Changeless

mental absence. “I take it it worked?”

He grinned hugely. “My first successful change in years, and a female Alpha at that. The howlers will cry it to the winds.”

“Somebody’s proud of himself.”

“Except that I should have remembered how distressing metamorphosis is to outsiders. I am sorry, my dear. I didna mean to upset you.”

“Oh pish tosh, it wasn’t that! I’m hardly one to be overcome by a bit of blood. It was simply a little dizzy spell.”

Lord Maccon shifted forward against her and ran a large hand down the side of her face. “Alexia, you have been entirely comatose for well over an hour. I had to send for smelling salts.”

Madame Lefoux came around the side of the couch and crouched down next to Alexia as well. “You had us very worried, my lady.”

“So what happened?”

“You fainted,” accused Lord Maccon, as though she had committed some egregious crime against him personally.

“No, with the metamorphosis. What did I miss?”

“Well,” said Madame Lefoux, “it was all very exciting. There was this crash of thunder and a bright blue light and then—”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” snapped Lord Maccon. “You sound like a novel.”

Madame Lefoux sighed. “Very well, Sidheag started to convulse and then collapsed to the floor, dead. Everyone stood around staring at her body, until all of a sudden, she began spontaneously changing into a wolf. She screamed a lot—I understand the first change is the worst. Then we realized you had collapsed. Lord Maccon threw a conniption fit, and we ended up here.”

Lady Maccon turned accusing eyes to her husband. “You didn’t, and on your granddaughter’s metamorphosis day!”

“You fainted!” he said again, disgruntled.

“Stuff and nonsense,” replied his wife sharply. “I never faint.” A bit of her old color was returning. Really, who would have suspected she could turn quite that ashen?

“There was that one incident, in the library, when you killed the vampire.”

“I was shamming and you knew it.”

“How about that time we visited the museum after hours and I trapped you in a corner behind the Elgin Marbles?”

Lady Maccon rolled her eyes. “That was an entirely different kind of passing out.”

Conall crowed. “My point exactly! Just now, you actually, positively, did faint. You never do that kind of thing; you’re not that kind of female. What’s wrong with you? Are you ill? I forbid you to be ill, wife.”

“Oh, really. Stop fussing. There is absolutely nothing wrong with me. I’m just a tad off-kilter, have been since the dirigible ride.” Alexia pushed herself more upright, trying to smooth her skirts and ignore her husband’s still- stroking hand.

“Someone could have poisoned you again.”

Alexia shook her head decisively. “As it wasn’t Angelique who tried before, and it wasn’t Madame Lefoux who stole my journal, and both occurred on board the dirigible, I believe the perpetrator never followed us to Kingair. Call it a preternatural hunch. No, I’m not being poisoned, husband. I’m just a little bit weak, that’s all.”

Madame Lefoux snorted, looking back and forth between the two of them as though they were both batty. She said, “She is just a little bit pregnant is what she is.”

“What!” Lord Maccon’s exclamation was echoed by Alexia. Lady Maccon stopped smoothing out her skirts, and Lord Maccon stopped smoothing out his wife’s face.

The French inventor looked at them, genuinely amazed. “You did not know? Neither of you knew?”

Lord Maccon recoiled away from his wife, violently, jerking to stand upright, arms stiff by his sides.

Alexia glared at Madame Lefoux. “Don’t talk piffle, madame. I cannot possibly be pregnant. That is not scientifically feasible.”

Madame Lefoux dimpled. “I was with Angelique during her confinement. You show every possible sign of a delicate condition—nausea, weakness, increased girth.”

“What!” Lady Maccon was genuinely shocked. True, she had been slightly sick to her stomach and unreasonably off some foods, but was it really possible? She supposed she might be in an indelicate condition. The scientists could be wrong, after all; there didn’t exist very many soulless females, and none of them were married to werewolves.

She turned a suddenly grinning face to her husband. “You know what this means? I am not a bad dirigible floater! It was being pregnant that made me ill on board. Fantastic.”

But her husband was not reacting in quite the manner anticipated. He was clearly angry, and not the sort of angry that made him bluster about, or shout, or change form, or any of those normal Lord Macconish kinds of things. He was quietly, white-faced, shivering angry. And it was terribly, terribly frightening.

“How?” he barked at his wife, backing away from her as though she were infected with some terrible disease.

“What do you mean, how? The how should be perfectly obvious, even to you, you impossible man!” Alexia shot back, becoming angry herself. Shouldn’t he be delighted? This was evidently a scientific miracle. Wasn’t it?

“We only call it ‘being human’ when I touch you, for lack of a better term. I’m still dead, or mostly dead. Have been for hundreds of years. No supernatural creature has ever produced an offspring. Ever. It simply isna possible.”

“You believe this can’t be your child?”

“Now, hold on there, my lord, don’t be hasty.” Madame Lefoux tried to intervene, placing one small hand on Lord Maccon’s arm.

He shook her off with a snarl.

“Of course it’s your child, you pollock!” Now Alexia was livid. If she hadn’t still been feeling weak, she would have stood and marched about the room. As it was, she groped for her parasol. Maybe whacking her husband atop his thick skull would drive some sense into him.

“Thousands of years of history and experience would seem to suggest you are lying, wife.”

Lady Maccon sputtered in offense at that. She was so overset she couldn’t even find the words, a remarkably novel experience for her.

“Who was he?” Conall wanted to know. “What daylight-dependent dishtowel did you fornicate with? One of my clavigers? One of Akeldama’s poodle-faking drones? Is that why you’re always visiting him? Or just some milk- curling mortal blowhard?”

Then he began calling her things, names and words, dirtier and harsher than she had ever heard before—let alone been called—and Alexia had encountered more than her fair share of profanity over the past year. They were horrible, cruel things, and she could comprehend the meanings of most, despite her lack of familiarity with the terminology.

Conall had committed many a violent act around Alexia during their association, not the least of which was savage a woman into metamorphosis at the supper table, but Alexia had never been actually afraid of him before.

She was afraid of him now. He did not move toward her—in fact, he’d backed farther away toward the door —but his hands were fisted white at his thighs, his eyes had changed to wolf yellow, and his canines were long and extended. She was immeasurably grateful when Madame Lefoux physically interposed herself between Alexia and the earl’s verbal tirade. As though, somehow, the inventor could provide a barrier to his horrible words.

He stayed there, on the other side of the room, yelling at Alexia. It was as though he’d placed the distance between them, not because he didn’t want to come at her and tear her apart, but because he really thought he might. His eyes were such a pale yellow they were almost white. Alexia had never seen them that color before. And, despite the filthy words coming out of his mouth, those eyes were agonized and bereft.

“But I didn’t,” Alexia tried to say. “I wouldn’t. I’d never do those things. I am no adulteress. How could you