The Lycan's Wife, The Alpha's Wish

I put my palm against the place where the finger had pressed. The glass was cold.

"Who are you?" My reflection mouthed the question with me. "Are you Constance?"

The fingertip dragged downward, beginning another stroke, but the fog shuddered and thinned. I caught only a pale curve before the mirror cleared. Whatever waited beyond it had tried to answer. Behind me, Judeth stood with the blue dress crushed against her chest.

"You saw that."

Her eyes remained fixed on the glass. "The breakfast bell rang twice, my lady."

"That was not my question."

"No." She swallowed. "It wasn't."

The bell sounded again, followed by hurried footsteps in the bedchamber. Judeth flinched toward the door. "If Lord Mathias sends someone else, we will not be allowed another minute."

I wanted to steam the room until the mirror spoke in complete sentences. I also knew what waited downstairs. Leaving Millicent alone with Mathias gave her the scene she had planned, while the woman behind the glass had managed one urgent word and could not afford to be forgotten.

"Bring me back here after breakfast," I said. "No one cleans that mirror."

Judeth nodded and helped me dress.

The blue gown fastened down the back and covered the bruises without powder. Judeth twisted my wet hair into a low knot as we crossed the bedchamber, her fingers working from habit while I tried to follow corridors I had never seen. Courcy Keep opened around us in gray stone, dark wood, and portraits of people who looked offended by death. Servants flattened themselves against the walls when I passed. Their eyes rose once I moved beyond them and dropped again when I glanced back.

Breakfast waited in a long room warmed by narrow windows and a fire no one needed. Mathias sat at the head of the table in a black coat, speaking to a steward over a stack of correspondence. Millicent occupied the carved chair at his right.

She wore Constance's gold.

The ceremonial collar curved over her dark green bodice, its linked wolves bright against her skin. I had seen it in the novel's illustrations, always on Constance at treaty feasts and household rites. It was not simply jewelry. The wife of Courcy wore it when she received guests in her husband's territory.

Millicent lifted her cup and smiled at me over the rim. Night jasmine reached me across the table, softened by warm resin and sharpened with the clean bite of winter air. The scent made Mathias's wolf stir; amber flashed around his pupils before he looked down at the page in front of him.

"Constance," he said. "Sit."

There was an empty chair beside Millicent. Judeth had gone still near the door.

I walked to Mathias's right and rested my fingers on the back of the carved seat. "Lady Millicent, you're in my chair."

The steward stopped turning pages. Millicent glanced down as if the furniture had only just appeared beneath her. "Mathias asked me to join him while he handled breakfast business. I hope you don't mind."

"You wore the wife's gold to do it."

Her hand rose to the collar. She did not blush or fumble. "A maid brought it with the gown. I assumed it was a gift from my hosts."

"Then a maid has publicly seated the Alpha of Hurst as Courcy's wife." I looked at the steward. "Does our treaty permit household servants to assign rank now?"

His mouth opened, but Mathias answered first. "No."

I kept my attention on Millicent. "I would hate for anyone to think you surrendered your own authority for a chair beside my husband."

The insult was polite enough to serve with tea. Millicent's smile deepened. She rose, unhurried, and the gold shifted against her throat. Beneath it, a finer chain flashed before she tucked it back under her dress.

Mathias noticed me noticing. "Return the collar to Constance's rooms," he told the steward.

I sat. Millicent took the next chair, close enough that her knee touched mine beneath the table. She left it there while a servant placed bread and pears before us.

"You rescued me from a terrible mistake," she said. "How fortunate that you know these customs so well."

The woman in the book had delivered every cruelty from a safe distance. The real Millicent leaned close enough for her perfume to settle at the back of my throat. Her face was all clean lines and generous lips, her voice rich without softness. Attraction was part of her control, offered so freely that refusing to notice it felt childish.

"Some customs deserve attention," I said. "Especially the ones people hope I'll forget."

Mathias watched my mouth instead of his correspondence. His gaze lingered when I bit into a pear, and a memory that belonged to Constance moved through my body: his thumb wiping juice from her lower lip, his mouth replacing it. Heat gathered before anger burned through it.

I set the fruit down. "Is that why you gave Lady Millicent your private seal? To help her remember Courcy law?"

His gaze snapped to mine.

Millicent's knee pressed harder against mine. "I don't know what you mean."

"The necklace beneath the gold collar." I touched the hollow of my throat. "A silver wolf with amber stones for eyes. Shall I ask the steward to fetch the household account?"

The necklace had appeared once in the novel when Constance glimpsed them together through a western window. Mathias had fastened the little wolf around Millicent's neck; by the next chapter, doors in Courcy had begun opening for her. The story had presented it as tenderness. Sitting in the wife's chair, I understood it as access.

Mathias folded the paper in his hand. Irritation tightened his face, but something else warmed his eyes: interest. His compliant wife had just laid a trap at breakfast, and the bastard admired the workmanship.

"The seal grants diplomatic passage," he said. "Nothing more."

"Then she won't mind wearing it where everyone can see your judgment."

Millicent laughed. The sound was low, genuine, and far more intimate than outrage would have been. "I was afraid we would be enemies."

She reached past me and laid two fingers over Mathias's wrist. His hand tensed beneath hers. Cedar sharpened in the air, tangled with jasmine, and Constance's body registered the exchange with a sick pulse of desire and grief.

"We should be sisters," Millicent said.

"I have standards."

Her smile never slipped. "So do I. Surviving them may prove difficult for you."

Mathias turned his wrist, breaking her touch as he called for the steward. Millicent withdrew her hand, then reached beneath the table as if smoothing her skirt. Her fingers closed around my bruised arm.

Pain traveled to my shoulder. I held still.

She leaned toward me, lips near my ear, her perfume sweet enough to hide the threat from everyone else.

"The first attempt to kill you already happened."