo banrigh.”
“You have no choice in the matter, dear child,” Abel Flosswulf said when I showed reluctance at entering the mating cage. “Jacob is a fine male, and he has come a long way at great expense. It has already been decided.”
Decided without me …
“There is always a choice,” I told Magnus as I should have told Abel Flosswulf. “Show me where in the rule book it says I have to move to your backwards village in Nowheresville.”
His head jerked into an angry tilt as his face screwed up in outrage. “Faoiltiarn… my kingdom village—is not backwards—”
I cut him off. “Do you have electricity? Wi-Fi? More than a mile of land without livestock or farm fields on it? A store that sells high heels? Cafés?”
“Iain’s home has electricity and Wi-Fi!” Magnus retorted as if he’d just delivered a truly devastating rebuttal. “And he doesn’t own so much as a chicken. The whole village had a right stir about it when he gutted the old blacksmith’s house and sold off all the fowl in the coop behind it.”
Again he shook his head in a way that put me in mind of men like Abel Flosswulf. “He’s also got one of those high-end coffee makers, just like the ones at Caffe Nero. I reckon he might even have a pair of high heels lying about in there somewhere. He’s lived in Edinburgh for a while now and you never really know what those city wolves can get up to...”
Okay, he was trying to distract me, but I refused to play his game.
“Magnus, is there or is there not a rule about where I must live?” I demanded, between gritted teeth.
A sullen beat. Then Magnus crossed his arms and admitted, “Nae, not exactly.”
“That’s what I thought.” I pointed toward the door. “Now get out.”
Magnus didn’t move.
“Wolf fathers have rights, though,” he informed me. “Many more than most human ones do during their child’s gestation period. As you must be aware, we male wolves are biologically programmed to protect our young.”
He folded his arms imperiously across his broad chest. “In my kingdom, unless a mother brings me a case of physical abuse, she is not permitted to tell the father of her unborn pup that he can’t be near her—as you seem keen to do with me. And nae, I cannae compel you back to my village. You are right about that—even though the best place for a she-wolf in your condition would be among your own kind. But there is a law in place about she-wolves attempting to leave the country when pregnant…”
“Okay, are you not the least bit concerned or at least slightly curious why pregnant she-wolves were so eager to skip town that your pack had to go and make a law about it?” I squinted at him, frustrated as hell with this country’s wolves and their sire.
“We’re a verrae auld country, banrigh,” he answered simply. “Our pack hails back to the Vikings. We have laws for almost every situation and outcome you can name—and a few are literally set in stone.”
He unfolded his arm and spread his hands with a shrug. “So, how you feel about our laws doesn’t really matter, does it? It willnae change the fact that you cannae leave the country unless you’re returning home—specifically to your pack.”
I blinked. Home to my pack…
No. I couldn’t go back there. Ever. I’d vowed to never return after what happened with Jacob.
“If you won’t come with me, it is within my rights to stay here with you,” Magnus continued. “And I guess that means I’ll be moving into Iain’s flat.”
My fists balled. I so badly wanted to hit him again. I’d escaped one cage only to wind up in another …
“No, no, I do not want this! I want to return to my family’s house!” I screamed when they attempted to put me in the mating cage inside Abel Flosswulf’s basement. Granted, the designated cage was much larger and more comfortable than the humble cages my family used to shift on full moon nights. These had floor-to-ceiling bars and a padded floor. But I completely freaked out the moment the pack alpha opened the door and directed me to enter it with Jacob.
“You cannot make me do this!” I protested.
But as it turned out, they could. As if by mutual agreement, both Jacob and Abel blocked me from running, each catching me by the arm.
“It’s okay, Tara. My wolf likes you. We will be a good pairing. I promise you …” Jacob said, his voice soothing even as he forcibly pulled me into the cage.
“No, no … I don’t want this. Please!” My screams had turned into sobs as the pack alpha pushed the door closed on the cage. He locked it with a climatic metallic thunk that I would never—no matter how far away I ran or how much time passed—be able to unhear.
“What are your grounds for severing a mateship?” I asked Magnus, cutting off whatever he’d planned to say next.
Magnus responded with a dangerous look. “You cannot sever our mateship.”
“Yes, I can. Your mother did and she’s a foreigner.”
Magnus went very, very still, his eyes flaring in a way that let me know I’d hit a nerve.
I might have felt bad under any other circumstance, but this was my life, my future, and I forced myself to be relentless as I continued, “Tell me how your mom got out of this. Did she serve your father with papers? Cut off a hand?”
Magnus clenched his jaw. His gray eyes were nearly glowing with fury. Nonetheless, he answered, “If a she-wolf goes a year without having sex with her mate, or if he lies with another, then she has grounds for divorce. And it is as binding as if she served her male with divorce papers.”
“Awesome. I hate you, so not sleeping with you will be easy,” I replied with absolute certainty. “All I have to do is sit back and wait for you to cheat on me. Shouldn’t take long. According to my boss, you’re a player in more ways than one.”
Magnus snorted. “Whatever your boss or those mangy gossip sites would have people believe, I’m telling you now, banrigh, I would never be with another once I have committed myself to someone. I am an honorable wolf and we Scottish wolves, my parents withstanding, mate for life.”
I could see from the resolute set of his jaw underneath his beard that he meant every word. Which was stupid. Couldn’t he see what a train wreck we’d be together?
“Fine,” I answered with an annoyed shake of my head. “I hope you’re looking forward to your year without sex.”
Magnus slit his eyes at me. “Aye, right. And I hope you love being the incubator you said you didn’t want to become. I would have been fine bedding you, Tara, sharing my kingdom and life with ye. But if you’d rather be my breeding cow, by all means …”
This time I didn’t just think about hitting him, I lunged at him, wolf first, intending to inflict the kind of bodily damage that comes with comparing a woman to a cow.
But unlike last time, Magnus saw this punch coming. Instead of taking the hit, he caught both my wrists in one hand and deftly turned me around, so I was trapped against his body. Trapped … Trapped …
My mind blanked, and my breathing became shallow as that metallic thunk from long ago echoed in my head.
“Let me go!” I screamed.
“Tara, you are not a child,” he answered. His voice was now next to my ear. “You need not hit me every time something you don’t like comes out of my mouth.”
That wasn’t the most unreasonable request I’d ever received—or the first time I’d ever been told to rethink my hit first, talk it out later policy.
But I had never been trapped before. Not like this. Not since …
“Let me go!” I wheezed. I was beginning to hyperventilate. “Let me go! Please!”
Magnus immediately released me, giving me the freedom I’d demanded.
And I immediately whipped around, twisting my body into a fighting stance. I was prepared to punch, scratch, and scream—anything to keep him from trapping me again.
But Magnus just stood there, eyeing me quizzically as if I’d lost my mind. “You’re the mother of my bairn. I will not fight you, banrigh. And I am not a monster. There’s nae danger of me grabbing you again so long as you keep your fists to yourself.”
His tone implied I should have known all of this, and I lowered my arms feeling completely embarrassed. For my defensive stance … and my outsized reaction to him trying to stop me from punching him. Again.
“I …I …” I trailed off with no idea what to say next.
But as it turned out, I didn’t have to say a thing. Without warning, a new scent suddenly filled the air between us. Screaming louder than either of us ever could.
We both froze in place, staring at one another wide-eyed.
I had lived exclusively among humans for a very long time. But this particular smell wasn’t the sort of thing you forgot. It was distinct and pungent. A slap in the face disguised as a smell.
Heat.
Someone was in heat. And that someone was me. But … how could that be?
I stood there, confused. I was already pregnant, and wouldn’t Iain have told me if there was another wolf living in his building?
Magnus growled in a way that made him sound more animal than man. And instead of cowering in fear, my whole body warmed.
No, warmed was the wrong word for it.
My body heated. Despite being furious with him, despite being pregnant, right then and there my whole body heated with a single thought. Mate.
Mate, my wolf growled inside me as the space between my legs began to tingle.
However, the word wasn’t meant as a noun. It was most definitely a verb. And a command at that.
Mate, mate, mate, my wolf chanted. Right now.