by Lola Gabriel
“Yes, dear,” the figure replied. “Thirsty maybe. Did you have a nice… Where have you been, dear?”
“SHUT IT!” Albaline exploded, his paunch bouncing comically beneath his robe. “Boy, do you want this fucking crystal? You can have it, but you can’t keep shtupping my daughter if I do this stupid ritual. You understand? Crystal from my court to yours, my daughter stays here!”
Archie stood as tall as he could. He had both the girls here, but what about their mother…
“Actually,” Archie said, “I don’t need the crystal. Your daughter, who has a name, by the way… Lyric… Lyric and I will rule my kingdom together, and her power, and her wit, and her energy will give me more than any crystal designed to warp a head ever could.”
“Whoa!” Allegra said. She looked at her big sister and raised her eyebrows.
Albaline tried to position himself in front of the double doors, but in stepping backwards, he bashed into his wife. “Move, woman!” he spat.
Both the fae queen’s daughters stepped forward. But they needn’t have. She had stuck out a foot, and Albaline toppled over like a falling egg.
“BITCH!” he yelled as he fell, and he hurled something, something shiny and sea-green that glittered in the firelight. But the fae queen intervened before it could make contact with anyone.
“Stupid bloody crystals!” she said, almost under her breath, and with a crack and a flash of blue light, the crystal exploded into dust. And then, in the distance, they heard POP, POP, POP, POP!
“Oops,” Lyric said. “Okay, we should definitely get out of here while he’s on the ground!”
Epilogue
Lyric
Lyric woke up before Archie, and though it was still quite early, sunshine streamed onto his face from the high windows and it picked out his light freckles, the red flecks of stubble where he needed to shave. Lyric leaned over and kissed one eyelid and then the other. Then she kissed his nose.
“Hello,” Archie said sleepily, hooking an arm around the fairy and pulling her in for a kiss. Their bodies were bed-warm and the sheets were still crisp. He propped himself up on his elbows. “What time is it?” he asked. “Should you get out of here?”
Lyric rolled her eyes. “What, is Erik going to tell on me? And anyway, I think he’s learned his lesson about walking in without knocking.”
Archie made a face. “Don’t remind me!” he said. And he pulled her close again, rolled her onto him so she could feel the length of him, feel him pushing eagerly into her.
“See?” Lyric said, kissing his neck.
Archie groaned gently. “Mmm, see what?”
“You don’t want me to go.”
“Of course not,” Archie said, “but your sister will want to get dressed with you or…or whatever…and you know Erik is a stickler for tradition. He’ll tell us for the rest of our long, long lives together that we’re doomed because we spent last night together.”
But Lyric was ignoring him, working her way down his body with kisses and nibbles. She reached the bottom of his ribs and moved down his stomach, in a cave of sheets and the smell of the two of them and just the smallest touch of morning light.
“Okay…” she heard Archie say, between breaths, “I suppose he’ll be helping your mum out first… You can just… ah…”
Lyric liked to touch Archie before he touched her. Make him squirm, make him want her even more than he seemed to at every minute of every day, and then just when he had almost forgotten where, who, what he was…
Lyric sat up and let the sheet fall. Her hair was almost down to her shoulders, and she wasn’t as pale as she might have been before. She smiled at Archie, who locked his eyes onto hers. “What am I going to do with you?” he asked, and halfheartedly tried to grab for her, but she dodged and then climbed on hands and knees like an animal up him, until she sat over his hips.
“I don’t know,” Lyric said in mock confusion. “What are you going to do with me?” She moved her hips back and ground down, letting him feel how wet she was. “Hmm… Maybe you’re going to bond with me forever, and live happily ever after?”
Archie smiled at her. He was far away, but he wasn’t, she knew he was lost in her. She lifted herself and slipped him inside her, and watched his face, watched his joy, and knew that hers was showing on her face too. The perfect joy of being in exactly the right place. The place you should be in. And then she closed her eyes, and just like it always was for them, it was a feeling like flying, like falling, like being caught. And even as the feeling reached a crescendo, she knew Archie was there. Could feel his hand on her thigh. They were keeping one another safe, and from now on, they always would be.
Cayden: Alpha Wolf of London
1
Cayden
There was a sharp knock on Cayden’s chamber door. He opened his eyes, and then closed them again. The curtains were open a crack, and bright midday sun was streaming through. It was, Cayden was sure, aimed right at his eyes. He pulled the blankets up over his head and grunted.
From his cave of breath and sweat, he heard the door of his room open.
“Up!” demanded a husky, Irish female voice. “Cayden, I swear by all that is holy, you are not too old for me to drag you out of that fetid nest of yours!”
Again, Cayden groaned, but then he poked his head out of the blankets. “What time is it?” he asked, propping himself up on his elbows.
The middle-aged, thickset woman in the doorway checked her watch. She always wore the face on the inside of her wrist—don’t want people spying on my time, or that was what she had told Cayden when he was a boy.
“Sun’s been up in the sky a while, I’ll tell you that.”
“Nanny…” Cayden tried, in his best wheedling voice, but she marched across the room and hit him hard across the feet, which were still under the blankets. “You’re beyond grown, Cayden. Mrs. Cruikshanks. As you know well. Now up, Ali’s lass is arriving today and you’re in no fit state for company.”
Cayden rolled his eyes, but not distinctly enough for Mrs. Cruikshanks to notice. She stood at the end of his bed, arms crossed. “In fact,” she said, “I already chased some company out earlier. A couple of young women looking for coffee and, as it seemed, half their clothes. I offered them some spare coats.”
This actually perked him up. He sat higher against his pillows and yawned. “Thanks, Cruikshanks, you really do make my life easier.”
Mrs. Cruikshanks shook her head. “Poor idiots,” she said. “Now, feet on the rug, Cayden.”
“I’m not…” Cayden waved vaguely at the bottom half of himself, still covered by blankets. Mrs. Cruikshanks shrugged and tapped one booted foot. “Cover your dingly danglies, or don’t. You think I’ll be worried? I wiped your arse for two years, child.”
Cayden relented. He swung his legs out of the bed, holding the blankets in place over his knees, and planted his feet on the ground.
Mrs. Cruikshanks nodded. “Coffee’ll be ready in ten, and so will you be,” she said, and she left the room. She was deceptively quick for a woman of five-foot-nothing, almost as wide as she was tall. The legend was she’d been turned by accident during a raid on a human village, but when Cayden had asked her, when he was a teenager, how she had become a werewolf, and, more specifically, why she was so old, she had smiled at him and told him she had taken a lupine lover in middle age. Of course, this had just been to freak him out and to stop him asking questions. And it had worked. She had been his nanny, and now she was just…here…not really keeping him in line or really wanting to, but at least keeping him ever so slightly accountable.
Cayden stretched and yawned. His mouth tasted terrible. That was what whiskey followed by red wine, followed by two human women called…what had they been called? A blonde and a redhead… It didn’t matter. They probably wouldn’t bring back the coats Mrs. Cruikshanks had lent them. She did a thing where she opened the boot cupboard to display all the coats that had accidentally been left here over the years, and, Cayden th
ought, she probably topped it up from the nearest charity shop. She would say, “Have you stayed over before? Are any of these yours?”
Not that he lured women home by pretending he was going to ask for their hand in marriage, but Mrs. Cruikshanks’ level of measured disrespect did tend to disgust most of his visitors.
Visitors. Shit. Ali’s kid. He didn’t give a toss about children, not really, but Ali was his best friend. Or he had been, back in the day, when they had prowled together, before Ali had been called back up to Scotland to head the pack there and, eventually, met his mate. Blah blah. Birds and bees. He’d met Ali’s kid when she was a baby…what was her name…Claudia? Well, he didn’t really meet her. Can you really meet a baby? But the few times he had seen Ali since, it had been a matter of getting away from family life for him.
A best friend is a best friend, though, and Vanessa, the kid’s mother, was what Mrs. Cruikshanks would refer to as high-strung. Aka, a tendency to overreact. Meaning, after some weird goings-on up in Edinburgh, she wanted to send the kid away. Christ knew why he had been chosen to watch the kid. Perhaps even Ali thought that now that Cayden was an alpha, he would be different? Fat chance.
Cayden stood, let the blanket fall from his junk, and padded barefoot into his ensuite to shower. Probably, Ali was really sending the girl to Mrs. Cruikshanks. If she’d changed Cayden’s nappies, she’d changed Ali’s too. Ali had been his best friend since birth. Born days apart.
Cayden let the warm water soothe his hangover, closing his eyes and pointing his face up at the showerhead. Ali hadn’t said how long his daughter was being sent down here for. He’d written what Mrs. Cruikshanks has described as a lovely letter, which had been addressed to her, and he’d texted Cayden. Actually, Mrs. Cruikshanks had hit Cayden on the head with her lovely letter after he’d expressed a lack of enthusiasm at the idea of this kid staying. And, no, he was not allowed to read it, but he’d do well to be a bit more like his best friend, if he had any sense and wanted her to stick around. She was waiting to be nanny to his cubs, and he was lucky to have her. This was a thing she often told him, which made him feel a little sick, actually.
Cayden made his way downstairs in sweatpants and an old t-shirt. The old townhouse he lived in had a central spine of wooden stairs, and most of them creaked. By the time he reached the front hall, which was still one floor above the kitchen, Mrs. Cruikshanks was waiting for him, doing her foot tapping thing.
“I’ll put proper clothes on after coffee, Nanny,” he said. Cayden was no longer sure whether he called her nanny out of habit or just to annoy her. He wanted her to think it was just to annoy her, but that didn’t mean anything.
“Good clothes,” Mrs. Cruikshanks said, “clothes for receiving visitors, Cayden.”
Cayden grunted. Downstairs, in the flagstone kitchen, he poured himself a large mug of coffee and ripped a bit of bread off the loaf. He was starving. When had he last eaten? Early yesterday, he thought. What time was it now? He glanced at the grandfather clock that had always been in the corner of the room, ticking away. Bloody hell, it was almost 3 p.m. Fair enough, Mrs. Cruikshanks, he thought. It was time to wake up.
The girl was getting the train down from Edinburgh, which was promising—she couldn’t be that little if she was getting a train alone could she? Or maybe she would be bringing someone to look after her. They would just be using the house as a base?
Ali was his best friend, that was definitely true, but they didn’t share much over text or over the phone. “Bit of trouble up here, disappearances” one text had said, and then, “Can Claudia come and stay in London for a bit? Dangerous in Ed. Vanessa worried. Me 2.”
And Cayden had replied, “Don’t c y not.”
Then Mrs. Cruikshanks had sorted the rest out.
Cayden was just taking another handful of bread from the loaf that Cruikshanks would definitely be annoyed he was mauling, when there was a knock on the door. It was so unexpected it made him jump, and hard enough that it echoed through the house and made the chimes of the grandfather clock ting-ting-ting.
2
Claudia
There was no doorbell, so Claudia smacked the heavy wooden end of her old-fashioned umbrella against the thick-looking door. The house was long and thin, white-painted with the wooden windows and door picked out in dark green. After she had knocked, she stood halfway up the set of stairs that led to the door. It didn’t look like the house a man like Cayden Southwark would live in—if the rumors her circle of friends had told her about him were true. And they were true. She had seen it in her father’s face when she’d pressed him on the matter, and eventually he had said something along the lines of, they both used to be young and irresponsible. And Claudia certainly didn’t want to question that statement.
It was warmer in London than it had been in Scotland, and brighter, and Claudia’s wool coat was too heavy, really, for the weather. Plus, her bag, which was slung over a shoulder, was weighing her down. It felt like a long time before she heard scuffles behind the door, and a woman’s voice, Irish-tinged and a little severe, chastising someone.
The door opened, and there was a man who looked a little older than Claudia, though of course he would look a little older than Claudia, despite being a couple of centuries her senior. His curly, dark brown hair was sticking up and he had bags under his eyes. The look wasn’t made better by his black sweatpants and grey t-shirt with a hole in the left arm.
The man blinked at her. “Oh,” he said. “Yes?”
She had seen a painting of her father with this man. Both on horses, both looking deadpan somber in a way that she had never really seen her father look, and that he liked to tell people was artistic license on the part of the painter because they’d been hammered, and he meant hammered by 19th century standards.
“Cayden?” Claudia asked anyway. Because what the hell else was she supposed to do?
“Yes,” Cayden said, and he crossed his arms. “And you are?”
“Claudia,” she said. “You’re expecting me. I think… My dad said you knew I was coming. I’m Ali’s daughter.” As she said this, a large part of Claudia hoped that Cayden would turn her away. Tell her he’d never agreed to have her stay, or else that he had changed his mind. Yes, she’d have to make her tired way all the way back to the bus, then to Liverpool Street Station and the tube and the train and Edinburgh and...
Cayden was staring at her. Then he jerked forward, like he had been pushed.
“Ow!” Cayden had turned around. “What? This isn’t her…it isn’t!”
The source of the voice she had heard when the door was closed became clear. A stout, older-looking woman, wearing a long skirt and old-fashioned boots and her hair piled in intricate grey plaits on her head, stepped around Cayden.
“Oh, yes it is! That’s wee Claudia!” She leaned toward Claudia on the step below. “Hello, love!” she said. “Long journey, was it? Cayden will take your bag.”
Then the woman straightened up and elbowed Cayden in the side, and the tall, slim, full-grown man winced and gave the older woman the side eye, before stepping forward and putting his hand out for Claudia’s bag. She dropped the strap into his hand intentionally heavily.
“You won’t remember me, little miss,” said the woman, turning and shooing Cayden into his own house backwards. “But I came to see you when you were knee-high to a grasshopper. And I remember your daddy when he was even smaller! Those two were thick as thieves from the moment they shot out,” she pointed at Cayden, the other of the two being, Claudia assumed, her own dad. Who she didn’t really want to think about being shot out of anywhere. “I’m Mrs. Cruikshanks,” the older lady said finally, closing the door behind them. And then she put out her arms to hug Claudia, who was just putting down her umbrella and was surprised by the ample bosom she was soon being pressed against.
“Oh,” Claudia managed, “hello, good to meet you.”
“You look a fair bit like him!” Mrs. Cruikshanks added when Claudia had finally be
en released. And then she pinched her left cheek. “Prettier, mind!”
Cayden had Claudia’s bag over his shoulder, but he had crossed his arms again.
“Don’t mind him,” Mrs. Cruikshanks said, looking from Cayden to Claudia and back again. “He’s a miserable bugger at the best of times, and he’s a sore head today. He’ll be changing for dinner, I can assure you.”
Cayden wasn’t paying any attention to Mrs. Cruikshanks. Just looking at her. Then he narrowed his eyes. They were brown and wide, like a fawn’s. Claudia could see, unfortunately, how he was such a successful arsehole. “You’re supposed to be a child,” he said, looking her up and down. “Why are you not a child?”
Claudia let out half a laugh, because what else was she supposed to do in answer to such a strange question? “Excuse me?”
“Ali’s kid is…a kid. Born in, what…”
“Born in 1996,” Claudia said, “which, old man, in case you’ve lost track, is about twenty-three years ago.”
Cayden shook his head slowly. But then there was Mrs. Cruikshanks again, in between the two of them. “For goodness’ sake, Cayden, the woman is standing in front of you. The fact that you’ve lost a decade to whatever it is you stay up all night with strangers doing is hardly her fault. Now will you please show your guest to her room? Or am I to do it? Apparently you see me as a maidservant, so I may as well fulfill my role.”
Mrs. Cruikshanks went to push past Cayden to the stairs, but he put out a hand to stop her. “Okay!” he said. “Yes, I…I suppose when you see a baby you think they’ll be a baby forever. Clearly Claudia is not a baby.” He took a step up onto the stairs and turned back to Claudia. “I’ll show you up,” he said, “and you can make yourself comfortable. Cruikshanks insisted on a special dinner tonight, so it’ll be a few members of the pack over, but until then, you can make yourself at home or…whatever.”