“Mmm?” was his wife’s only answer.
“I’m nae certain that’s a verra good name.”
“Mmm.”
“Sorry to disturb you, my lord, but the vampires are asking for you.” Professor Lyall’s voice was quiet and apologetic.
Alexia Maccon came awake with a start to the feel of her husband shifting behind her. He was evidently trying to extract himself from the bed without disturbing her. Poor man, stealth of movement was not one of his stronger character traits. Not in human form at any rate.
“What time is it, Randolph?”
“Just after sunset, my lord. I thought it best to let you sleep the remainder of the day away.”
“Oh, yes? And have you been awake the whole time?”
Silence met that.
“Ah. Right. You tell me the lay of the fur, Randolph, and then you go catch some rest.”
Alexia heard a faint howling. The younger werewolves, still unable to control change so close to full moon, were back in their fur and imprisoned below for another night. Locked away with vampires.
“Who is seeing to them?” asked the earl as he, too, registered the sound.
“Channing, my lord.”
“Oh, blast.” All pretense at subtlety abandoned, Lord Maccon jumped out of bed.
This jiggled the baby. A thin, querulous wail started up from just under Alexia’s chin. She started violently, for she had, until that moment, entirely forgotten about the child. Her child.
She opened her eyes and looked down. Half a day’s intermittent rest had not improved the infant’s appearance. She was red and wrinkly, and her face got all scrunched up when she cried.
Conall, obviously still under the impression that Alexia was asleep, hurried around the bed and scooped the tiny creature up. The whining turned to a little snuffling howl, and there in his arms instead of a child, lay a newborn wolf cub.
Lord Maccon nearly dropped his daughter. “God’s teeth!”
Alexia sat up, not quite comprehending what she had just seen. “Conall, where’s the baby?”
Her husband, mute in shock, proffered the cub at her.
“What have you done to her?”
“Me? Nothing. I simply picked her up. She was perfectly normal and then poof.”
“Well, she’s unquestionably cuter in that form.” Alexia was prosaic.
“Here, you take her.” Lord Maccon put the squalling furry cub back into his wife’s arms.
At which juncture she promptly turned back into a baby. Alexia could feel the bone and flesh shifting under the swaddling clothes. It seemed to be relatively painless, for the infant’s cries did not modulate to those of real distress.
“Oh, my.” Alexia thought she sounded rather sedate, under the circumstances. “What have we gotten ourselves into?”
Professor Lyall’s voice was awed. “Never thought I’d live to see a real skin-stalker born in my lifetime. Amazing.”
“Is that what it means?” Alexia looked down at the child. “How extraordinary.”
Professor Lyall smiled. “I guess it must. So, what’s her name, my lady?”
Alexia frowned. “Oh, yes, that.”
Lord Maccon grinned, looking down at his wife. “With us for parents, we ought to call her Prudence.”
Lady Maccon, however, did not seem to share the joke. “Actually, I rather like that. How about Prudence Alessandra, after my father? And then Maccon, because when Lord Akeldama adopts her, she’s going to be an Akeldama.”
Lord Maccon looked down at his daughter. “Poor little thing. That’s a lot of names to live up to.”
“My lord,” interjected his Beta, “not that I don’t see the importance of this particular matter, but can it wait? Biffy could use your proximity. And the vampires are kicking up quite the fuss. We’ve no justification for keeping them locked in the dungeon. What are we going to do about them?”
Lord Maccon sighed. “Sadly, it’s not them we have to find what to do with—it’s us. We can’t stay living here, not with a hive in residence as well, and they can’t leave. Not now. When you invited the countess in, Alexia, you gave them Woolsey Castle.”
“Oh, no, surely not.”
Professor Lyall sat down in a nearby chair. Alexia had never seen him look defeated before, but at that moment, Woolsey’s Beta looked as close to crushed as any man she’d ever seen.
Lord Maccon looked grim. “Nothing else for it. We’ll have to move the pack permanently into London. We will need to buy a second town house to accommodate us all and build dungeons.”
Professor Lyall protested this decision. “Where will we run? How will we hunt? My lord, there is no such thing as an urban pack!”
“This is the age of industry, invention, and refined behavior. I suppose Woolsey really will have to learn to move with the times and become civilized.” Lord Maccon was resolved.
Alexia looked at her child. “It would only be for sixteen years or so. Until Prudence is grown. Then we could look for a new territory. Sixteen years isn’t all that long for a werewolf.”
Professor Lyall did not look cheered by this shortening of his urban sentence. “The pack is not going to like this.”
“I have made my decision,” said his Alpha.
“The queen is not going to like this.”
“We’ll just have to persuade her it’s in the best interest of the Crown.”
“I think that’s a very good idea,” said Countess Nadasdy, entering the room at that moment, followed by Quesnel and Madame Lefoux.