Page 95 of A Lady’s Guide to Werewolves

“I was on an antiquarian dig, searching for Pictish singing stones,” he continued. “They are very rare, almost impossible to find. Someone had stolen them from a grave, and the spell was curdling the milk in the nearby villages. And then well water turned to vinegar. Some magic does not like being stolen.”

“And they sent you.”

“No one else would go. I know why, now. He came out of nowhere. There was no fighting him off, not with spells or swords. He was moon mad.”

She swallowed. “What does that mean?”

“It means he was not a true Alpha. The power of it took him over. His wolf could not be controlled. Just like the stories you’ve been hearing. Only he had killed dozens by the time he found me.”

“You found him.”

“Sorry?”

“Aidan, I know you, and I would bet my ovens that you went searching for the wolf who was on a killing spree.”

He paused, just long enough that she knew she had guessed correctly.

“And I don’t understand. Because I’ve seen your wolf. Even if he took you over, you would still be Aidan. You would still be you.”

“Would I?”

“Yes.”

“You sound very sure,” he said. “There are superstitions among the Lycan that to be turned by a monster makes you a monster.”

“Rubbish.”

He glanced at her, half smiling. “Rubbish?”

“I know monsters.”

“Aye.”

“And I happen to prefer them. And, in my experience, they’re rarely the ones who are the actual monsters. But either way, you’re not one.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I know lots of things, Aidan Carnahan. For one, your wolf saved my life. Twice now.”

“What if I can’t trust him?” He said it so quietly that she nearly did not hear him over the waves and the squabbling gulls.

“I trust him,” she returned, just as quietly. “Enough for the both of us.”

She stroked the beak of a gull who had approached, head tilting this way and that. He sent her flashes of baked potatoes and abandoned dishes of fruit ices. Hunks of bread.

“Is that why you have no Pack?” she asked Aidan, as softly as she would have spoken to one of her birds so as not to frighten them off.

He nodded. “The only Packs that would have me when I first turned were not Packs I would ever join.”

“See?” she said. “You’re proving my point. If you were the kind of monster you feared, you wouldn’t have hesitated. But you did.”

“I suppose. What about you?” he asked. “What brought you to Lyonesse from London? Why monsters instead of gentlemen?”

She snorted. “Have you been to London? I mean, outside of the museum?”

“Fair point. But even I heard about the Duke of Gloucester’s granddaughters, all Incomparables and Diamonds of the First Water. You could be a marchioness, or a duchess.” That stoic, neutral tone again. She was beginning to see through some of his disguises. Curator, earl, wolf.

“I could have been,” she agreed. “But the duke who proposed to me was more interested in how I might train his hunting hawks. There was one marquess and two earls, but they were not from witching families. And a viscount who was very kind, but also in love with someone else. Someone he could not marry.” She recalled the dancing and the gleam of silver candlesticks and crystal chandeliers. Rides through Hyde Park in carriages that looked like cakes swirled with icing. The pigeons on the Greens that she insisted on feeding every morning. “It was lovely for a while.”