Queen Elizabeth was waiting outside Dùn Faoiltiarn for me.
I’d left her there with a wagon full of my supplies for my Brother’s Cottage stay. Thinking it would only be a quick in-and-out trip, I hadn’t even bothered to tie her up to one of the castle’s hitching posts.
Fortunately, despite the longer-than-expected wait, she hadn’t left the spot.
Good girl. I petted her long nose.
She whinnied and nudged at the pocket of the military jacket I was wearing over my t-shirt and kilt.
Horses weren’t wolves when it came to smell. But she knew I usually nicked an apple for her when I visited the castle.
Not this time. I had a whole bag of them nestled in with the rest of my winter provisions in the wagon, though. I made her a mental promise to give her a treat when we reached our destination.
Queen Elizabeth and I didn't share a telepathic bond like all the other heat-mated wolves in Faoiltiarn. But at this point, she was as close to a lifelong companion as I was likely to get. Her life, at least.
I climbed onto her back and left Faoiltiarn behind without another glance back in the castle’s direction.
On my way out, though, I rode past the large meadow where the kingdom used to host the annual Gaelic Games. That was before we fell out with the Irish Wolves, and they stopped making the row across the channel. It had sat empty and fallow for centuries after that.
But then came the biggest of Queen Tara's BUCs. Now, the meadow hosted a separate town with a name of its own. New St. Ailbe Queen Tara had dubbed it when she decided this was where all the prospective bride she-wolves from her Ontario hometown would be staying.
A wooden dorm house sat in the middle of the meadow, surrounded by a cow barn, loads of wooden planter boxes, clotheslines, and a baseball field of all things. I could see the St. Ailbe brides out there. Playing that bastardized version of the English bat-and-ball games of yore in their long blue dresses.
The Faoiltiarn males were stretched out in a queue about a kilometer long back at the castle. Meanwhile, the St. Ailbe Brides played in their homemade diamond underneath the late afternoon sun.
I couldn’t even imagine one of these wholesome she-wolves agreeing to start a courtship conversation with me. Sure, I was under the forty-year cut-off age by half a decade. But the few Brides I’d encountered around town tended to give me a wide berth. Any of them would take one look at me and run if Magnus tried to present me as a mate option. Same as Gail did after leaving me that letter.
The way you’ve been acting since your return to Faoiltiarn is a disgrace. It doesn’t matter that we were promised. You’re not the male you were before, and you’re obviously no longer fit for any she-wolf. I can’t even imagine you as a father.
No, there was nothing for me in Faoiltiarn anymore.
And it’d be a full moon tonight. Better get a move on …
Ben Faol was almost three hours away by wagon. And by the time we got within viewing distance of the Brother’s Cottage, I regretted waiting until audience hours with the royals before setting out.
Sure, I owed Magnus a heads-up about my departure. But I could feel the incoming moon in my bones. And I still needed to toss all my provisions in the cottage and get Lizzie secured in the stable I’d built for her before my wolf took over.
I clicked at Queen Elizabeth to go faster. But instead of rushing toward the stable, she stopped in her tracks.
We were only a few meters from the cottage, but she let out the same kind of grunt she did when we were deep in the forest, hunting boar.
I sniffed the air. Nothing I could smell. Not even a rabbit.
But then I saw it—the cottage detail I hadn’t noticed before Queen Elizabeth stopped walking ...
A huge plume of smoke drifting up from the chimney.
Somebody had a fire going at my place.
Somebody who wasn’t me.
I stilled—then climbed off Queen Elizabeth’s back and grabbed my Beretta 486 side-by-side shotgun.
Someone was in my house.
But not for long.