“For Pete’s sake, Conal ,” said his Beta in tones of the deeply put-upon, “how did you manage to get so corned?” He tugged his Alpha away from the abused shed.
“Na drunk,” insisted his lordship, throwing one substantial arm across his Beta’s shoulders and leaning heavily upon it. “Jush a tiny little slightly smal bit’a squiffy.” His lordship’s accent got distinctly more Scottish in times of great stress, strong emotion, or, apparently, under the influence of vast amounts of liquid intoxicants.
They left the safety of the potshed.
The earl pitched forward suddenly, his grip on his Beta the only thing that managed to keep him upright. “Whoa! Watch that bit’o ground there, would ya? Tricky, tricky, jumps right up at a man.”
“Where did you acquire the alcohol?” Professor Lyal asked again as he tried valiantly to get his Alpha back on track across the wide lawn of Woolsey’s extensive grounds, toward the castle proper. It was like trying to steer a steamboat through a tub of turbulent molasses. A normal human would have buckled under the strain, but Lyal was lucky enough to have supernatural strength to cal upon at times of great difficulty. Lord Maccon wasn’t simply big; he was also tremendously solid, like a walking, talking Roman fortification.
“And how did you get al the way out here? I distinctly remember tucking you into bed before leaving your room last night.” Professor Lyal spoke very clearly and precisely, not entirely sure how much was seeping into his Alpha’s thick skul .
Lord Maccon’s head bobbed slightly as he attempted to fol ow Professor Lyal ’s words.
“Went for a wee nightly run. Needed peace and quiet. Needed air in my fur. Needed fields under my paws. Needed, oh I canna— hic—explain… needed the company of hedgehogs.”
“And did you find it?”
“Find what? No hedgehogs. Stupid hedgehogs.” Lord Maccon tripped over a daphne bush, one of the many that lined the pathway leading up to a side entrance of the house. “Who bloody well put that there?”
“Peace, did you find peace?”
Lord Maccon stopped and drew himself upright, straightening his spine and throwing his shoulders back. It was an action driven by memory of military service. It caused him to positively tower over his second. Despite his ramrod-straight back, the Alpha managed to sway side to side, as if the aforementioned molasses-bound steamboat was now weathering a violent storm.
“Do I,” he enunciated very careful y, “look like I have found peace?”
Professor Lyal had nothing to say in response to that.
“Exactly!” Lord Maccon made a wide and flailing gesture. “She is wedged”—he pointed two thick fingers at his head as though they formed a pistol—“here.” Then rammed them at his chest. “And here. Canna shake her. Stickier than”—his powers of metaphor failed him—“stickier than… cold porridge getting al gloopy on the side of a bowl,” he final y came up with triumphantly.
Professor Lyal wondered what Lady Alexia Maccon would say to being compared to such a pedestrian foodstuff. She would probably compare her husband to something even less agreeable, like haggis.
Lord Maccon looked at his Beta with wide, soulful eyes, the color of which changed with his mood. Currently they were a watered-down caramel and highly unfocused.
“Why’d she have ta go an do a thing like that?”
“I don’t think she did.” Professor Lyal had been meaning to have this out with his Alpha for some time. He had simply hoped the discussion would occur during one of Lord Maccon’s rare moments of sobriety.
“Wel , then, why’d she lie about it?”
“No. I mean to say, I do not believe she was lying.” Lyal stood his ground. A Beta’s main function within the werewolf pack was to support his Alpha in al things—publicly, and to question him as much as possible—privately.
Lord Maccon cleared his throat and looked at his Beta in myopic seriousness from under fierce eyebrows. “Randolph, this may come as a shock, but I am a werewolf.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Two hundred and one years of age.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Pregnancy, under such circumstances, you must understand, is not possible.”
“Certainly not for you, my lord.”
“Thank you, Randolph, that is verra helpful.”
Professor Lyal had thought it rather funny, but he’d never been much good at humor.
“But, sir, we understand so very little about the preternatural state. And the vampires never did like the idea of you marrying her. Could it be they knew something?”
“Vampires always know something. ”
“About what might happen. About the possibility of a child, I mean.”
“Poppycock! The howlers would have said somewhat to me at the outset.”
“Howlers do not always remember everything, do they? They cannot remember what happened to Egypt, for one.”
“God-Breaker Plague? You saying Alexia is pregnant with the God-Breaker Plague?”
Lyal didn’t even dignify that with an answer. The God-Breaker Plague was the werewolf moniker for the fact that in Egypt supernatural abilities were rendered negligible. It could not, by any stretch of the imagination, act as a paternal agent.
They final y made it to the castle, and Lord Maccon was momentarily distracted by the Herculean task of trying to climb steps.
“You know,” continued the earl in outraged hurt once he’d attained the smal landing,
“I groveled for that woman. Me!” He glared at Professor Lyal . “An’ you told me to!”
Professor Lyal puffed out his cheeks in exasperation. It was like trying to have a conversation with a distracted and very soggy scone. Every time he pushed in one direction the earl either oozed or crumbled. If he could simply get Lord Maccon off the sauce he might be able to talk some sense into him. The Alpha was notoriously emotional and heavy-handed in these matters, prone to flying off the cogs, but he could usual y be brought around to reason eventually. He wasn’t al that dim.
Professor Lyal knew Lady Maccon’s character; she might be capable of betraying her husband, but if she had done so, she would admit to it openly. Thus, logic dictated she was tel ing the truth. Lyal was enough of a scientist to conclude from this that the currently accepted gospel truth, that supernatural creatures could not impregnate mortal women, was flawed. Even Lord Maccon, pigheaded and hurt, could be convinced of this line of reasoning eventually. After al , the earl could not possibly want to believe Alexia capable of infidelity. At this point, he was simply wal owing.
“Don’t you think it’s about time you sobered up?”
“Wait, lemme ponder that.” Lord Maccon paused, as though giving the matter deep consideration. “Nope.”
They made their way inside Woolsey Castle, which was no castle at al but more a manor with delusions of dignity. There were stories about the previous owner that no one entirely believed, but one thing was for certain: the man had an unhealthy passion for flying buttresses.
Lyal was grateful to be out of the sun. He was old enough and strong enough not to be bothered by direct sunlight for short lengths of time, but that didn’t mean he enjoyed the sensation. It felt like a tingling buzz just underneath the skin, highly unpleasant. Lord Maccon, of course, never seemed to notice sunlight at al , even when he was sober
— Alphas!
“So where are you acquiring the alcohol, my lord?”
“Didna drink— hic—any alcohol.” Lord Maccon winked at his Beta and patted him on the shoulder affectionately, as though they were sharing some great secret.
Lyal was having none of that. “Wel , my lord, I think perhaps you would have had to.”
“Nope.”
A tal , striking blond, with a perennial y curled lip and hair in a military queue, rounded a corner of the hal and halted upon seeing them. “Is he soused again?”
“If you mean, ‘is he drunk still?’ then, yes.”
“Where, in al that is holy, is he getting the plonk?”
“Do you think I haven’t tried to figure that out? Don’t just stand there gawping. Make yourself useful.”
Major Channing Channing of the Chesterfield Channings slouched reluctantly over to brace his pack leader from the other side. Together the Beta and the Gamma steered their Alpha down the hal to the central staircase, up several floors, over, and up the final steps to the earl’s tower sleeping chamber. They managed this with only three casualties: Lord Maccon’s dignity (which hadn’t very far to fal at that point), Major Channing’s elbow (which met a mahogany finial), and an innocent Etruscan vase (which died so that Lord Maccon could lurch with sufficient exaggeration).
During the course of the proceedings, Lord Maccon started to sing. It was some obscure Scottish bal ad, or perhaps some newer, more modern piece about cats dying
—it was difficult to tel with Lord Maccon. Before his metamorphosis, he had been a rather well -thought-of opera singer, or so the rumors went, but al remnants of pitch were shredded beyond hope of salvation during his change to supernatural state. His skil as a singer had fled along with the bulk of his soul, leaving behind a man who could inflict real pain with the slightest ditty. Metamorphosis, reflected Lyal , wincing, was kinder to some than to others.
“Dinna wanna,” objected his lordship at the entrance to his sleeping chamber.
“Reminds me.”
There was no trace of Alexia left in the room. She’d cleared out al of her personal possessions as soon as she returned from Scotland. But the three men in the doorway were werewolves; they merely needed to sniff the air and her scent was there—vanil a with a trace of cinnamon.
“This is going to be a long week,” said Channing in exasperation.
“Just help me get him into bed.”
The two werewolves managed, through dint of cajoling and brute force, to get Lord Maccon into his large four-poster bed. Once there, he flopped facedown, and almost immediately began snoring.
“Something simply must be done about him.” Channing’s accent was that of the privileged elite. It irritated Professor Lyal that the Gamma had never bothered to modify it over the decades. In the modern age, only elderly dowagers with too many teeth stil spoke English that way.
Lyal refrained from comment.
“What if we have a chal enger or a bid for metamorphosis? We should be getting more of both now that he has successful y changed a female into a werewolf. You cannot keep Lady Kingair a secret in Scotland forever.” Channing’s tone was ful of both pride and annoyance. “Claviger petitions have already escalated; our Alpha should be handling those, not spending his days fal ing down drunk. This behavior is weakening the pack.”
“I can hold the chal engers off,” said Professor Lyal with no shame, no modesty, and no boasting. Randolph Lyal might not be as large, nor as overtly masculine, as most werewolves but he had earned the right to be Beta in London’s strongest pack. Earned it so many times over and in so many ways that few questioned his right anymore.