About Face (Wolf Within)

by Amy Lee Burgess

  “How on earth did you get Glenn Murphy, a seasoned Councilor, to confess, or so severely compromise himself, that he lost all reason and tried to kill you? You were relentless, weren’t you? Went for the jugular and accused him, didn’t you? Interrogated him?”

  Horror engulfed me. I had interrogated him in just the same fashion as Ducharme herself used. Had used on me.

  “Alors, you will, perhaps, some day make a decent Councilor after all,” she said.

  “Celine,” remonstrated Jason when he realized how tense I’d become.

  “That’s how you do it, cherie,” said Celine. “You take your own experiences, and you learn from them. Turn them to your advantage. And always, always let your anger serve you. But you must work on your sense of self-preservation. Never confront a potential enemy without allies. You should have come to me. I would have helped you.”

  “Celine,” said Jason again, but she only laughed.

  “I begin to like her, Jason. If you’re not careful, I shall take her away from you and persuade her to be my Advisor. I think her politics may lean in my direction rather than yours. My side does not resort to murder within our own ranks.” Her smile was toothy. “Or without them. You fight a losing battle, you know. Your own side is so divided against itself you lose momentum and credibility by the day.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if Glenn Murphy hasn’t delivered your side a death blow from which you cannot recover. He single-handedly may have advanced the decision by months, if not years. And your prized Advisor will help it along no matter which side she chooses.”

  The sound of her triumphant laughter continued until she closed the door behind her and was gone.

  I wanted to tell Jason that no matter what I believed, I would never, ever become that bitch’s Advisor, but he put a finger to my lips to remind me I wasn’t supposed to talk.

  “You need to rest. Go to bed,” he ordered and when the panic flared in my eyes, he added. “I won’t leave you. I’ll be right here all night. I’ll sleep in a chair by your bed.”

  He settled me beneath the covers and then dragged one of the lighter chairs to my bedside. He switched off all but one small lamp, which shed muted light onto a side table across the room, and settled into the chair. After a moment I felt his fingers comb through my hair.

  “Is the pain too much? Do you want another shot?” he offered, and I shook my head. I did not want my thoughts muddled. It would make me more vulnerable than I already was.

  Chapter 21

  I couldn’t swallow much of the chicken broth Jason gave me for breakfast, but I took another mug of honey-infused tea to the window seat and looked down into the courtyard and the fountain.

  I could see the phantom image of Paddy’s bloody body on the gravel if I tried hard enough.

  At ten o’clock a group of grieving people made their way down the path. Murphy led them around the opposite side of the fountain so they wouldn’t tread where Paddy had been attacked.

  Fee, fragile and pregnant, clutched his arm. Siobhan, their mother, followed closely behind, flanked by the curly-haired brunette—Paddy’s mother, Maureen O’Shea—and another man I didn’t know but suspected must be her bond mate. Behind them came Colm O’Reilly, Alannah Doyle and the woman from the pub who had sat with Colm, the petite beauty with coal-black hair that hung in a shimmering mass to the small of her back. Deirdre. In heels she might come to Colm’s chin. Maybe.

  Jason and Etain Feehery met them just beyond the fountain. Etain went straight to Siobhan Carmichael, and a moment later I saw Siobhan’s face crumple and through the cranked-open mullioned window of my room I could not escape her cry of grief.

  Tears poured down her face, and Maureen O’Shea moved to her side. Fee’s face went very white, but she didn’t cry. Murphy’s expression was blank, and that, more than anything, broke me.

  I raced out of my room, down the staircase and out the French doors of the small room where we breakfasted. It wasn’t until I splashed into the gray lake and the icy water penetrated through my jeans straight into my bones that I stopped. For a moment I stood there, knee-deep in water, before I retreated to the shore. I sat on the rough sand of the beach, drew my knees to my chest and stared into the gray water.

  * * * *

  I heard footsteps a few moments later but didn’t turn around. The person was cautious on the rocky sand as if uncertain about footing. The beach was strewn with small stones, but not enough to give someone Pack that much pause.

  However, as the footsteps drew closer and the wind shifted to bring me the person’s scent, I understood.

  Fee lowered herself next to me, using my shoulder for support. Up close her grief-ravaged face was pale and drawn, her eyes so red-rimmed they were swollen.

  My own eyes burned in sympathy, and if she hadn’t needed my shoulder, I would have bolted. I could be such a coward.

  Once seated, she leaned against me, this time offering me her support. I took it gratefully and bowed my head so it touched hers. Our fingers laced together, and my breath caught in my throat. The comforting power of an Alpha, even a grief-stricken one, wasn’t something I could explain in words, but it meant everything to experience it.

  “I wanted to ask you if you’d play the harp tomorrow. After Paddy’s funeral.” Fee’s voice didn’t falter, but I knew how much the words cost her.

  I nodded. My damaged throat had squeezed so tight it was impossible to speak even though I desperately wanted to.

  “And during the bonding ceremony. Please?”

  Bonding ceremony? I tried to speak, but only a distressed sound escaped me.

  “It’s true that my baby will be born well within the three months I have to find another bond mate, but I need to make sure he or she has a place in the pack. I don’t have time or the inclination to search for somebody I—for somebody. So I’m going to bond with Colm and Deirdre. Something positive can come from all this. She won’t have to abort her baby.

  “Everyone’s letting me do what I want. I’m milking their sympathy all I can so I can protect Colm and Deirdre. Besides, I like the idea of another baby related to Paddy running around the pack, and their indiscretion would have knocked them out of contention for the next Alpha election.

  “Which brings me to this.” With her free hand, Fee thrust something into mine. I looked down at a silver pendant in the shape of a Celtic circle. A peridot gleamed from the center of the circle, and my stomach clenched. “Paddy made it,” Fee said, and I wanted to scream and howl my grief, but I only sat there like a frozen idiot and stared. “That’s what he did, you know, in the pack? He and his family are all artisans. He designed and made jewelry, silver mostly. He sold and fashioned bond pendants at the Regional and Great Gatherings. You, Stanzie, you’re an artisan. The musicians fall into that category, too.

  “Liam and I, our families, we’re the investors. We buy and sell real estate, play the stock market, help the Alphas run the pub. The investors are generally well-off, especially in this pack because it’s so old. Liam’s a whiz at the stock market, and I’m really good at managing properties. I used to let Paddy believe he was keeping the books for An Puca, but it was really me.” Her smile was wistful, and I squeezed her hand.

  “Anyway, you need to put this on the same chain as your bond pendant. I’ll help you do it now. I want everyone to see it before and right after the funeral so nobody will say a frigging word. Alphas get to choose the duos or triads in contention for the Alpha slot. The pack gets to vote, but the Alphas choose the candidates. And I want you and Liam to be the next Alphas of Mac Tire. I’m not sure who will be your competition, Colm and Deirdre will choose, but I want you and Liam. Paddy wanted it, too. That’s why he made this. He was gonna give it to you when you took the pack bond, but now I’m the one to give it to you.”

  Fee moved aside the black scarf I’d used to cover my bruised throat and gasped.

  “Jaysus,” she said, and burst into miserable tears.

  We held each other as t
ears soaked our cheeks.

  “Allerton took me and Liam aside to tell us the truth. Da really did try to murder you.” Fee stopped crying before I did, and her fingers gently explored my bruises. I held still and tried not to wince.

  “Da tried to recruit us both into the frigging Guardians. We said no. We thought it was just one of those issues the Councils keep themselves busy with. It seemed so damned far-fetched, the idea of coming out to the Others. We never thought it was serious, that it would ever get enough traction within the Councils to become possible. Da told Liam and me both about it when we became Alphas, and we both told him we didn’t want to be involved, to let the Councils work it out.”

  Jason had been right. Murphy had known about the conspiracy the entire time I’d known him. And never told me.

  I flashed back to a night at the Hartford safe house. Murphy’s lip bleeding from the fight he’d had with Colin Hunter. He’d told Jason he wouldn’t be his puppet. Always, there’d been subtext beneath their interactions. Murphy had always suspected Jason had an agenda, only he’d had a much better idea of what it was than I ever had.

  Murphy had sworn to me he hadn’t anything to do with the conspiracy except fight against it. Yes, that had been the truth, but only part of it. He fought the conspiracy within the movement, he was against those who harmed Pack, but all along he must have known Jason was part of the original movement, and he’d never breathed a word.

  He’d known his father was involved with the movement before Paddy ever had.

  All his cards had never been on the table. His or Jason’s. Meanwhile, I was an open book, floundering along, not trusted to know the full truth. Left behind when things got dangerously ugly.

  “I’m sorry, Stanzie. I don’t know what Da was thinking. This issue has gotten so much bigger, so out of control. Maybe if Liam and I had worked with him as he’d wanted, we could have kept him from doing the appalling things he’s done.”

  I wanted to tell her it was Sorcha’s liaison with Colin Hunter that pushed her father over the edge, but I couldn’t talk. Besides, that may have been the match that lit the fuse, but he’d always been capable of going there. If not Sorcha, something else would surely have provided him with the excuse.

  “Fiona Carmichael, what are you thinking of to be sitting on the cold, hard ground in your condition!”

  Fee stiffened at her mother’s voice and hastily rearranged the scarf around my throat.

  “She thinks it was a heart attack,” Fee whispered into my ear. “She has no idea of the truth.”

  And now I was being enlisted as a conspirator who would work to keep her in the dark.

  Rebellion tasted like dirt in my mouth, but I couldn’t talk so what would I do? Rip off my scarf and let Siobhan stare at my bruises in utter incomprehension? Fuck.

  “And you, Constance Newcastle, you ought to be ashamed of yourself,” lectured Siobhan. “Can you not see your Alpha’s pregnant and shouldn’t be sitting on the ground? You’re as selfish as Sorcha ever was, aren’t you? Instead of meeting your grieving Alpha at the door like any civilized, intelligent person would have done, you force her to find you sulking at the lakeshore. And not even a welcome hello to your own bond mate, let alone your Alpha. He’s lost his best friend and his father in the space of three days, and you’re wallowing in your own grief, shallow as it has to be. You didn’t know either of them, yet here you are crying. For shame!”

  Fee and I scrambled to our feet and faced her. I could feel the tears, wet on my face, and resisted the humiliated urge to wipe them away as if that could fix things.

  Siobhan’s own grief was stamped hard on her face, but her eyes were dry. She moved to Fee’s side, shoving me away in the process, and I nearly fell but caught myself against the back of a black boulder.

  “Ma,” remonstrated Fiona. “Didn’t Stanzie work hard to bring Declan Byrne to justice for Paddy? Hasn’t she been supporting Mac Tire all along with her efforts? And I know she didn’t know Paddy long, but they formed a bond, and her grief is as real as yours and mine.”

  “A bond?” Siobhan’s expression was contemptuous. “Paddy never could keep his dick in his pants, could he? Show him a pretty face and he was off. How you put up with it, I’ll never understand. He was blatant about it, rubbed your face in it.”

  “Siobhan!” Fee’s voice was icy. “You’ll not be lying to me and telling me Glenn never dipped his wick in another woman’s willing hole, will you now?”

  “No, but he was discreet. He didn’t come back and brag about it to me.”

  “Paddy didn’t brag. We compared notes,” Fee said, and Siobhan shuddered. “I was just as blatant as he was. You know the first thing you said when I told you I was pregnant was ‘Do you know who the father is?’ Don’t be a hypocrite, please.”

  “Well, what the hell are you looking at?” Siobhan yelled at me. “You go find your bond mate and tell him what a selfish, wicked bitch you are. He’ll forgive you. He always forgives the ones he loves. He lets them trample all over him. And he doesn’t fuck around. He’s faithful, that one, and if you’ve got to be shagging other men, Constance Newcastle, you might have at least tried to resist his best friend. Even Sorcha didn’t go there.”

  “Paddy wouldn’t touch her. She tried to seduce him, but he fucking hated her like poison.” Fee’s face was livid. “You stop harassing Stanzie. So what if she fucked Paddy. I hope she made it good for him and he enjoyed it. I’m so big I wasn’t much fun lately, and I hope he and Stanzie went at it for hours, I do!” Fee burst into tears again, and I wanted to crawl under the black boulder and never come out. This was fucking hell.

  “See what you’ve done, you pathetic bitch?” shouted Siobhan, and that was it, I couldn’t face either of them anymore. I ran.

  * * * *

  Murphy had his face buried in his hands as he sat on the edge of the bed in my room when I burst through the door.

  Startled, he jerked his head up and I froze. We stared at each other. His bond pendant gleamed from around his throat. It hung on the outside of his shirt, and I saw the small Celtic knot with a pearl at the center beside the peridot and pearl.

  My peridot knot was still somehow clenched in my fist.

  He had my bond pendant in his hands. He must have found it on the dresser where Jason had put it. One of the bruises on my throat was the perfect imprint of the silver chain and at the base of my neck, the clasp.

  I could tell by his expression he didn’t understand it was Jason who had removed it. He thought I had deliberately stopped wearing it.

  I’d never returned his phone call, and he hadn’t said he loved me back at the end of the one phone call we’d had. His father had tried to kill me with his bare hands. Jason must have told him about how I knew everything now, all the lies, even if most of them had been by omission.

  “Nine months ago I asked you to wait until your birthday. I told you if you still wanted to leave me, I’d let you go. You weren’t there with Allerton and Etain when we got here. I saw this first thing when I walked in. I guess this is your answer. I don’t blame you. You never wanted to bond with me in the first place, I know. And I’m sure you never wanted to love me. Maybe that’s gone, too, after all that’s happened the past few days.” At first he’d looked up at me, but now he dropped his gaze to my bond pendant clutched in his hand.

  “I trust you to make the right decision. You always do. You must think I’m such a frigging hypocrite. And I am. I know I am. Three days ago I told you to your face I wasn’t a vigilante, and what’s the first thing I did when I saw Grandfather Mick with a knife? I took it from him and stuck it in his heart and twisted the blade for good measure. Watched him die on the ground like a dog.” He looked up at me and his eyes were haunted house dark.

  “Allerton gave you the photographs of Declan Byrne, and I know what he told you. He said you could do anything you liked with them and he’d back you up, the same as he backed me after I murdered Mick Shaughnessy. If I’d had those photographs, n
o question, I would have taken Declan out in the back alley and beaten him to death. Maybe by myself, maybe I would have made it worse and brought someone like Colm with me. You could have shown me the photographs, let me kill Declan, but you accused him in front of the whole pack and used your Advisor authority to take him in to face a tribunal. The right thing.

  “I let Sorcha’s death twist me. You didn’t let yourself get warped after Grey and Elena. You crept away to lick your wounds, and you came back looking for happiness without them. And you always seemed to see the best in me, not the worst. I tried to hide the worst, but you found it. How could you not? Sorcha saw it right away, it’s why she couldn’t love me.

  “I’m not worth your time, Stanzie Newcastle. That’s why I left you in Boston.” He dropped his gaze again and tightened his fist around my bond pendant.

  “I always meant to kill Mick Shaughnessy. Paddy’s been holding me back for months. Trying to keep me away from him, trying to pay him off. Trying to protect us all. And I wouldn’t let him go to Allerton or Etain or my father. I wanted to do things my way. Like I always do. And now Paddy’s dead, and I’ve lost you as well.

  “I thought revenge would feel good. Only, it feels like shit. When you came into An Puca waving those photographs and doing it the right way, I knew I’d lost you. I knew it, and yet I still hoped.” He took a deep breath and lifted his chin.

  “I love you so much, but I threw it away, didn’t I? Revenge has cost me everything. My best friend, you, and it didn’t make anything better. The stupid thing is, I didn’t even think of Sorcha when I was killing him. I was thinking of Paddy and my sister—and you.

  “My best friend gets stabbed, and you and I, we both start running. I went after that fucking old bastard, and you went to him, to Paddy. You did the right thing, the way you always do. I traded my opportunity to say goodbye for an empty, meaningless…” He couldn’t finish because tears wouldn’t let him.

  He cried as if he had nothing left. Nothing at all.

  The paralysis that had me rooted to the floor broke, and I ran to him. He went unresisting into my arms, but didn’t hug me back at first. It wasn’t until he felt my lips in his hair that his arms stole around my waist.