Page 96 of A Lady’s Guide to Werewolves

“And then?”

“And then it wasn’t anymore. My cousin loved it all so much. She still does. It took me a long time to realize I didn’t love it. Not like that. But I loved Lyonesse and the moors and my grandmother’s rambling old house, which she left to me when my family disowned me.”

“They what?”

“They really liked that duke.” She shrugged because it had taken her a very long time to be able to shrug about it. “More than they cared for me, as it happens.”

His eyes glittered.

“Thar’s hardly shocking,” she pointed out. “Debutantes are meant to marry dukes and have ducal babies.”

“Parents are meant to care for their children.”

“I have Granny. And anyway, when they hear I’ve got myself an earl, they might even invite me for supper.” She would decline. And when the betrothal was inevitably broken… Well, she could just imagine their reactions. Best to stay on the island. She’d rather deal with a Black Shuck and a temperamental unicorn. “Were you close to your family?”

“For a time.”

She could see it in his face, the lines at the corners of his eyes, the way he swallowed. “Before you were bitten?” she guessed.

“Aye. My mother thought she could cure me.”

Sorcha wrapped her fingers around his forearm. “You’re not sick.”

“Wolf cures don’t work anyway,” he said wryly. “No matter how much vinegar she wanted me to drink. Or how many times I swam across the Serpentine until I choked.” He glanced at her hand, closed his own warm palm over it. “You’re growling, love.”

Sorcha cleared her throat. “It was a cough.”

“My mother likes things orderly.”

“You are not a thing.”

“Wolves are not…couth.”

Sorcha was not feeling particularly couth either.

She was used to feeling anger. She raged at the way the Collector treated magical creatures, at the spectators who thought it was entertainment, at puppies abandoned at her gate, horses turned away because they weren’t fast anymore. At the way people treated pigeons.

This was a new kind of fury.

Pieces of Aidan were falling into place. The stoic, iron hold he had on his magic and his wolf.

“Sorcha?”

“Yes?”

“Did you just summon a Stymphalion marsh bird?”

Someone on the beach screamed.

A giant bird with sharp metallic feathers soared above them, its shadow stretching over the sand. The stink of stagnant water and old blood followed. He shook a wing, sending one of its feathers like a dagger, nearly taking out the poet. They were not gentle birds.

And they were a tiny bit poisonous.

“Oops.” She tossed the last piece of bread from her pocket and sent it flashes of a nice, marshy nest. Far from here. The giant bird flapped its wings once, twice. Dagger-feathers sliced through the water. Please, Sorcha added with a push of her magic. I’ll bring you teacakes.

With a screech that boiled the water in a nearby tide pool, the bird flew away.

“I’ve decided I don’t like your family,” Sorcha declared.

He smiled. “But you hide it so well.”

“They are not invited to our pretend wedding.”

His smile faltered. “Aye.”

Something changed, dimmed. Had she pushed too hard with her questions? She had brought up bad memories. And she had summoned a Stymphalian marsh bird, for goodness’ sake. Not exactly countess material.

And to think there was a time when she knew exactly what to say, what dress to wear, which modiste to frequent. How to flatter, how to flirt. How to act demure.

Now she just chatted with gulls and poisonous marsh birds that smelled like rotten grass.

Pitiful.

“We should probably get back,” she suggested before she could make things even more spectacularly awkward. Or accidentally summon a winged seaworm. They smelled even worse than marsh birds.

“Aye.”