Last Alpha: A Highland shifter romance

by Ruby Fielding

  There had been shouts from the gallery, angry and triumphant, and beside him Jenny had slumped just a little in her seat.

  “It’s over,” she said, and he knew she meant more than just the trial. The release: she could leave now, put this awful thing behind her.

  She’d known Jackson at school. They’d been in the same classes in the early grades, she’d told him. Gone to the same birthday parties, hung out in the same friendship groups and after-school clubs. At high school their paths hadn’t crossed so often, but he was still one of the people she thought of when she remembered the kids she’d gone to school with. And she’d just spent two weeks listening to detailed accounts of the atrocity the boy had committed. Not only that, but how the roots of his psychosis went back to his childhood – how he had clearly never been the lad she remembered. How could you get someone so wrong? How could you miss all the signs of something as awful as this?

  And how had Billy not understood that now, walking out of the courthouse into the spring sunshine, was not the time to pull Jenny up, a hand on each of her shoulders, snap her out of her contemplation, and say these words? “Jenny, I have to tell you this. I know we only met two weeks ago, but that’s been long enough for me to know that I love you and I want you to be with me, always. Will you come away with me?”

  She stared at him. Perhaps still lost in the emotions of the trial, only slowly catching up with what he was saying. “I... What?”

  And then, as if that wasn’t enough, a day that had already contained too much had a whole new complication thrown in.

  She looked past him, her eyes widening, her jaw sagging. She shrugged his hands free of her shoulders and took a step to the side, and said, “You? Just what in the fuck do you want?”

  Billy turned, saw a man in a blue suit, thin tie pulled up tight with a tiny knot. Close-cropped hair gone to silver and thinning across the crown, wire-framed glasses glinting in the sun.

  “Jennifer?” the man said. “Now what kind of a way is that to greet your pop? And who’s your boyfriend? Are you going to make introductions?”

  “No,” hissed Jenny, her whole body shaking in a big shudder. “Just no.” And with that she’d walked away, clean out of Billy’s life.

  He still wondered, weeks later, what would have happened if her father hadn’t shown up just then. Would she have let Billy plead his case? Would she have allowed herself to see him in a new light? Or had she already been on the point of rejecting him?

  He stood, watching her go, glancing across at her father. He knew there were issues there. She wouldn’t talk of her childhood. The fact that the trial was here in Maldon and, as far as Billy could determine, she had not once visited her family spoke volumes.

  Her father smiled, held out his hand, said, “Wesley Layne.”

  His suit had an expensive cut, but close up he smelled of cheap burgers, grease, something rank. Or maybe Billy was just imagining that, having seen Jenny’s reaction to her father just showing up outside the courthouse.

  There was something about him. Something that made Billy have to grit his teeth and force the smile as he muttered his name, made his excuses and hurry away.

  When he reached the parking lot, Jenny’s VW had gone already.

  He called her, but no reply. Got through to her voicemail and considered hanging up but said instead, “Jenny. I meant it. Will you just hear me out?”

  He wanted to say more. Wanted to tell her how he hadn’t planned this. It was the last thing he’d expected. He wanted to tell her he didn’t really understand the rush of feelings, but he’d never felt anything like this before, and he’d been powerless not to just blurt it all out. But he didn’t. He saved all that for when he called her later that day. For the messages he left her that evening, before he could stop himself, scared at the power of the feelings that had taken him over, almost grateful that he had a flight first thing the next day, that he could get away from this, get some perspective, get a grip.

  9

  “I’m sorry. I really am.”

  For luring her over here? For setting her up like this? For the manipulation? No, he didn’t mean that: he meant for Maldon, for the way he’d come on so intensely, for the messages afterwards.

  “And so you damn well should be,” she said.

  In truth, she didn’t know quite why she’d gotten so pissy with him back then. She’d had her share of men being dicks with her, and Billy’s behavior had been more clumsy and inarticulate than malicious.

  She’d been dealing with a lot. She’d over-reacted. She’d moved on. But clearly, he hadn’t.

  Dating had never been one of her strengths. She seemed to have a knack for picking guys who excelled at letting her down in one way or another. Weak men, selfish ones, stupid ones. Usually some mix of all three.

  And here was a guy who’d bottled up his feelings for two weeks and then let them all splurge out. Not just that, but a guy who was seriously easy on the eye. One who was smart, a world traveler, a guy who shared her strange obsessions and didn’t treat her like a freak.

  Shouldn’t she have snapped him up?

  That was a question she’d mulled over for weeks afterward, and one she had never managed to answer.

  She’d been an emotional wreck. Back in Maldon for a little over two weeks, and all the family shit that stirred up. All that stuff with Jackson, the horrors of the trial, the forced reassessment of her own childhood memories of a boy she’d thought she knew.

  That didn’t answer the question, but it laid the foundations for her explosive reaction.

  “Ineffable” was a word she’d always liked, and it was perfect for how she felt about Billy. There was something ineffable about him. His dual nature: smooth nice guy one minute, then strangely intense the next. The way he’d seemed happy with their casual friendship, yet all along had clearly been harboring very different feelings toward her.

  There was just... something. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

  Maybe it was her.

  But whatever it was, she found it hard to shake off the feeling that if he felt so strongly for a slightly overweight oddball like her then that was a sure sign there was something seriously wrong with him.

  §

  “You sent that message, didn’t you? You tricked me into coming over here.”

  “It wisnae a trick,” he said now. “This is a story just made for you, and I work here – I was too close to say any more.”

  His words made it clear that he knew exactly what the message had said: it was as good as admitting he’d sent it.

  “Carr wants me to work for him. Was that your idea?”

  Billy shook his head. “Mr Carr’s his own man,” he said. “I didnae suggest that. It’s a smart idea, though. He likes to identify people who could contribute to his projects and bring them in. He did that, first with Lilian and her team, and then me.”

  He had moved into the room as he spoke, and now stood by one of the bookcases. Any closer and he’d be towering over Jenny. She resisted the urge to stand, and tried not to feel intimidated by his presence. What was going on in her head? It was like that day in Maldon all over again, the intense rush of thoughts and emotions. She’d put that down to events around the location and trial, but now...

  He seemed to sense her discomfort and stepped back, then moved across to stand by the far window.

  “He head-hunted you?” she asked. “What for? What do you do for him?”

  Billy nodded. “Aye, he did,” he said.

  “He told me you’re his ghillie.”

  He laughed at that. “He said that? Well, I guess... I keep an eye on the estate, it’s true. I go fishing and shooting with him. I’ve taught him about the environment hereabouts. I grew up with it.”

  Jenny remembered him telling her about that night when the boy and his father had been attacked: Billy had been out poaching on the river.

  “But that’s not why he got in touch,” he went on. “I’d known him years ago, but we lo
st touch. I did my thing, and whenever I could I traveled around chasing down these daft wee stories. I guess he must have come across what I was doing because one day he called me out of the blue, and said, ‘I have a project that might interest you, Billy.’”

  “The werewolf thing.”

  “Aye. Although he has a fancier name for it than that. Now he finances me to travel around, chasing stories, looking for evidence. It’s a canny job to have.”

  “And now me. He thinks I can help manage the media profile of the work here.”

  “Makes sense. You’ve clearly impressed him. Are you considering it?”

  “You acted like a dick.”

  Billy nodded again.

  “All that... all the messages.” The voicemail messages had only confirmed the unease she’d felt about him: she’d never come across that kind of intensity before. It had scared her. It scared her now.

  “And then you trick me into coming here.” She turned her laptop screen so he could see. “I’m this close to booking a flight home tonight. Just one click.”

  “Forget Carr, the job,” he said. “Are you not intrigued? You’ve got a wealthy man throwing his money into a project to create a frigging werewolf. You’ve got a screwball but brilliant scientist who’s been hounded out of her own country for daring to think the unthinkable. You’re sitting in a castle in an ancient landscape with a pack of wolves just up the hill. Does that not set your mind racing, Jenny?”

  He knew her so well at times. All those chats over coffee... He knew this was a story from which she could never just walk away.

  “Don’t tell me you’re not interested in a story like that. Do your thing, Jenny. Your thing of making sense out of chaos. I don’t know anyone who can do that better than you.”

  §

  She’d forgotten what he could be like. Buried the positives under all the negatives of that last day.

  All those furtive escapes to the coffee shop, his double espresso to her latte. The fire and energy. The spark. The way he could cut through to the core of whatever it was they were discussing and nail it to the board.

  She’d known she was being manipulated from the moment that message came through. Whether it was some off-balance fanboy or Carr or anyone else: the only reason they’d sent that tantalizing message was to lure her in and she knew that. She’d come here with her eyes wide open, doing her thing, following a story that had grabbed her imagination. The wealthy guy throwing his money at an obsession, the intriguing possibility that if he was throwing all that money at the question then maybe, just maybe, there might be some substance.

  When it came down to it, she was always going to do exactly what she did: throw herself into the scary shit in the hope she might just make some sense of it.

  She managed to wipe the smile off her face almost as soon as it appeared, but he must have seen it.

  What the Hell?

  She let him see as she clicked the “x” to close the flight ticket window.

  So she wouldn’t fly back today. She’d give it a shot.

  “So who should a girl talk to, for an independent viewpoint around here?” she asked, and Billy didn’t even try to wipe the smile off his own face.

  10

  Mid-afternoon, she found herself back behind the wheel on the wrong side of her rental Toyota, wrestling with the stick-shift in her left hand and reciting over and over in her head, “Stay on the left, stay on the left, stay on the goddamn left.”

  Leaving the castle behind her, she came to the gate, and paused to check both ways, and then again for good measure. Finally confident enough to venture out, she took a left, retracing the route along the narrow Highland roads she’d taken down from the A95 the previous day.

  A few minutes later the pine forest retreated from the road and a few houses appeared. When she came to the little stone church with its packed graveyard that Billy had told her to look out for, she took the next right, and just ahead of her was the village pub. The Calder Arms was a squat building with a steep, gray-slated roof and walls made from stones of seemingly random shape and size, slotted together like a jigsaw; the colors of the stones ranged through grays and browns to orangey-red, all crusted with silver and ochre lichen and moss. Other than an ancient Land Rover, Jenny’s was the only car in the lot round to the side of the building.

  She climbed out, heard the shouts of playing children from somewhere nearby, realizing how it felt as if she’d been away from normality forever, not just a night.

  She walked round to the front, pushed the door open and stepped inside. The pub’s interior was gloomy and nearly empty.

  “Mr McQueen?” He sat alone at a table by the window, a big man with ruddy cheeks, purple nose and bushy white whiskers that struggled to compensate for the smoothness of most of his head. She proffered a hand. “My name’s Jenny Layne. Billy Stewart called ahead on my behalf. Can I get you a drink?”

  The big man stood, dipped his head, took her hand and shook firmly. “It’s a wee bit early for another,” he said, his face breaking out into a smile as he spoke and nodded towards his nearly-full pint glass. “Can I get you something yourself?”

  And somehow she found herself sitting while McQueen went to the bar and asked for her club soda with a slice of lemon.

  “I’m a writer,” she said when he came back and reclaimed his seat opposite her. “Staying at Craigellen Castle for a few days. Billy said that if I wanted to know anything about the local area you’re the man. He said all I had to do was buy you a drink... I guess I’m not doing so well already.”

  McQueen chuckled into his beer. “Me or Billy, aye,” he said. “He knows the place as well as I do, but he told me ye’d rather talk to me.” The old man had a cheeky twinkle in his eye. She wondered how much else Billy had told him.

  She was getting more used to the accent and dialect now. McQueen’s Scots was broad, like the housekeeper’s, but easy enough to follow.

  “Have you lived here all your life?” she asked.

  “Aye, so I have. Born two houses down the way. Worked in Elgin and Nairn before I made Detective Inspector at Inverness.”

  “You’re a cop?”

  He smiled. “Retired,” he said. “Although sometimes the lads still call on me when they need an auld heed.” Old head, she mentally translated.

  That would explain why Billy had told her McQueen knew the place so well: he’d lived here all his life and he was a cop. “So how do you know Billy?”

  “Wee Billy was always a free spirit.” He pronounced it spurrit. “His ma went back to Glesgae when he was a bairn and never kept in touch. His da let him run wild afore he drank himsel’ to death when Billy was nae even sixteen. Me an’ the wife looked out for the lad after that.”

  Jenny got the sense that to be a policeman here was very different to back home. McQueen was at the heart of his community. Where a kid like Billy might well have run wild until he ran himself into jail in New York, here McQueen, the local patriarch, had looked out for him, protected him. In their two week friendship in Connecticut, Billy had told her none of this, but now she felt McQueen’s account gave her a little insight into those warring elements of Billy’s personality: the strong sense of what was right and wrong, the always-present hints of wildness and unpredictability.

  “So what are you doin’ up at Craigellen? What’re ye here to write about?”

  She wondered how much to tell him. Did the locals know about Carr’s plans? Did they know what Lilian Lee was working on?

  “I met Billy when he was over in the States in the spring,” she said. “He told me about Jonathan Carr and Craigellen. It sounded interesting. Then a couple of weeks ago I got an invitation. I think Mr Carr is hoping I’ll do their public image some good. Do you think they need that? Do they have a good reputation around here?” She recalled what Carr had said about local opposition to his reintroduction schemes and sure enough McQueen took the bait.

  “They need more than a wee bit of PR,” he said. “Not a lot
of people are keen on the man’s plans. Have you seen the damage a wild boar can do? They can be vicious wee bastarts, too, so they can.”

  “What about the wolves?”

  McQueen snorted. “There’s guid reason they were hunted to extinction, you know. There’s no’ a right-minded man or woman who wants them back. He’ll never get a license to release them, but then that’s nae going to stop him. You can hear them at night when the wind’s right. Some folk say he’s let them loose already.”

  Maybe it was time to start on that PR work. “No,” said Jenny, “he hasn’t released them. I’ve seen them up at the hunting lodge beyond the castle. There’s a pen, maybe a hundred yards on its longest side. It’s a big cage, really. I was up there this morning: there’s no way they could get out of there.”

  McQueen didn’t believe her. “Have you seen the fences, too?” he asked. “Six foot fences wi’ barbed wire at the top. They run round maybe a hundred acres. He says it’s to keep the wild boar and deer in, but I know for a fact that’s not true. That’s an awful lot of fence to keep in deer and boar when the beasts are already roaming free beyond that area anyway.”

  “No, Mr Carr assured me the only wolves were the ones I saw.”

  “Have ye heard of a fladry fence? No? It’s a fence with a line running along the top where they hang strips of colored cloth that smell of humans. The bright colors agitate the wolves. The scent plays on their worst fears. It’s an auld way of keeping wolves out. Or in. If you get a chance to look at tha’ fence, tell me if it’s no’ a fladry fence.”

  “I will,” she assured the old man. “I’m not on Mr Carr’s check yet.”

  As they spoke, a part of her mind was racing. Had Carr been misleading her? Now that she thought about it, had he even assured her that there were not more wolves elsewhere on the estate? She wondered where the legal distinction lay between a large enclosure and controlled reintroduction.