Highland Wolf Pact

by Selena Kitt

  She had thought about what it would mean, to be a wulver’s mate.

  To be Raife’s mate.

  She would have denied it aloud—and had, on several occasions, when the women had teased her about it. They soon learned not to mention it, because if they did, Sibyl would bristle. And Raife—no one ever said anything about Sibyl in front of Raife. The last man who had said something suggestive about Sibyl had spent the afternoon in the pigpen, shoveling it out.

  But as much as she denied it, she thought about it. She felt the way his eyes followed her, wherever she went. He always knew where she was, at all times. He spent nights sleeping in the cold hallway somewhere outside her door, wrapped in his plaid. She couldn’t count the times she’d stood on the other side of that door, her ear pressed tight, imagining she could hear him breathing, feel the pound of his wulver heart. Of course, it was really only the sound of her own quickened breath, the thud of her aching human heart.

  Because, if nothing else, her heart beat for him.

  She knew it wasn’t unheard of, a wulver choosing a human mate. It had happened before. Raife’s own father had been a human man, after all. But Raife was the leader of his pack. He had a responsibility, not just to himself, but to all of them. He hadn’t yet taken a mate, but they expected him to, and soon. They expected him to choose a wulver woman, someone who matched him in spirit and strength, a woman who wouldn’t put herself at risk every time she gave birth to a new heir.

  And Sibyl knew any issue from a human and wulver would be a changeling. No human-wulver pairing ever resulted in a child who was fully human.

  She had been sold to a man who was as different from her as night from day, or so she once thought. The Scots ways were odd to her, so often opposite her own, but the more time she’d spent in their presence, she’d grown used to the soft brogue, their jokes and forward behavior. Donal and his men had endeared themselves to her, over time. Well, most of them had.

  It was mostly Alistair, her intended, who had still rankled her.

  Now that she’d lived with these wulvers, she knew what real “difference” was. They couldn’t have been further apart, she and these creatures. They were wild, untamed, a close-knit pack of warriors, the men strong and protective, the women nearly as strong and just as territorial. Sibyl had watched them argue, tussle, fight and make up, had listened to the women tell stories and watched them take care of their young.

  And yet, in their hearts, she had found they were the same as she was. Their needs and wants were no different. They hungered. They fed. They laughed. They wondered. They loved. And in that last, in her estimation, they were perhaps superior to her own breed. They loved with a passion and devotion she had never seen before. The connection between wulver mates went far beyond contracts. In her world, men of power and pieces of paper served to join two factions.

  She had been little more than a pawn on her uncle’s chessboard. King Henry had sought to unite the English and Scots, to ease the tension between them by uniting families along the border, so everyone was invested in the future generations that issued from each union. She was but one bride who had been sold for that purpose, she knew. And ultimately, if her uncle was to be believed, James IV of Scotland would marry a Tudor and the union of Scots and English would wind its way all the way to the top of the hierarchy.

  “Sibyl?” Laina’s voice brought Sibyl out of her reverie. Sibyl tore her eyes from Raife, focusing on the woman and her baby.

  “I’m sorry?” Sibyl apologized. She hadn’t heard a word, didn’t even know if Laina had been speaking at all.

  “He’ll claim ye.” Laina was the only one who dared speak of it aloud, although even she was cautious and spoke in hushed tones, so no one overheard them. “If’n ye let ’im.”

  “Who am I to let him?” Sibyl laughed, trying her best to sound as if it mattered not at all. Besides, what did Laina know? Sibyl had climbed into the man’s lap and humiliated herself—and he’d refused her. “I am just a woman. I get no say in such matters.”

  “From what I hear, ye had a great deal t’say ’bout such matters wit’ an arrow.” Laina leveled a knowing look in her direction. “Ye’re more wulver than English at heart, I think.”

  Sibyl had escaped her captor, had defied her uncle, had shamed her mother. That was not a ladylike, English thing to do. There was nothing to return to for her anymore, and if there was, she wasn’t sure she would want to go back. Her world had died the moment she fled. Now she belonged nowhere. She lived in this fantastical place, with these strange creatures, but she didn’t belong with them either. That’s what it came down to, in the end. She wasn’t just a stranger in a strange land, she was forever an outsider, a foreigner who could never fit in.

  An Englishwoman could act like a Scot, could someday become Scottish in language and mannerisms, but a human woman could never become a wulver. That was a transformation no person could ever perform, no matter how much they wished it were true. Just as Laina, who longed to change her wulver nature, could never prevent her own change.

  We are what we are. That’s what Raife often said, and it was true. More true than Sibyl wanted to admit, even to herself.

  “Hello, Darrow.” Sibyl glanced up as Laina’s husband joined them, kissing the top of his son’s dark head, looking upon him with great affection. Sibyl didn’t stay long between them. She was too afraid they might start asking her about the huluppa tree again and she didn’t want to have to tell them the truth.

  She told herself she’d go the next day and pull off a shoot and try to get it to root, and replant it. Mayhaps she could get it to grow somewhere else further downstream. Maybe it needed partial shade instead of full sun. She was still puzzling over this when she took her seat across from Laina and Darrow at the long table. Raife had insisted she sit by him from the very beginning. At first, she thought it was so he could translate for her from Gaelic, but then he had insisted everyone start speaking English. Of course, they still didn’t pay much attention to the rule, especially at dinner, when everyone talked at once, hundreds of people sitting at four long tables.

  Sibyl didn’t care much, not really. She was too hungry most of the time to pay attention to the jokes and laughter, the talk of training and babies. Besides, it allowed her to keep Raife’s attention. They sat and talked together every night at dinner like they were in their own little world. She liked it that way and she thought he did too. She’d learned a lot about the wolf pack—and its leader—this way. And she had revealed a great deal about herself and her life before this, far more than she would have otherwise, if she’d been focused on making small talk with the other wulvers, whether it was in English or her poor attempt at Gaelic.

  But tonight, Raife was quiet. He ate his bacon and sopped up gravy with biscuits and just grunted yes and no answers to her questions. In spite of her halting attempts at conversations, he stayed quiet, thoughtful. It was only when Darrow made a joke across the table in Gaelic that made everyone laugh that Raife took notice and snapped at his brother.

  “Beurla!” Raife insisted. “English!”

  He taught Sibyl that way, saying the word in Gaelic, then repeating it in English.

  “You mustn’t force them for my sake.” Sibyl nudged Raife with her right elbow, trying not to make it too obvious she was doing so, as he told his brother to speak English at the dinner table.

  The pack gathered for dinner in this one large, central room, a fire always burning cozily in the kitchen’s giant hearth. This was the heart of the mountain and the foundation of the pack. This was where they met, where they ate, and at night, where many of them slept. It was during her first week in the mountain, unable to sleep, when she’d wandered into the kitchen, her stomach looking for biscuits, that she’d found them all huddled together like the pups in the kitchen back home.

  The bed she slept on, she discovered, was Raife’s, but while she’d protested to Kirstin about taking his room, she assured Sibyl that he rarely occupied it. He wrapped
himself in his plaid, like the rest of his pack, and slept on the kitchen floor with a hundred other canines. Aside from Raife’s, rooms with doors inside the mountain were usually reserved for mating couples and birthing females. Darrow and Laina were in a much smaller room next to Raife’s. It was the room Sibyl had first woken up in, where Laina had given birth.

  Raife had not taken a mate to fill his room, much to his pack’s frustration. So far, he had, according to Kirstin, been far more interested in training, not only himself but his pack mates, for a war he never wanted to fight. It was strange to Sibyl, given it was Darrow who seemed far more interested in starting a war, even if he wasn’t quite as diligent about training and preparing for such.

  “I told ’em t’speak English.” Raife frowned down at her, his expressive blue eyes showing concern over her confusion at Darrow’s Gaelic words. Raife had made it a new pack-wide rule that, in Sibyl’s presence, English should be spoken at all times. All of them could speak and understand English, although they spoke it with a thick, Scottish brogue, but most of them forgot and needed reminding when she was around.

  “I am learning Gaelic,” she protested, sticking her tongue out at him when he raised those dark, arched brows at her. She picked up a biscuit and waved it at him. “Aran. See?”

  “Seo?” Raife lifted his glass of wine, tipping it toward her, asking what it was.

  “Uhhhh.” Sibyl frowned. She was drinking goat’s milk—the goats were kept in the valley behind tall fences, or else they would get eaten instead of milked—and she knew the word for “milk” was “bainne.” Laina, still nursing her baby balach, Garaith, said the word “bainne” enough for Sibyl to remember it.

  She noticed that many of the pack were watching her. Kirstin, who had been a patient, excellent Gaelic teacher so far, was particularly interested in Sibyl’s struggle.

  “F-f-f…” She knew it started with that sound. She remembered that much. “Fiodh! Now give me!”

  Sibyl reached for his wine to take a drink, triumphant. It hit her belly with a mellow burn and immediately made her light-headed. She hardly ever drank spirits.

  “No, lass.” Raife couldn’t help grinning, watching her drink the rest of the wine in his cup. “Fion is wine.”

  “What did I ask for then?”

  “Fiodh is wood.” Raife chuckled.

  “Methinks ye give me brother plenty a’dat.”

  Sibyl’s cheeks reddened at Darrow’s words and the laughter that ensued.

  “Darrow.” Raife scowled a warning at his brother.

  “The scouts say Alistair’s men ‘ave finally given up searchin’ f’her.” Darrow met his brother’s eyes across the table.

  How long had it been? She wondered. She hadn’t been counting the days, but it was still summer. So Alistair had given up on her. It was a relief to her, and it must be to them too, she thought.

  But then Darrow said, “Tis time fer her t’go back t’her own kind.”

  “Darrow, enough,” Raife snarled. His words brought silence to the whole pack. They all stopped talking, putting down their food, looking uneasily between the two men.

  “Yer gonna start a war,” Darrow said, standing and staring pointedly at Sibyl.

  She shrank against Raife’s side, afraid of the anger in Darrow’s eyes. This was a man who had taken her on his back deep into the woods, who had been willing to risk his own life—and hers—in hopes of finding some sort of relief for a wulvers’ plight. They had talked together on those trips, had jested and laughed, had found they had more in common than not. Sibyl had come to believe that Darrow had not only accepted her among them, but that he even liked her. Now, looking at the anger on his face, she wondered if she’d been mistaken.

  “Ye wanna war!” Raife threw up his hands and stood too, a head taller than his brother.

  “Not like this, I do’na.” Darrow pointed a finger at Sibyl so that everyone around the table turned their heads to look at her. “She puts all of us at risk. Ye wan’me t’speak English? I’ll say’t in plain English then! Are ye doin’ what’s right fer the pack? Or are ye doing what’s right fer yerself?”

  Sibyl couldn’t breathe. She knew it was true, that her mere presence here put them all in danger. She’d tried to leave, but Raife wouldn’t let her, said it was safer here for all of them. She’d never felt so welcome anywhere before, but she also had never had a family like the wulvers. She didn’t want any of them harmed.

  But if Alistair’s men had finally given up…

  “What about ye, Darrow?” Raife glanced down at Sibyl and then back to his brother, eyes flashing. “Ye wan’me t’say’t plainly? Ye risked yer woman’s life and the life of yer bairn, and if it weren’t for this woman ye want ta toss out into the woods on her own, ye’d’ve lost ’em both!”

  “Raife…” Sibyl’s wide eyes met Laina’s across the table, seeing the pained look on the woman’s face.

  The two men stood, face to face, eyes locked, unmoving.

  “Raife, please.” She tugged his hand as she stood beside him. “Don’t.”

  He wasn’t listening. A low growl came from his throat, from both of them. She imagined them leaping across the table at one another, brother against brother, tearing each other to pieces, and couldn’t stand it.

  “D’ye wanna tell ’er the truth, or should I?” Raife asked his brother. Darrow reddened but did not speak, so Raife continued, his voice thundering through the cavern. “They stopped lookin’ fer her over a month ago, but ye kept yer mouth shut til now, didn’ye? Now that ye got what ye wanted outta ’er, that is. Now yer fine tossin’er out on ’er own!”

  His words sunk in, deep. She felt faint.

  Sibyl put her hand in Raife’s, squeezing hard.

  “Tiugainn,” she whispered, pleading with him in his native tongue, begging him. She couldn’t stand another moment of this. “Tiugainn!”

  He looked down, seeing her eyes brimming with tears, and the word registered in his eyes.

  Come. Come on.

  He turned away from his brother, away from his pack, and followed her into the tunnels.

  Chapter Nine

  There was nothing but silence as they made their way through the tunnel. Slowly, she heard the sound of the pack beginning to talk again, but it was far away now. She saw the light of a torch in the distance and knew there was a sentry on duty, as always, near the front of the cave.

  Raife stopped outside her room, hand on the latch, looking down at her.

  “I’m sorry ’bout that, lass,” he apologized softly. “Me brother overstepped ’is bounds.”

  “Is it true?” Sibyl asked. “Did the MacFalons stop looking for me over a month ago?”

  “Aye,” Raife admitted, frowning. “Darrow did’na tell ye because he wanted ye to find the plant.”

  “And you did not tell me either.” She blinked at him. “Why?”

  “Ah lass…” He sighed, shaking his head. “T’isn’t safe for ye out there, even if the MacFalons stopped lookin’. The MacFalons and the wulvers, we’ve a history…”

  “I know.” Sibyl knew, more than she let on. Raife didn’t know what the wulver women had told her by the stream that day.

  “Ye know?”

  “The wolf pact.” She rolled her eyes when his brows went up in surprise. “I am not an idiot. I know the story. But I don’t care about that. What I want to know is…”

  “Sibyl, I can’na…”

  “Tiugainn,” she said softly in Gaelic. “Come.”

  Raife reluctantly followed her into the room—his room, a place he hadn’t slept in over a month—shutting the door behind him. Sibyl went to the fire and fed it. The flames were low and she used a poker to stoke it, glancing over her shoulder to see Raife still standing in front of the door like a sentry.

  “Tiugainn.” She said it again, holding her hand out to him. “Sit with me by the fire.”

  The rug in front of it was made from lamb’s wool, soft and white and inviting. She had fallen asleep
in front of the fire a few times on that rug, wrapped up in her plaid, just like a real Scot.

  “Yer startin’ t’look like one of us.” Raife approached slowly, looking down at her in her shirt and plaid as she pulled her knees up, resting her chin on them. She’d gotten used to this way of living quite quickly. No more corsets. She liked going around with bare legs, even running through the valley in bare feet. It was like reliving her childhood again. “Yer even gettin' some color.”

  “Just my freckles.” She rolled her eyes, patting the floor beside her. “Sit.”

  Raife did as she asked, sitting next to her on the rug in the firelight. She searched his face and that faraway look in his eyes as he stared into the flames, and wondered what he was thinking.

  “D’ye like it ’ere?” he asked softly. He didn’t look at her when he asked. She knew he was thinking about her mounting that horse, riding hell-bent on escape. She’d told him she felt like a prisoner, but it wasn’t true, and she felt guilty now for saying it.

  “Yes,” she confessed. “It’s beautiful.”

  Sometimes she was afraid to admit how much she’d grown to love it in the den. As strange and frightening as it had once been, it was now just as familiar, like home. Even her childhood home had never felt like this. Traveling through the mountain and its tunnels had become routine, and their valley, with its sheep and goats and pigs, its running stream and fields of heather, was one of her favorite places in the world.

  “Bóidheach.” Raife turned his head to look at her, reaching out to touch her face. His fingers were rough against her flushed cheek. “Tha thu bóidheach.”

  “No.” Sibyl felt her cheeks redden at his words, biting her lip and shaking her head. “Not me.”

  “Yes, ye know those words.” He tilted her chin up when she tried to avoid his eyes. “Yer beautiful. Me bonnie lass.”

  Hearing him say it made her feel dizzy and flushed, but she told herself it was the warmth of the fire that made her feel that way, not the heat of his gaze.