Lyall set down his offering of shortbread and stood, looking down on Biffy. The blue dressing gown was quite fetching. This Alpha – my Alpha – has excellent taste. At least I need not worry on that score anymore.
Does he want to be left alone? Lyall hadn’t yet fully matched to his new Alpha’s moods.
He’d known Biffy before metamorphosis, young and bright and free of cares except for the wishes of his vampire master. At that time, Lyall could have predicted drone Biffy’s wants. His curious bright interest in the world and its machinations. He’d wanted very little then.
He’d known Biffy directly after, newly metamorphosed, struggling to learn to become what he’d never wanted, to accept his new afterlife. At that time too, Lyall could have anticipated werewolf Biffy’s needs. Sometimes, he had. Sometimes, anticipation, need, and want had all been the same thing.
But he didn’t know Alpha Biffy – this mature hunter with a pack at his back. So sure of his wolf and yet not of his command. In control, but only when he was not paying attention, questioning himself the rest of the time. So comfortable in his fur and fighting, and yet shifting and twitchy in a beautiful blue dressing gown after dealing out death.
Lyall saw nothing for it but the direct approach. One that Biffy, no doubt, still loathed, but which Lyall had come to understand had its place in werewolf dynamics, if not in polite society.
“Do you wish to talk about it, Alpha?” From what Lyall knew of Biffy before surviving the bite, killing of this kind was outside his purview. He wasn’t a soldier and had never trained as one, even after becoming werewolf. He’d served his civic duty to the Crown as a newly minted pup in the Home Office, practicing espionage, not in the front lines, not even in the shadows as an assassin.
Biffy sipped his tea. “Blood is so messy. And the iron taste of immortality is never pleasant.”
“No,” agreed Lyall. “No, it’s not, is it?”
Biffy nodded for Lyall to sit.
Lyall settled near enough to be a reassurance and a comfort, but not so close as to be thought intruding – any more than he already was.
Biffy looked into his tea for a long moment, as if there, in the leaf, were all the answers.
“Lyall, would you tell me something of pack protocol, without taking insult? I am afraid the question may be indelicate.”
Lyall hid his surprise with consummate skill and hedged his answer. “I’m no howler, so I may not know the answer you seek. I could summon one to visit us, if it were a matter of origin and specifics.”
“But you are old enough to know most of the right way of things.”
“Yes. I’m old enough.” Lyall didn’t know why, but he held his breath.
Biffy winced, looking away from tea and into fire. His blue eyes were tinted yellow by the shifting flames – a hint at the wolf within. “Is it wrong, what we did, you and I, before you left?”
Of all the things to be asked. “By whose standards?”
Biffy gave a humorless smile. “Oh, I do not mean morally or socially. I know what they think. I mean by pack protocols. Are like-minded gentleman werewolves not supposed to share intimacy?” He chose his words with exacting care.
Lyall tried not to flinch or blush, keeping his breathing slow and relaxed. He tried not to be excited by this line of inquiry. He tried not to want the reasons behind it. “Nothing carnal is held sacred that I know of. It’s not common, but it’s not forbidden, either. Werewolves, like vampires, have always been less bound by the limits humans will pose on their own desires. Within reason, of course. Both parties should be agreeable and willing, and capable of undertaking an informed decision. I always felt we were all such things, back then.”
“Yes.” Biffy smiled at him. “And perhaps more.”
Lyall nodded. On his part, certainly more. “Yes.”
“So, now that I am your Alpha in truth? Now it is forbidden? It would be considered taking advantage of my position, perhaps?”
Lyall blinked, startled. Why would he think that? Alpha was a feeling, a necessity, a control, not exactly a position of authority so much as a state of existence. There was no abuse to the power, not in a good Alpha. And Biffy was a good one, for all he questioned himself.
Is this what I have wrought? This doubt in him? When I returned with all my need not to push, not to impose, not to rely upon what we once had? Was I damaging him? Biffy clearly required some form of reassurance. So, like any good Beta, Lyall sacrificed his own pride for that of his Alpha.
“No. Oh, no. I thought you would not want me back like that. I thought that I was comfort then, nothing more.”
Biffy flinched and looked, at last, at him. “I let you leave, thinking so little of us? Thinking that?”
“I left thinking that. My choice. You had so much ahead of you, so much to learn. So much changing. I thought twenty years was a long time, and it would be easy if I returned to you without expectations.”
Biffy turned towards Lyall fully, angling his body, reaching out with his fine, strong hands. He trailed three fingers down the side of Lyall’s cheek, as if learning the feel of the soft beard that hadn’t been there before. “It was more than comfort.”
Biffy smelled of sandalwood and Bond Street pomade, and a little of blood and battle and the forests that had once, eons ago, lined the banks of the Thames. Wolf and man, wild and civilized in equal measure. He smelled of home, and safety, and guidance, and need.
My Alpha. Mine.
Lyall nodded, and opened himself to his Alpha. To his lover. “It was more than comfort for me as well.”
*
Biffy let the words be enough. Coating him with joy and gratitude.
Then Lyall slid in against him – quiet and warm and present. This part was so achingly familiar, it almost hurt him to allow it in again. Even though he’d been waiting so long with only the thought of this moment to hope for.
“Twenty years, Lyall.” He said it on an exhale, not so much accusation as plea.
“I told you it would take time.”
“Twenty years!” He knew Lyall would sense the question in the accusation.
But it was not in his Beta’s nature to be confrontational. “Lady Kingair is a great responsibility for a Beta. She took much of my attention. Plus, there was a war to fight.”
Biffy plucked at a loose thread in the divan. “I wouldn’t have thought her your type.”
“I don’t know. I’ve always liked my women a little gruff and brash, and my men suave and broken.”
Biffy winced. “And did you and she—?”
“No. Never.”
Biffy really wanted to ask for further details and really didn’t want to ask. Twenty years was a long time for a werewolf to be celibate. They were noted for a healthy appetite in all things. Surely, there must have been someone. A small voice reminded Biffy that he himself hadn’t partaken. Which was embarrassing, in its way.
Well, he said to himself, trying to justify decades of celibacy, I had a lot to do. I had to become an Alpha. I had to... Excuses. I had to wait. I wanted to wait. But Lyall didn’t need to know that. And Biffy didn’t want to know if Lyall had also waited. Because he wasn’t sure which would be worse – that he had or that he had not.
Saying nothing wasn’t correct either. “There’s been no one for me.”
Against him, Lyall went perfectly still.
Biffy soldiered on. “I had to learn a great deal. To be a werewolf. An Alpha. To lead pack. To cry challenge and to win.”
“No one? For twenty years?”
“I had to heal too, from loss.”
Lyall nodded. “Your family. Lord Akeldama. The other immortality that you gave up for this one.”
“Yes, that too.”
“Too?”
“Twenty years. I have waited long enough.”