Chapter Eight
E IGHT
We pass through a massive pair of stone pillars and a wrought iron gate as tall as the carriage.
Then we’re engulfed by trees as the lane cuts through dense forest. When I see those endless trees, something in me quickens.
As a child, as much as I liked the rocky shores and windswept expanses of our home, I could often be found in the small forest two miles away.
I’d always thought I appreciated the security of it, a coziness and a sense of privacy missing on that open land.
Now I understand why I’d felt so at home there.
This is where I come from. What the wolf in me longs for.
I want to roll my eyes. Now that I know I have werewolf blood, I declare that’s why I’ve always been drawn to forests? Maybe I just like them. After all, I’m not a werewolf. I’m a witch with werewolf blood.
And yet… I’m as much werewolf as witch.
As much werewolf as Bishop or any others in the Pack, who’ll all be half werewolf and half human.
The blood manifests differently in me because of my sex, but while I’m no scientist, I don’t think I inherited less from my father than Bishop did from his.
The difference is that werewolf sons can transform, as if there’s a switch that flicks on only for males.
Bishop and my father called me a lycan—a daughter who inherits secondary werewolf traits.
Is it really so rare? My understanding is that werewolves claim their sons and leave their daughters.
Are there dozens of women walking the world, wondering why they can smell better or hear better or see better?
Why they’re restless, driven by an itch they can’t scratch?
Why they yearn for thick forest and fresh air?
Since they don’t transform into wolves, they can attribute the rest to peculiarities of personality and physicality. Do those women go their entire lives feeling different and unsettled, with unexplained urges and empty spaces in their souls?
Witches are always female, and witches can’t bear sons.
Our fellow spellcasters, sorcerers, are always male, and sorcerers can’t sire daughters.
Werewolves are unique in their sexual dichotomy, which seems a cruel mistake by Mother Nature.
Werewolves can have daughters, who end up like me, amorphous creatures, neither fully werewolf nor fully human.
Does that make us lesser? Creatures half formed? I don’t feel half formed. I feel fully something, and that something is unique and exciting, unburdened by the physical obligation to transform. I’m a lycan. My own identity.
Werewolf males seem to have decided that their daughters are unworthy because they lack one particular thing. Like deciding women are unworthy because we lack a particular male appendage, though most men seem very happy with what we have instead.
I smile at that as I gaze out the window and enjoy the sight and, yes, the smell of the forest, rich with loam and leaf.
The laneway—for that gate must mean we’re on private property—seems to go on forever through darkness.
Finally, we pass lit lampposts, our arrival anticipated, and then the carriage pulls up at…
Well, I presume it’s a house, but it’s like something from a painting. Or the cover of a gothic romance. The building seems to stretch forever in each direction. Gray stone, as far as the eye can see, massive blocks of it rising into the sky, blotting out the moon and stars.
It should be terrible and terrifying. It isn’t.
Maybe I’ve read too many of those novels, with the timid but sweet young woman thrown into the maw of a house yawning wide with jagged teeth of treachery and secrets.
To me, those stories aren’t scary at all.
They’re amazing adventures—maybe because no one has ever accused me of being timid or sweet.
I never saw those fictional houses as dungeons or prisons. I saw them as puzzle boxes to be explored and mastered. Investigate, understand, and then touch the right spots to make the secrets fly open.
I realize Bishop is watching me. Not impatiently waiting for me to open the carriage door. Just watching. Considering. Learning. As I’ve been doing to him.
A puzzle box to be solved.
A danger to be understood and—once understood—a threat to be annihilated.
I might be an obstacle to Bishop’s ambitions. I couldn’t take his place, but I could capture my father’s attention, even make him consider a new plan, one that ensures his blood stays on the throne instead of crowning Bishop.
The carriage door swings open, and there stands a younger version of my father, with the same light hair, though his eyes are a murkier blue. He’s not as handsome as my father, but that seems mostly a matter of style. He dresses plainly, with whiskers that hide most of his face.
“Miss Cordelia,” he says, reaching in to help me out.
I accept the hand and the help with murmured thanks. Once I’m out of the carriage and in the light of those lampposts, the man can see me properly. His gaze shoots over my shoulder to Bishop, worry blazing from his eyes.
“Mr. Stockwell?” I venture.
The man snaps his attention back my way and inclines his head. “Oliver, please.”
I smile. “Not Uncle Oliver?”
A genuine smile chases away that flash of worry. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. You can just call me Oliver, though. Welcome to Trevelyan. I hope the journey was pleasant?”
“We need to get her inside,” Bishop interrupts. “It’s late.”
A look passes between them, a mild reprimand from Oliver, for cutting the pleasantries short. To my surprise, Bishop accepts the rebuke with a nod, and then murmurs, low enough that I don’t think I’m supposed to hear, “Let’s get this over with.”
“It won’t be easy,” Oliver murmurs back.
Bishop straightens. “I can handle it.”
“I know.”
My gaze darts between them. Oliver’s brows rise as he must realize I heard the exchange. He dips his head, as if in apology.
“Bishop’s right. We should go in. It’s chilly, and you must be tired.”
Bishop puts out his arm. All women recognize that as the signal to take a man’s arm, but I only frown at it, as if to say “What’s that for?” and start to walk around the carriage on my own.
Oliver clears his throat. “Miss Cordelia? You really should take Bishop’s arm. The ground is uneven here.”
That’s a lie. A smooth one, but still a lie. If the ground were actually treacherous, Oliver should offer his own arm, as the elder man and my relative.
They want me entering the house on Bishop’s arm, and from the slight strain around Oliver’s eyes, this is important.
Important that Bishop Daniels lays a claim on me. That it’s clear I am, as he said, “not for them.”
I could bristle. I’m not for Bishop either. But Oliver’s expression tells me this is about me. Protection for the Alpha’s daughter.
So I take the offered arm, and I swear Bishop exhales in relief.
We round the carriage. Trevelyan looms even larger up close, and I find myself smiling at the delightfully forbidding facade.
“A beautiful house,” I murmur.
Oliver’s brows shoot up. “That isn’t the usual reaction.”
“There are many kinds of beauty,” I say. “Some are more interesting than others.”
He smiles. “I’ve always thought she’s beautiful, in her own unique way. Not everyone does. Bishop? What was it Julius said when he first saw Trevelyan? ‘A goddamn monstrosity.’” Oliver makes a face to me. “Pardon my language.”
“Not at all. So Julius didn’t grow up here?”
Oliver shakes his head. “He’s one of Bishop’s boys.” Genuine affection lights the older man’s eyes as he looks at Bishop. “Bishop brought them when he joined us. Welcome additions, all of them.” His eyes light with a teasing glint. “Well, almost all.”
“I take no responsibility for Julius,” Bishop says.
That makes Oliver laugh. My mind spins, parsing this all out.
So Bishop didn’t grow up as a Pack wolf?
Neither did Julius? That actually makes sense.
He said something about him and Julius not growing up around women, which suggests they didn’t have female servants either, and there are female servants here.
But Oliver mentioned Bishop bringing others when he joined. Bishop’s boys, he called them. My impression has always been that Packs are composed of core werewolf families, and letting in a lone wolf is rare.
Before I can ask, we’re at the door, which is already opening. A man stands there. He’s even bigger than my father, shirtless, with suspenders over a broad and battle-scarred chest.
On Bishop, I’d admired the muscles and the marks. On this man, all I can think is that I don’t want to be alone with him. That might have something to do with the way his gaze rakes up and down me.
“Well, well,” he says. “This is a treat.”
“Please allow Silas’s daughter inside, Henry,” Bishop says, his voice cool but calm. Then, to me, “Miss Cordelia? This is Henry Cain. Your father’s enforcer.”
Miss Cordelia? Huh.
Bishop opens the left side of the huge wooden doors, so I can enter without dropping his arm.
I step into another forest—a forest of men.
They range in age from late teens to forties, some dressed in casual suits, some in workmanlike shirts and trousers.
All of them stare, their eyes glinting in the dark, and fear trickles down my spine, as if I’ve walked into a pack of actual wolves.
I should have prepared for this.
I did not prepare for it.
“Back,” Bishop says, the word openly a growl now.
At least half the men obey, their gazes dropping or shifting aside. The rest keep staring, some openly leering.
“Well, that isn’t what we expected,” one says, and others laugh, some politely restrained, others openly guffawing.
“This is Miss Cordelia,” Bishop announces. “Your Alpha’s daughter.”
“Are you sure?” one says, stepping forward. “Silas is handsome enough, but that’s…” His gaze lands squarely on my bosom. “Spectacular.”
Bishop’s answer is an animal growl that sends a shiver through me.
“Are you sure she can’t transform?” says a man to our rear. “We could teach her. First thing you need to do, miss? Take off that pretty dress.”
Bishop whirls, and before anyone can blink, he has the man by the throat, rammed against the wall.
“That is your Alpha’s daughter,” Bishop says. “You will apologize. And then you’ll pack your things and sleep in the stable for the rest of this Meet, and if you’re lucky, I won’t tell Silas what you said.”
“They’re only having a bit of fun.” Henry saunters forward. “Miss Cordelia needs to understand that our manners aren’t as pretty as yours. We’re proper men paying her a proper compliment. She is indeed…” His gaze rakes over me again. “Spectacular.”
“And her scent…” Another wolf inhales deeply and licks his lips.
Bishop throws the wolf in his grip toward the door. “The stables.” He advances on the one who licked his lips.
The man raises his hands. “No offense intended. I only mean she smells…”
“Like a wolf,” Oliver says smoothly. “A woman and a wolf, and that isn’t something most of you have encountered, but I’m sure you’ll all remember who she is and pay her proper respect.”
Henry sneers. “Why don’t you lick Bishop’s boots where we can all see it, Oliver? Or maybe you really want to lick his—”
“Enough,” Bishop snaps. “Henry? When Silas arrives, you can ask him whether he considers your comments insults or flattery.”
Henry’s lips thin. All around me, the wolves shift and shuffle, and the massive entry hall palpitates with tension.
I’ve stumbled into a war between the Alpha’s enforcer and his right-hand man—a young upstart who wasn’t even raised in the Pack. When they clash, even briefly, everyone in the room instinctively responds, falling in on their respective sides of the battle line.
A war within a werewolf Pack. With me caught in the middle.
I should be worried. Instead I’m fascinated. I look around, my mind already clocking expressions, remembering faces and how they’re reacting. Assimilating useful information.
“Miss Cordelia,” Bishop says, guiding me. “Please come this way. It’s getting late. I’ll show you to your quarters.”