“Branson is much bigger.”
I sigh and roll my eyes. “You’ve never seen Lord Augustus, Lucien.”
“I don’t need to.” He looks down his nose matter of factly. “I know Branson could kick his ass if he wanted to.”
I try not to laugh. Newly mated couples are completely ridiculous. “Let’s put ass-kicking on hold for now. We can always revisit the idea if we need to—and Branson can bring Wilder along with him, if he does end up making a trip out here.”
Lucien opens his mouth to tell me Branson doesn’t need Wilder’s help kicking Lord Augustus’s ass, but I cut him off by raising my hand to shush him. He takes the hint and says, “Okay, so what’s weird about this guy?”
“It’s the strangest thing.” I lean in a little closer to my screen and lower my voice to a whisper. “He doesn’t have a scent.”
Lucien’s nose crinkles. “What do you mean? Like, a faint scent, or a scent you don’t like?”
“No, I mean, he doesn’t haveanyscent at all. He doesn’t smell like an alpha, or even a person, really. He just…kind of smells like plastic.”
“Oh my Gawd.” Lucien’s jaw drops and his mouth morphs into a massiveyikes. “That’s fucking horrendous.”
He wastes no time dissecting the information in a hundred different ways, so much so that after a while, he starts looking normal again. His face looks like it belongs to my Lulu. My friend. My old and best friend.
“Thank you for telling me this, Jens,” he says when it’s time for me to go. “I miss you so much, and I promise I’m going to try my best not to tell Branson anything you’ve said.”
One and a half minutes later, a message pops up on my phone. It’s Lucien.
Branson says hewillkick that stuck-up alpha’s ass if he touches you.
Over the next half hour or so, more and more messages pop up, evidently in response to the detailed play-by-play Lucien is giving Branson of our conversation. To my surprise, I find myself smiling a little harder each time a message is delivered.
It’s been a long time since I’ve felt connected to Lucien and Branson like this, and it feels good. It’s different from the way it was before, but at least it feels like they care. Like they miss me and still love me.
I settle back into work with a little spring in my step. Generally, I break my workday into two. I focus on cataloging and organizing in the morning, and in the afternoon, I treat myself to a little book restoration. It’s painstaking work, but I absolutely love it, and this afternoon, I’m going to start on bringing a water-damaged copy ofThe Hound of the Baskervillesback to life. Can’t wait.
It’s an awful, wind-howling, lightning-flashing kind of night. I had dinner on my own, as usual, and while I didn’t see Lord Augustus leave the property, it feels like I’m alone in the house. The roof is creaking from the gale, and the old bones, the old soul, of the property are groaning from the strain of the bad weather.
I feel my solitude like a high-pitched hum I don’t like.
I feel something else too. Another kind of hum. One that vibrates lower down. This hum has been with me for as long as I can remember. This hum, I do like, despite the fact that it makes no sense at all.
I’ve drawn the curtains in my rooms and stoked the fire, but it’s done nothing to shut the night out. The low hum grows louder, sending tiny vibrations up my spine. It gets so loud that I find myself unable to stay still.
For the first time since I got here, I venture out of my rooms in the middle of the night. My heart pounds as I do it, but I don’t mind it. It might even be why I do things like this.
The house is eerily quiet and clashingly loud. There isn’t another heartbeat to be heard, yet the building is alive with the sounds of discontent. The wind howls and howls, whistling through walls as I walk. I flick lights on as I go, finding roomsI haven’t been in before, entering with a quake in my step. The quake is like the low hum. It doesn’t make sense for me to like it. I shouldn’t, and I don’t know how to explain what I like about it, other than to say I like it.
The first room I enter is a small den. The walls are deep red and bedecked with art. Marble, tapestries, and sumptuous velvet sofas beg me to touch them. Long shadows reach out to me, cranking the volume of the low hum up considerably as I check that the windows are locked before beating a path back to the hallway.
I pass several closed doors. I don’t have the courage required to open a closed door, but I do barely have what it takes to touch my fingertips to one of the door handles.
The wrought iron is cool to the touch.
The wrongness of being here, of doing this, of snooping where I don’t belong, delivers a heady frisson of fear.
It’s a lot, but not enough. Not nearly as much as I want. It’s a sliver.
Just enough to make me shiver.
Just enough fear to make me stiffen.
I keep walking, turning on hall lights, until I find another door that’s ajar. I nudge the door with my foot, not with my hand, as though that makes what I’m doing better. It swings open to reveal a room that might as well havealphastamped into the brickwork.
