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  “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?” Tara demanded, frustrated as hell with this country’s wolves and their sire.

  “We’re a verrae auld country, banrigh. 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 answered, folding his arms over his broad chest. “And 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.”

  Tara blinked. Home to her pack…

  No. She couldn’t go back there. Ever. She’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.”

  Tara’s fists balled. She badly wanted to hit him again. She felt as if she had 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!” Tara screamed when they attempted to put her in the mating cage in Abel Flosswulf’s basement. Granted, the designated cage was much larger and more comfortable than the humble cages her family used to shift into on full moon nights. These had floor-to-ceiling bars and a padded floor. But she completely freaked out the moment the pack alpha opened the door and directed her to go in with Jacob.

  “You cannot make me do this!”

  But as it turned out, they could. As if by mutual agreement, both Jacob and Abel blocked her from running, each catching her 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 her into the cage.

  “No, no…I don’t want this. Please!” Her 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 Tara would never—no matter how far away she was or how much time passed—be able to unhear.

  “What are your grounds for severing a mateship?” she 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 her know she’d hit a nerve.

  Tara might have felt bad under any other circumstance but this was her life, her future, and she forced herself to be relentless as she continued, “Tell me how your mom got of this. Did she serve your father with papers? Cut off a hand?”

  Magnus clenched his jaw, his stone-colored eyes 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,” Tara 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 wolves, my parents withstanding, mate for life.”

  She could see from the resolute set of his jaw that he meant every word. Which was stupid. Couldn’t he see what a train wreck they’d be together?

  “Fine,” she answered with an annoyed shake of her head. “I hope you are looking forward to your year without sex.”

  Magnus’s eyes slit. “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, but if you’d rather be my breeding cow, by all means…”

  This time she didn’t just think about hitting him, she actually 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 her wrists in one hand before turning her around, so she was trapped against his body. Trapped… Trapped…

  Tara’s mind blanked, her breathing becoming shallow as the metallic thunk from long ago echoed in her head. “Let me go!” she screamed.

  “Tara, you are not a child, so you need not hit me every time something you don’t like comes out of my mouth,” he answered, his voice both hot and cold next to her ear.

  In fact, it wasn’t the most unreasonable request she’d ever received—or the first time she’d ever been told to rethink her hit first, talk it out later policy.

  But she had never been trapped before. Not like this. Not since…

  “Let me go!” she wheezed, feeling herself begin to hyperventilate. “Let me go! Please!”

  Magnus immediately released her, giving Tara the freedom she’d demanded. She whipped around, twisting her body into a fighting stance. Prepared to punch, scratch, and scream—anything to keep him from trapping her again.

  Magnus stood there, eyeing her quizzically as if she’d lost her 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,” he said in a tone that implied she should have known that.

  Tara lowered her arms feeling completely embarrassed. For her defensive stance…and her outsized reaction to him trying to stop her from punching him. Again.

  “I…” she began, only to trail off with no idea how to respond. Or what to say next…

  But as it turned out, she didn’t have to say a thing. Without warning, a new scent suddenly filled the air between them, freezing them both in place. They looked at one another wide-eyed.

  Tara 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. But…how could that be?

  Tara stood there, confused. She was already pregnant, and wouldn’t Iain have told her if there was another wolf living in his building?

  But then Magnus growled in a way that made him sound more animal than man. And instead of cowering in fear, her whole body warmed. No, warmed was the wrong word for it.

  Her body heated. Despite being furious with him, despite being pregnant, right then and there her whole body heated with the single thought of him.

  Mate, her wolf growled inside her as the space between her legs began to tingle.

  But it wasn’t meant as a noun. This was most definitely a verb. And a command at that.

  Mate, mate, mate, her wolf chanted. Right now.

  Chapter Seven

  Here’s how wolf mating works. Two wolves mated in wolf form. Got pregnant in wolf form. Then shifted back to human form and went about their lives. Wham! Bam! Thank you, Moon, for the free baby—no messy heat sessions required.

  One of the reasons her pack had voted for compulsory wolf matings was it involved much less fuss than the heat alternative favored by most other packs. Also, if a she-wolf was wolf-mated before going into heat, she wouldn’t fall prey to mating with an inappropriate male while under the influence of an overwhelming biological urge.

  Tara was wolf-mated. She could smell the baby growing inside her, clear as day. She should not be in heat. It was technically impossible for this to be happening.

  Yet, it was definitely happening. A powerful wave of lust caught fire between her legs and spread to every nerve ending in her body before she could even think of ways to put it out.

  One moment, Tara was trying to tear a certain alpha king’s eyes out. And the next, she was
trying to tear off his clothes.

  Magnus’s heavy knit sweater came apart in her hands as if it were made of tissue paper, but he stopped her after she tore through the strap of the small leather purse he wore over the waist of his kilt.

  “Calm yourself, banrigh,” he said. “All my clothes are handmade by the Faoltiarn tailor and his mate. I cannae let you ravage their good work, no matter your state.” With a low chuckle he pulled one of the pleats back to reveal a set of buckles.

  Tara felt his arrogant gaze on her, watching as she fell on the fasteners and all but wrenched them apart.

  Her breath caught when his kilt finally fell away. However big Magnus had seemed that morning several days earlier, he was much, much bigger in the flesh. Hard and uncircumcised, his huge cock seemed to pulse with an invitation for her to touch it. An invitation she accepted with the desperation of a starved animal who’d finally been given food.

  Unfortunately, needing and knowing were two very different things. Tara took him in hand only to fumble…

  She honestly wasn’t sure what to do next, how to get him in her so he could sate the raw hunger.

  “You’re alright, banrigh,” he assured her. “Turn ‘round for us and bend over the sofa.”

  Tara usually hated being told what to do, but right then it felt like she couldn’t comply fast enough. She got into position with more speed than she’d ever followed an order in her life. Tara braced her hands against the back of the couch.

  “Aye, just like that…” he said, his voice low with amused approval as he hiked up her nightgown and easily tore off her lace panties.

  She’d bought those panties at a high-end lingerie store at 30 pounds a pair. But she didn’t complain. In fact, Tara whimpered when his hand found its way between her legs, exploring for a few efficient moments before pushing in deep. “Ohhh!” she moaned at the mind blowing feel of his two large fingers inside her.

  “So tight…so wet, banrigh…” he observed with a dark chuckle. “How about I put in more than my fingers?”

  For once, his arrogant tone didn’t grate on her nerves in the least. It seemed to hold a dark promise of things he could give her.

  “Yes, please,” Tara whimpered. “Your fingers aren’t nearly enough.”

  “Let me see. You’re already pregnant, but you want my seed. Is that right, ye greedy female?”

  Her human hated that the answer was yes. A desperate, unequivocal YES in all caps. But her wolf, shivering at the thought of having him inside of her again, pushed the truth out of her mouth on a moan: “Yes, please!”

  “You want my seed.” Not a question, but a command to respond.

  “Yes, I want your seed!”

  “How much do you want it, banrigh? Enough to formally accept my mate claim? Because as you pointed out to me before, I am a wolf who bides by tradition. I willnae knot inside a she-wolf who is not my willing mate.”

  Tara squeezed her eyes tight, clenching her teeth before any more breathless words could escape her mouth. He wasn’t fighting fair. He wasn’t fighting fair at all. And she would not give in to him.

  As if reading her thoughts, Magnus pulled his fingers out of her.

  “No!” she gasped, desperate to have that erotic pressure back even if it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.

  Magnus didn’t answer. Just reached around her chest, his hands finding the neckline of her satin nightgown. Without a thought to its cost or beauty, he ripped the front in two, effectively freeing her heavy breasts. Tara cried out as his large hands, callused from years of rugby, caught both her breasts. Massaging them hard in a way that made the soft flesh swell even tighter.

  Somehow this was even worse than having his teasing fingers inside her. His intimate touch left her pussy with nothing to clench but air, making her even more desperate for him to take her. And then he viciously rolled her nipples.

  “Aaaaghhh!” Right on cue, another wave of uncontrollable lust slammed into her. She was so turned on, she should have come then and there.

  But that wasn’t how it worked. She remembered from the one and only conversation her mother had with her about the heat process. A she-wolf’s heat wasn’t like normal desire at all. It could not be masturbated away. It could not be gotten around. It could only be sated by a male wolf. Or, as her mother put it—your chosen mate.

  Tara did not want to be mated. The very notion of it made her feel as if shackles had been placed around her wrists. But Magnus refused to take her without her acquiescence. And she did not know how much longer she could hold out.

  To her credit, Tara tried. She clamped her lips together and refused to say anything. As cool as Magnus was playing it, she knew males were as affected by the heat smell as she-wolves. Which was one of the reasons her old pack considered unheated shifter teens to be so dangerous. If Tara could just stay quiet and wait Magnus out, he would have to eventually give in to the heavy scent that was rumored to drive unmated male wolves so crazy, they often had to be caged or chained up to stop them going after a she-wolf in heat.

  As it turned out, she’d been correct about Magnus eventually having to give in. But the outcome did not seem promising. “I’ll give you ten more seconds to decide, banrigh. Then I’ll be forced to take what’s under my kilt and bury it in the first willing human female I find.”

  “What happened to being an honorable wolf who would never take another?” she bit out.

  “The same thing that happened to your vow to never have me, I suspect,” he answered, his voice a blend of arrogance and ultimatum.

  He was bluffing. Tara was sure he was bluffing. But then she remembered what her boss had said about Magnus and women…and how Daphne reacted to his office visit. “You’re crazy to hide from that one. All he’d have to do is look in my direction and my legs would fall open with a ‘welcome’ sign hanging around my fanny.”

  In the end, he could make good on his threat. But she doubted the wolf screaming, Mate! Mate! Mate! inside her would let her do the same.

  “Okay, fine!” she cried out, her core clenching so hard it felt like it was shouting its consent, too.

  “’Okay, fine’ might work in Canada,” Magnus answered, his voice as unyielding as a winter wind. “But here in Scotland, we have a set of formal words a she-wolf must give before a Faoltiarn male knots inside her. Now banrigh, I’ll admit the sight of ye is giving me cause to forget all about such notions. But seeing as how the future of my clan is at stake, I’m afraid I’ll have to insist on having your vow in the auld language.”

  Oh, God…this could not be happening.

  Tara wanted to argue with Magnus. Wanted to scream at him for being such a tool, the type of wolf who would take advantage of a she-wolf in heat.

  But her wolf did not care. Mate, mate, mate! it chanted inside her without any thought or regard to how her human might feel about the matter.

  “Okay…okay…” she croaked, responding to her wolf as much as she was responding to him. “Just give me the damn words.”

  He answered with a short string of Gaelic. And she echoed the words back to him as best she could, given the complexity of the language. Tara didn’t know what they meant but they definitely had the rhythm of ritual, making it easy to guess just how binding they were. Especially in Scotland where laws only ever seemed to get created. Never updated, modified, or—God forbid—removed from the books completely.

  Magnus had been playing it cool ever since the start of her surprise heat. Teasing her. Manipulating her. Both literally and figuratively, before finally offering her a deal her wolf would not allow her to refuse.

  But if Tara thought he was unaffected by her heat, she soon found out how very wrong she was.

  “Christ, Tara. That took everything I had in me,” he confessed on a harsh exhale as he fell on her back. He then pushed inside her with one hard stroke.

  Without delay, Magnus began to move into her from behind, his breath hot on the back of her neck.

  “Magnus,” she whimpered,
too far gone to chastise or hate him the way she definitely had before all this began—how long ago had that been? Minutes? Eons?

  It honestly didn’t matter because the way he rode her, with his chest pressed hard into her back and his arms braced on either side of her, caused every single defense she’d built to come crumbling down.

  “Magnus! Magnus! Oh, God, take me. Claim me! Please! Ich bin dei Wölfin! Ich bin dei Aldi! Bidde! Bidde! Oh, Gott…”

  After that, Tara didn’t know what she was saying, only that she defaulted to her first language—the one her mother spoke—and couldn’t stop. Not until the first shudder of a fierce orgasm abruptly cut her off.

  She knew they were building up to this. Tara had read about it in books. And seen it on TV shows. But nothing—nothing—could have prepared her for it. She shuddered around his cock, expelling so much heat, she was afraid he would slip out.

  And perhaps he was afraid of that happening, too. Magnus gave a rough growl and she felt him sink his teeth into her shoulder, holding her shuddering body in place as he continued to drive into her.

  His bite cleared her head. Kept her from collapsing as she focused on surviving the onslaught of pleasure.

  But just as the orgasm started to die down, Magnus knotted inside her. His huge cock spreading her so wide, it felt like he would tear her apart. And a second orgasm blasted through her with the intensity of a tsunami. Tara was paralyzed in place as it electrified her with an almost painful pleasure for moments on end.

  Now she understood why her wolf had caved so easily. If their wolf mating had been anything like this, even Tara couldn’t blame her beast for wanting to be with Magnus’s wolf again. And again. And again.

  “I agree with you completely, banrigh. Our wolves had the right of it, and now we’ve sealed our claim,” a dark and husky voice said inside her head.

  And that was that. Tara could hear Magnus speaking in her head. Meaning they’d 100% unlocked their mate bond in a way her wolf-mated parents couldn’t until they’d been taken over by the heat mating that produced her, their second child.