CHAPTER TWO

Home for the Holidays

Professor Randolph Lyall was tired. Tired from his toes to the tips of the (too long) sandy-colored hair on his (always, despite the length) neat and tidy head. London looked dirty and a little sad, but after so long away, he was still seized with the joy of it. It spread over and in him like bathing in slightly cold, but probably still edible, pea soup. Very cold, as it turned out. And congealed.

Home.

He’d separated from the Kingair Pack at Southampton – passing off his former Alpha to her new Beta. His replacement was there, waiting for her to disembark the ship – as any serviceable Beta should be. Phineas was a good-natured chap, a loner for most of his life, but Beta to the core. He’d need all three traits to put up with Sidheag Maccon, the Lady of Kingair. Still, Phineas was accustomed to Alpha females, if his partner was anything to go by. Lyall didn’t know her name – better not to. Those who inquired too closely into the identity of the Wicker Chicken disappeared. How the Dewan would survive henceforth, without his two best intelligencers, was anyone’s guess. But Lyall, who dealt all too often with the shadows, was glad to have the Wicker Chicken out of London at last, and Lady Kingair in very capable hands. What Phineas couldn’t keep in line, the Wicker Chicken would.

Lyall felt almost happy about such a smooth transfer of pack power. An unusual sensation for him to grapple with. The Kingair Pack, plus new additions, were all looking forward to some quiet time in Scotland. All Lyall needed do was wish them a pleasant farewell, which he did. Surprised to find that he actually meant it, for a change.

Not that he hadn’t tried his best to be a good Beta. Lady Kingair deserved nothing less than his best effort. But she hadn’t been his Alpha, not really. His real Alpha was here, in London.

Home.

Lyall jumped down from the hackney and paid the driver, eager to see his friends and pack-mates again. And his Alpha. My Alpha.

Unfortunately, much to his shock, the pack house was empty. He could smell the absence from the road, no pack present. Hadn’t been for a week or more.

Terror hit him hard and sure and sudden to the stomach, instantly coiling it into knots. He’d been at sea. Had he missed the news? Had something happened to his pack?

I left it too long. I knew he needed me back. Bloody hell, what if he couldn’t control them without me? What if he failed? What if they had to be eliminated?

His face, however, slid into a mask of cold indifference, and he kept his footsteps measured as he approached the house next door instead.

Lord Akeldama will know what happened. Where they are. Lord Akeldama always knows.

Lyall’s knock was answered, after a long pause, by a harried-looking drone. “Oh, good evening? Who are you? Never mind, come in quickly, do, or she’ll... nope, there she goes! Quick, catch her!”

Lyall bent down and scooped up the kitten before she had a chance to escape over the threshold – werewolf speed and werewolf reflexes. Like most cats, she’d no interest in objecting to his wolf nature. Prey animals, like sheep and rabbits, always seemed to know that they were likely thought tasty. Even when a werewolf was in his human form. Dogs, of course, liked to challenge or cringe. Cats, however, were simply cats about the whole supernatural thing. Or they had adapted to become so. Lyall had read a fascinating theory once that cats had malleable souls. Or, at the very least, a sense of superiority so strong that they regarded even immortals as their inferiors.

Well, who am I to challenge feline judgment?

The kitten in his arms struggled briefly and then gave him a wide-eyed look of perfect innocence. Finally, when Lyall cuddled her to his chest, she butted against his jaw and issued some consolatory (if raspy) tiny-tongue licks to his chin.

The drone quickly shut the door behind him. “Oh, sir, I am so sorry. Unpardonably rude but she will keep getting out, and she’s a bit too young as yet for the streets of London.”

Lyall clucked at the kitten and rubbed her cheeks. The kitten began emitting a remarkably loud purr for such a wee little thing.

The drone looked embarrassed. “I shouldn’t have allowed you in like that. This being the house of a vampire and all, and your being a strange chap and unknown element.”

Lyall looked the young man up and down. He appeared young and not quite as well dressed as Lyall had come to expect from one of Lord Akeldama’s drones. Lyall had been away from London for twenty years, but Lord Akeldama was a vampire and his tastes and standards didn’t alter that much.

“You’re new, I take it?”

“Is it very obvious?”

“Only to the oldest friends, my dearest Tiffin!” A cheerful voice spoke from within the drawing room – bright but a little too sharp, like untempered lemon juice.

Lyall knew it well. He also knew the smell; it hadn’t changed in the slightest. Citrus and hair wax, and old dead blood, faintly rotten and musty – vampire with a Lord Akeldama twist.

His hackles rose, the wolf ones, buried deep under urbanity and efficiency. He let them rise and then smoothed them over, accustomed to the wave of savagery battling against his human self. The wild predator, all emotions and instincts. It did no good to fight them, so he let them be, simply never let them show. A consummate man of culture, he became nothing more or less than Professor Lyall, an old Beta werewolf. Safe. He doubted even Lord Akeldama noticed the tiny twitch of territorial defense that briefly surfaced at the, frankly, disgusting smell of vampire.

I am, after all, in his home. It is on me to behave.

Lord Akeldama approached, looking as well put together and beautiful as ever. He was a paragon of calculated perfection. Lyall wasn’t fooled. Charmed – always – but never fooled.

This was a game they could both play, and play well. “Lord Akeldama, how delightful to see you again and in such good health. You don’t look a day over five hundred, if I do say so myself.”

“Dolly, darling, you flatter me. Just now returned to town and you visit me first! To what do I owe the incalculable honor?”

Lyall was tired, or he might have been less blunt. He cuddled the kitten and said, over the purr, “I seem to have misplaced my pack. Terribly careless, I know.”

Lord Akeldama gave a tinkling little laugh. “Of course, you realize everyone expected you a bit sooner.”

Lyall hid his wince. He had tried to return right after Biffy took over, but circumstances had not allowed it.

Lord Akeldama assessed him. Those changeable eyes of his were so calculating. Lyall knew what the vampire saw. Lyall had let his sandy hair grow long, and sported a neat beard in response to the current fashions. He wasn’t sure why he’d adopted such a marked physical change. But he had. No doubt Lord Akeldama would understand exactly what this implied.

Immortals didn’t grow hair, not like normal people, so for Lyall to have changed his, there could be only one explanation. He’d spent months inside the God Breaker Plague zone in Egypt. There, his immortality, and all stasis that went with it, had been broken. He had aged too, although not noticeably. It had been oddly restful and liberating to be mortal again. He had thought to simply... stay. Maybe, finally, to stop.

Except that he wasn’t done yet. He had an Alpha to serve. Another one. More lives to live.

He wasn’t sure what he expected from the vampire. A snide comment: How was Egypt? Or a probing one: Are the Maccons well? He got neither.

The vampire allowed his new appearance to pass without remark. A truly out-of-character maneuver.

“I’m afraid, Dolly dear, they up and moved. Abandoned me to my own devices.”

Is that relief in Lord Akeldama’s tone? “They did?”

“Several weeks ago. At least, I think it was several weeks. You know me and time.”

“Old bedfellows?”

Lord Akeldama laughed.

Lyall shook his head trying to make sense of this. But why would Biffy leave his love? Neighbors were better than nothing. “But where?” he asked, trying not to sound plaintive.

Lord Akeldama’s mouth twisted slightly. “To Greenwich.”

Lyall swallowed. He wasn’t sure why, but the statement felt like an accusation, as if for some reason Lord Akeldama blamed Lyall for the relocation. Perhaps that accounted for the lack of personal commentary on the state of Lyall’s hair. Anger.

He let his wolf a little closer to the surface. “Of course, Blackheath. An excellent choice for pack, and it balances out the supernatural distribution over the greater London environs.”

“My dear Dolly, that is almost exactly what I said about the decision.” Lord Akeldama smiled, showing fang. Definitely anger. Or disappointment.

Both of us know, of course, that there are a million other reasons for Biffy to move his pack away from you. Did you try to get him back? Did you try to break his heart all over again? Or was it simply too much for both of you, wanting and not being able to have?

Lyall allowed his eyes to flicker over the ancient vampire. Old friend or old nemesis? One never knew with vampires. Lyall was pushing decades, a long afterlife for a werewolf – I must be at least four hundred at this point. But Lord Akeldama was pushing centuries. Roves, the ones that did not go mad, could live a very long time indeed.

“Where, exactly?”

“Ah, I wasn’t given the courtesy of an address.” The vampire pretended to be hurt. As though his drones had not already determined the exact location. It was damn near impossible to hide a pack. Hives were no problem at all, but packs had no subtlety.

“And you don’t know?” Lyall would not give him quarter.

“What fun is there in that? Use your much-vaunted werewolf nose, Dolly my sweet.”

Lyall sighed. No point in arguing. He inclined his head. The win must go to the vampire this time. At least I know they’re in Greenwich. God, I’m tired.

Lord Akeldama, for lack of another way of putting it, took pity on him. “However, as we are heading into the Christmas season, you must know where your Alpha is most likely to be on a busy night like tonight.”

“Yes, of course. Thank you for that, my lord.”

Lord Akeldama dipped his head, a funny, sad movement. “Welcome home, Professor.”

“Thank you, sir. Happy Christmas.” Lyall, ensuring the kitten was well ensconced in the young, new, confused drone’s arms, touched the brim of his hat and strode back out into the cold night.

They’d never even left the foyer.

* * *

The relocation had gone relatively smoothly, or as smoothly as such things go with a pack of werewolves. It helped that most of the London Pack was actually in London at the moment. Everyone said that when Alpha transition occurred, a pack was justified in recusing itself from military obligation for at least a decade. Fortunately, the government agreed. In fact, Queen Victoria was so set on the power shift going smoothly with her largest and strongest pack (especially as the last power transfer had resulted in a botched assassination attempt), she’d given the London Pack a fifteen-year dispensation from all foreign service – to ensure cohesion under a new Alpha.

It was still peculiar to Biffy that he had actually met her. The Queen of England! She was shorter than he had expected. He’d stood before her while she granted him lands and title, for all Alphas were aristocrats by royal decree.

“We are very pleased,” she’d said, looking a little less constipated than usual in her evident pleasure, “to have a city pack at all. We should like to keep it healthy. We understand you to be a most civilized young man.” Her eyes had said she approved Biffy’s well-coiffed appearance and fine manners. Even at seventy-six, the queen was said to have an eye for pretty men. Biffy was not ashamed to say he preyed upon that weakness. He was the only existing werewolf Alpha who could. Oh, there were other good-looking Alphas in England; they simply weren’t pretty.

“Arise, my Lord Rabiffano, Earl of Falmouth.”

So, now Biffy was a proper earl of something he was rather embarrassed to say aloud. And he was Alpha of a strong if anti-purple pack. He still preferred to be a milliner. Fortunately, such eccentricity was permitted. Actually, it was permitted even more so now that he was an aristocrat. After all, proper aristocrats always had peculiar hobbies. Of course, by rights he ought to give away his art to the deserving poor. Engaging in trade couldn’t even be excused as insanity, let alone eccentricity, but Chapeau de Poupe was a thriving business concern, and Biffy liked selling hats. So everyone, including the shopper, turned a blind eye to either his habits or his title, depending on how they felt about it at the moment.

It was a generally accepted practice that when working on milling hats, he was referred to as Mr Rabiffano. When advising on the choice of a hat, he was to be called Lord Falmouth. And when actually handling the expenses, a mere Biffy would suffice. It was odd what society would do to accommodate the acquisition of a really beautiful hat.

He was Lord Falmouth at the moment, taking the clientele in hand, advising the rampaging hordes on the efficaciousness of feathers over flowers for the winter season.

He was avoiding the new pack house. All was still in chaos after the move, and he had learned his own Alpha moods well enough to realize his pack must be left to squabble about who got which room without him. Otherwise, he was compelled to interfere, and in these kinds of petty cohabitation matters, his authority was neither needed nor wanted.

So, he’d taken refuge in his favorite place, where he could bury himself in the beauty of pretty things and the organization of attractive wares.

Until his hard-won calm was disturbed.

He smelled the other werewolf before he saw him. There was a scent of strangeness, wolf but not quite his pack, wild with the spice of dry, hot sands and exotic lands.

Look at me, getting poetical even with a possible fight on my hands. How droll.

It wasn’t odd, a loner werewolf in London, but it was for a loner to enter his hat shop uninvited and unannounced. He braced himself, nervous.

Why a challenger right now? As if moving wasn’t stressful enough. I suppose he couldn’t simply be after a hat, could he? No.

Not that the hat shop wasn’t popular. The titillation of the previous owner, a cross-dressing evil genius inventor of exotic tastes, had given over to the titillation of being served by a werewolf and his clavigers. Young ladies flocked to Chapeau de Poupe in record numbers. Mothers and chaperones allowed this because the danger inherent in a werewolf dandy was only slightly less than the danger inherent in a cross-dressing female scientist. At least the werewolf was an eligible bachelor.

Not that it was obvious, upon entering the shop, which one was the werewolf. To those with lesser noses, all the young gentlemen were cut from the same cloth – polite poodle-faking fops of the first order. Biffy worked hard to appear no more than one of them.

He did not look up as the strange werewolf entered his space. The shop was busy and he was at the very back, trying to convince a mother whose daughter had an aggressive nose that a small perch would detract from the protuberance rather than exaggerate. He was right, of course. Biffy was always right about hats.

However, the werewolf was right there. It wasn’t polite to look away from his clients, although every fiber of his fuzzy self was urging him to raise his hackles and defend his territory. Not only because this was his hat shop, but because his hat shop was a front for the London Pack’s safety dungeon. Biffy needed, with every part of his Alpha soul, to protect his pack’s security.

The strange werewolf held back, waiting quietly on him. He heard the murmur of voices as one of his clavigers engaged the gentleman, attempting to steer him towards their shop next door – the one that purveyed men’s headgear and accessories. The newcomer was polite, and so soft of voice that even Biffy’s supernatural hearing could not determine what was said. But he clearly intended to stay, and to wait.

Simon let him be. Simon was not one to press himself upon a customer when unwanted. Or perhaps Simon was perceptive enough to see that the gentleman was interested in Biffy, not hats.

Biffy sniffed again. His nose told him nothing new. Foreign smells, yes, but this was someone’s pack member, not a loner, which meant he was there as a representative or messenger in Biffy’s territory, not as a challenger. He permitted himself a tiny sigh of relief.

He finished with the young lady and the perch, or, more properly, with the young lady’s mother. She eventually came around to his gentle guidance, the trick being that the color of the hat was deemed a perfect complement to the girl’s complexion, which was very fine indeed (nose notwithstanding). Biffy watched them walk to the counter to settle the account. He thought that the girl might do much better this season than she would have before the purchase of the hat. Hats were like that – necessary, even vital, to one’s success on the marriage mart.

He spent a quiet moment rearranging the stock, ensuring the gap left by the perch would not be obvious. He collected his finer feelings, stamped civility and urbane sophistication over his werewolf instincts. Someone in my territory! He ensured his cuffs were peeking out perfectly from his jacket, and turned to meet the stranger.

The werewolf was standing behind a sea of hats. Madame Lefoux, the original owner, had chosen to dangle them all at the ends of long chains, so that they swayed softly at different lengths. A field through which shoppers could coo and drift. Biffy liked the design. It had a pleasing undersea quality, and so he kept it. The stranger stood on the other side of that field, peering through it at him.

He was a lean, undersized man, shrouded in a full cloak and a hat. Backlit by the gas wall sconces, it was difficult to see his face.

Biffy knew him instantly.

Yes, he smelled different. Yes, he had spoken too softly. But Biffy remembered that body and posture as if it were a childhood nursery rhyme – not word for word but the melody impressed upon his psyche in a way that would haunt him all his life.

Mine. My Beta.

He suddenly felt the tension he didn’t even know he’d been holding. Tension since he’d assumed control of the pack several months earlier. Tension around need, and vacancy, and absence. He felt it now because it left him all at once. His knees wobbled. Perhaps I’ve been holding it longer than two months. Perhaps I’ve been holding it twenty years.

Professor Randolph Lyall had spent his very long life cultivating anonymity. He specialized in being impeccably easy to forget. He always dressed exactly under the height of fashion. His manners were perfectly quiet and perfectly polite, his customs designed to fade into the background. He was the ideal Beta, always there to observe and provide support, never to steal the limelight.

But Biffy always noticed Professor Lyall. Had done so from the very start. He’d noticed the set of Lyall’s shoulders, and the curve of his neck, and the length of his eyelashes. Now, as Biffy moved towards Lyall, stalking, hunter-like, he noticed the way Lyall’s sandy hair was longer, queued back in the military fashion. He watched the way he adjusted his waistcoat under Biffy’s steady gaze. He remembered the way that waistcoat always contained precisely the right gadget for any occasion.

Biffy pushed the hats aside, careless of their movement. He was thinking too much about not running through them. He was concentrating too much on holding himself back. Heedless of watching claviger eyes and interested shoppers, Biffy closed the space between them.

Finally.

“You smell foreign,” he accused Lyall, coming to a stop at last. Exactly the correct distance for a reunion among friends. Biffy was overcome, but he was never that overcome.

Professor Lyall smiled at him. It was a real smile too, one that crinkled the corners of his sand-colored eyes. “Good evening, Lord Falmouth.”

“Professor.” Biffy nodded his head in greeting. “Why did your smell change so much?”

“It’s been a long time.”

“You said it wouldn’t feel so long to a werewolf.”

“I lied.”

“I know.” Biffy held himself perfectly still. Afraid that if he moved, he would embarrass them both. They were, after all, in the middle of a hat shop. His mind blurred over with all the things he wanted to say, all the questions he wanted to ask, all the moments he wanted filled all at once. Thus all he could actually give his Beta were banalities.

“Welcome home.”

Professor Lyall cocked his head, just slightly to the left, exactly as Biffy remembered. Did anyone else notice that he did that only when he was considering his words with extra care?

Biffy wanted to reach out and tuck a small bit of sandy hair behind Lyall’s ear. Although, this being Lyall, not a hair was out of place. He wanted to ask stupid questions about why, and how, it was longer. He wanted to run his fingers over that jaw line, now covered by a well-tended and entirely modern bit of facial scruff. Darker than the hair on Lyall’s head. Making him look even more foxlike. Biffy wanted to see if it was soft to the touch. He would need to glance around and see if they were under observation first. But he was afraid that if he looked away, Lyall would disappear in a puff of exotic-smelling smoke.

“It’s good to be back.”

“You’ve been in Egypt.”

“The smell?”

“And the hair.”

Lyall smiled. “You would comment on that. I see you’ve taken to keeping yours quite short on top.”

As if Biffy had an option. “Was it nice being mortal again, if only for...” He allowed himself a touch at the length of those straight dirty-blond locks, silky smooth. “…two months?”

“I had to visit some old friends.”

“I’m not complaining.”

“No?”

“It took you long enough either way. Twenty years.”

“So, what’s two more months of waiting?” Lyall suggested an end to Biffy’s reasoning, as if he had always known. As if he had not, in fact, been away at all.

Two more months was like two extra years. Like fumbling in the dark. Where were you? What took you so long? How could you leave me here to fend for myself?

Lyall was evaluating Biffy under his lashes, and then, with one of those impossibly subtle gestures full of incalculable meaning, he dropped his head back, lifting his chin to expose the length of his neck. Not so far as to be obvious, but almost. His voice went quieter and lower. “Alpha.”

Biffy wanted to lick the long line of his graceful throat.

So many things rolled up in that gesture: acknowledgment, power transfer, offering, acceptance. Much to his incalculable shame, lust spiked through Biffy. Possibly as a result of all four, possibly simply from his Beta’s smell, for under Egypt, and India, and long sea journeys, Lyall still smelled of something else. Something familiar and half-remembered. Something yearned for and lost.

Mine.

The chin dipped, the sandy eyes lowered. Those lashes spread out, long and pale against his cheeks. “So, are you ready?”

“Is anyone ready to be Alpha?”

“Only the ones doomed to fail think they are prepared.”

“Are you ready to be back?”

“Of course. This is where I belong. And I already know how to be a Beta.”

Biffy let out a breath. Happiness bubbled inside him like Lord Akeldama’s stupid pink slurp, so unexpected it was all the more intoxicating. He slid into the wrong class for just a moment. “Bloody hell, Lyall, it took you long enough.”

Professor Lyall barked out a surprised laugh. Then remembered himself.

Biffy wanted more than anything to reach for him, to pull him in close. But he was all nerves and worries. What had been pain and consolation twenty years earlier wasn’t necessarily love now. Lyall had been there after Biffy changed, and held him, even knowing Biffy still loved Lord Akeldama. They had been something to each other. Necessity, perhaps. But that was two decades gone. Biffy wasn’t a newly made, newly brokenhearted werewolf anymore.

And Lyall was his Beta. Biffy was pretty darn certain pack members weren’t supposed to sleep with each other, let alone Alphas and Betas. That seemed a recipe for disaster. He’d certainly never heard nor read of such a relationship.

So, Biffy held himself apart and tried simply to be glad that his Beta was home. His Beta was there. It was, he thought, good enough. Or he would learn to let it be so.