Chapter Eleven #2
She shrugged one shoulder. She felt as though she had swallowed a peach pit without realizing it and now it had simply dissolved away.
“I am also not an idiot, Lord Coventry. Nothing about the Cauldron is safe. But we both want to take it down, so we may as well work together. Especially as apparently the Collector does not care for either of us. And it’s too late now, isn’t it?
You heard what Freya said about pacts with the wolves. ”
“Fair enough.”
“And by the way, if you cannot track the Cauldron as wolves, how is it that you found me that night?”
“I can always find you.” His voice was deep, quiet. She had no idea if his eyes were golden behind his spectacles, as he was not looking at her.
Something fluttered in her chest at that, like her crow’s shining wings. Only Elderberry was soaring ahead, bright as sunlight on water. Aidan had entirely too much effect on her insides.
“You hadn’t even Marked me yet,” Sorcha pointed out as the mist curled around her ankles.
“I can smell you,” Aidan replied quietly.
Sorcha felt unusually shy. “You can?” Was that a good thing?
“You smell like—”
“Please don’t say fish scales.”
“—like sunlight and raspberries and the wind off the moors.”
That was so much nicer than Hecuba’s description.
“Even in the Cauldron?” She could imagine the competing smells of mud and blood and sweat and ale and fear. And magic, both simple and baneful. It had been overwhelming for her own very ordinary nose.
“Even then.”
She was not sure what to say after that. Not to Aidan the wolf, or Aidan the earl who was now also her betrothed. They should probably talk about that.
Not right then, thankfully. Not with a group of women who had caught sight of them, walking toward a tent erected over a table lined with baskets of food. They grinned. Maniacally.
Aidan groaned.
Before Sorcha could ask him what it was about, one of the women, in her early fifties, buxom and red cheeked, shouted, “Come on, don’t be shy, Coventry. We want to meet your bride.”
Sorcha stumbled, but tried to make it look as if she had tripped over something in the mists. Which were clearing. Most unhelpfully. “I’m sorry about this,” Aidan murmured.
“I heard that.”
“Good,” he returned. “Lady Sorcha, this is Agnes.”
Sorcha smiled and wondered if she should curtsy. It seemed odd in the middle of the forest with a naked man walking past. “How do you do?”
Agnes sniffed the air, her smile growing bigger. “You’ll do, Sorcha. Come and sit with us.”
“She needs to eat,” Aidan grumbled.
Agnes snorted. “Who do you think you’re talking to?”
Aidan seemed endearingly uncertain about leaving her to the clutches of a pack of wolf women. Besides Agnes, there was the woman with the blonde braids Sorcha had seen yesterday, two women wrapped in plaids, and another who looked so much like Agnes that they had to be sisters.
Agnes shooed Aidan away, forcibly pulling Sorcha into the tent and shoving her onto a bench.
He hovered until Sorcha shot him a smile.
She might not have experience with wolf women, but she knew debutantes and she knew vampires and unicorns.
She had even petted a hellhound once. Only once, but still, it counted. So how hard could this be?
Besides, she was starving.
“May I?” she asked, reaching for a bun, an apple, and a piece of salted cheese before anyone had a chance to reply.
“This is my sister, Catherine,” Agnes said. “And that’s Gretel, and Odessa and Portia.” She passed Sorcha a bowl. “Have some eggs too.”
“We heard you went to see Freya last night,” Catherine said. She had the same brown hair, streaked with more silver.
“I did.”
“And you emerged with all of your limbs.”
“Seems that way.”
“And a betrothal.”
“Yes.” Was Sorcha supposed to simper? Say something romantic?
How did one pretend to be betrothed? Especially among the wolves.
Wouldn’t they smell a lie? She hadn’t considered the logistics of this.
She stuffed bread into her mouth, then paused.
“These Welsh cakes are divine. You used a bakestone, didn’t you? ”
“You know your bread,” Agnes said.
“Yes, I help with my granny’s bakery.”
Agnes snapped her fingers. “The duchess. I knew you looked familiar. Her blackberry scones were divine, and I don’t even care for blackberries.”
There were baskets of more Welsh cakes, cottage loaves, and oatcakes.
There were wheels of cheese, crocks of butter, bowls filled with apples and pears and plums and walnuts.
Slices of ham, baked potatoes. Agnes smiled proudly.
“Wolves eat a lot. Shifting can be tiring for the wee ones.” As if on cue, she caught a young girl racing past by her ear. “Eat another scone!”
“Auntie, I’ve eaten three! And I don’t like the rosewater ones!”
“I can see your knobbly elbows. Eat some cheese.”
“Yes, Auntie.”
“And who’s been making rosewater scones? Who wants to eat perfume?”
Sorcha decided right then and there that she loved the Wolf Wood. The bakehouse at Nettlestone was her grandmother’s favorite place. Briar had her gardens, Pippa her libraries. Sorcha had the hills, but they were fickle. Sometimes windy, sometimes too hot, too icy.
But this…
The air was cool and quiet, scented with the smoke of cooking fires and wild mint growing on the banks of the nearby river.
Someone was brewing coffee. Someone else was singing, a deep voice with a haunting song.
No one cared that there was mud on her hem, or burrs, or that she had wrapped her hair in a haphazard braid.
And definitely no one cared if there was dog hair on her sleeves.
When she wasn’t being abducted or threatened, it was quite lovely.
“So what do you know about Lycan men?” Agnes asked bluntly.
Sorcha blinked. “Um. Not very much?” she admitted. “Besides Aidan, I’ve only met a few wolves.” A fair few at the Cauldron, but they seldom lingered to talk. Even Simon was fairly closemouthed. She knew more about wolves than Lycan. “Counting Brutus and Lorcan.”
Gretel of the blonde braids tilted her head at Sorcha’s tone. “You don’t care for my brother.”
“Who is your brother?”
“Lorcan.”
“Ah.”
“You don’t,” Gretel crowed. Instead of looking insulted, she looked positively delighted.
Sorcha decided it was probably safe enough to be sitting within arm’s reach. “I am sure he’s very…nice?”
“Arrogant peacock, you mean.” Gretel was still grinning. “Oh, we are going to be fast friends. I can’t walk three feet around here without tripping over someone who wants to bed him. It’s very annoying.”
“He is handsome,” Sorcha allowed.
Gretel snorted. “And he knows it.”
“So I gathered.”
“You can’t pretend he’s not beautiful,” Odessa said, sighing.
Sorcha and Gretel exchanged a glance.
“He’s very pretty.” Agnes waggled her brows. “But he’s no Alpha, like Aidan.”
Aidan was an Alpha? What did that mean, exactly?
Did he have a Pack? There must be ceremonies, rituals.
There were at least a dozen Sorcha could think of off the top of her head when it came to marrying an earl.
Betrothal balls, dowries, negotiations. Being seen at the theatre, having the wedding at St. George’s.
Even what one would be expected to serve at the wedding breakfast.
How did Lycans marry? Did they handfast, as was the old witch custom, by binding their wrists together with red cord? Did they jump over the Beltane fire?
She suddenly had a hundred questions. Even if she knew none of the answers applied to her.
She stilled suddenly. Alphas were also known to wield compulsion over their Pack. “I’m not going to have to obey him, am I?” she asked, frantically enough that Catherine patted her leg and Gretel snorted.
“Mates don’t have compulsion over each other,” Agnes assured her. “That mark on your neck makes him yours more than it makes you his.”
“And Aidan doesn’t have a Pack,” Gretel said.
Sorcha frowned. “I thought Tavish was part of his Pack.”
“Not technically. Which is a shame,” Agnes added. “As no one needs it more. Your mate is…unique.”
“Hush,” Catherine said. “Don’t scare the girl.”
Sorcha found she wasn’t scared. Not of Aidan.
But she was intensely curious.
Agnes noticed. Sorcha had a feeling not much got past her. “Where did you two meet? Was it in London? Mayfair?”
Sorcha grinned. “Right here on the island. I made it my mission to aggravate him.” To distract him from Briar’s involvement with the stolen moon talisman.
That she had found it so enjoyable was a surprise.
Something about his mixture of bewildered patience and stern exasperation.
Not to mention the jaw, the amber eyes not quite hidden by the lenses of his spectacles.
The scar through his eyebrow. The furrow on his brow, suggesting complicated thought.
His innate kindness, coupled with that primal authority, which she now understood might be attributed to his wolf.
But it might just as easily not be. There was something so Aidan about it all.
Agnes chuckled. “You’ll do just fine, then. He needs a bit of needling. All Alphas do, no matter what they might try to tell you.”
“You need needling, do you?” her sister asked drily. “I’ll remember that the next time you complain about it.
“Shut it, you,” Agnes replied, but there was no rancor to it, only sisterly affection.
“You’re an Alpha as well?” Sorcha asked.
Agnes inclined her head. “Most Packs are ruled by mated partners, but not all.”
This alternate life unfolding so clearly in front of Sorcha was a revelation.
It was a wish she hadn’t even known she had.
It was underscored by the way Aidan leaned against a tree, drinking tea.
Gone were the spectacles, the cravat, the way he often tried to make himself smaller.
His thick arms strained at his shirt, tattoos dark as rivers beneath.
He had not taken his golden gaze off her.
She felt the warmth of it kindling in her chest, tingling in the mark on her throat.
His eyes flared, dropping to glance at it.
Sorcha had the sneaking suspicion she might never fully recover from this betrothal.