AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She felt his breath in her ear and sensed that indescribable pressure attempting to force her to submit to him. “Explain this, please, this attempt to control me by, what? Your will? Explain the speed. And the smelling. And where that robe came from.”
She spun around and headed back to the sofa, flipping out the tails of her coat. He dipped his head to the space beside her, and she nodded. They sat side by side, his heat enveloping her once more.
“My wolf has yearned to be honest with you,” he began. “It went against his instincts to withhold the truth, and he knew, with his superior instincts, that you would be receptive to our history.”
“You speak of him as being separate, but that cannot be.”
“We are… It is as though we walk within each other always, no matter which skin we wear. When you saw us in the meadow, I was still aware of who you were, and he was very aware that, for once, he would lead the way.”
“But you cannot speak in your wolf form. Not in your human voice.”
“No. It is not possible. I can think human thoughts but not express them when I am in my wolfskin, as my wolf can think lupine thoughts and not express them when I am a man.” He looked down at his hands, and his ears turned red. “There are limitations and also taboos…”
“I take your meaning, say nothing more.” She turned scarlet and avoided his gaze strenuously. “I assume you read my cousin’s note and knew to come here?”
“Bates deserves the credit for discerning the code.” He explained what had transpired. “Marshall and the colts are taking your horses to Lowell Hall. We were all able to outpace you with our superior speed. And with excellent planning.” His tone betrayed the satisfaction that it was he who had planned excellently. He gestured to his dressing gown. “I was able to send this along with Marshall and bring it in with me.”
“You move with speed as a man as well. How is this so?”
The duke relaxed back into the curve of the divan and stretched an arm along the back of it. The sofa was so small that his fingers landed on several of the curls that had escaped Felicity’s windblown coiffure. They stroked so lightly, yet it thrilled her to her marrow. “It is primarily through our bodies that my wolf and I connect. Therefore, I have the speed and agility of the beast, along with myriad sensual amplifications.”
“Sensual?” She tipped her head back, and his fingers traced the back of her neck to her collar and back again.
“As pertains to the senses, of course.” It was unbelievable that his voice could go any lower; as it did, she perceived Alfie’s presence beneath his human skin. “My sight is impeccable. I can see great distances and clearly in the blackest of night. My hearing is beyond human comprehension—I can hear Jupiter grazing in the paddock, your heart beating, your blood racing through your veins. I require excessive amounts of touch, due to my wolf’s natural propensity for affection. My sense of smell is highly attuned, far exceeding human ability.” He leaned in and ran his nose briefly over her cheek, as he had done the night of the ball.
“Why did you inhale so deeply of my person at the ball?”
“My nose led me to you,” he said, his fingers moving to trace the shape of her jaw, the lobe of her ear. “I had been searching for five years, across the globe, for the fragrance that would reveal myvera amoristo me.”
“Your…”
“My true mate.” The timbre of his voice crashed through her, made her skin tingle, and she swore she heard her own heart beat despite her less-than-acute hearing.
“But I am notversipellis—it cannot be true.”
His hand rested fully on the side of her neck. “It would not have been imaginable until we willingly sought human mates. Those of us who honored the old ways had to compromise—your favorite word—because we saw that the bloodlines were corrupting. We had to do something to survive. The more we integrated with humanity, the more connected we became. As well, our foundation myth had a human element to it.”
“Mary Mossett said something about Romulus and Remus?”
“Mary Mossett is a fount of knowledge.”
“Mary Mossett is the only one who even came near to telling me the truth.”
The duke—Alfred—lightly squeezed her neck. This was another apology, she sensed. “In the human myth, the twin brothers were royalty whose existence threatened the current king. They were abandoned by the river Tiber but saved by a she-wolf who took them to the cave Lupercal and suckled them to health.”
“Lupercalia.”
“One of our highest feast days. It was also said Romulus would one day kill Remus and become the founder of Rome. This is not the true story, for the twins were a threat not only due to their high birth but also because they wereversipelles. What we celebrate on the day of Lupercalia is that they both found theirvera amorum, and thus assured the continuance of our race. They set the course for true mating, from the heart and soul, that all good-thinking Alphas follow.”
“And if this course is not followed?”
“Then, if you are my parents, for example, you marry for position and wealth and out of prejudice. They were not sympathetic to what they perceived as the dilution of the race and did not allow the mixing of human and wolf. They were not true mates, yet they chose to present themselves asvera amorum. The lie angered the Goddess, who laid a curse upon the fruitfulness of the Lowell Pack. This trickled down to the rest of the species that served us, and as a result, my sister was the last child born to this pack.”
“That is why there are no children.”
“Once their lie was discovered, the curse took hold for the first time in the long history of lupine affairs and decreed that, until there is a true mating of the Alpha, then none of the matings that had gone before would bear fruit, and those who have not mated, cannot.” He turned her face to his. She saw Alfie shining through his gaze, his irises so icy a blue as to be bright white. “Unless I bond with myvera amoris, the pack will die out over time, never to grace the earth again. It will be as though we never existed. Unless you take me to mate.”
Felicity gasped. “That is far too much responsibility, Alfred.”
