Changeless

Lady Kingair finally spoke. Her voice was oddly soft. “Niall was my mate, and I pure loved him. He was a brilliant tactician and a good soldier, but he wasna a true Alpha.”

“Are you saying he wasna dominant enough? I heard naught of lack of discipline. Whenever I ran a recognizance on Kingair, you all seemed to be perfectly content.” Conall’s voice was soft.

“So you did check up on us, did you, old wolf?” Lady Kingair looked hurt at that rather than relieved.

“Of course I did. You were once my pack.”

The Beta looked up from where he still lay on the floor. “You left us weak, Conall, and you knew it. Niall had na Anubis Form, and the pack couldna procreate. Clavigers abandoned us as a result, the local loners rebelled, and we didn’t have an Alpha fighting for the integrity of the pack.”

Lady Maccon glanced at her husband. His face was carved in stone, relentless. Or what little she could see behind the puffy eye and bloodstained cravat seemed that way.

“You betrayed me,” he repeated, as though that settled the matter. Which, in Conall’s world, it probably did. He valued few things more than loyalty.

Alexia decided to make her presence known. “What is the point of recriminations? Nothing can be done about it now, since none of you can change into any form at all, Anubis or otherwise. No new wolves can be made, no new Alpha found, no challenge battles fought. Why argue over what was when we are immersed in what isn’t?”

Lord Maccon looked down at her. “So speaks my practical Alexia. Now do you understand why I married her?”

Lady Kingair said snidely, “A desperate, if ineffectual, attempt at control?”

“Oooh, she has claws. Are you positive you never bit her to change, husband? She has the temper of a werewolf.” Alexia could be just as snide as the next person.

The Gamma stepped forward, looking at Lady Maccon. “Our apologies, my lady, and you a newly arrived guest among us. We must truly seem the barbarians you English take us for. ’Tis only that na Alpha these many moons is making us nervous.”

“Oh, and here I thought your behavior sprang from the whole not-being-able-to-change-shape quandary,” she quipped back sharply.

He grinned. “Well, that too.”

“Werewolves without pack leaders tend to get into trouble?” Lady Maccon wondered.

No one said anything.

“I don’t suppose you are going to tell us what trouble you got into overseas?” Alexia tried to look as though she wasn’t avidly interested, taking her husband’s arm casually.

Silence.

“Well, I think we have all had enough excitement for one evening. Since you have been human these many months, I assume you are keeping daylight hours?”

A nod from Lady Kingair.

“In that case”—Lady Maccon straightened her dress—“Conall and I shall bid you good night.”

“We shall?” Lord Maccon looked dubious.

“Good night,” said his wife firmly to the pack and clavigers. Grabbing her parasol in one hand and her husband’s arm in the other, she practically dragged the earl from the room.

Lord Maccon lumbered obediently after her.

The room they left behind was filled with half-thoughtful, half-amused faces.

“What are you about, wife?” Conall asked as soon as they were upstairs and out of everyone’s earshot.

His wife plastered herself up against him and kissed him fiercely.

“Ouch,” he said when they pulled apart, although he had participated with gusto. “Busted lip.”

“Oh, look what you did to my dress!” Lady Maccon glared down at the blood now decorating the white satin trim.

Lord Maccon refrained from pointing out that she had initiated the kiss.

“You are an impossible man,” continued his ladylove, swatting him on one of the few undamaged portions of his body. “You could have been killed in such a fight, do you realize?”

“Oh, phooey.” Lord Maccon waved a dismissive hand in the air. “For a Beta, Dubh is not a verra good fighter even in wolf form. He is hardly likely to be any more capable as a human.”

“He is still a trained soldier.” She was not going to let this rest.

“Have you forgotten, wife, that so am I?”

“You are out of practice. Woolsey Pack Alpha has not been on campaign in years.”

“Are you saying I’m getting old? I’ll show you old.” He swept her up like some exaggerated Latin lover and carried her into their bedchamber.

Angelique, who was engaged in some sort of tidying of the wardrobe, quickly made herself scarce.

“Stop trying to distract me,” said Alexia several moments later. During which time her husband had managed to divest her of a good percentage of her clothing.

“Me, distract you? You are the one who dragged me off and up here right when things were getting interesting.”

“They are not going to tell us what is going on no matter how hard we push,” said Alexia, unbuttoning his shirt and hissing in concern at the array of harsh red marks destined to become rather spectacular bruises by the morning. “We are simply going to have to figure this out for ourselves.”

He paused in kissing a little path along her collarbone and looked at her suspiciously. “You have a plan.”

“Yes, I do, and the first part of it involves you telling me exactly what happened twenty years ago to make you leave. No.” She stopped his wandering hand. “Stop that. And the second part involves you going to sleep. You are going to hurt in places your little supernatural soul forgot it could hurt in.”

He flopped back on the pillows. There was no reasoning with his wife when she got like this. “And the third part of the plan?”

“That is for me to know and you not to know.”

He let out a lusty sigh. “I hate it when you do that.”

She waggled a finger at him as though he were a schoolboy. “Uh-uh, you just miscalculated, husband. I hold all the high cards right now.”

He grinned. “Is that how this works?”

“You have been married before, remember? You should know.”

He turned on his side toward her, wincing at the pain this caused. She lay back against the pillows, and he ran one large hand over her stomach and chest. “You are perfectly correct, of course; that is exactly how this works.” Then he made his tawny eyes wide and batted his eyelashes at her, pleading. Alexia had learned that expression from Ivy and had employed it effectively on her husband during their, for lack of a better word, courtship. Little did she know how persuasively it could be applied in the opposite direction.

“Are you going to at least see me settled?” he murmured, nibbling her neck, his voice gravelly.

“I might be persuaded. You would, of course, have to be very very nice to me.”

Conall agreed to be nice, in the best nonverbal way possible.

Afterward, he lay staring fixedly up at the ceiling and told her why he had left the Kingair Pack. He told her all of it, from what it was like for them, as both werewolves and Scotsmen, at the beginning of Queen Victoria’s rule, to the assassination attempt on the queen planned by the then Kingair Beta, his old and trusted friend, without his knowledge.

He did not once look at her while he talked. Instead his eyes remained fixed on the stained and smudged molding of the ceiling above them.

“They were all in on it. Every last one of them—pack and clavigers. And not a one told me. Oh, not because I was all that loyal to the queen; surely you know packs and hives better than that by now. Our loyalty to a daylight ruler is never unreserved. No, they lied to me because I was loyal to the cause, always have been.”

“What cause?” wondered his wife. She held his big hand in both of hers as she lay curled toward him, but otherwise she did not touch him.

“Acceptance. Can you imagine what would have happened if they had succeeded? A Scottish pack, attached to one of the best Highland regiments, multiple campaigns served in the British Army, killing Queen Victoria. It