Her Scottish Hero

By Theodora Taylor

All this Scottish Grump wants to be is


ALONE


But I need his help…

When a swarm of mail-order brides and his ex-fiancée invade Alban Scotswolf's small shifter town, no one can blame the giant war vet for deciding to retire to his centuries-old cabin in the mountains. This is a tranquil place meant for him, and him alone. Per tradition, no she-wolves are allowed there, and that’s the way he likes it. All he wants to be is ALONE.

So, how aggravated is he when he finds us squatting in his cabin?

Me, a single mother, hurt and broken after escaping from my abusive ex. Plus, the vulnerable daughter I’ve sworn to protect.

All Alban wants to be is ALONE.  

But I need his help to heal from my wounds—the ones on both the inside and the outside.

Will he give it to me?  


Her Scottish Hero is a seriously steamy, contemporary shifter romance featuring  

· a Scottish grump who only wants to be alone
· a polite and innocent single mother who needs his help
· a small Scottish town with lots of brawny male wolves in need of brides
· tons of Marmite
· AND an adorable girl wolf who’s hoping her gentle mother and her new grumpy best friend will give her the family she’s been praying for all along.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Theodora Taylor
• Release date: Mar 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9781959243052

Book preview

Leora

Ianswered the knock on my door to find Joanna, the postmaster’s new helpmate on our farmhouse’s front step, hunched over and wheezing with her hands on both knees.

She tried to talk but only managed, You’ll … you’ll …

Poor thing. She was completely out of breath. Most likely because of the distance she’d had to travel from her stead to ours at the furthest edge of town. While six months pregnant.

I opened my mouth to offer her what appeared to be a much-needed glass of water.

You’ll never guess what came in the mail! Joanna gasped out before I could.

She waved a letter in the air. "I was sorting through all the mail as my Benefactor instructed me to do when I saw this letter addressed to you. It came all the way from Scotland!"

I eyed both her and the letter warily.

Like me, Joanna wasn’t from Saint Albert Village. Or SAV, as the abbreviation-happy PEI outsiders called what they assumed was a human Mennonite farming community.

The postmaster’s new helpmate had only been wolf-mated a few months ago. So she remained in that special time of an SAV new arrival. Excited to be here and hopeful that her pregnancy would result in the birth of a boy.

It would. My eleven-year-old daughter had told me the village's newest arrival was expecting a boy. And Dorie might be toothless, but her nose had never been wrong. Joanna would soon be ascended, as they called it here, to the position of wife.

I’d forbidden Dorie from making such announcements years ago, though. So the postmaster’s new helpmate wasn’t aware of her incoming fortune. She hadn’t yet turned mean and prideful as the other wives in our community had.

She still considered herself one of us. For the time being, she was a fellow helpmate. Until she produced a son, she was morally obligated to assume a role of complete servitude to her Benefactor, the male who had wolf-mated her.

As nice as Joanna was now, she’d soon come to look down on me and the rest of the helpmates once she became a wife. That was as predictable a cycle in Saint Albert Village as the full moon rising and setting each month.

But Joanna didn’t know any of this. Yet. And she also didn't appear to know about the humility rules around mail. According to the Saint Albert Discipline: helpmates (always spelled with a lowercase h, even when placed at the beginning of sentences) were expected to humble themselves to their Benefactors (always spelled with a capital B) in every way.

This meant we weren’t allowed to handle mail ourselves. It all had to go through our Benefactors. Only wives had the privilege of sending and receiving mail without oversight.

I wasn’t surprised she didn’t know about this, though. None of us helpmates had been told about any of the extra helpmate rules until we gave birth to girls.

Still, her naïveté made me cringe inside. Twelve years ago, I’d been as ignorant as her. I'd come to Saint Albert freshly wolf-mated to Joshua Beiler, the eldest son of Jeremiah Beiler, our community bishop. I’d bristled with excitement because I had no idea back then. No clue that the SAV Wölfennite rules were nothing like those of the Wölfennite pack I’d left behind before turning eighteen.

I assumed I was at the beginning of the same journey my parents had undertaken when my mother agreed to be wolf-mated to my father. And I assumed it would include at least three children, the same as my loving parents.

But I knew better than that these days, and my chest seized with a now-familiar fear.

I could get in trouble with Joshua merely for having this conversation. He wouldn’t give me time to explain what happened. He never did. Not even when I broke the SAV Discipline rules on accident. Not even when I broke rules that weren’t actually in the SAV Discipline at all. Often he made up new ones for the sole purpose of finding an excuse to reprimand me.

Looking at the letter in Joanna's hand, I could already feel the hot sting of his reprimand stick across my skin.

I should send her away with a polite request not to tell Joshua she stopped here first.

But the letter had come all the way from Scotland—a place I’d only ever seen on a globe. And if Joshua got a hold of it first, I’d never find out what was inside the envelope.

Before Dorie’s birth, he’d read the letters my family sent to me out loud. He'd even allowed me to write letters back with my own hand. Then Dorie was born a girl.

I was only allowed to write what he dictated aloud to me after that.

Then what he still referred to as The Tara Incident happened.

I'd been so relieved when she hadn't shown up at the village wolf-mated to Joshua's younger brother as planned. But Joshua stopped letting me hear any of the letters my family wrote to me after that. Two missives, dictated by him at Christmas and Easter, were the only messages I was allowed to write. And when it turned out Dorie was toothless, even that small permission was taken away.

No, he wouldn’t ever let me see that letter. If I asked him about it, I wouldn't get the outcome I wanted. He’d either claim he knew nothing of it or reprimand me for inquiring after something I shouldn’t know existed.

At that point, I didn’t know which would be worse. I’d become used to the physical pain of reprimands. Could I bear the emotional pain of Joshua pretending to have never received a letter addressed to me?

Leora? Joanna asked, crooking her head at me.

I’d been standing there too long. I had to make a decision.

"Thank you," I said, emphasizing each word to keep my voice steady.

Then I accepted that letter from the postmaster’s naive helpmate. As if it were a small deed—not the biggest risk I’d taken since my own arrival in SAV.

And I bit back a gasp when I saw it was from my sister, Tara.

Somehow I managed to give Joanna a friendly goodbye. But as soon as I closed the door, I leaned against it and ripped open the letter.

Dearest Leora,

I know you’re still angry at me. I doubt you’ll even answer this, considering you haven’t answered any of the other letters I sent you in ten years. But so much has happened, I had to try writing you one more time …

The opening lines of Tara's letter continued to swirl around in my mind that night at supper with Joshua and Dorie. I'd read the letter about a thousand times before folding it up and stuffing it in my pocket when Joshua got home, and now it was all I could think about. The twists! The turns! I still couldn't believe my younger sister had somehow ended up the Queen of the Scottish Wolves.

May I make the coffee tonight? A voice tore me out of my hundredth mental recitation of the letter I’d received.

It took a few blinks for me to realize my daughter was speaking to me, not my sister.

She looked so much like Tara at that age. I kept her curly dark brown hair in a Double-Dutch Soopfe. My mother used to twist Tara's curly hair into the same inverted braids style to wear under her prayer coverings. Joshua had pale wheat brown hair and light blue eyes. But thanks to my father's Ghanaian genes, Dorie’s skin was only a couple of shades lighter than my sister's.

She also had Tara's same sharp brown intelligent gaze.

Please, may I get the coffee? Dorie asked, looking between Joshua and me.

My stomach froze. Something was wrong.

Dorie never offered to do anything that would keep her in Joshua’s company for longer than necessary. Much less with a please on top. Not unless she sensed Joshua was about to reprimand me.

I must have done something wrong. But what? I scanned the table for clues. Did I forget to light candles? Put out cloth napkins?

My eyes dropped to my plate—my still full plate. I hadn’t even touched the potato casserole I’d made. That had to be it. Something was wrong with dinner.

"No, Dorcas. After I talk to Leora about this supper she made, she will make the coffee," Joshua answered Dorie, confirming my fear.

Dorie hesitated to stand up from her seat, reminding me even more of Tara.

Honoring your parents was a sacred rule in all Wölfennite communities. It didn't matter whether your pack spoke English as they did here or a German dialect as they did in St. Ailbe. But both Tara and Dorie had trouble grasping the unspoken minding without hesitation part of that foundational rule.

Go. Go now before he becomes any angrier, I warned her in the German dialect we spoke back in St. Ailbe.

Joshua stood from the table so abruptly that one of his black suspenders fell from his thin shoulder. What have I told you about speaking in that language I can’t understand!

Sorry, I whispered, bowing my head.

But I only looked remorseful. Dorie left the kitchen without another moment of hesitation. She was safe. So no, I didn’t regret breaking yet another one of the rules that weren’t actually in the Saint Albert Discipline.

Nonetheless, Joshua insisted, "You’ve broken two humility rules this eve."

His voice rang with authority as he went over to the silverware drawer. This was where he kept his reprimand stick. As if it was as necessary as a spoon or a fork. According to Joshua, the reprimand stick was a feature of every SAV household. He'd told me that when he brought it out to correct my instinct to suggest gentler talking points for his weekly helpmates’ lecture.

I learned that night he had no problem reprimanding me before writing his sermon for the Wednesday morning services he pastored. I had never dared to call my Benefactor a hypocrite to his face. But I’d thought it. I’d thought it so often over the years.

And now, it just happened to be Tuesday night again.

It's time to receive your reprimand for speaking a language your Benefactor has forbidden and over-spicing his food, Joshua told me.

So that was what I’d done wrong.

I’d been so caught up in thinking about the letter Tara had sent I hadn’t remembered to only spice my and Dorie’s side of the casserole.

My father adored spice. He’d even dedicated a part of our living room to the growing of plants that would allow him to season his food the same as he had before moving to Canada. Cloves, cumin, and curry were only a few of the seeds and leaves I’d been tasked with grinding up into spice jars when I lived in Ontario.

Dorie loved my cooking, but Joshua acted as if I'd tried to poison him the few times I attempted to serve him anything with more than a dash of salt.

Joshua held up the stick. It was a little longer than a ruler and stained darker in some places with blood. Mine. Take off your dress and kneel on the floor.

I wasn’t Dorie. I immediately did as he said. But I took special care removing the dress with Tara's letter in the pocket and draping it over the chair's back. Joshua would take the letter from me if it fell out, and I already knew I couldn’t bear that. In less than a few hours, it had become my most precious possession.

But after I settled it over the back of my chair, I kneeled down before him without any protest whatsoever.

No protest whatsoever wasn’t good enough for Joshua, though.

You’re getting worse and worse by the year, I tell you. Joshua came to stand over me with a disapproving look. It’s as if you have gotten so used to my reprimands you no longer bother to try to honor your Benefactor.

Either that or I know there is no pleasing you, I thought but didn’t say out loud. No, matter how hard I try, you’ll always find an excuse.

Being wolf-mated, we didn’t share a telepathic bond as my parents did after my mother went into heat for her second impregnation. But Joshua glared down at me as if he sensed every word I was keeping to myself.

Maybe reprimands are no longer enough, Joshua said. Maybe I should start extending your punishments to that toothless she-wolf you love so much.

No, I whispered. Don’t! Please don’t!

Tell me why I shouldn’t, he answered with a self-satisfied smirk.

This was what he’d wanted, I realized with a dull thunk of clarity. Quietly humbling myself wasn't enough for him anymore. He wanted to see how upset he'd made me.

I did not hesitate to give him what he wanted. I wasn’t Tara. I didn’t have pride. Not when it came to my daughter.

I castigated myself out loud, listing all my failures of humility. I apologized for being such a worthless helpmate and promised to do better in the future.

I did this until my throat became raw. And only then did Joshua start my reprimand, his blue eyes glittering with superiority. He hit me with the stick so many times I lost count before he left me in the kitchen, bleeding on the floor.

It will be more lashes if you turn to your wolf for healing, he warned as he walked out the door.

He didn’t have to tell me that. My wolf whimpered inside of me but knew better than to rise to the surface. Healing in a flash would only make things worse. We’d played out this scenario many, many times in the years since Dorie’s toothless diagnosis.

Dorie …

This was the first time he’d threatened her. But I could already sense it wouldn’t be the last.

A new resolution came over me as I picked myself up from the floor.

No, I wasn’t Tara. But I’d do anything—anything to protect my daughter.

And I knew what I had to do now.

I put back on my dress and made coffee, which I brought to Joshua, where he was writing at his little wooden desk.

As usual, I received no thanks from him. But I didn’t need it.

For once, I was happy to stand by while he finished his speech for Wednesday's service. He called it a sermon. It was more like an often repeated lecture from the point-of-view of the helpmates sitting in the pews.

I waited without complaint, though, and I bid him a solemn good night when he retired to bed. But I didn’t go upstairs right away to the bedroom I shared with Dorie.

No, I continued to wait until I heard the distinct bray of Joshua snoring.

Then I went to the desk where he kept his sheafs of blank paper for his sermon lectures …

And began writing a letter back to my sister for the first time in over ten years.

Leora

Act normal! Act normal! Just act normal!

I pasted on a cheery smile as I approached our Wölfennite pack’s simple white clapboard church. If I acted normal, as if nothing unusual had happened this morning, no one would suspect anything …

I slowed, all the false bravado leaking out of me. Martha, Susan, and Anne stood outside the church’s wooden doors, gathered in a huddle. The village’s biggest gossips.

The telling of tales was strictly prohibited in the SAV pack’s Discipline. Right up there with well-known biggies like dressing in immodest ways, using electricity in the home, and driving cars. But, these three she-wolves never concerned themselves with the village Discipline. Especially when there were no males around to see them.

And they were quite obviously gossiping right underneath the church’s steeple.

Did they …? Did they know what I did this morning?

Dread pooled in my stomach, along with a fervent urge to reach into the right pocket of my black dress. I longed to touch the creased edges of the letter I’d memorized by heart. But no …

I re-gripped both hands around the Schnitz pie I’d made for the after-service meal.

They didn’t know about the letter from my sister, I assured myself. Or the one I’d written her back—the one I’d asked the postmaster’s soon-to-be-wife to deliver for me this morning. Before she learned of the rule about helpmates not being allowed to send outgoing mail.

How could they know? I'd only made the request a couple of hours ago. And Joanna assured me she would send it off before the helpmate’s weekly Wednesday service.

You are good. Everything is going well. Nothing is out of order. I reassured myself in Wölfennite German as I climbed the wooden steps of our little church. You must act normal.

Easier said than done. The three gossiping she-wolves’ conversation came to an abrupt stop as soon as I started up the stairs. And the usual feelings of not fitting in here swept through me.

Martha, Anne, and Susan were also helpmates, but not like me.

All three of the she-wolves watching me climb the stairs had been born and raised in SAV. And though Susan and Anne also had dark brown hair and freckles the same as I did, neither of them looked like me.

Susan’s and Anne’s dark brown hair was smooth and straight, while mine was a riot of curls. I barely managed to contain it in the double crown braid I wore beneath my prayer covering.

The skin under their freckles was pink and ruddy in the crisp late fall air, while mine was coppery brown. It also didn’t help that I had what Joshua called an ungodly baking habit. Thanks to years of eating my feelings, my body had become heavy and rounded with curves over the past decade. Yet another physical aspect that made me stand out in the thin helpmate crowd.

All the other helpmates had pretty much the same backstory—even the ones who hadn’t grown up in SAV. Their parents' ancestors had been exiled from human Amish and Mennonite farming communities. I was the only one with a Ghanaian father who’d gotten himself bitten by a werewolf while attending university in Canada.

Many SAV she-wolves never met a person who looked like me until Joshua brought me to live there twelve years ago.

I'd been considered a good idea for the remote and close-to-inbred pack back then. But two years after my arrival, The Tara Incident happened. And Joshua’s younger brother, Jacob, left the pack in shame.

Years of me failing to go into heat followed that familial crime. Then, Dorie's turning out to be toothless made it official.

I was pretty much a pariah now. And the other helpmates often avoided me. As if misfortune were catching.

Which was why I was so surprised when Martha greeted me with a bright smile. Oh, there you are, Leora! Did you not bring Dorie with you today?

So, they didn’t know. Relief flooded through me as I answered, No, I’m afraid she was feeling poorly this morning …

About being stared at and treated like a freak by your children at church, I silently added to myself.

Oh, that’s too bad, Martha said. She actually sounded sincere.

Another shock, considering that she was the mother of Dorie’s former best friend, Ruthie. That friendship ended after Ruthie decided to start bullying Dorie for being toothless. And Dorie decided to respond to that sudden turn by punching Ruthie straight in her mouth. Yet another thing my daughter had in common with her aunt. Tara had gotten chastised often for her displays of physical anger at the St. Ailbe village school, where we’d been the only two brown children until my eight year’s younger little sister, Naomi, joined us there.

Anyway, accusations of being unhinged and violent followed Dorie's decision to hit her former friend—mostly lobbied by Martha. And I’d decided to oversee Dorie’s education myself after that.

So why was Martha acting disappointed about Dorie’s absence at the helpmate’s service?

We wanted to ask her if she knew Rebecca was going to have a girl, Susan said, clearing up my confusion.

So that was what they’d been gossiping about. A strange mixture of relief and annoyance filled up my chest.

Yes, I’d made Dorie stop announcing the genders of unborn babies out loud years ago. Memories lasted a long time in communities like ours, though. And there wasn't much to do during the season between harvest and planting but pray, gossip, and judge.

The three helpmates leaned forward in eager anticipation of my answer.

And, I once again fought the urge to finger the folded-up letter in my pocket as if I could siphon strength from it.

The Tara I remembered never hesitated to speak her mind. She would have burned down the school if her special needs child was being bullied. Not just quietly withdrawn her. When we were both teens, Tara looked up every single curse word in the dictionary. And I didn’t doubt she would have used every one of them on these gossipy she-wolves.

I just clamped my lips and looked down at my plate of brownies, pretending I didn’t see their expectant looks.

But they didn’t need me to keep on gossiping.

Did you see how Rebecca swanned around last Wednesday? Martha asked when I didn’t respond. She actually said goodbye to everyone as if she didn’t expect to ever see us again at the helpmates' service!

I’m standing right here until the service starts, Anne, the shortest of the three insisted. "I want to see her face when she shows up with her baby she-wolf."

"If she shows up, Susan countered. She might be too embarrassed to show her face today."

Either that or she had a baby only a couple of days ago, I thought but didn’t dare to say out loud.

"Yea, all you be subject one to another and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble! Anne quoted a verse from the apostle Peter in an ironically superior tone. She bragged. Therefore, she deserves no grace from us!"

I suppressed a spike of rage. We were all in a miserable position here. But helpmates could be crabs in a boiling pot, pulling one another down when any of us tried to get out.

How would the daughters of these godly she-wolves treat Dorie when she came of age for wolf-mating in five years? Would Joshua and the rest of SAV’s Executive Board even deign to let a toothless girl be matched? I didn't want a wolf-mating for her. But what would they decide to do to my daughter if they decided she was of no use to them?

I couldn’t bear to find out. That was why I’d risked everything to write my sister that letter.

And that was why I couldn’t respond to the other helpmate’s callous behavior—why I had to keep my mouth shut. Act normal. Act normal. Act normal.

I should get inside to help Joshua set up for today’s service, I told them in my most demure tone.

Yes, yes, go help your Benefactor, Martha said with a dismissive wave of her hand. I was back to pariah status now that I’d proven to be of no use to her.

Relieved, I started to go around them.

Speaking of missing she-wolves, where is the postmaster’s new helpmate? Susan asked, stopping me dead in my tracks. She’s been here bright and early for every helpmate’s service since her arrival.

Maybe she did something wrong, Anne suggested, eagerly picking up the new subject. That would explain why Pastor Joshua sent his grandfather to lead today’s service—is something wrong, Leora? You look like you've tasted some bad butter!

Yes, I did, and I couldn’t reschool my face. There was no more acting normal. Joshua wasn’t here, and neither was the postmaster’s helpmate.

Despite a restless night of sleep, I’d gotten up early and made a dried apple pie this morning. Schnitz pie was a somewhat complicated recipe. But I'd needed it to appear as if I’d done nothing outside the Wednesday morning usual when Joshua emerged from his bedroom.

I dropped the Schnitz pie without a second thought. The plate I put it on shattered on the ground as I turned to rush down the steps.

Joshua knew. I no longer doubted that. And even worse, Dorie—Dorie, my toothless daughter, was alone at the house. His words from the night before rang in my ears.

Maybe reprimands are no longer enough. Maybe I should start extending your punishments to that toothless she-wolf you love so much.

I’d begged him not to hurt her. I cried and promised to do better. While mentally writing the return letter, I knew I had to send my sister in my head. Because I’d do anything—anything to protect my daughter.

But anything hadn’t been enough.

Joshua knew. And that letter I’d tried to send most definitely wouldn’t be reaching my sister.

Leora! Leora! Where are you going? the other helpmates called after me when I took off running toward our farmhouse.

I didn’t answer them.

I had to get to Dorie. I had to get to Dorie before Joshua did!

Alban

One Week Later, The Day of the November Full Moon

I suspected my simple announcement wasn’t going to go as planned when I saw all the other wolves. Every one of them male. Every one of them waiting for the first official audience hours with the righ, since our king’s retirement from the Edinburgh Rovers rugby team.

A long queue stretched all the way from Dùn Faoiltiarn’s entrance to the closed throne room doors. And in front of those stood two guards. One held a Lochabar axe, the other a clipboard.

With an aggrieved sigh, I began to charge past all the other males. But the pubmaster’s youngest son seized my arm before I could reach the throne room's doors.

Hey! No cutting! You’re gonna have to wait for your chance to put your name on the list like the rest of us.

I flicked my eyes down to his thin hand on my large forearm. This lad was either aggressively stupid or the sort who didn’t think before he dared to grab onto a wolf twice his size.

Are you mad? The pubmaster’s eldest son snatched his brother’s hand away before I could introduce the young fool to the ham of my fist. "He’s the Kingdom Defender and the king’s cousin besides! He doesnae have to wait here like the rest of us. He can put his name on the list whenever he wants, you eejit."

The younger brother bowed his head and mumbled something. Perhaps it could have been translated as an apology if you spoke the language of Sullen Teenager.

Anyroad, I resumed my mission unabated. But as I continued toward the front of the line, I had a brief wonder about what sort of list would stir up a queue like this one.

Ach, probably better not to know. Most likely it’d be another BUC.

BUCs stood for Big Unnecessary Changes. And that's all our new banrigh had made since moving to our kingdom town a few months ago. She'd even done away with the term banrigh itself.

"Real talk, it creeps me out after what you did to my friend Milly, she’d told the crowd at her big welcome parade. Call me Tara—or Queen Tara if you have to be that formal about it."

So nae, Queen Tara didn’t refer to herself as banrigh. Or call all the changes she’d been making to our old-fashioned kingdom town unnecessary. The opposite, in fact.

She'd labeled all her royal decrees opportunities to bring Faoiltiarn into the 21st century. Aye, with a straight face.

She'd added invisible money to our banking system. Because according to her, one-hundred percent physical coin and paper systems weren't a thing kingdom towns did anymore.

She’d also