His valet clapped silver manacles about them with an air of embarrassment. Never during all his years of service had he had to bind Professor Lyall.
The Beta gave him a little half smile. “Not to worry, dear boy. It happens to the best of us.” Then he followed both young men docilely down the staircase and into the pack dungeon, where the others were already behind bars. He gave absolutely no hint of the discipline it took for him to remain calm. Simply out of obstinacy and pride, he fought the change as long as possible. Long after his two clavigers had reached through the bars and unlocked his manacles, and he had stripped himself of all his carefully tailored clothing, he continued to fight it. He did it for their sake, as they went to stand with the first shift of watchers against the far wall. Poor young things, compelled to witness powerful men become slaves to bestial urges, forced to understand what their desire for immortality would require them to become. Lyall was never entirely certain whom he pitied more at this time of the month, them or him. It was the age old question: who suffers more, the gentleman in the badly tied cravat or those who must look upon him?
Which was Professor Lyall’s last thought before the pain and noise and madness of full moon took him away.
He awoke to the sound of Lord Maccon yelling. For Professor Lyall, this was so commonplace as to be almost restful. It had the pleasant singsong of regularity and custom about it.
“And who, might I ask, is Alpha of this bloody pack?” The roar carried even through the thick stone of the dungeon walls.
“You, sir,” said a timid voice.
“And who is currently giving you a direct order to be released from this damned prison?”
“That would be you, sir.”
“And yet, who is still locked away?”
“That would still be you, sir.”
“Yet somehow you do not see my difficulty.”
“Professor Lyall said ”
“Professor Lyall, my ruddy arse!”
“Very good, sir.”
Lyall yawned and stretched. Full moon always left a man slightly stiff, all that running about the cell and crashing into things and howling. No permanent damage, of course, but there was a certain muscle memory of deeds done and humiliating acts performed that even a full day of sleep could not erase. It was not unlike waking after a long night of being very, very drunk.
His clavigers noticed he was awake and immediately unlocked his cell and came inside. The footman carried a nice cup of hot tea with milk and a dish of raw fish with chopped mint on top. Professor Lyall was unusual in his preference for fish, but the staff had quickly learned to accommodate this eccentricity. The mint, of course, was to help deal with recalcitrant wolf breath. He snacked while his valet dressed him: nice soft tweed trousers, sip of tea, crisp white shirt, nibble of fish, chocolate brocade waistcoat, more tea, and so on.
By the time Lyall had finished his ablutions, Lord Maccon had almost, but not quite, convinced his own clavigers to let him out. The young men were looking harassed, and had, apparently, deemed it safe to pass some clothing through to Lord Maccon, if nothing else. What the Alpha had done with said clothing only faintly resembled dressing, but at least he wasn’t striding around hollering at them naked anymore.
Professor Lyall wandered over to his lordship’s cell, fixing the cuffs of his shirt and looking unruffled.
“Randolph,” barked the earl, “let me out this instant.”
Professor Lyall ignored him. He took the key and sent the clavigers off to see to the rest of the pack, who were all now starting to awaken.
“Do you remember, my lord, what the Woolsey Pack was like when you first came to challenge for it?”
Lord Maccon paused in his yelling and his pacing to look up in surprise. “Of course I do. It was not so long ago as all that.”
“Not a nice piece of work, the previous Earl of Woolsey, was he? Excellent fighter, of course, but he had gone a little funny about the head one too many live snacks. ‘Crackers’ some called him.” Professor Lyall shook his head. He loathed talking about his previous Alpha. “An embarrassing thing for a carnivore to be compared to a biscuit, wouldn’t you say, my lord?”
“Your point, Randolph.” Lord Maccon could only be surprised out of his impatience for a brief length of time.
“You are becoming, shall we say, of the biscuit inclination, my lord.”
Lord Maccon took a deep breath and then sucked on his teeth. “Gone loopy, have I?”
“Perhaps just a little bit noodled.”
Lord Maccon looked shamefacedly down at the floor of his cell.
“It is time for you to face up to your responsibilities, my lord. Three weeks is enough time to wallow in your own colossal mistake.”
“Pardon me?”
Professor Lyall had had more than enough of his Alpha’s nonsensical behavior, and he was a master of perfect timing. Unless he was wrong, and Professor Lyall was rarely wrong about an Alpha, Lord Maccon was ready to admit the truth. And even if Lyall was, by some stretch of the imagination, incorrect in his assessment, the earl could not be allowed to continue to be ridiculous out of mere stubbornness.
“You aren’t fooling any of us.”
Lord Maccon resisted admission of guilt even as he crumbled like the metaphorical cracker. “But I turned her out.”
“Yes, you did, and wasn’t that an idiotic thing to do?”
“Possibly.”
“Because?” Professor Lyall crossed his arms and dangled the key to his Alpha’s cell temptingly from one fingertip.
“Because there is no way she would have canoodled with another man, not my Alexia.”
“And?”
“And the child must be mine.” The earl paused. “Good gracious me, can you imagine that, becoming a father at my age?” This was followed by another much longer pause. “She is never going to forgive me for this, is she?”
Professor Lyall had no mercy. “I wouldn’t. But then I have never precisely been in her situation before.”
“I should hope not, or there’s a prodigious deal regarding your personage about which I was previously unaware.”
“Now is not the time for jocularity, my lord.”
Lord Maccon sobered. “Insufferable woman. Couldn’t she have at least stayed around and argued with me more on the subject? Did she have to cut and run like that?”
“You do recall what you said to her? What you called her?”
Lord Maccon’s wide, pleasant face became painfully white and drawn as he went mentally back to a certain castle in Scotland. “I’d just as soon not remember, thank you.”
“Are you going to behave yourself now?” Professor Lyall continued to wave the key. “Stay off the formaldehyde?”
“I suppose I must. I’ve drunk it all, anyway.”
Professor Lyall let his Alpha out of the cell and then spent a few minutes fussing about the earl’s shirt and cravat, tidying up the mauling Lord Maccon had inflicted while attempting to clothe himself.
The earl withstood the grooming manfully, knowing it for what it was: Lyall’s unspoken sympathy. Then he batted his Beta away. Lord Maccon was, when all was said and done, a wolf of action.
“So, what do I have to do to win her back? How do I convince her to come home?”
“You are forgetting that, given your treatment of her, she may not want to come home.”
“Then I shall make her forgive me!” Lord Maccon’s voice, while commanding, was also anguished.
“I do not believe that is quite how forgiveness works, my lord.”
“Well?”
“You remember that groveling business we once discussed during your initial courtship of the young lady?”
“Not that again.”
“Oh, no, not precisely. I was thinking, given her flight from London and the generally slanderous gossip that has resulted and permeated the society papers ever since, that public groveling is called for under such circumstances.”