“Don’t you dare threaten me, young lady!”
“Leave it, dear,” said his wife. “Remember back then, how you reacted to interference from my sainted mother?”
Paw looked shocked. “Are you comparing me to your mother?”
“If the hat fits.”
Rue had never before seen Paw so quickly cowed.
Everyone was calming down. The vampires and drones beetled off to their nearby hive under Percy’s annoyed instructions. Although, no doubt, one or two remained in the shadows to observe. The pack stayed, assembling in a loose circle of lupine curiosity. They seemed particularly fascinated by Tasherit. With regal cat superiority, she took the attention as her due and ignored them.
A touch at the top of Rue’s head distracted her.
Quesnel had his hand buried there and was idly combing through her fur.
“You’re so soft.” He tugged a bit at her long silky ears and she flicked them at him.
He’d ridden her in the past. A fact she had carefully not told her parents; it seemed oddly intimate. But those had been necessarily hurried exploits. She had hoped to practise more, to give him some real training in wolfback riding. The twins were both skilled in the matter, and Quesnel had felt left out. But then he disappeared to Egypt.
“Get your greasy hands off my daughter,” yelled Lord Maccon.
The petting stopped.
Rue instantly missed it.
“What is going on here?” Uncle Rabiffano strode onto the croquet green.
He was so very stylishly pulled together; everyone around him immediately became aware of how disreputable they looked. Lady Maccon’s hands went to her hair, which was still up but full of flyaways. Lord Maccon reached self-consciously for his cravat knot. The other werewolves all looked guilty – cognisant of ruffled fur, scrapes, and the need to bathe.
Uncle Rabiffano’s elegant dancer’s stride ate up the distance until he came to a stop in front of Paw.
Lord Maccon tried to recover the conversational ground. “What are you doing here, Beta?”
Uncle Rabiffano shook his head in a short negation, eyebrows raised. “Delivering a hat to Baroness Tunstell, of course. The real question is, what are you” – one graceful hand took in the amassed pack – “all of you, doing here?”
Lady Maccon stepped in. “Biffy, darling, let me explain.”
Uncle Rabiffano glanced briefly at her. “Oh, I can guess what is going on. Not the particulars, but I know why this is happening.”
He turned his back on Rue’s mother, pointedly, and she winced.
Rue’s jaw dropped, and because she was a wolf, her tongue lolled out. No one, no one dismissed Lady Maccon. Certainly not Uncle Rabiffano. They were friends. Good friends, Rue had thought.
Uncle Rabiffano faced Lord Maccon, fighting stance now, not dancer’s. “You’ve trained me up. I’m not going to be any more ready. It’s time to let go.”
Paw looked sad and militant at the same time.
Uncle Rabiffano tossed back a lock of hair. He had been made werewolf shortly before Rue was born. She wasn’t familiar with the particulars – no one liked to talk about it – but there was some scandal surrounding his metamorphosis. But it still meant he must be at least forty years old. Yet, in that brief moment, he looked exceedingly young and frightened.
He confronted her Paw. Her mortal Paw, as if… what?
Rue struggled to understand. As if he intends to challenge for leadership.
Uncle Rabiffano took a breath to steady his tone, and spoke again – low and level, strong and clear. Stage training perhaps, or a singer? Rue didn’t know what his art had been. She didn’t know anything about Uncle Rabiffano before he became Uncle Rabiffano.
“I don’t want to fight you, Conall.”
First names. Equal footing.
Paw lifted his head. Anger slashed red across his cheeks.
What is going on? What is Uncle Rabiffano doing? It hummed as a litany through Rue’s brain.
“You promised I wouldn’t have to fight you.” Uncle Rabiffano’s words vibrated with both power and pleading. “You promised this would be a smooth transition. I don’t know if I’m ready. You don’t know. They don’t know. But that is irrelevant to the fact that you must let us go now. You can’t hold them any more. And you can’t stop me from wanting. I can feel the tethers fraying. It’s not only you who will go mad – it’s all of us. Don’t you see that? I’m compelled to stop it. I will fight you for it, because it’s no longer an option. It’s stupid, and it’s brutish, but it’s instinct. And you were the one who taught me to accept instinct.”
Perhaps it was because Rue held his shape, but Paw didn’t react in the way she thought he would. Uncle Rabiffano’s words were a direct attack that no normal Alpha would tolerate. But Paw remained standing quietly before him. Yes, he looked angry but he also looked abashed.
I don’t like this, wailed Rue to herself.
Sensing her distress, Quesnel’s hand returned to her head. He didn’t pet her this time, simply rested it there.
Paw didn’t notice. He was focused on Uncle Rabiffano.
Mother didn’t notice either. She was focused on Paw.
The pack sat, still as stone, waiting.
It was as though the world held its breath; even the sounds of London faded.
Then Uncle Rabiffano changed. Not to werewolf form, not completely. No, only his head shifted. Above his perfectly tied cravat and starched white collar, above the dapper grey suit with its smooth lapel, his sweet boyish face became a dark wolf’s head.
Anubis form. Rue had seen her father do it. But that means…
Quesnel’s gasp cut into the silence.
Only Alphas have Anubis form. Rue stared, riveted, dumbfounded. Anubis was for bite to breed; it was Alpha’s gift to go with the curse. It was rare even so. Paw had Anubis. And Lady Kingair. And, Rue thought, mind drifting in shock, three other Alphas in England that she knew of but not Uncle Rabiffano. He was Paw’s Beta. He was Beta by feeling too: calm and relaxed and easy-going. Always there to foil his Alpha, to balance the pack. Except, of course, that Uncle Rabiffano hadn’t been. Not really. He’d simply been in the background and then off to his hat shop.
No, Rue realised, Mother had done the calming and the balancing, as much as she was able.
“You’re an Alpha.” Quesnel sounded as shocked as Rue felt.
Uncle Rabiffano inclined his wolf head slightly, so as not to disturb his collar points.
Out of the corner of one eye, Rue saw her mother do something awful. She stepped towards Uncle Rabiffano, establishing alliance.
“It’s time, Conall. He’s right. No more waiting. I can’t handle it, literally. And it’s too much to ask of our daughter.”
Rue felt Quesnel’s hand lift as everyone’s attention focused on her. The top of her head, despite the fur, felt cold.
Uncle Rabiffano spoke again, through his lupine mouth. Rue supposed that with the rest of him still human, speech was possible. It was peculiar-sounding, though, echoing and deep, not like his normal voice at all. “Conall, look at what this is doing to your family. To your pack. I don’t want to cry challenge, but I will if you can’t leave on your own.”
Paw seemed confused, indignant, and frustrated all at once. And betrayed, because his wife was standing against him. Rue had known her parents to argue – in fact, they seemed to enjoy it – but they had never in her life failed to present a unified front to the rest of the world.
Rue couldn’t decide what to do. Should she rush her mother, make skin contact with a preternatural to break the tether? That would give her father his supernatural abilities back and a fighting chance, as erratic and dangerous as that would make him.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” Uncle Rabiffano stepped in and, swinging from the shoulder with all his force, punched Paw in the jaw.
Paw fell back like a stone, senseless.
Everyone else remained motionless.
Uncle Rabiffano shift
ed back to normal. The fur of his face crawled up to the top of his head, chocolatey and thick, slightly less styled than before Anubis.
Rue growled and leapt at him, teeth going for the neck.
Only to find herself shifting back to human.
Her mother was gripping her hard. Preternatural forced change, exactly as if she were a misbehaving child.
“No, infant.” Lady Maccon sounded brittle.
“But, Mother!” Rue, starkers and uncaring, could only protest.
“Go and sit with your father. We might need you to touch him once more.”
“It’s not fair. You can’t use me as a weapon against my own Paw!”
“Prudence Alessandra Maccon Akeldama, I am not going to tell you again.”
“You’re asking me to choose between you,” wailed Rue.
Quesnel pulled off his frock coat and helped Rue into it.
Lady Maccon glared at her daughter. “No, I am ordering you to take care of him. Child of mine, ponder what he has become. We’ve tried every which way to get him to Egypt. He agreed. Twenty-odd years ago this all looked to be so easy. But none of us knew how Alpha’s curse would take him, or when. And the plan has failed.”
Uncle Rabiffano’s voice held no hostility. “We shouldn’t have waited for Lyall.”
Rue couldn’t comprehend that. “The Kingair Pack Beta? Why on earth should he matter?”
Rabiffano gave the oddest huff of a laugh. “He’s actually my Beta; they’ve had him on loan.”
This was all too much. And Paw was stirring. Rue would have to choose and she couldn’t face it. It felt like treason. If Uncle Rabiffano wanted the London Pack, if he was really meant to become its Alpha, shouldn’t he challenge for it? Except that meant one of them would die. When Alphas fought for pack leadership, one of them always died.
“The God-Breaker Plague. You’re going to take him into the plague zone?” Quesnel sounded oddly hopeful. Didn’t he understand how awful all of this was?
“Yes. Exactly.” Lady Maccon was pleased by his understanding.
“Where he’ll die!” Rue did not care how bitter she sounded.
Lady Maccon hauled her off and slapped her, hard across the face. “Stop it.”
It stung, but certainly didn’t hurt as much as werewolf shift. Still it surprised her into shocked silence.
So did the fact that Quesnel turned and stepped up against her mother in an entirely ungentlemanly way. “I wouldn’t do that again, Lady Maccon, if I were you.”
Mother blinked at him. “Oh. That’s the way of it? I didn’t realise.”
Rue clutched at her cheek and tried very hard not to cry.
“Prudence, little one.” Uncle Rabiffano’s voice was smooth as black treacle. He was so sure of himself. “This is not betrayal.”
Rue nodded. How long had it been since she had heard that kind of confidence in Paw’s voice? The slap seemed to have recharged her brain. They were right. The God-Breaker Plague would make her father an exiled mortal for the rest of his life, but he would have a rest of his life. Mother would surely go with him. Hadn’t Rue already acknowledged to herself that Paw’s time was running out?
It was a lot of realisations all at once.
“It’s only that I love him. He’s my Paw.” Rue didn’t know to whom she spoke, or why. Maybe it was for herself. She looked to Quesnel for reassurance. He was outside this. Outside her whole messy family with all its uncles and tethers and malingering life spans. “What do you think?”
“Oh, mon petite chou, it isn’t my place.”
“Please?”
“I think it’s romantic, to live together in an ancient land.”
“To die together there.”
“Not many Alphas get a retirement, chérie. And the weather is reputed to be very nice in Egypt.”
Rue gave a watery chuckle. Although she’d asked for his opinion, she did question his judgement. He’d no father and a dead birth mother. And, despite her indenture to a vampire hive, Madame Lefoux had never requested the bite. So his other mother would die too. He was accustomed to mortality.
“You do own one of the world’s fastest dirigibles.” Quesnel came to stand before her, not touching but there. And she adored – oh dear – the slight dimples when he smiled.
He was kind. “We could visit anytime you liked.”
Rue took a breath and struggled for something she could do to help. “So, how do we get him to Egypt? Will The Spotted Custard do?”
“Werewolves can’t float,” said Mother sadly.
Quesnel frowned. “It’s not the intent, but my tank might help there. The one Aggie’s hovering over in engineering.”
Lady Maccon looked thoughtful. “Prudence mentioned something about a tank.”
Rue nodded, numb. “Let’s give it a try? You’ll have to supervise, Quesnel. I’ll be indisposed.”
Then Rue took off the frock coat and walked to Paw.
He was moving, sluggishly returning to consciousness. She placed a hand gently to his dear wrinkled forehead. Rue shifted back to wolf, bones breaking and reforming and hair crawling from her head to cover her entire body. For once, she relished the pain. It was a punishment she richly deserved for her treachery.
Paw, please forgive me.
She tried not to be grateful for the relief on Uncle Rabiffano’s – and Mother’s and even Quesnel’s – faces.
Lord Maccon sat up, groggy.
And Uncle Rabiffano was hit full in his middle by a large vicious white wolf.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Channing,” Rue heard Uncle Rabiffano say just prior to shifting form. “I love this suit.”
The suit was ripped beyond repair and among the tatters of perfectly lovely and very expensive grey cashmere and crisp white lawn, stood a dark chocolate wolf with an oxblood red chest.
The two wolves met on a leap and began fighting. This was not how the pack had been tussling earlier with vampires, but really fighting. Trying to kill and maim one another. It was sickening in its ferocity.
Rue wanted to look away.
Channing went straight for Rabiffano’s neck. Rabiffano twisted so that Channing only got his shoulder. Blood dripped from deep puncture wounds as the white wolf bit down. They struggled with such force it was as though Channing were lifting and balancing the younger wolf on his nose. Rabiffano scrabbled at Channing’s belly with his hind legs, claws out, decorating the white with red gashes. He chomped down on Channing’s ear, fairly taking it off.
Rue came over queasy. She wasn’t usually squeamish, but she had never before witnessed two men she adored trying to brutally murder one another.
The wolves reared up, biting and slashing with their front paws and generally turning themselves into a fur-flying fray of white, chocolate, and red in the moonlight. Channing yipped in pain. What looked to have been his battle to win suddenly wasn’t any more. Rabiffano was braced in such a way as to give superior leverage against the white wolf, biting hard into the neck, applying a brutal pressure forwards and down. He was fighting smart, something very few werewolves could do, usually only the oldest or the most Alpha.
Rue leaned against her Paw, turned her wet nose into his leg, pressing her furred face against him helplessly.
There was no dramatic final moment; the fighters seemed likely to go on until dawn or exhaustion or death forced a separation. Except that, without apparent reason, they both stopped.
They backed away from each other, panting.
The pack leaned in, eyes gleaming.
So slowly that at first Rue wasn’t sure it was happening, the white wolf stretched out his front legs and sank over them. Then he flipped to his back, stomach up.
The rest of the pack threw back their heads and howled in victory and acceptance.
Rue felt absolutely no urge to join in such vocal nonsense.
The chocolate wolf’s tale swished once and then Rabiffano shifted back to human. For a dandy who wore his suits like armour against the world, Uncle Rabiff
ano was oddly comfortable wearing nothing but moonlight and the gaze of his pack.
His pack. Not Paw’s.
Uncle Rabiffano addressed Rue’s parents, uncompromising. “It is time for you to leave.”
Lord Maccon twitched. Rue could feel it in the muscles of his leg against her cheek.
Mother hadn’t watched the fight; her gaze stayed on her husband the entire time. Without acknowledging Uncle Rabiffano’s order, she turned her indomitable focus onto Quesnel. “I assume it’s a preservation tank you have, Mr Lefoux?”
Quesnel, slightly green about the gills from the battle, took a few seconds to react. “Modified from my mother’s original design. It’s not intended for werewolf transport, although the theory holds. If Rue thinks we should try, I’m game.”
“Would he be in danger?”
Quesnel shrugged. “If it turns out the tank doesn’t work on werewolves, he’ll likely go mad with aether, break it, and jump overboard.”
“Not an ideal outcome.”
Quesnel arched an eyebrow in agreement and continued. “Otherwise he’ll appear asleep or dead the whole time.”
Lady Maccon paled considerably. “So how would we know it’s working?”
Quesnel donned his delighted academic smile. Percy had the same smile. “Initially, if we stick him in and Rue here returns to normal, then we can presume the tank is at least preserving his tether.”
“And after that?” Mother was a great deal more careful with Paw’s well-being than she was with her own.
“We’d know when we arrive and he wakes up again.” Quesnel would not sugarcoat the reality of science.
“He is standing right here!” Lord Maccon gave an aggrieved rumble. His voice sounded worn and shaken, as if he’d been recently crying.
“Quite right, your risk, Conall. Do we try?”
“I am at your disposal, Wife. I’ve no other duties now but to attend your whims.”
“God help us all,” said Lady Maccon with real feeling. She turned towards The Spotted Custard. It had floated down for a better view of the Alpha challenge.
Rue stayed behind and watched the pack.
One at a time, each werewolf was approaching Uncle Rabiffano. Each knelt low over his forelegs and then flipped to present the soft underside of throat and stomach. There seemed a prescribed order of rank, or was it age? Rue found herself trying to guess whose turn would be next. Somehow she always got it right. She wondered if she had some latent pack instinct after all.
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