Beneath the Skin

by Amy Lee Burgess

  The blood slammed to Murphy’s cheeks. He’d shaved this morning and his skin was

  smooth. I remembered the feel of his beard beneath my fingers and saw Rudi’s body convulsing.

  For a moment, I thought I might be sick.

  “I’m almost tempted to do this so I can tell you I told you so, you little...” Murphy stopped himself from insulting her. Just. But Ducharme only laughed.

  “Almost? That’s what I thought. Constance, come with me, I’ll put you to work right now. I have so many things that need doing, you understand.”

  “I didn’t say no yet, goddamnit,” growled Murphy.

  I really thought I was going to throw up. My stomach did hideous things that made me wish the bathroom was a lot closer.

  “Do I get a say in any of this? At all?” I wondered. I felt the sick sweat on my face but didn’t wipe it away. I was afraid to move too much.

  “Are you going to confess?” Ducharme’s voice was saccharine sweet.

  “I can’t confess to something I didn’t do. I meant do I get a choice between being your servant or his bond mate?”

  “Bien sûr.” She shrugged. “Of course.”

  “You want to be her servant? Indefinitely? Which could mean for the rest of your

  goddamned life, Constance.” Murphy spoke before I could, because he knew what I was going to say.

  “No,” I answered him. “I want to go home. But I guess that’s not an option at this point.

  Walk away, Murphy. This isn’t your fight. Just go away now while you can. I won’t blame you.”

  He headed for the door and I waited for him to pass through it. Sweat trickled down the back of my neck and I hoped he had the time to shut the door before I puked. I also hoped Ducharme didn’t move, because I thought I had a good shot at barfing all over her Christian Louboutins if she would just stand still.

  He opened the door and was halfway through before he slammed it shut and beat a fist against it in impotent rage. “Everything that I know as a man, as Pack, tells me you didn’t do it, Constance.” His voice was barely above a whisper and he didn’t turn around. He beat his fist against the door again, but not as hard as the first time.

  “I didn’t.” I squeezed my eyes shut and tried so hard not to be sick. The fire burned so high it made the room sweltering. Oh, for an open window. For a breeze. For something cool.

  “Bond with me.” He turned around, his eyes very dark. “Don’t let her win. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “You don’t even know what you’re saying. You don’t know me and I don’t know you.

  We’ll make a travesty of what bond mates are supposed to stand for. Get out, Murphy. Fuck you.” I was perilously close to crying, but I was even closer to puking. I didn’t want him to see me doing either.

  “Fuck you, Constance. Don’t do this!” His voice was harsh. “She’ll make you into her dog. You want to be her dog? You want to wash her car and make her bed and shine her fucking shoes every day for the rest of your life just because you don’t know me? That is a lie, because you know me at least well enough to know I can offer you a much better alternative than she can.

  And that I don’t look down on you like you’re beneath me, not as good as me, like she does. She thinks she’s better than you are, and she’ll make you lick her boots to prove it. Is that really what you want? Just because you were unlucky enough to be with that poor bastard when he died?”

  “There was nothing wrong with Rudi. He shouldn’t have died. Doesn’t that make you

  even the least bit suspicious?” I was afraid to swallow the spit gathering in my mouth, but I would have to in a moment or risk drooling all over the damn carpet. This was hell. I was in hell.

  “It makes me pissed off, that’s what it makes me. I saw him with you. Laughing,

  enjoying himself. I thought he was just someone to fuck to you, and that what’s you were to him, but it was more than that, wasn’t it? You were going to bond with him and you’ll lick her boots for penance for that, won’t you? In his memory, because you couldn’t save him. Well, that’s a fucking bloody awful thing to do to a man’s memory, Constance. The worst insult you could offer the poor bastard. Is that what you want to do? Insult the man, debase his memory, live a life of misery just because he’s dead? If that’s what you want, woman, you do it, but fuck you. I thought you had more guts than that, but maybe I’m wrong.”

  “I don’t need you to save me. I don’t need anybody to save me,” I choked out then I was crying and I cursed myself for that. I’d rather have puked.

  “I’m not trying to save you. Just give you a chance to save yourself. That’s all. If you don’t want it, to hell with you.”

  I didn’t know what to do. The idea of spending the rest of my life being ordered about by Celine Ducharme was unendurable. But bonding with Murphy was hard to imagine. I didn’t know him. He reacted against Councilor Ducharme’s arrogance, but he might regret his offer to bond with me, and then where would we be?

  For what seemed forever but was probably only a few seconds, I wavered between my

  two choices. Neither appealed, but one was definitely worse than the other.

  Murphy opened the door again but closed it when I said, “I don’t want to lick her boots. I don’t want to do penance for something I didn’t do. I’m not a martyr, damn you. You’re serious?

  You’ll bond with me? For real?”

  I swiped at my eyes with the back of my hand, smudging my mascara all to hell, but I was beyond caring, even if I did look like sobbing raccoon.

  “For real,” he said. He was pissed off at all of us, and we cringed under his withering glare. At least I did.

  “Okay.” One little word put my life on a collision course with Liam Murphy’s. I could not possibly be Councilor Ducharme’s dog. Not in this lifetime, not in a thousand other lifetimes.

  I might not have murdered Rudi, but I damn sure would have been guilty of at least her attempted murder. Actual murder if I got lucky enough which, knowing me, I wouldn’t.

  Chapter 5

  The bonding ceremony always took place the night before the last evening of the Great Gathering.

  After I’d agreed to bond with him, the bastard had disappeared on me, and so we’d had no chance to discuss anything between then and the ceremony. I think he did it on purpose, because he thought if we spent any actual time together one or the both of us would change our minds.

  Grey and I had been bonded at a Regional. I tried not to contrast that ceremony, not to mention the one we’d had with Elena, to this one.

  Like everything else, it took place in the grand ballroom. I found it disconcerting that I could compartmentalize the fact that Rudi had died in this room, and yet, I could still eat there three times a day and now bond with someone. I tended to avoid the corner of the room where Rudi had died--everyone did--but we still spent a considerable amount of time there.

  I suppose you couldn’t rearrange an event for hundreds of people just because someone had inconveniently died in your biggest event space.

  It was sunset, so I could look out the windows at the splashing fountains and not recoil in sun-blinded agony. I stood for a long time and gazed out at the water and sky. The water was a pale blue and the November sky was like an Impressionist painting of soft pastels--peaches, pinks, purples and a slight streak of palest orange. The clouds had formed in a puffed mass of white. Huge and majestic, like floating islands, and the sunlight spun them into cotton candy pink and lemon yellow.

  They drifted across the sky in a lazy, unspecific fashion. A flock of geese fanned out in a V formation, honking so loudly I heard them through the glass. It was so beautiful I could barely breathe. I wished I had someone next to me to share the moment but I was alone.

  The tables were set up for a party, with gold linen, the chairs swathed in purple fabric.

  The head table was set up for the Council who oversaw everything, and there were also tables for those who were bonding
and their guests. The ceremony was not open to everyone--only to those who were bonding and their pack members.

  It galled me to no end that because Councilor Ducharme was the highest-ranking

  Councilor at the Gathering she would be the one to perform the ceremony. But then this was a farce, anyway.

  I wasn’t allowed to go back to Paris, so at first I resigned myself to wearing jeans and a sweater. I’d done my hair and makeup with the other women in one of the fancy changing rooms, and they’d all stared at me, because there they were draped in beautiful gowns of every conceivable color and I had on a pair of pretty dirty jeans and a dispirited sweater. But my shoes were nice.

  “Don’t you have a dress?”

  I looked up in the mirror and saw a young woman with strawberry blond hair and pale freckles sprinkled across her face staring at me with a most solemn expression.

  “No,” I said, but I smiled so she wouldn’t think I was about to break down into tears, which I was, but not because I didn’t have a dress.

  “I brought two because I wasn’t sure which one I wanted. Do you want to try on the one I didn’t choose? I think we’re about the same size.” She didn’t even smile.

  I agreed to try on the dress, since I thought maybe if I did she’d stop looking like the world was going to end because I contemplated being bonded in a pair of Levi’s.

  The black dress was deceptively simple: sleeveless, V-neck, empire waist with one pleated ruffle from the waist to the hem that almost blended into the rest of the dress.

  It fit and what was better it went with my shoes--a pair of black mesh pumps with a leopard print accent on toe and heel.

  “I’m Constance.” I introduced myself as I turned critically in front of the mirror, assessing whether or not the dress was too tight or just right.

  “Sarah,” she whispered, staring at me. Her dress was also black--also simple--only longer with no ruffle and a side slit along the thigh. Her shoes could have been more imaginative, just basic black pumps, but they were expensive.

  “Who are you bonding with?” she asked.

  I fingered the pleated ruffle and decided I quite liked the dress, especially since it showcased my shoes, which had been rather hidden beneath my jeans. “His name’s Murphy.

  Liam Murphy.” I had been going to wear my hair down, but I experimented with an updo, twisting it into a knot I held in place with one hand.

  Sarah shrugged. “I don’t know him.”

  Not surprising, but I wondered if that would be a blow to the man’s ego to think someone hadn’t even heard of him. He was front table material, after all.

  Her accent was Australian like the couple with the twins at my table the first night.

  Maybe they were from the same pack.

  Of course she wasn’t wearing her name tag, not on her bonding dress.

  “Mine’s name is Lucas. Lucas Potter.”

  “Is he nice?” I asked, because she kept staring at me, obviously wanting something, but I was damned if I could figure it out. She smelled healthy, but not happy. She was certainly not a delirious giggler like three quarters of the room seemed to be.

  “Not very,” she admitted with an admirable candidness.

  “Then why bond with him?” It fascinated me that somebody who had a choice would

  elect to bond with someone who wasn’t very nice.

  “My mum’s making me. His dad. Our packs are combining. We’re going to be the new

  Alphas and be the symbolic bridge.” Her voice swooped with derision, and just for a split second, tears stood out in her eyes.

  “On your birthday dump him. Sever the ties. Nobody can stop you,” I suggested, and she gave me a grateful look and almost smiled.

  “Mum says maybe it won’t be so bad. But I don’t like him. He’s not very nice to the grandmothers and grandfathers, and that’s never a good sign. He doesn’t like kids, either, but that’s fine with me. I don’t want his kid. I hope I don’t get pregnant.”

  “Sever the ties on your birthday. Go to every Regional you can get your ass to and find somebody else. Leave your pack.” I said but in a low voice, because I didn’t want everyone in the room to overhear, especially the one I suspected was her mother. She had the same strawberry blond hair and their scents were closely aligned. She looked as if she were thinking about coming over to join the conversation. I wished Sarah would smile, but she didn’t have anything to smile about.

  “Mum says you’re the one with that bloke who died before the Great Hunt. Was that

  you?” Sarah, like most Australians, was blunt.

  “Yeah.” I sat at the vanity table and waited for her to ask for her dress back, or at least walk away in horror. I was bad luck, and bad luck was like stepping in shit. It stuck.

  Instead, she picked up a brush and brushed my hair.

  “I gotta keep my hands busy, or I’ll strangle my mum, I swear,” she told me, her green eyes meeting my blue ones in the mirror.

  She did a good job on my hair, pulling it up and pinning it in place, leaving some loose to frame my face. She did my makeup too before I did hers and her mother eventually joined us but we barely talked and, when we did, it wasn’t about how unhappy we were.

  Sarah introduced me as “Constance, you know, Mum, the one who was with that bloke

  who died before the Great Hunt. The German one.”

  You have to like Australians.

  Four women and three men gathered to bond at the ceremony. Sarah and I were forming

  duos, the others a triad.

  We ranged in a long row together. We faced the Councilors who stood before the head table while our packs were behind us.

  The room was lit by candlelight and by the fountains outside the window.

  Instrumental New Age music, soft and evocative, played and I smelled food. There would be a feast after the ceremony.

  Murphy had managed to get a suit--a black Armani with a purple tie to add a spicy dash of color. He was actually very handsome, more handsome maybe than Grey had been, but it had never been Grey’s looks that had really attracted me--it had been his essence and his heart.

  I didn’t know Murphy’s heart and I’d never experienced his essence. Maybe tonight, in bed, he would reveal that part of himself to me, but I didn’t know.

  We each held a small box. I’d picked mine out earlier. Lots of people brought boxes for sale to Gatherings, because it’s a tradition to give your bond mate a box with the pendant he or she would wear after the ceremony. Boxes were made of wood or stone or papier-mâché. Once someone had boxes for sale made of matchsticks painted in bright colors.

  The one I’d chosen for Murphy was made of tiny polished shells glued onto a small

  cardboard box. The shells were brown and cream and speckled. It had caught my eye among the other boxes made of wood. It had cost thirty euros, which wasn’t much. Sometimes people would commission them, decorating them with jewels and gold and silver. Then they’d be expensive.

  I sneaked a look at the box he held. It was metal. Pewter I think. I’d always admired pewter boxes. They were so old-fashioned, and they reminded me of the narrow streets of Boston. My birth pack was from a small town in Massachusetts. It was still there, but of course for the two years after Grey and Elena’s deaths I had been isolated from them. My mother and father belonged to that pack, but we weren’t close anymore. An investigation by the Great Council, even if you’re ultimately cleared, doesn’t do relationships much good and we had not been on great terms before that.

  No one in my birth pack had come to this Gathering. It wasn’t surprising. Mayflower, my birth pack didn’t like to mix much. They were very self-contained.

  Murphy and I stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the Council, but we didn’t look at each other.

  Sarah didn’t look at her bond mate, Lucas, either. She stood beside me and I saw her keep her gaze fixed on the Councilor in front of her. Lucas stared at her, though, in a most possessive fashion. I smelled
his greed and stubbornness. I didn’t like what I smelled--at all.

  On the other side of Murphy were the two women and one man making a triad. The man

  and his original bond mate were Belgian. The third woman was French. She was extraordinarily pretty and dressed in a burnt-orange gown. All three of them glowed with happiness. They were a good match.

  The shells glued to Murphy’s box were smooth against my skin. I ran my fingertips along their curling edges and wondered if he’d like the box, or even give a shit in the first place.

  I knew my pewter box would be cold and not precisely smooth to the touch. There would be tiny bumps, small imperfections where the metal had cooled. I couldn’t tell if the box was square or rectangular, because of the way he held it. I knew it wasn’t round, nor, thank god, heart-shaped.

  The shell box was shaped like a treasure chest with a domed lid. I wondered if I shouldn’t have chosen a plain wooden box with maybe a few decorative insets of different types of wood.

  Maybe this one was too distinctive, too different. I wished I knew Murphy better but I didn’t, of course, and I tried to be positive. Maybe in time we’d be a good match. Maybe we would.

  Councilor Ducharme performed most of the ceremony in French and I followed along

  pretty well. Murphy had no problem, of course, nor did the triad, but Lucas scowled the entire time, pouting, and Sarah bowed her head and appeared to go somewhere inside herself.

  If I’d been the one performing the ceremony when it came time for each of us to affirm we were doing this of our own freewill, I would have challenged Sarah. But Ducharme didn’t.

  She barely deigned to do that part in English.

  For the ceremony she wore her Councilor’s robe--earth brown with a golden lining.

  Underneath it I saw she wore a dark brown dress, and I thought once she took off the robe she might look like a wafer-thin walking chocolate bar with blond hair.

  The entire time she interacted with me and Murphy, she had a most insincere smile. But then so did we.

  Murphy and I had to face each other to present the boxes. This was the part of the