Page 113 of A Lady’s Guide to Werewolves

Chapter Twenty-Six

Aidan might not have heard the sparrow inside her head, but he caught her reaction straightaway. He was stalking beside her before she said a word, toward the arched doors leading into the nave and the apse. She felt rather than saw wolves moving around them, the flicker of a candle here, a shadow at the window there.

They hurried to the apse at the end, closed off with carved wooden screens. Simon waited behind, clearly agitated. There was broken glass at his feet, blood on his hands.

“Simon!” Sorcha said. “Did you see him? Is he here?” She glanced around wildly, not sure what she expected to find. Simon did not seem injured—he was not even favoring his bad ankle overmuch.

“Sorcha,” Aidan said softly, “step away.”

Something was very wrong. Had the Collector escaped? Had he done something to Simon?

But no. No, that wasn’t it. The bait had worked. The trap had been sprung.

And it had caught Simon.

And not by accident.

Sorcha gaped at him even as Aidan moved to shield her, his chest rumbling with a warning growl.

Simon straightened and turned. Expressions crossed his delicate features: surprise, concern, fury, as if he could not choose. His eyes landed on Sorcha. Something like regret flashed there, but not enough. Not nearly enough. He snarled, teeth lengthening.

But when he went to move, light shimmered from the ground, like green glass underwater. It tightened into a circle, smelling of seaweed and salt. He snarled again, confused. In pain.

“There’s nowhere to go,” Aidan said. “There’s kelpie hair under the floor there, at your feet. You’re caught.”

Sorcha was still trying to understand what she was seeing.

Simon paced backward, the Ossory tooth in his hand, bleeding from punching through the cabinet glass. He definitely wasn’t limping. “You were never really injured, were you?” Sorcha asked.

“I was,” he said. “You’d never have taken me with you if I wasn’t.” He shrugged. “But I heal quickly.”

He had allowed himself to be captured.

By her.

By the Red Cloak.

Sorcha shook her head. “I don’t understand.” But she did understand, and betrayal and sorrow and anger were warring inside her. He had slept in her house. She had yelled at his father. Did Lord Winterwell know who his son truly was? The way Simon had known who she was?

“You pushed the chimney stacks. You set that fire. And the fucking Nightmare,” Aidan seethed.

Simon did not look particularly proud about it, but nor did he look particularly remorseful. “Just warnings. Believe me, it could have been much worse. You should have heeded them, Sorcha,” he added, annoyed. Annoyed that she had not heeded him? Or that she was not more grateful he had not actually murdered her? “I was trying to help you.”

She thought back to Hecuba saying he paced the hall outside her bedroom, remembered the ice on her doorknob. The iron nails scattered in random places to confuse Granny. How many close calls had there actually been?

“But why?” Sorcha asked.

Simon looked away.

“Why, Simon?”

“You’ve met my parents. Always on about strength and courage. And my brother. But now I’m the one people will talk about.”

“I don’t give a shit about your motives. You tried to hurt her,” Aidan said evenly, infinitely more frightening than any growl or snarl. “You tried to kill her.”

He seemed to grow taller, wider, stronger.

And that was before he shifted into a giant gray wolf with golden eyes.