Page 20 of Lion's Little Scamp

They would eat dinner together in the dining hall before retreating to Harrigan’s apartment where her Daidi would give her a bath before snuggling with her on the couch while she caught up on all the cartoon movies she had never seen before.

Irish had come to love her new life, except for one thing. Even though she spent every night curled up against him in his bed, Harrigan had made no move to claim her as his mate. She was beginning to think he had changed his mind about taking her as his mate for the rest of her life.

She was sweeping the main hallway in the barn when two women approached. Both were dressed in jeans, cowboy boots, cute t-shirts, and straw cowboy hats. They looked like they were on their way to the rodeo. One had straight hair as red as a new penny while the other one had light brown curls that just brushed her shoulders. Both were smiling and seemed friendly enough. Not like the two girls she had come to Bratburg with, who even two weeks later, still treated her like she was a pile of poop.

“Hi, are you Irish?” one of them asked.

Irish looked around for Sullivan, the grumpy man who was in charge of the barns and all the animals living at the institute. He frowned, growled, and grumped around like he had a sore foot or something. She couldn’t see him and figured he was in his office doing the bookwork he claimed to hate. She decided she could take a minute to talk as she finished up the sweeping.

“Yes, I’m Irish. Who are you?”

“I’m Talia and this is Poppy,” the redhead said. “I belong to Lonergan, and she belongs to Master Diego.”

Irish blinked at that bit of information. These two tiny women were mated to the director and classroom instructor? How did they ever manage?

Then Talia’s words sunk in. “You belong to them? Are you slaves or something? Slavery is illegal.”

Both women giggled, as if she had not gotten a joke or something.

“No, no, no. Nothing like that. We belong to them like mates belong together,” Poppy explained easily. “Aren’t you Harrigan’s mate? That’s what Emory said. She’s mated to Kodiak, the head of security.”

Irish looked from one woman to the other. They looked friendly enough, and she did have questions about being a mate that maybe they could answer. If she was brave enough to ask them.

But was she? Irish was not so sure.

“Can you give me a minute to finish up here?” she asked, angling her head toward the broom in her hand.

The two nodded together, as if their heads were connected. “What else do you have to do? We can help,” Talia offered.

“I just need to finish this, then I have to check in with Master Sullivan to see what else he wants me to do.”

“I’ll go talk to Sullivan while you finish up. Then we can talk,” Poppy said, already turning toward the office.

Irish returned to sweeping and was surprised when a moment later, Talia began sweeping beside her. It only took a few minutes before they finished sweeping the stray hay, food, dust, and whatever else landed on the floor of a barn out the back door. By the time they had put the brooms away in the storage closet, Poppy had returned.

“Let’s go,” Poppy grabbed her hand and pulled her out the back door of the barn and toward the tree line.

“Where are we going?”

“We built a tree fort in the forest where we can go and be away from the men when we need to be alone. Or have girl time,” Talia said over her shoulder as she led the way deeper into the woods.

“And we brought snacks,” Poppy added with a giggle.

With Poppy still holding her hand, Irish decided to go with it. She just hoped Master Sullivan did not get upset that she had left.

Or Harrigan. After the first week of nightly spankings required by the institute, Harrigan had eased off, and she only found herself over his lap a few times. She honestly tried never to be naughty because Harrigan had hard hands and his spankings hurt.

“Where is she?” Harrigan growled as he paced the dining hall’s porch while staring out into the growing darkness. A front had come through with the temperature dropping nearly twenty degrees in the past half hour and rain was supposed to start falling at any moment.

Sullivan stood at the bottom of the porch steps, watching him. “The last time I saw her, she had finished mucking the stalls and had begun sweeping the aisle. She never checked in after that, and when I went to check on her a few minutes ago, she was gone.”

“Has anyone seen Poppy or Talia this afternoon?” Lonergan asked as he and Diego approached.

Harrigan shook his head. “I was on south side patrol until about an hour ago,” he said. “But Irish is also missing. Could they have all gone off together?”

“Poppy stopped in to talk to me a couple hours ago, but only to ask if Missy had given birth yet,” Sullivan said. “She didn’t say anything about Talia or taking the trainee anywhere. But I was doing paperwork and kind of distracted.”

Harrigan stopped pacing and forced himself to take several deep breaths. Breathing did little to clear the fear that had been growing exponentially since finding out that Irish was nowhere to be found.