Last Alpha: A Highland shifter romance

by Ruby Fielding

  Contents

  Last Alpha

  Afters

  Last Alpha

  A Highland shifter romance

  Ruby Fielding

  Published by James Grieve Press

  © Ruby Fielding 2015

  www.rubyfielding.com

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  Cover images © Artofphoto, Demian, Inigocia and Marusja2, with design by James Grieve

  This ebook is copyright material and no portion of it may be reproduced or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law.

  Last Alpha

  Chi mi Sgorr-eild’ air bruaich a ghlinn’

  An goir a’ chuthag gu binn an dòs.

  ’Us gorm mheall-àild’ nam mìle giubhas

  Nan lub, nan earba, ’s nan lŏn.

  I see the ridge of hinds, the steep of the sloping glen

  The wood of cuckoos at its foot,

  The blue height of a thousand pines,

  Of wolves, and roes, and elks.

  (early Gaelic poem, anon.)

  1

  Head held low at the same level as his shoulders, the wolf runs at a steady pace. Deceptive, the run appears almost lazy and yet the beast covers ground rapidly.

  His easy gait never altering, he traverses the flank of the hill. His route angles up from the damp hollows where a carpet of sphagnum moss adds spring to each stride, to the dry ground where coarse ling heather scratches and pulls, each step a potential snare in the tangled vegetation.

  He comes to a craggy outcrop and pauses to sniff, lips pulling back from sharp teeth, tail twitching. The only scent here is his own, and he relaxes. He cocks a rear leg and sprays, then moves on.

  The mournful, bubbling cry of a curlew breaks the twilight calm. Ears twitch, turning towards the sound, and he sees the flash of mottled brown of the scimitar wings, the big wader flying out across the glen.

  The silver-blond wolf’s gait doesn’t alter. He could run like this for miles, hours. He could run all night, and sometimes that’s all he wants to do. He can’t articulate this, of course, not when he is like this, nan lub. Of wolf. Now, nan lub, he just senses, feels: the power, the stamina, the oneness with his own physicality and that of the world around him.

  He is strong.

  He runs.

  Abruptly, a clatter and whir of wings as a covey of grouse erupts from the heather. In a single movement the wolf twists, changing direction so that now he is tumbling up the hillside in a whir of legs and tail, his pace doubled.

  The fat game birds escape him easily and he loses sight of them over a ridge, but that is of no concern. The pursuit-instinct triggered by the birds’ flight has set his heart racing, his senses heightened, the world all of a sudden so much more clearly defined.

  He slows to that steady lope once again, tongue lolling as if he can still taste the birds on the air.

  He is in his element and he is free and it is good.

  §

  The building nestles in a fold of the hills, surrounded on all sides by regimented, tidy gardens and then a fringe of dark pine trees. The building is high, its rooftops haphazard, towers reaching to the sky. Lights shine from within.

  Human noises drift on the evening air. A chatter of garbled words, a bark of laughter, a mechanical drone. The chemical sweetness of human scent sets his heart racing again and he draws his lips up from his teeth once more in that grimace of uncertainty, caution.

  Motor cars are pulled up before the building, and people move about.

  It is all he can do to stay here and not flee.

  There is something different tonight. Something new.

  Someone new.

  2

  Jenny Layne pulled off the little single-track lane and crunched to a halt on the gravel driveway. She still hadn’t got the hang of this little Toyota rental she’d picked up at Aberdeen airport. She hadn’t driven a stick-shift since she was a teenager and all the controls were in the wrong places, not to mention minor details like she was sitting on what should be the passenger side and she had to keep reminding herself to drive on the wrong side of the road.

  She was used to city traffic, so driving along one of these remote Scottish roads with nothing else around, then seeing an enormous logging truck approaching and having to fight the urge to pull hard right instead of staying here on the left... well, right now she wanted nothing more than a long soak in the tub and a tumbler of Long Island Iced Tea. Or a Manhattan. Or both.

  It was late, and she should probably have stayed at that Thistle Hotel she’d seen back at the airport, but patience had never really been one of her things.

  Now, after what had become a two hour drive as she tried to find the right turnings on these narrow roads, she knew she could have been in that tub for two hours already if she’d opted for the hotel.

  She was delaying. That definitely was one of her things: the mad rush to get out into the Highlands and now she was here she was prevaricating.

  They weren’t expecting her until tomorrow. She should have called ahead. What if the laird of the manor or whatever he called himself sent her packing?

  She should turn back. She’d driven past a pub a few minutes ago – they might have rooms. And if not, it couldn’t be far to a town where there would be some kind of motel.

  She peered into the gloom.

  Dark pine trees hugged the driveway, before opening out ahead into manicured gardens. The house – the castle, Mr Carr had called it – was an odd construction, not at all what she’d expected. In her head, a castle was a big building surrounded by a moat and high walls with battlements and a great portcullis over the entrance. This was more a country house, blocky and tall, like a grand dame hunching its shoulders and drawing its skirts in to make room for the gardens around it. Small towers jutted out from halfway up the walls, each with a pointed roof, and the main roofline of the castle was marked by tooth-like crenellations. The whole place looked thrown together.

  To be blunt, for a castle it was a strangely ugly affair, and not at all welcoming.

  Now the urge to turn around was growing. Surely the place would be better by daylight?

  She crunched the little Toyota into what she hoped was first gear and juddered back into motion, approaching Craigellen Castle at little more than a sedate walking pace.

  A short time later she pulled up before a heavy front door. She cut the engine, opened the car door and swung her legs out. She would never get used to driving over here. Everything about it was wrong.

  She stood and looked up. The castle loomed over her, and looked even more oppressive close up. She suddenly felt as if she’d stepped onto the set of a period whodunit, as if Hercules Poirot or Miss Marple might step out to greet her at any moment. Except this wasn’t an English country house: she was in Scotland. She suspected the locals could get quite picky about that kind of detail.

  She looked down. There was a prickling sensation around her ankles and lower legs.

  She raised one leg and started scratching and that was when the door opened and a woman’s voice said, “You dinnae want to scratch, dear. It’ll only make it worse.”

  Jenny looked up. A gray-haired woman stood in the open doorway, a welcoming smile on her face.

  “The midgies,” the woman we
nt on. “They’re oot in force the nicht.”

  Jenny could only make out about every other word of what the woman said, so she smiled and nodded like an idiot and carried on scratching. Now she could see the flies, tiny black things buzzing around her ankles. She flapped at them and straightened, then stepped forward offering a hand to shake.

  “Hi,” she said, letting her hand drop, unshaken. “I’m Jenny Layne. You were expecting me tomorrow, but, well, I get enthusiastic, you know?”

  She took her bag from the back of the car and allowed herself to be ushered inside, hoping she’d left the flies – the “midgies” – outside.

  The entrance hall was everything she’d expected. Walls painted a deep maroon were liberally adorned with stags’ heads, antlers, a pair of great shields decorated with some kind of baronial insignia, and a pair of fierce, curving swords. The wood-paneled ceilings were so high you could easily have put Jenny’s Greenpoint apartment in here and then stacked two more on top of it.

  This place was so much cooler than a chain hotel at the airport! On the inside, at least.

  “All this is for real?” she asked, and the woman just smiled at her blankly. It was as if the two of them spoke entirely different languages.

  The awkward silence was broken by a door swinging open at the far end of the hall and a figure emerging. A man, tall and athletic, he wore a pair of jeans and an untucked cream silk shirt that he was busy fastening.

  “I... I’m sorry,” Jenny said, as the guy approached. “I didn’t mean to disturb your...”

  “Oh, not to worry,” the man said. “I was just getting myself cleaned up after an evening on the river.” Then, by way of explanation, he added, “Fly fishing. Salmon. It’s a passion. You must be Miss Layne.” His voice had a toffee-like richness, as if he was speaking through molasses, and while his accent had the Scottish lilt Jenny had heard here ever since landing it was more mellow and understated.

  She stepped forward, offering her hand and wondering if this time someone would shake it.

  “Hi,” she said. “That’s right. Jenny Layne. So pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  His grip was firm and cool. For a moment she thought he was going to stoop and kiss her hand, then he shook it briefly and released her. “Jonathan Carr,” he said. “Delighted.”

  The smoothness of his voice permeated everything. His mannerisms, his smile, the casual sophistication of the way he presented himself. His eyes were gray, his hair short and dark. She already knew he had just turned thirty, but she’d have put him a good ten years older – not in a bad way, but in a mature, stinking rich lord of the manor kind of a way.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “But we weren’t expecting you so soon.” He turned to address the woman who had opened the door. “Do we have a room prepared for our guest, Aileen?”

  “Ten minutes,” said the woman, stepping forward to gather up Jenny’s bag from where she’d let it rest on the tiled floor, and then slipping away through a side door and leaving the two of them alone.

  Jonathan Carr followed Jenny’s look, a smile on his face. “A wall full of beasties,” he said, waving a hand to indicate the antlers and stags’ heads. “We do a lot of hunting in these parts.”

  That surprised her. Carr was a passionate conservationist, by all accounts. She shouldn’t be surprised when conservation and hunting went hand in hand, but still...

  There was something about him that stole her tongue. Not like her at all.

  “Have you eaten, Miss Layne?”

  “Jenny, please. And yes, I have, thank you.” A textureless burger at the airport before she’d picked up the car. More than two hours on, it still sat heavily in her stomach.

  “A wee dram then, perhaps?”

  She raised an eyebrow and he mimed raising a glass to his lips, and said, “A little Scotch?”

  The closest she ever came to whiskey was the occasional Old Fashioned, but she nodded, and said, “Thanks, that’s very kind.”

  Carr turned and reached for the door, holding it until Jenny had passed through and then stepping forward to lead her down a dark corridor to a room that looked like some kind of Dickensian parlor.

  Again, she knew she was mixing up her English and her Scottish, but the image stuck: leather-covered chairs with roll-top arm-rests were arranged in a small arc, facing a grand fire. Vases and crystal lined up along the mantelpiece, and an impressive rack of wrought-iron implements stood to one side of the fireplace. There should be people standing around with names like Cratchitt and Chuzzlewit. High yellow flames licked the inside of the fireplace, the fire well set even in the middle of summer. It must be something about the thick stone walls and the high ceilings, she supposed, that just sucked the heat away.

  “Please,” said Carr, waving towards the chairs.

  Jenny sat, and waited politely while her host poured Scotch into two cut crystal tumblers. No ice, no water... She had to fight the urge to ask for a measure of Diet Coke.

  When he came across and handed her one of the glasses, Jenny smiled up at him, and said, “Thank you.” And then she added, “So, when are you going to tell me about your werewolves?”

  3

  He tipped his head back and laughed. Then, straightening, he took a sip of his drink and said, “You Americans. Your directness is so refreshing.”

  Was that meant to be an insult? She wasn’t sure. He was still smiling, at least.

  “It’s the reason I’m here,” she said.

  She still didn’t quite understand how she’d reached this point in her life. It had all started out as a simple blog. She’d had no ambitions for it, no real focus, even, until she noticed that the posts that got the most comments and the most social media shares were the ones about wacky science, the supernatural, and her own slightly clumsy investigations. Asked in an interview recently to sum up what she did, she’d said, “City girl throws herself into scary shit and sometimes makes sense of it.” The YouTube channel had grown from the blog, and then came along the syndication and the occasional piece in Huffington Post and other places she’d only ever dreamed of writing for before.

  Now she had enough of a profile that people sent her leads out of the blue, like the Facebook message a couple of weeks ago that had drawn her attention to what Jonathan Carr was up to here in wildest Scotland. It was also enough of a profile that opened doors to places like this, when most journalists wouldn’t get past the front gate. The only condition of her being here was that the focus of her piece should be about Carr’s conservation work and that she shouldn’t write anything until she was back home – “You’re to write nothing in the heat of the moment,” the rather terse email from Carr’s estate manager had said.

  Now, she sat across from Carr, trying to work out what was going on in his head.

  He raised his glass, the amber liquid catching the light from the fire and flashing gold. “Eighteen year-old Glenmorangie,” he said. “A favorite of mine. The distillery is just across the Moray Firth, maybe thirty or forty miles as the crow flies.”

  Polite, Jenny raised her glass, swirled it and breathed in the lemony, floral scent. She took a sip, bracing for the initial burn and then surprised by a delicate honeycomb sweetness, a kick of spices, a flavor that developed and transformed with each second that passed, finishing with a fruity, smoky after-taste. She smiled at the thought of the flavor shifting like that, given the reason she was here: shifter whisky. When she looked up from the glass she saw that Carr approved, no doubt assuming her smile was for the drink and not the private joke.

  “The project is only one of the many things we do at Craigellen,” he said.

  She nodded, deciding to ease off. Going straight in with questions about his mad-scientist scheme was maybe a bit full-on. You should never go in too hard on a first date. She smiled again, and said, “Sorry. It’s been a long day and I’m keen. So what else do you do here?” She caught herself again, and added, “I mean, if you want to talk now. I’m not even down to interview yo
u until tomorrow. I really do appreciate your hospitality, you know.”

  He was laughing again, a gentle chuckle this time.

  She raised her hands defensively, almost spilling her drink. “I blabber. What can I say?” Then: “So... tell me about the rest of it. This place. Your life here. The people.”

  She took another sip of the Scotch, a convert already.

  He smiled at her over his glass. He was prepared to play the game, even though he knew she hadn’t flown across the Atlantic just to talk estate management. “I’m an only child, born and raised in Edinburgh,” he told her. “Educated at St Andrews and then King’s College, Cambridge. I’ve built up a wee software company, among other things. I’m sure you’ve read my Wikipedia entry.”

  Jenny smiled politely.

  “I used to holiday in this part of the world as a boy,” he went on, “so when the estate became available. Well, a little over 10,000 hectares of ancient Caledonian forest and moorland, two of my own Munros... what’s a chap to do?” In response to her blank look, he explained, “A Munro is a mountain over 3,000 feet high. People like to climb them – ‘doing the Munros’. It’s a Scottish thing.”

  Only now, far too late, did Jenny start to understand that she’d come unprepared. Ballet flats and slingbacks were not exactly mountain footwear. Last time she’d been up a mountain was Mount Washington as a kid, and there had been a train, and a café at the top.

  “So I’ve been here five years now,” said Carr. He seemed quite content to keep talking, which was perfect for Jenny. Far better this than some reticent guy who needed everything to be prized out of him with a toothpick.

  “It’s a Hell of a place,” said Jenny. “Did you have to do much work?” It was a question to which she already knew the answer, one that flattered him by allowing him to tell her about all the work he’d done to the castle, restoring it from near ruin.

  She drank some more whisky and listened, and when he started to wind down said, “It’s beautiful. I can’t wait to see it in daylight.”