The Curse of the Beta

l, and the second was that I was naked on a

s lay in a heap near the door, which meant someone had undressed me. My boots were gone. My coat was gone. The silver chain I wore at m

to call

th

r him the way a man reaches for a light in a dark room, and my hand found empty air. I reached again. I lay there on the wet stone

nothing else to say, and my voice came

y forearm that was not healing. I watched it for a long moment, waiting for the slow draw of skin closing, the small warm itch that had alway

storm. It had gone into me somewhere, and wha

That was something. My ears were still sharper than a human's, or they had been a minute ago. I could hear the creak of a rope on the far side of the harbour and the low complaint of a

omeone else. A woman. Not perfume, nothing so easy. Wool and chalk and something clean like rain on stone. I told

in, and afterward I wiped my mouth and looked at the stain on my hand. It was too dark. The

ould be in his study with the ledgers and the whisky he thought no one knew about. If I walked in like this, they would see. They would smell the silver on me before I got thro

was nine and the tide took me, and I had stood at his shoulder at his father's funeral and at his challenge and at every hard thing since. He would want to know who h

yet that the gr

ng pink over the hills, and the first boats were sliding out past the breakwater with their lanterns swinging. Thomas the magistrate stood at the end of the pie

said. "You'r

my voice easy. "You're ou

of a run," he said. "I'm decid

decide the

a man looks at another man in a grey mornin

oys

es on my back the whole length of the pier. Thomas was a good magistr

e that sticks in the rain, and up the outside stair to my own room under the eaves. I washed the blood off in the basin and burned the rag in the grate and put on a clean shirt and stood in front of the little mirror my mother had l

I hea

e way you know a woman's voice in a crowd, and it was a first shift, because no wolf who had shifted before howls like that. There is a note in it, a long rising note, part fear and part wonder. It goes up and up and does n

he sea pulling away from it, and on the shingle a shape moved, low and pale, and then the s

tance, across the sand and the rocks and the wet grass, sh

d been thrown across the shore and pulled tight. My hands shook on the windowsill. The empty place where my wolf had been ached, actually ached, the way a lost tooth aches. I wanted to g

d and walked, quick and unsteady, back toward the village, and the fe

with my sleeve, and my sleeve came away with a spot of grey on it, the same gre

hands. She is seventy years old and she has cooked for three Alphas, and sh

" she said. "And you l

as o

ble. It was porridge, with a curl of honey on top. "That was a

eone

choolteacher. The one who came back in the spri

n her once at the market, a woman with champagne blonde hair pinned up and a basket on her arm, arguing with a fishmonger about the price of herring. She had won

said. "You'

ng to do. The porridge was good. It was always good. Halfway through the bo

d up the rag from the hearth and folded it, and

he Alpha would say nothing if the Beta asked him sweetly." She put the ra

down over the cu

leave a streak of it in my basin." She took the empty bowl and set it in the sink. "You watch your Alpha today. Watch him clos

o of the Gamma's men came in behind him arguing about a net. Then the kitchen door opened again and Marcus came in, and the room got quieter the way it always did, and he smiled at Agnes and clapped

light brown eyes went over my face in a slow, friendly way, and then he s

d I got up and followed him out of the kitchen, and behind me I heard Agnes set the kettle down

beauty mark near his lip caught the firelight, and he said, "A woman shifted on the s

her,"

the thing that took the ground out from under me. "And Elias. If you feel anything when you're

y chest still aching from the pull of a woman I had never met, and I looked at m

up and drank and did n

ooks like when a wolf finds his mate, and I w

d to himself many times in the dark. And I stood in his study and u