MAGNUS
One month. I had convinced Tara to return to Faoiltiarn and live there with me for one month. Just through the Autumn Test Matches … which I then had to explain weren’t actual tests, but showy international games.
The Rovers would be at home, hosting the matches for three weekends in November before going on the road for a number of European fixtures—nae, “that’s not an architectural term” I told her. Fixtures are matches against other rugby teams which were played at home and away. They were the matches that counted most because they resulted in cups and trophies—and, aye, my 100th cap—after which I’d been planning to retire …
Like most wolves in professional sports, I only needed to retire from the sport when I felt like it since my wolf genes helped me to heal faster and age more slowly than most human players my age. But I promised my mate if she truly did not like Faoiltiarn, I’d delay my retirement plans. We would limit our time in the Highlands until the bairns were born, and she could even join me on the road if she so wished.
Yet four months later, I woke to find Tara’s side of the bed empty…again. And it occurred to me I might never have brought her home to Faoiltiarn if I’d known I would be waking up alone for the remainder of the foreseeable future.
Tara didn’t like being the reigning Queen of Faoiltiarn.
She loved it. Too much, I suspected after I began waking up alone in our bed because my mate had decided to return to “St. Ailbe” hours—which apparently meant jumping out of bed at four in the bloody morning.
Within a week of coming to Faoiltiarn, Tara created a list of improvements that would be added to the newer modern half of town, and to New St. Ailbe which Tara referred to as the Brigadoon side of town (but only in private so as not to offend anyone). There had been some shuffling of homes and many in-person visits, but Tara eventually managed to get everyone on the same page and to agree to the new terms. She’d even commissioned the creation of a small stream dug from the castle’s moat to serve as the line of demarcation.
Tara, as it turned out, was not the type of queen anyone expected. She was far better.
She didn’t just agree to take on the role, she threw herself into it. I had cheered when she quit her job to oversee the construction of the New St. Ailbe Exchange and focus on her list of Faoiltiarn improvement projects. But by the end of November, I found myself out on the road alone. Tara barely had enough time to make it to my home games, much less travel with me as some of the wives and girlfriends did.
Currently, I was home for a rare four weeks with only a couple of home games on the Rover calendar. However, I already decided when the season was done in April, I’d be done, too.
In the end, my reluctant mate turned zealous queen made my decision to retire an easy one. If I actually wanted to see her and the pups, she was growing between all the village work, I’d have to give up rugby, just like she sacrificed her job in the city.
If you could call it a sacrifice. My mate now seemed more dedicated to her daily Faoiltiarn routine, than I’d ever been to my rugby practice. I thought maybe she’d make an exception to her usual crack of dawn routine on today of all days. But like nearly every day I’d spent with her in Faoiltiarn so far, I began this one searching for my mate.
“Have you seen Tara?” I asked my parents at breakfast.
It was rare to have them there in Faoiltiarn. Not just because they still hadn’t bothered to remarry, but also because Lachlan had decided after our trip to Canada that he quite liked traveling. Valentina, in turn, had offered to show him around … the entire world.
Thus far, they’d gone on long holidays to Thailand (it turned out my Da enjoyed Milly’s copy of The Beach much more than Tara), Australia, Bali, Korea, and Texas—from which they, like every self-respecting European tourist, had returned wearing flashy heeled riding boots and the biggest ten-gallon cowboy hats they could find.
But they had finally returned to Scotland for a two-week visit, and with Milly’s help, they were trying to decide whether to go to South America or Africa next.
In any case, neither of my parents responded to my question about Tara’s whereabouts. I wasn’t even sure if they’d heard me. They were too busy giving each other nibbles of food as if they’d both come down with some rare disease that rendered them incapable of feeding themselves, only each other.
Technically, I was happy—if slightly befuddled—to see my parents back together. But this morning their moony behavior grated on my nerves, acting as yet another reminder that I’d woken up alone. Again.
“Dinnae make me declare a law that only married people can go at it worse than feckin’ teenagers under my roof,” I said, lobbing one of the rolls the New St. Ailbe mail-order brides brought with them when they arrived two weeks ago.
“Sorry, king of mine, did you say something?” Lachlan asked after the roll bounced off his head.
“Have. Ye. Seen. Tara,” I repeated, not bothering to hide my impatience though Tara had told me several times I should try to better understand that my parents were in “back together again” mode.
My mother, proving she hadn’t changed that bloody much, had the nerve to laugh at her son’s show of temper. “Oh, Lachlan, someone—I will not say who, but he looks exactly as you did thirty years ago, mi bello—seems very upset that he cannot find his mate … again,” she sing-songed.
“Have you seen her or not?” I demanded through gritted teeth.
“Nae,” Lachlan answered for the both of them. “But mebbe ask Milly … I can hear her coming now.”
Milly and Iain arrived on cue carrying their one-month-old daughter, Elspeth, with them. She’d been born in this very castle, much to the delight of the village. Elspeth was sleeping peacefully as a lamb inside her mother’s arms. But judging from the dark circles under my brother and sister-in-law’s eyes, that might not have been the case last night.
“Have you seen Tara?” I asked my brother’s mate as I took my wee niece from her. Not because Milly looked exhausted, mind ye. But because I was the king and should be allowed to cuddle with my adorable niece whenever I wished.
“Sort of,” Milly answered in her decidedly American way. “Ellie was up all night, crying. Tara came by our rooms and took one look at me and told me to go back to sleep because she had this morning covered. She even said she’d ask her sister to babysit for us tonight—seriously, Magnus, she’s such an awesome queen.”
Aye, too awesome, I decided as I stomped across the stream toward the New St. Ailbe Exchange House. The snuggle time with my niece had done little to alleviate my bad mood. Nor did my change into my special leather Rufglen kjalta and Prince Charlie jacket. If anything, my mood became as dark as the mud from the newly made stream splattered across my vintage kilt hose and Ghillie brogues.
A truly bucolic scene greeted me when I finally reached the three-story Exchange House the Faoiltiarn males had built in record time on the eastern side of the village.
All but a few of the mail-order brides were playing baseball in the snow-covered field next to the house. And they’d drawn a bit of a crowd. At least forty villagers—mostly young males also dressed in their leather kilts and Prince Charlie jackets—watched the game from a respectful distance.
“We’ve been cooking all morning, and they’re playing a game before we change into our church dresses,” Naomi told me when I found her setting out an array of pies and other desserts on the house’s long communal table.
Unlike the she-wolves playing baseball outside, Tara’s sister had no interest in the young male spectators on the other side of the field. A disappointment for sure since a few of my subjects had already asked me about the brown beauty who’d shown up with the rest of the brides but hadn’t bothered to send so much as a postcard in the letter exchange before her arrival.
Even more disappointing, Naomi hadn’t seen Tara since she’d come over to help with the milking and asked Naomi to babysit.
“You let a she-wolf, five months pregnant with twins, milk a cow?”
But Naomi only shook her head and said, “It’s not like it’s a wood-burning stove. Do you think she’s been here so long she’s forgotten how to milk?”
With a roll of my eyes, I walked back toward the main part of town, asking villager after villager, most of whom were already dressed in their Highland finest, if they’d seen Tara.
What was frustrating—though not unusual—was that nearly everyone had seen her. She’d dropped off a pair of heels with the cobbler and asked that he put some tread on the bottoms when he was done with the order of sturdy black shoes for the exchange brides.
She’d also stopped by the baker’s for a morning sausage roll even though she could have eaten a proper breakfast at the castle, couldn’t she?
And Alban complained she’d knocked on his door personally to ensure he had enough volunteers to handle tomorrow’s installation of solar panels.
Nae, Alban did not have any volunteers yet—because he could do it himself and didn’t need anyone else in his way.
He told her this thinking the matter sorted. But less than an hour later, a few of the village men came to him with reports of their five-months-pregnant banrigh rubbing her belly as she asked if they really wanted to let her down by not volunteering to help with the solar panel installation.
Aye, the luster of a doubly pregnant queen had fallen off Tara’s crown rather quickly. Now people were more likely to hide rather than gape when they saw the banrigh heading their way. They’d learned from experience that wherever Tara went, work followed.
“I told her ‘just me!’” Alban groused, finishing his story.
Right now, the only one more exasperated than Alban with the new queen was her king.
“I saw her head over to the bank after she ambushed me at my house,” a bitter solar panel “volunteer” told me. “She said I was the last person on her list of people to harass. Do you ken she actually has a list? And it actually said PEOPLE TO HARASS—I watched her make a tick next to my name!”
So, she was at the bank … of course. Of all her projects, updating one of the oldest (albeit secret) banks in the United Kingdom was closest to her heart. And that’s exactly where I finally found her…snuggled up with the town’s treasurer.
“Hi!” she said, jumping out of her seat when she saw me fuming in the doorway of the Faoiltiarn Treasury. Just a few weeks ago, the bank had been little more than a desk and a cash box in front of a large vault.
But now it had a partner’s desk with an array of ten monitors on top of it. They were stacked so high, I could barely see my wife and the male wolf behind them.
“It’s not what you think!” she said at my furious look.
“I see. Ye aren’t in here with the treasurer, setting up yer new invisible money system when ye were supposed to be with me?”
“Okay, it is what you think.” She conceded with an apologetic grimace. “But can you please stop calling it invisible money? It’s digital money that we can pass back and forth just like paper, which means Willie and I are literally bringing this place into the current century—”
Four months ago, I had decided to give my she-wolf anything she wanted and promised to never, ever lose my temper with her again. Four months ago, I’d found it charming and even teased her about how quickly she’d taken to Faoiltiarn after all her resistance.
But this particular morning, I had had enough. “It is our wedding day!” I roared. “Can you set aside the village for one bloody second and pledge your troth to me like a normal bride?”
“Well, looks like it’s time for me to go, Willie,” Tara said, rising from her seat and walking around to the front of the desk.
She wore her wedding dress, the one the Faoiltiarn tailor assured me she’d picked up over an hour ago. It was the first time I had seen her in it. We’d agreed the wedding would be a mix of my traditions and hers, but this gown was all Scottish.
It featured long tulle sleeves and an empire waist, a style that would have passed as fashionable in this century and the two before it. The dress would have worked as is, but the tailor had laid the Faoiltiarn tartan over it in the auld way, and it neatly framed her swollen belly on both sides.
Tara looked nothing short of breathtaking, but without a further word to her or the treasurer, I took her by the arm and hauled her out the front door.
“Bye, Willie!” she called over her shoulder.
“See you at the church then,” Willie called back.
“I’m sorry,” she said, once we were outside. “I only meant to talk with him for a few minutes, but I guess I got distracted.”
“Bad enough Milly insisted we not see each other for a full twenty-four hours before the wedding,” I grumbled. “Now I have to share ye with another man on the day itself?”
“Yeah, you should be really concerned about a wolf old enough to be my grandfather, who—quite frankly—I think has a crush on your dad. Not sure how to break it to him that Valentina and Lachlan have barely left the bedroom since they came back for our wedding.”
I didn’t laugh, which made Tara roll her eyes. “Okay, I’m sorry not getting to sex me up for a couple of days has put you in such a terrible mood, Ri Faol.”
“That and your tardiness—to your own wedding, I might add!” I said as we passed Iain’s old house, which my brother had been disgruntled to find converted by Tara into a café and town Wi-Fi spot in his absence.
She peered at Iain’s former home and bit her bottom lip with a wicked smile. “Well, there’s a sturdy stone wall right over there. We can solve one of your problems right now, but it might make us even more tardy for the ‘wedding of the century.’”
I stopped, my wolf standing up along with another part of me at the suggestion …
* * *
TARA
Which is how we ended up arriving over an hour late to our own wedding. We entered the church, looking rumpled as if we’d been caught in a gale force wind, and we smelled strongly of sex. However, the formerly grumpy groom passed the hour-long ceremony with a beaming smile upon his face. And everyone agreed he couldn’t have looked happier to finally marry his queen.
“For someone who said she didn’t want to be queen of our land, you’ve gone out of your way to give the clishmaclavers stories to tell for years to come!” Iain said as we waited in the hallway outside the castle’s ballroom.
The formally clean-shaven tech billionaire still sported what he called his “traveling beard,” and his dark shaggy hair had grown nearly past his collar. But whatever accent he’d lost during his world travels with Milly came back in full force within a week of them returning to Scotland for their baby’s birth. The first child born in Faoiltiarn during the current century.
“I’m just glad there’s finally a scandal to replace when we broke into Iain’s house,” Milly said with a chagrined smile. “Who knew there were towns in Scotland that still had bards?”
Both Magnus and I laughed, too chuffed to be bothered by the fact that our late arrival and the reason for it might literally be committed to song. I was also grateful for a little alone time with Iain and my best friend after such a hectic week.
In honor of the mail-order brides’ visit, I had opted to incorporate a few of my pack’s traditions and a few of his Scottish ones. After the wedding, we’d crossed the small stream bisecting the village in Faoiltiarn and New St. Ailbe twice for Scottish good luck and tomorrow morning, Magnus and I would rise early to wash our clothes together as the St. Ailbe Ordnung commanded. But since there would be no pictures taken at all today, the wedding party had a chance to relax before the reception (to which the Faoiltiarn males wouldn’t be allowed to bring swords or so much as a dagger).
“I’m just glad we got married here instead of my village,” I said. “Those weddings are no joke. Three-plus hours. In High German, no less!”
“If you think that’s bad you should try going to an Indian wedding,” Iain said. “Two to three days of celebrations and you cannae understand a bloody thing the priest is saying during the four-hour ceremony. Truly, it will make you reconsider taking on unwed programmers, just so you don’t have to lose years of your life attending their weddings.”
“Had a Greek teammate get married in one of those Macedonian Orthodox ceremonies,” Magnus said. “It went on for ages with them calling for us to sit and stand every ten minutes. Still have nightmares about it. Like, I only think I went back to my real life. But in actuality, I’m still at the Macedonian wedding. Similar to purgatory or one of those Black Mirror episodes.”
“Beggin pardon, Banrigh …”
A young male by the name of Donnan approached, interrupting our discussion. He bowed quickly before saying, “I’ve a few questions about this Sarah. My da said she-wolves are more likely to go into heat if you show an interest in what they like. But when I asked Sarah what she likes, she wrote back listing her favorite activity as butter sculpture. Is that some kind of joke, then?”
I grimaced. “I’m afraid not. Where we come from, the annual butter sculpture competition is a bit like your Six Nations.”
Donnan stared back at me, wide-eyed and very confused. “Yer saying there’s violence and gameplay involved? This is some type of sport … with butter?”
“Well, not exactly,” I answered with a sympathetic look.
The eligible male villagers were definitely still playing catch up.
Magnus had pre-apologized on the plane ride back to Scotland for the amount of awe I’d have to put up with because of my twin pregnancy.
But that abject awe for me and my incoming twins had only lasted until he announced the imminent arrival of twenty plus nubile she-wolves in search of mates.
The village males immediately switched from awestruck subjects to nervous young men. Which was understandable, I supposed. Much like the visiting she-wolves, most of them had never left their village and hadn’t practiced their interested—but not too aggressive—flirting skills on any outsiders.
It wasn’t any wonder then that no less than eight males came up to me before the traditional Grand March to get intel on the newly arrived she-wolves.
“I thought this would be easy after writing back and forth with Orpah, but now I’ve no idea what to say to her …” another male lamented, sounding like a fretful schoolboy even though I was pretty sure he was older than me. It seemed the prospect of actually talking to the woman he’d written to for months was doing his head in now that he was only standing a few feet away from her.
“Try saying ‘hello,’ mate,” Magnus advised. “It really does work.”
“You can also offer to show her your horse,” I added, even as I mentally acknowledged how ridiculous this would sound to anyone outside the village.
“And where’s this sister of yours?” Gavin, a striking wolf in his mid-twenties, asked after waiting with his ridiculously handsome best friend, Malcolm, to speak with me. “We talked with the other wolves and turns out none of us got a letter from her. But she’s the prettiest of them all, and now we cannae find her anywhere.”
I gave the two would-be lotharios a dry look. Why did I have the feeling there was some kind of bet riding on who my younger sister would give the time of day to first?
“Oh, yeah., sorry …” Milly said behind me. “She volunteered to take care of our daughter during the reception, so she won’t be coming,”
The males’ faces fell.
“And why would she go an’ do that?” Malcolm demanded. “What’s the point of her coming if she’s not even going to meet with us? She’s wasting our time and the kingdom’s money!”
“I suggest you think of her as more of a chaperone,” Magnus advised, his demeanor toward the younger men cooling considerably. “And if I were you lads, I’d focus more on connecting with the she-wolves than ranking them. Or else you’ll end up wasting everyone’s time.”
“Thanks for the backup,” I said into my husband’s head.
“Always, mo banrigh. Always and forever.”
And to think I had been so afraid when I’d stepped onto that plane with him in Canada. Every day since then, Magnus had given me a new reason to thank my wolf for superseding my human and making the right choice.
The Faoiltiarn Grand March went beautifully.
Magnus and I paraded into the castle’s celebration hall to the sound of bagpipes. Then we were joined by Milly and Iain. Then Lachlan and Valentina. And, eventually, the rest of the guests with both the New St. Ailbe brides and the Faoiltiarn wolves coming together to perform a traditional reel that left them all breathing hard, laughing, and happy to be a part of this once dying kingdom village.
After that, nothing could kill my mood. Not even the reformation of the line of male wolves that had been cut short when Lachlan announced it was time for the traditional grand march.
However, I was surprised when Alban, who’d been missing during the big group dance, suddenly appeared and cut to the front of the line.
“Alban, you want to have a go at the St. Ailbe brides, too?” Magnus asked with a shocked look.
I’m sure I wore a similar expression on my face. Alban had just given me a gruff “Nae” when I stopped by his house to see if he wanted to put his name down on the letter exchange list.
He must have changed his mind after he actually saw them. Oh, crap …
I mentally scrambled to figure out which of the sweet and sheltered St. Ailbe she-wolves could possibly be a good match for the grizzled veteran.
But then Alban gave a jerk of his head. “Nae. It’s your sister. She’s here with a child asking for you.”
“Naomi’s here?!” I said, “Is Ellie okay?”
Magnus tensed. “You go to her. I’ll find Iain.”
“Nae! Nae! Not her,” Alban answered, grabbing both our arms before we could run off. “T’other one.”
The other one …? I struggled to grasp his meaning until I realized, “Wait, do you mean Leora? My older sister? She’s here? With her daughter?”
“Aye, she’s here. I should have told you earlier, but I—it doesnae matter. Just come. Come with me now!” Alban said with more urgency—or words, for that matter—than I’d ever seen him display.
But just as I started to follow him, a great shout went up. In Gaelic, but not the happy kind I occasionally heard at the cafe when Magnus scored a “try” (which, like every other rugby term I had come across, was both confusing and misleading. A try was what Canadians would have called a goal or touchdown or run—or anything but “try”—in, like, every other sport).
However, this Gaelic rose into the air as an angry shout—clipped and accompanied by Magnus suddenly shoving me behind him.
Alban shouted something to Magnus in their old language before running in one direction while Magnus pulled me in another.
“What is going on?” I demanded as I tripped over my white heels, trying to keep up.
“Alban’s going to find Naomi and provide her protection.”
“Protection? From what?!” I demanded.
“The Irish. This is 1503 all over again—thank feck we already have it open.”
My eyes widened when I saw what he meant—a great chunk of the hall’s back stone wall had been slid open to reveal a dark passageway. At least half of the St. Ailbe brides were being shoved inside along with the few unheated Faoiltiarn she-wolves.
“What is this? What’s going on?” I asked as Magnus attempted to do the same to me.
“I’m sorry, mo banrigh, but now more than ever you must be our queen. Keep the lasses silent and guide them down the passageway. It will bring you to a cave in the woods. Walk, don’t run, since it’ll be dark and ye’ll have no light. But if you hear the stone slide open behind you, tell the she-wolves to run and I’ll find ye afterwards.”
“After what? Magnus, what is going on?”
Another shout went up before he could answer. And though only about ten of the St. Ailbe’s she-wolves were in the passageway with me, the stone door began to slide close.
“I’m sorry, mo banrigh, there’s no time. The Irish are here and we have no weapons to defend ye with.”
With that, the stone door slid closed and the next thing I heard was someone say on the other side of it, “Tell us, King, what is this news we’ve received about a house full of brides …?”
The voice had a heavy Irish accent, which I normally found pleasant and melodic. But this one sounded menacing and darker than the passageway I’d been shoved into.
“Take the brides away!” he yelled inside my head. “Take them now.”
And, so I did.
“Okay, ladies. Keep quiet, turn slowly, and start walking,” I said, my voice calm and steady though I could smell the fear coming off the she-wolves gathered together in the black passageway.
But they did as I said, shuffling carefully along in the dark for a full twenty minutes to the soundtrack of nothing more than our rapid heartbeats.
Eventually, though, I decided to disobey my mate’s orders and asked, “Can one of you please tell me what happened in 1503?”
“I’m not sure as I’ve only ever heard the tale from my gran,” a voice answered—one I recognized as the baker’s daughter who’d refused to charge me for the sausage roll I’d enjoyed that morning. “But I think it has something to do with a wedding like this one. Knowing our males would be sottered with the celebration of their king’s wedding, the Irish wolves came and stole away nearly half the unheated maidens in our village. It’s the reason why we built this secret passage into the castle’s main celebration hall. It’s also the reason Irish and Scottish wolves still dinnae get along to this verrae day.”
“Oh, my goodness!” one of the St. Ailbe exchange brides murmured, giving voice to the horror every she-wolf in the tunnel was probably feeling right now.
“It’s okay,” I assured all of them despite the fear pooling like a loch in my stomach. “I think we’re almost there.”
Indeed, the passage had grown colder, and I could smell the outdoors now—snow and trees and rabbits. We must be near the cave where the tunnel let out, and given the strong scent of rabbits, it seemed a warren of them had also decided to take refuge in the cave.
There was no scent of Magnus, however, and he’d promised to meet us here.
“Are you okay?” I pushed into his head.
“Aye, made our way out with our fists. We’re headed to you.”
Thank goodness … relief filled me just as we stepped into the cave. The smell of rabbits was even stronger here. But at least I could see the moonlit night beyond the cave’s entrance.
“So what happened after you got the maidens back?” I asked the baker’s daughter as we stepped from the passageway into the cave. “Was it all-out war?”
“That’s just it,” the baker’s daughter answered. “According to Gran, we never got them back. We sent our best hunters after them, and eventually the king himself. They either came back empty-handed or not at all.”
The chill that went through me had nothing to do with the dark cave. “But how is that possible?”
“Well, if you’re askin’ me, muirnin, it’s because the Irish wolves are a much cleverer lot than your males,” a voice answered. A male voice with a melodic-but-dark accent I recognized as not Scottish.
Several flashlights suddenly lit up the cave, revealing at least ten male wolves stepping out of the shadows. They all wore coats fashioned out of strung-together rabbit furs. Which explained the strong animal scent and why I couldn’t smell them before we entered the cave. They were all huge, with dark paint streaked in lines, patterns, and symbols across their broad faces.
The she-wolves, including me, all stared at the males.
The males grinned down at us, their eyes glittering with evil intent.
And then … all hell broke loose.
* * *
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
The Scottish Wolf trilogy concludes with Her Scottish Hero.
I can’t tell you how happy I am to share Tara and Magnus’s romance. As soon as our heroine let me in on her super-secret back story, I knew this tale would be all kinds of fun. I hope you enjoyed it, too.
But oh, my gosh! Oh, my gosh! What will happen with the Irish wolves? And why has Tara’s older sister show up in Faoiltiarn out of the blue?!?!
Make sure to check out all of the books in the Scottish Wolves trilogy:
And keep reading for a sneak peek of
