CHAPTER NINE

Tethered and Forgotten

Lyall set down his offering of shortbread and stood, looking down on Biffy. The blue dressing gown was quite fetching. This Alpha – my Alpha – has excellent taste. At least I need not worry on that score anymore.

Does he want to be left alone? Lyall hadn’t yet fully matched to his new Alpha’s moods.

He’d known Biffy before metamorphosis, young and bright and free of cares except for the wishes of his vampire master. At that time, Lyall could have predicted drone Biffy’s wants. His curious bright interest in the world and its machinations. He’d wanted very little then.

He’d known Biffy directly after, newly metamorphosed, struggling to learn to become what he’d never wanted, to accept his new afterlife. At that time too, Lyall could have anticipated werewolf Biffy’s needs. Sometimes, he had. Sometimes, anticipation, need, and want had all been the same thing.

But he didn’t know Alpha Biffy – this mature hunter with a pack at his back. So sure of his wolf and yet not of his command. In control, but only when he was not paying attention, questioning himself the rest of the time. So comfortable in his fur and fighting, and yet shifting and twitchy in a beautiful blue dressing gown after dealing out death.

Lyall saw nothing for it but the direct approach. One that Biffy, no doubt, still loathed, but which Lyall had come to understand had its place in werewolf dynamics, if not in polite society.

“Do you wish to talk about it, Alpha?” From what Lyall knew of Biffy before surviving the bite, killing of this kind was outside his purview. He wasn’t a soldier and had never trained as one, even after becoming werewolf. He’d served his civic duty to the Crown as a newly minted pup in the Home Office, practicing espionage, not in the front lines, not even in the shadows as an assassin.

Biffy sipped his tea. “Blood is so messy. And the iron taste of immortality is never pleasant.”

“No,” agreed Lyall. “No, it’s not, is it?”

Biffy nodded for Lyall to sit.

Lyall settled near enough to be a reassurance and a comfort, but not so close as to be thought intruding – any more than he already was.

Biffy looked into his tea for a long moment, as if there, in the leaf, were all the answers.

“Lyall, would you tell me something of pack protocol, without taking insult? I am afraid the question may be indelicate.”

Lyall hid his surprise with consummate skill and hedged his answer. “I’m no howler, so I may not know the answer you seek. I could summon one to visit us, if it were a matter of origin and specifics.”

“But you are old enough to know most of the right way of things.”

“Yes. I’m old enough.” Lyall didn’t know why, but he held his breath.

Biffy winced, looking away from tea and into fire. His blue eyes were tinted yellow by the shifting flames – a hint at the wolf within. “Is it wrong, what we did, you and I, before you left?”

Of all the things to be asked. “By whose standards?”

Biffy gave a humorless smile. “Oh, I do not mean morally or socially. I know what they think. I mean by pack protocols. Are like-minded gentleman werewolves not supposed to share intimacy?” He chose his words with exacting care.

Lyall tried not to flinch or blush, keeping his breathing slow and relaxed. He tried not to be excited by this line of inquiry. He tried not to want the reasons behind it. “Nothing carnal is held sacred that I know of. It’s not common, but it’s not forbidden, either. Werewolves, like vampires, have always been less bound by the limits humans will pose on their own desires. Within reason, of course. Both parties should be agreeable and willing, and capable of undertaking an informed decision. I always felt we were all such things, back then.”

“Yes.” Biffy smiled at him. “And perhaps more.”

Lyall nodded. On his part, certainly more. “Yes.”

“So, now that I am your Alpha in truth? Now it is forbidden? It would be considered taking advantage of my position, perhaps?”

Lyall blinked, startled. Why would he think that? Alpha was a feeling, a necessity, a control, not exactly a position of authority so much as a state of existence. There was no abuse to the power, not in a good Alpha. And Biffy was a good one, for all he questioned himself.

Is this what I have wrought? This doubt in him? When I returned with all my need not to push, not to impose, not to rely upon what we once had? Was I damaging him? Biffy clearly required some form of reassurance. So, like any good Beta, Lyall sacrificed his own pride for that of his Alpha.

“No. Oh, no. I thought you would not want me back like that. I thought that I was comfort then, nothing more.”

Biffy flinched and looked, at last, at him. “I let you leave, thinking so little of us? Thinking that?”

“I left thinking that. My choice. You had so much ahead of you, so much to learn. So much changing. I thought twenty years was a long time, and it would be easy if I returned to you without expectations.”

Biffy turned towards Lyall fully, angling his body, reaching out with his fine, strong hands. He trailed three fingers down the side of Lyall’s cheek, as if learning the feel of the soft beard that hadn’t been there before. “It was more than comfort.”

Biffy smelled of sandalwood and Bond Street pomade, and a little of blood and battle and the forests that had once, eons ago, lined the banks of the Thames. Wolf and man, wild and civilized in equal measure. He smelled of home, and safety, and guidance, and need.

My Alpha. Mine.

Lyall nodded, and opened himself to his Alpha. To his lover. “It was more than comfort for me as well.”

* * *

Biffy let the words be enough. Coating him with joy and gratitude.

Then Lyall slid in against him – quiet and warm and present. This part was so achingly familiar, it almost hurt him to allow it in again. Even though he’d been waiting so long with only the thought of this moment to hope for.

“Twenty years, Lyall.” He said it on an exhale, not so much accusation as plea.

“I told you it would take time.”

“Twenty years!” He knew Lyall would sense the question in the accusation.

But it was not in his Beta’s nature to be confrontational. “Lady Kingair is a great responsibility for a Beta. She took much of my attention. Plus, there was a war to fight.”

Biffy plucked at a loose thread in the divan. “I wouldn’t have thought her your type.”

“I don’t know. I’ve always liked my women a little gruff and brash, and my men suave and broken.”

Biffy winced. “And did you and she—?”

“No. Never.”

Biffy really wanted to ask for further details and really didn’t want to ask. Twenty years was a long time for a werewolf to be celibate. They were noted for a healthy appetite in all things. Surely, there must have been someone. A small voice reminded Biffy that he himself hadn’t partaken. Which was embarrassing, in its way.

Well, he said to himself, trying to justify decades of celibacy, I had a lot to do. I had to become an Alpha. I had to... Excuses. I had to wait. I wanted to wait. But Lyall didn’t need to know that. And Biffy didn’t want to know if Lyall had also waited. Because he wasn’t sure which would be worse – that he had or that he had not.

Saying nothing wasn’t correct either. “There’s been no one for me.”

Against him, Lyall went perfectly still.

Biffy soldiered on. “I had to learn a great deal. To be a werewolf. An Alpha. To lead pack. To cry challenge and to win.”

“No one? For twenty years?”

“I had to heal too, from loss.”

Lyall nodded. “Your family. Lord Akeldama. The other immortality that you gave up for this one.”

“Yes, that too.”

“Too?”

“Twenty years. I have waited long enough.”

“For me?” Such a wealth of confusion in Lyall’s voice. Of lack of value.

Biffy felt the pain in the question as if it were a pressure at the base of his throat, stoppering breath. Oh, no. I never thought. I never considered that he would not think himself worthy. Of course. Lyall would never think to put himself on the list of loves lost. Would never think of himself as second, or third, or fourth in Biffy’s affections. He was Beta, born to live his life for others.

“Silly man. The main loss I had to cope with was yours.” There. Lyall could make of that what he would. That Biffy missed him for his gentle care as Beta werewolf, or that Biffy missed him as man, and friend, and lover.

Hesitantly, Biffy set his hands on Lyall’s shoulders. Careful not to upset the line of the jacket. Careful because he wished to grab so badly.

Then Lyall tilted his head slightly. That birdlike movement that said he was considering carefully what he would say next.

Biffy decided to stop being careful. He pulled Lyall against him and held him as tightly as he could, hands stroking down that familiar back, curling up to the back of his neck, messing up that perfectly styled hair, so much longer now with the aftereffects of mortality.

Lyall sighed and relaxed against him. Lyall, who never relaxed. He pressed his nose against Biffy’s neck, nuzzling under the collar of the robe, breathing him in.

“You smell like home.” Lyall murmured it into Biffy’s throat.

“While you, on the other hand, still wear the scent of desert sands about you. Foreign and not right. Come to bed? We can work on fixing that condition.” Biffy expected resistance. It was the middle of the night. There were things still to do. The pack was awake. And Lyall was refined and reserved, never wild or uncontrolled. So, most of the time, was Biffy.

“Will we be done in time for supper?” was Lyall’s only token resistance.

“Of course. What do you take me for, some kind of monster?” But Biffy’s hands were now fisted in Lyall’s jacket and he was almost dragging him towards the bed.

For two extremely cultivated men, reunions, it turned out, could be a messy business. Rushed, and fumbling, and sloppy, and desperate, but also sweet and wondering. Twenty years was a long time, and Biffy wanted to relearn every inch of his lover’s body.

He remembered, of course, what those perfectly tailored nondescript suits covered. His Lyall was all lean muscle and smooth skin. There was a little cluster of freckles on his right shoulder blade that needed to be checked and licked – still there. Good. There was the way the hair on his head tapered down to a V at the base of his neck, that needed to be checked and nibbled – still there, still elicited the same whimper of pleasure. Good.

Lyall was doing the same. They hadn’t had much time together before he left with the Kingair Pack, but they’d made good use of it. There was a lot to remind each other of. The same taste, different smells, same kisses, different touches, the best kind of reminding. Even while it was hurried and desperate, it was also perfectly rapturous.

There was something more there too, something in the strands of tether between Alpha and Beta, as if they were knitting together the last pieces of their souls.

When they lay tangled and supine, satiated and sticky, Biffy asked about it. “Did you feel that?”

Lyall understood, of course. “A resettling of the tethers, yours and mine.”

“Is it normal?”

“What is normal?”

Biffy glared at him.

Lyall pressed Biffy’s nose with his finger in the manner of a playful adult to a frustrated child.

“Randolph!” Biffy resorted to Lyall’s given name, which he knew they both hated.

“I only know what I have felt before. Previously, when I have settled into a new Alpha, it usually comes along gradually. But then, I never slept with any of them so early on in our relationship. And never willingly.”

Biffy flinched from that. He knew Lyall had been abused by Lord Vulkasin when that Alpha had succumbed to the curse. Insanity was the greatest of werewolf horrors, and Biffy dreaded that fate. Although he was young and he likely had hundreds of years, he still flinched away from the horror of his future. He did not deserve sympathy for what would be, when Lyall had once dealt with it personally, every day.

“I will go to the God-Breaker Plague before I let myself get that far gone. I swear it,” Biffy vowed.

Lyall stroked Biffy’s hair, placid and reassuring. “Hush, now. I’ve got you. Can you feel how strong it is?”

“Yes, that’s why I was asking about it. I mean to say, I can feel my tethers to the rest of the pack, but it’s not like this.”

“It’s different. Thicker, tighter. I feel possessive in a way I had not before,” Lyall agreed, but did not seem upset.

“Sex complicates matters.” Biffy puffed out his checks, afraid.

Lyall nudged him. “Sometimes, it simplifies them. It brings them here, to this place, to need and gratification and connection. I am entirely yours now.”

Biffy buried his face in Lyall’s neck and inhaled. “Yes, you are.”

“And you are mine.”

The Alpha in Biffy balked at the statement, but also liked it. He tested the tether between them, a small emotional tug. It wasn’t a chain or a leash. It wasn’t binding. He didn’t think it would become so. It simply was.

Lyall hummed and tugged gently back.

Biffy started at the feeling and glared at him.

“When you’re as old as I am, you think there are no more firsts.” Lyall was actually grinning. His forgettable face made memorable and beautiful by discovery.

“Are you complaining?” Biffy teased, with an edge of worry. He liked being a first for a werewolf hundreds of years old. But this was so very sudden and unmoving in its intensity.

“Certainly not. It feels right. It is odd, but I feel as if I am anchoring you. As if this is what a Beta is meant to be, and before I was merely acting the part as best I could. This is somehow more real.”

Biffy kissed him for his candor, and because, even now, he couldn’t stop touching him.

“Four hundred years to find my place.” Lyall folded against him, resting his cheek in the divot beneath Biffy’s shoulder.

Biffy shifted to get more comfortable, winding his legs through his lover’s, pressing Lyall close with long strokes and firm hands. “I guess the fact that I had to wait for twenty is not so bad, by comparison.”

Biffy felt that he had given everything. And taken everything. They were what they were, and the world would have to accept it.

Lyall was heavy against him, dozing off. Biffy thought he was asleep until he spoke. It was so quiet, Biffy almost missed his words, even with supernatural hearing.

“We will have a long time now, you and I. Together. Must be, with a tether this strong. I think I can hold you here, hold you back.”

“From what, my love?”

“From Alpha’s curse. From madness.”

Biffy choked and nodded, but did not stop his petting, did not relax his hold.

Soon enough, Lyall slept against him.

Biffy wept silently into sandy hair – overcome with relief and lost loneliness and the possibility of forever.