Last Alpha: A Highland shifter romance

by Ruby Fielding

  19

  When the Land Rover pulled up before the castle Billy turned to Jenny, his expression suddenly nervous, guarded. “Jenny,” he said, “if you could just–”

  But she was already turning away from him, climbing out of the car. She stood, straightened, and finally met his look again. “Thank you for the tour, Mr Stewart,” she said. “It was... interesting.”

  “I–”

  She turned away. It was hard to be so rude, even when she just wanted to slap him. How could he be so... so many different things, all at once?

  She walked up to the front doors of the castle, painfully aware of the low diesel rumble of the Land Rover’s idling engine behind her.

  She didn’t look back. She pulled the doors open and passed through. Pulled them closed behind her and leaned back against them, her heart suddenly racing, thumping heavily in her chest. She took a deep breath and held it. This was not the time or the place for an anxiety attack.

  She saw Aileen, then, standing in a doorway to one side of the big staircase.

  “I... I have a headache,” said Jenny. “I’ll be in my room.”

  §

  She stood at the window, looking out. Bright sunlight again. The cloudcover had thinned as they drove down from the loch. A black bird bounced jauntily across the grass, pausing to peck at something briefly. She could see clouds of midges dancing in the air. The pine forest looked dark and brooding. Previously she had thought the forest’s atmosphere to be church-like, but now her mood had changed and it seemed more sinister and threatening.

  She should just go.

  Get her things, drive back to Aberdeen, get a flight. Turn this tangled web of a trip into a vacation.

  There was a gentle knock at the door. Jenny turned, said, “Yes?” and the door nudged open. Aileen stood there with a tray bearing a silver teapot and a cup balanced upside down in a saucer.

  “I brought you some tea,” the woman said. “Chamomile. It’s good for the nerves.”

  “Is there reason for my nerves to need help?” asked Jenny, a little too pointedly.

  Aileen just smiled as if she didn’t understand the question.

  “Do you mind me asking?” said Jenny, trying a less confrontational approach. “What do you make of all this? Of Carr? Of Billy and the others?”

  “Mr Carr’s a generous employer,” said Aileen. “I like the castle, I enjoy being responsible for its upkeep.”

  “None of it’s just a bit weird?”

  Now the housekeeper’s expression turned to puzzlement. “I’m not sure I know what you mean, miss,” she said.

  “Never mind. Thank you. For the tea.” Aileen came in and placed the tray on the table by the window, then turned away. Either she had a really good poker face, or she genuinely didn’t know much, if anything, about the stranger things going on at Craigellen Castle.

  Jenny went to the table, turned the cup over and poured. The fragrance of the tea was highly perfumed and sweet. She raised the cup and sniffed, took a sip, put the cup back down again.

  She turned back to the window and stared out at the forest, lost in her thoughts.

  How much even did Carr know? He funded Billy’s travels, kept him in that odd position somewhere between lieutenant and friend. But what did he understand of the real reasons for Billy’s travel? That he explored the world looking for other people “like him”, only to be disappointed when he only ever found sufferers of the same psychosis that was fooling him? There were so many levels of irony in that.

  Did Carr know what Billy believed? Did he even believe it himself? And how could she ever explore that with Carr without risking exposing Billy and possibly ruining the set-up he had here?

  She’d never before found herself in the position where even the questions she asked could change people’s lives like this.

  It was all too much.

  She went to the bed and lay down. She really did have that headache now.

  §

  She woke some time later to the soft klaxon call of her cell phone’s ring-tone.

  Billy. She’d forgotten he even had her number. They’d swapped contact details back in Maldon, easier that way to arrange a quick coffee shop rendezvous before the day’s courtroom activities got started.

  She let it ring. Four, five times, then nothing. He knew quickly she wasn’t going to answer, and didn’t wait for voicemail to take over.

  She’d been lying on her side, but now she picked up her phone and rolled onto her back. She spent a few minutes checking her emails, slow to wake up properly after her impromptu afternoon nap.

  Outside, the day was still bright, even though it was past six.

  She checked Recent Calls, pressed to call back, barely even allowing herself time to think.

  He answered with a single word: “Jenny.”

  “Hi. You free to talk? No BS, no games. I want to understand.”

  “That’s all I could hope for.”

  “The Calder Arms? At seven?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  §

  He was waiting for her at a table by the window – the same one where she’d sat with Jim McQueen only the day before. That seemed so long ago, already!

  She looked around, wondering if the old man would be here too, but there was no sign of him. A group of twenty-somethings stood at the bar, hikers by the look of them, and English by the sound. Two older men sat farther along the bar, staring into their pint glasses. A young couple occupied a table towards the gloomy back of the pub.

  She looked back at Billy, not sure if the fact that he was here early indicated neediness or simple politeness.

  He stood, smiled uncertainly, moved a chair out for her to sit. He always had been polite at least, she remembered.

  “Drink?” he asked, still standing.

  He went to the bar, coming back a short time later with a bottled beer and a large glass of red.

  “So what’s really going on?” she asked, as he seated himself opposite her.

  “It’s the truth.”

  That he was a werewolf. And he loved her.

  For all the uncertainty in his manner, those dark eyes didn’t leave her.

  “Does Jonathan Carr know? Does he believe you?”

  Billy shook his head. “Nobody knows,” he said. “It’s not a thing to share.”

  “So why me?”

  He shrugged. “Because you’re you,” he said simply. “I knew from the moment I saw you. Something changed in me. Something clicked into place.”

  She hadn’t meant that. She’d meant why tell her, not why love her.

  Maybe the answer was the same to both questions, though.

  Something clicked into place.

  He raised his bottle, took a sip, his eyes never leaving her.

  Falteringly, she broke the look. “Do they do food here?” she asked.

  Billy nodded towards a blackboard on the wall by the bar. The handwritten menu was minimal, offering what she assumed was standard British bar food: burgers, pie and mash, fish and chips. “Haggis, neeps + tatties” was the only one that stood out as different, but she didn’t ask.

  Billy went to the bar again with their food orders, a chicken Caesar salad for Jenny, a burger for himself. He wouldn’t take her money, said it was the least he could do.

  He seemed intense tonight. He must feel exposed, vulnerable. He hadn’t made these claims to anyone else, he had said. He must know she was on the point of walking away from all this, when clearly that was the last thing he wanted to happen.

  She didn’t know how to ask this without being blunt. “So what makes you believe–?”

  “That I’m a werewolf?”

  She glanced around, but nobody was close enough to eavesdrop.

  “It’s not a belief,” he said. “It just is. I always knew I was a wee bit different. I was a loner. I always thought that was because of how I was raised. My ma was gone, and my pa was ... well...”

  She remembered McQueen explaining that B
illy’s mother had left when he was young, and that his father had drunk himself to an early grave when Billy was still in his teens.

  “My refuge was the hills. I learned to read my environment, to track game, to survive in the wild. I was earning good money as a ghillie by the time I was twelve. All these rich men coming up from the south, wanting to be led straight to the deer and grouse the easiest way possible. I could do that. I didn’t come to understand the real reason I was so different until the change kicked in at puberty. There’s nothing can prepare you, except survival instinct. It’s so intense, that first time in particular. It takes you over and you have no idea what’s happening, no preparation.”

  “You said you’re the last...”

  Billy nodded. “It’s passed on through the generations, of course. That’s how I am what I am.”

  “Your mother?”

  “So I thought. I tracked her down. She was living in a wee bedsit in Hillhead. The look on her face when she realized who I was. Feart to her bones, she was.”

  She saw the trauma on his face as he relived the incident. His Scots becoming more broad. Feart... scared.

  “Why was she afraid?”

  A beseeching look. “Because she knew what I had become.”

  “Was she one herself?” She couldn’t believe she was asking such questions, playing along with his madness. But right now, in the thick of this story, Billy’s version seemed as sane as any other.

  “That’s what I thought, mysel’,” he said. “But no. It wisnae what she was. It’s what she’d run from.”

  “Your father.”

  “Aye. I was nearly twenty by the time I’d tracked down my ma, and my pa was long dead. I’d thought... the drinking, the shutting me out... I’d thought all that was because he knew what I’d become and he was scared, but no. It was because he was responsible for me being what I was. What I am. But he’d never said. And worse, he’d never prepared me for it. Just shut himself down and hoped I’d take after my ma and no’ him.

  “And by the time I understood all that it was too late. He was gone.”

  Their food came, and Billy’s story lapsed.

  Jenny tried to make sense of it. Tried to apply a rationalistic, sane interpretation: his story had the consistency of a version of events that he’d gone over time and again in his mind. It made sense within its own irrational framework, but equally you could step back and see a young man struggling to find his own identity as he came to terms with a disturbing psychosis. Allow yourself to be drawn into a madman’s view of the world and it might easily sound just as coherent as Billy’s story had sounded just now.

  She picked at her food, allowing the lull to draw itself out.

  “And so now you’re the last.”

  “You don’t believe me. That’s fine. Why should you? I certainly wouldn’t. But aye, I’m the last. Or, at least, the last I’ve been able to find. And you know I’ve looked hard enough.”

  “That’s why you came to Jackson Taylor’s trial,” Jenny said. “Not because it was just a strange case but because you thought he might actually be the real thing.”

  “I didn’t think he was, but if there was even the slimmest of chances... All I wanted was to find survivors. Others.”

  And all you found was me.

  “‘Survivors’?”

  He nodded.

  “It’s not as if my kind have ever been popular,” he said. “We hide ourselves away for good reason. Look at any culture and you’ll find references. The loup-garou of France, the German werwolf, the Slavic vlkodlak. But mostly we’ve been written out of history. Everybody knows about the historical witchcraft trials, but how many know that werewolf hunts and trials went hand in hand with all that? Between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries there were maybe 50,000 people executed for witchcraft – but that included a range of crimes including lycanthropy. Werewolves. It’s no coincidence that most trials took place in the forested, mountainous regions of Europe. Wolf country. There were three or four thousand executed in Scotland, alone. By any measure, that’s genocide. So no, I’ve never told anybody what I am. Until now, that is.”

  “Does Lilian Lee know?”

  He shook his head quickly.

  “But she could learn so much from you.”

  “I’d be a specimen. I’ve spent my life hiding myself away. I have no reason to change that.”

  “But you’re drawn to her work.” Maybe that explained something of the relationship he had with Carr. The millionaire liked to keep Billy around but never missed an opportunity to emphasize the employer-employee nature of the relationship. Billy was willing to swallow all that, in the hope that... “Do you think she’ll succeed?”

  She saw the hope in his eyes, even as he shook his head. “I don’t. But if there’s even the slimmest of possibilities.”

  She tried to imagine what it must be like to be the very last of your kind.

  She caught herself. To believe you’re the last of your kind.

  They ate in silence for a time.

  A man she recognized from the estate office came in, greeted Billy warmly enough, then moved on to the bar.

  Outside it was still light, although the sun was hanging low over the rooftops now. She went for more drinks, the red for her and a Libertine Black Ale for Billy.

  She didn’t know what to make of all this. How would anyone react to something like this? The strangest thing was that she’d spent a large part of the evening sitting down with him in the local pub, talking about it all as if everything about this was somehow normal.

  And something that went hand in hand with that: once the weird stuff started to feel normal, she was sitting here having food and a couple of drinks with a guy who professed to love her.

  It was the strangest feeling.

  20

  “There’s really never been anyone?” she asked him. “You’ve never been in love?”

  If someone ever asked that question of Jenny, she didn’t know how she would answer. Sure, she’d had relationships. She’d even lived with Louis Castillo for a couple of months. She’d said the words before. That simple three-word sentence. But had she ever truly been in love? Had there been a single one of those men who she’d been able to see herself with in another five years’ time, let alone ten or twenty?

  She didn’t know how she would answer, but right now no-one was asking her.

  She studied Billy’s features. The slight frown that he wore when he was thinking carefully about a response. The depths in those dark eyes. The tensing of that strong jawline.

  “Never,” he said, finally.

  She thought that was going to be the sum total of his answer, but then he went on: “I thought there was something wrong with me. All the lads at school, talking about girls, swapping naughty magazines. All that, it did nothing for me. I didnae want anything to do with all that. With them. The more intense adolescence got, the more I withdrew. I thought I must be gay, or some kind of sociopath. I’d far rather be out on the hills, or exploring the forest. But while I was drawn to all this rugged outdoor activity, I wisnae drawn to the men who did it, so I knew I wisnae gay.”

  “So sociopath it was, then?”

  They both laughed, breaking some of the tension.

  “So what was it?” Jenny asked. “Some kind of, I don’t know, low libido? A low sex drive?”

  There was a sharp flash of something in his eyes. “Not that,” he said, quickly. “I think it’s just something in my nature. Wolves mate for life. I think that’s what it is for me. All that travel, I didn’t realize that a part of me was seeking out my soulmate.”

  That term again, spoken as simple fact. It was quite breathtaking to be thought of in those terms.

  “I... I think I need to get back,” she said, awkwardly.

  He stood, offered her a hand. “I’ll walk you to Craigellen,” he said. “Ye’ll no’ be driving tonight.”

  Her rental Toyota was in the pub car park, but after three glasses of wine she knew h
e was right.

  She took his hand but wouldn’t meet his look, confused by her response to his touch.

  She made her excuses, went to the rest room.

  She needed time to catch her breath and think. The chemistry with Billy was undeniable. It had been there in Maldon, and it was here even more so on his own territory, where he was clearly more comfortable. They had fun, they talked easily, they shared interests. But how do you tease all that out? How do you unravel it from the fact that they’d spent a large part of the evening talking about his belief that he was a werewolf?

  How could it possibly be so easy to push all that aside?

  §

  Outside, the air had taken on a freshness as the sun fell away behind the surrounding hills.

  “I hope the midges won’t be out,” Jenny said, trying to keep it light.

  “If we stick to the middle of the road you’ll be fine,” Billy told her. “They don’t like to stray too far from the undergrowth.”

  They walked close, not quite touching. Down through the village and across the little humpback bridge. When they reached the turning that would take them towards the estate, Billy strode out down the middle of the road.

  “What if something comes?” Jenny asked, hurrying to keep up.

  He smiled. “I’ll hear it from a long way off,” he said. “My hearing is very good. And I’ll smell it coming. I have a very good sense of smell.”

  “And those big beautiful eyes are all the better to see them with, right?”

  He laughed, but Jenny didn’t. She wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that he was joking now.

  “I mean it,” he said. “We’ll be fine.”

  They passed the last house in the village, and then the forest closed in on both sides. The darkness beneath the trees was like a blanket. She remembered going for a late night walk the night before, and tried to recapture that sense of wonder at the night-time woodland.

  She shuddered.

  “Hey, you’re cold?”

  He’d seen the shudder, and now his arm looped across her shoulders, his leather jacket partly covering her back.

  She was intensely aware of the hardness of his body, and the way she just slotted into him as they walked.