When Conall noted he must not have visited Torridon before, for he would have sensed him there, Kiyo nodded vaguely. After all, he couldn’t tell the alpha that he’d met Conall’s father and grandfather back in 1961 when he’d stumbled across Pack MacLennan on his travels. At the time, he’d been running in wolf form through the woods near Torridon when he’d come across a cornered alpha. Another alpha and a beta had the alpha pinned. Without even thinking about why, Kiyo had joined the fight.
That cornered alpha turned out to be Conall’s father. Although strong, he was young and inexperienced. The two wolves were from a pack in the Lowlands of Scotland. Kiyo had insinuated himself into a war. When the Alpha of Pack MacLennan discovered Kiyo had saved his son, he welcomed him into his home in Torridon. Always a lone wolf, Kiyo had been intrigued by pack life, but he knew it would never be for him.
Still, he stayed awhile. Long enough to see the end of the Lowland pack. It was a small pack, having lost members and much power over the years. The attack on Conall’s father, Caelan, had been a last desperate attempt to gain leverage over Pack MacLennan, to force a submission.
Lennox MacLennan, Conall’s grandfather, was having none of it. He’d given the Lowland pack many chances to assimilate, but they didn’t want to. They wanted to take over Pack MacLennan. Foolish arrogance as far as Kiyo could see.
He lived with Pack MacLennan for three months before setting off on his own again. By the time Kiyo left, Lennox had wiped out the last of the Lowland pack, and Pack MacLennan was the last werewolf pack in Scotland.
Conall wasn’t even a glitter in Caelan’s eyes at the time as he hadn’t found a mate yet.
There was no way Kiyo could confide his history with the pack without revealing his immortality. Wolves lived longer and aged slowly … but not that slowly.
After his query about Scotland, Conall stopped talking. Much like Kiyo, he wasn’t really a conversationalist. It suited Kiyo nicely. Theirs was a comfortable silence.
However, the urgency and irritation that hummed beneath Kiyo’s stoic facade must have betrayed him because as soon as they got into the rental car hours later after arriving at Heathrow, Conall asked, “Do you have some feeling for Niamh?”
Conall was driving since he was the one following Niamh’s scent. Kiyo tried not to glower at him for the ridiculous question. “Obligation,” he replied flatly. “I’m being paid to keep an eye on her, and I don’t like to fail.”
“So, the somewhat oppressive sense of desperation coming off you is just out of obligation?”
“Desperation?” Kiyo asked, his voice dangerously quiet.
Conall was not intimidated by his warning tone. “I’m an intuitive alpha,” Conall explained. “I often sense things in other wolves, especially other alphas. I hadnae realized it until my mate pointed it out. She had the audacity to suggest it’s why I always win in a fight.” He grinned, shrugging. “Perhaps she’s right.”
“I’m not desperate,” Kiyo insisted.
“You’re something.”
Glaring out the passenger-side window as they sped along the motorway away from Heathrow Airport, Kiyo considered this. It would be a lie to suggest he wasn’t feeling something. “I’m annoyed,” he admitted. “I should have realized what she was planning.”
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why should you have realized?”
Kiyo looked at the alpha. “It’s my job.”
Conall gave a slight shake of his head. “It’s more than that. You think you missed something.”
Damn it, the wolf was intuitive. Kiyo thought on the night before with Niamh, going over every inch of their interaction. And there it was. In among everything. The thing that bothered him most. “After her vision … she asked me … well, something personal. Something she’d been plaguing me with almost from the moment we met. I won’t get into what. But she asked again after her vision, and there was something in her expression when I didn’t give her the answer she wanted.”
“What?”
Kiyo shook his head. “Nothing,” he answered, realizing what this sounded like. “It’s nothing. I’m looking for answers out of nothing.”
“I doubt it.” Conall glanced quickly at him before looking back at the road. “I can guess what you saw.”
He almost rolled his eyes. “Now you’re clairvoyant too?”
The alpha let out a low rumble of a growl, but it was tinged with amusement. “Thea would call me wise, not clairvoyant.”
“Are you sure you’re not using Thea as an excuse to hide the fact that you have an ego the size of Scotland?”
Conall gave a bark of laughter. “Thea would say so.”
The wolf was mate-whipped. Kiyo had come across a pair of true mates decades ago, but he’d forgotten how insufferable they could be until Fionn and Rose crossed his path. And now this alpha. A veritable legend among his species. And he was practically bubbling with contentment and happiness, like an oversized pup, all because of a supernatural mating bond that had shattered his freedom.