Dearest Alexia, the message read. Oh, please absolve me of this guilt I already feel squishing on my very soul! Lady Maccon huffed, trying not to laugh. My troubled heart weeps! Oh dear, Ivy was getting flowery. My bones ache with the sin that I am about to commit. Oh, why must I have bones? I have lost myself to this transplanting love. You could not possibly understand how this feels! Yet try to comprehend, dearest Alexia, I am like a delicate bloom. Marriage without love is all very well for people like you, but I should wilt and wither. I need a man possessed of a poet’s soul! I am simply not so stoic as you. I cannot stand to be apart from him one moment longer! The caboose of my love has derailed, and I must sacrifice all for the man I adore! Please do not judge me harshly! It was all for love! ~ Ivy.
Lady Maccon passed the missive to her husband. Several lines in, he began to guffaw.
His wife, eyes twinkling, said unhelpfully, “Husband, this is a serious matter. There are derailed cabooses to consider. You have lost your valet, for one, not to mention a promising claviger for the Woolsey Pack.”
Lord Maccon wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Ah Tunstell, the nitwit, he was never a very good claviger. I was having doubts about him anyhow.”
Lady Maccon took Ivy’s note back from him. “But we must feel sorry for poor Captain Featherstonehaugh.”
Lord Maccon shrugged. “Must we? He has had a lucky escape, if you ask me. Imagine having to look at those hats for the rest of one’s life.”
“Conall.” His wife slapped his arm in reprimand.
“Well,” Lord Maccon said truculently.
“You realize, husband, this puts us in an exceptionally embarrassing position? Ivy was in my charge. We shall have to inform her parents of this sad affair.”
Lord Maccon shrugged. “The newlyweds will probably make it back to London before we do.”
“You believe they are headed there after Gretna Green?”
“Well, Tunstell is hardly likely to give up the stage. Besides, all of his possessions are at Woolsey.”
Lady Maccon sighed. “Poor Ivy.”
“Why poor Ivy?”
“Well, my dear, you must admit, she has come rather down in the world.”
Lord Maccon waggled his eyebrows. “I always thought your friend had a flair for the dramatic, my dear.”
Alexia winced. “You suppose she will join him in treading the boards?”
Lord Maccon shrugged.
Felicity, who had been avidly listening in to their conversation, slapped her fork down on her empty plate with a clank. “Well, I say! You mean she will not be completely ruined?”
Lord Maccon only smiled.
“You know, husband”—Lady Maccon glanced at her sister—“I think you may be right. She might make for a passing good actress. She certainly has the looks for it.”
Felicity stood up from the table and marched out of the room.
Lord and Lady Maccon exchanged grins.
Alexia figured this was as good a time as any. “Husband,” she said, casually helping herself to another small portion of haggis and assiduously avoiding the kippers. Her stomach was still feeling a little queasy, having never really recovered from the dratted dirigible experience, but a body had to eat.
“Aye?” Conall loaded his plate down with mounds of various dead critters.
“We will be departing presently, will we not?”
“Aye.”
“I ken it is time you bit Lady Kingair, then,” she stated baldly into the quiet munching of the dinner table.
The pack was immediately in an uproar, everyone talking at once.
“You canna change a woman,” objected Dubh.
“She’s the only Alpha we got left,” added Lachlan, as though Alpha were a cut of meat to be acquired at the butcher.
Lady Kingair did not say anything, looking pale but resolute.
Alexia, rather boldly, took her husband’s chin in one gloved hand, turning him mortal and turning him toward her.
“You need to do this, regardless of your pack laws and your werewolf pride. Take my counsel in this matter; remember, you married me for my good sense.”
He grumbled but did not jerk his head away. “I married you for your body and to stop that mouth of yours. Look where that’s got me.”
“Aw, Conall, what a sweet thing to say.” Lady Maccon rolled her eyes and then kissed him swiftly, on the lips, right there in front of the whole dinner table.
It was the surest way to silence a pack—scandalize them all. Even Conall was left speechless, with his mouth hanging slightly open.
“Good news, Lady Kingair,” said Alexia. “My husband has agreed to change you.”
The Kingair Beta laughed, breaking the dumbfounded hush. “I’m guessing she is a proper Alpha for all she was born a curse-breaker. Never thought I’d see you line up short to the petticoats, old wolf.”
Lord Maccon stood up slowly and leaned forward, staring across at Dubh. “Want to try me again, pup? I can beat you down just as soundly in wolf form as I could in human.”
Dubh quickly turned to one side, baring his neck. Apparently he agreed with the earl in this matter.
Lord Maccon made his way over to where Lady Kingair sat, still and straight in her chair at the head of the table. “You certain about this, lass? You ken ’tis probably death that’s facing you?”
“We need an Alpha, Gramps.” She looked to him. “Kingair canna survive much longer without one. I be the only option we’ve got left, and at least I’m Maccon. You owe the pack.”
Lord Maccon’s voice was a low rumble. “I dinna owe this pack anything. But you, lass, you’re the last of my line. And it’s time I took your wishes into consideration.”
Lady Kingair sighed softly. “Finally.”
Conall nodded once more. Then he changed. Not entirely. There was no full breaking of bone, no complete melting from one form to the next, and no shifting of hair into fur—except about his head. Only there did Lord Maccon transform: his nose elongating, his ears expanding upward, and his eyes shifting from brown to full yellow and lupine. The rest of him remained fully human-looking.
“Goodness me!” exclaimed Lady Maccon. “Are you going to do it right here, right now?” She swallowed. “At the dinner table?”
No one responded. They all stopped eating—a serious business, indeed, to put a Scotsman off his food. Pack and claviger alike became still and focused, staring hard at Lord Maccon. It was as though, by sheer strength of will, they could all see this metamorphosis through to a successful conclusion. Either that, or they were about to regurgitate their meals.
Then Lord Conall Maccon proceeded to eat his great-great-great-granddaughter.
There was really no other way of putting it.
Alexia watched in wide-eyed horror as her husband, wearing the head of a wolf, began to bite down on Lady Kingair’s neck and then kept on chomping. Never before had she thought to behold such a thing.
And he was doing it right there, supper dishes not yet cleared away. The blood leaking down from Lady Kingair’s throat seeped into the lace collar and silk bodice of her dress, a dark spreading stain.
The Earl of Woolsey savaged Sidheag Maccon. Not one of the pack stepped in to save her. Sidheag flailed against the full bite. Instinct would not deny such a reaction. She clawed and hit at Conall, but he remained unmoved and unhurt, his werewolf strength easily outmatching her pathetic human struggles. He simply clamped those big hands about her shoulders—and they were still simply hands, without claws—and kept on biting. His long white teeth ripped through skin and muscle right down to the bone. Blood covered his muzzle, clotting the fur there.
Lady Maccon could not pull her eyes away from the gruesome sight. There seemed to be blood everywhere, and the copper smell of it battled against the scent of haggis and fried kipper. She was beginning to discern the inner workings of the woman’s neck, as though this were some kind of horrific tableside anatomy lesson. Sidheag stopped struggling, her eyes rolling far back, showing almost all the whites. Her head, barely still attached to the rest of her body, lolled dangerously far to one side.