No, Rue realised, Mother had done the calming and the balancing, as much as she was able.
“You’re an Alpha.” Quesnel sounded as shocked as Rue felt.
Uncle Rabiffano inclined his wolf head slightly, so as not to disturb his collar points.
Out of the corner of one eye, Rue saw her mother do something awful. She stepped towards Uncle Rabiffano, establishing alliance.
“It’s time, Conall. He’s right. No more waiting. I can’t handle it, literally. And it’s too much to ask of our daughter.”
Rue felt Quesnel’s hand lift as everyone’s attention focused on her. The top of her head, despite the fur, felt cold.
Uncle Rabiffano spoke again, through his lupine mouth. Rue supposed that with the rest of him still human, speech was possible. It was peculiar-sounding, though, echoing and deep, not like his normal voice at all. “Conall, look at what this is doing to your family. To your pack. I don’t want to cry challenge, but I will if you can’t leave on your own.”
Paw seemed confused, indignant, and frustrated all at once. And betrayed, because his wife was standing against him. Rue had known her parents to argue – in fact, they seemed to enjoy it – but they had never in her life failed to present a unified front to the rest of the world.
Rue couldn’t decide what to do. Should she rush her mother, make skin contact with a preternatural to break the tether? That would give her father his supernatural abilities back and a fighting chance, as erratic and dangerous as that would make him.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” Uncle Rabiffano stepped in and, swinging from the shoulder with all his force, punched Paw in the jaw.
Paw fell back like a stone, senseless.
Everyone else remained motionless.
Uncle Rabiffano shifted back to normal. The fur of his face crawled up to the top of his head, chocolatey and thick, slightly less styled than before Anubis.
Rue growled and leapt at him, teeth going for the neck.
Only to find herself shifting back to human.
Her mother was gripping her hard. Preternatural forced change, exactly as if she were a misbehaving child.
“No, infant.” Lady Maccon sounded brittle.
“But, Mother!” Rue, starkers and uncaring, could only protest.
“Go and sit with your father. We might need you to touch him once more.”
“It’s not fair. You can’t use me as a weapon against my own Paw!”
“Prudence Alessandra Maccon Akeldama, I am not going to tell you again.”
“You’re asking me to choose between you,” wailed Rue.
Quesnel pulled off his frock coat and helped Rue into it.
Lady Maccon glared at her daughter. “No, I am ordering you to take care of him. Child of mine, ponder what he has become. We’ve tried every which way to get him to Egypt. He agreed. Twenty-odd years ago this all looked to be so easy. But none of us knew how Alpha’s curse would take him, or when. And the plan has failed.”
Uncle Rabiffano’s voice held no hostility. “We shouldn’t have waited for Lyall.”
Rue couldn’t comprehend that. “The Kingair Pack Beta? Why on earth should he matter?”
Rabiffano gave the oddest huff of a laugh. “He’s actually my Beta; they’ve had him on loan.”
This was all too much. And Paw was stirring. Rue would have to choose and she couldn’t face it. It felt like treason. If Uncle Rabiffano wanted the London Pack, if he was really meant to become its Alpha, shouldn’t he challenge for it? Except that meant one of them would die. When Alphas fought for pack leadership, one of them always died.
“The God-Breaker Plague. You’re going to take him into the plague zone?” Quesnel sounded oddly hopeful. Didn’t he understand how awful all of this was?
“Yes. Exactly.” Lady Maccon was pleased by his understanding.
“Where he’ll die!” Rue did not care how bitter she sounded.
Lady Maccon hauled her off and slapped her, hard across the face. “Stop it.”
It stung, but certainly didn’t hurt as much as werewolf shift. Still it surprised her into shocked silence.
So did the fact that Quesnel turned and stepped up against her mother in an entirely ungentlemanly way. “I wouldn’t do that again, Lady Maccon, if I were you.”
Mother blinked at him. “Oh. That’s the way of it? I didn’t realise.”
Rue clutched at her cheek and tried very hard not to cry.
“Prudence, little one.” Uncle Rabiffano’s voice was smooth as black treacle. He was so sure of himself. “This is not betrayal.”
Rue nodded. How long had it been since she had heard that kind of confidence in Paw’s voice? The slap seemed to have recharged her brain. They were right. The God-Breaker Plague would make her father an exiled mortal for the rest of his life, but he would have a rest of his life. Mother would surely go with him. Hadn’t Rue already acknowledged to herself that Paw’s time was running out?
It was a lot of realisations all at once.
“It’s only that I love him. He’s my Paw.” Rue didn’t know to whom she spoke, or why. Maybe it was for herself. She looked to Quesnel for reassurance. He was outside this. Outside her whole messy family with all its uncles and tethers and malingering life spans. “What do you think?”
“Oh, mon petite chou, it isn’t my place.”
“Please?”
“I think it’s romantic, to live together in an ancient land.”