Archive of Our Own

“The house likes you.”

Leah, not often prone to moments of amateur dramatics, swiveled her head around in amazement, as if trying to work out where this sudden voice had come from, when she knew for certain that Bran had been standing in the doorway, watching her, for some time.

But since her husband had not deigned to speak to her since this morning when he had thanked her brusquely for breakfast and then disappeared into the second bedroom, again, some dramatics were called for.

Bran grumbled. “Very amusing,” he said, leaving the room and not explaining his statement any further. “I shall get us take out from the pub for dinner.”

Unimpressed, she stared daggers at his receding back, the book she had been attempting to read forgotten on her lap. She hadn’t exactly expected this trip to be one of moonbeams and rainbows – nothing about her marriage had ever been thus – but the courtesy her husband had typically treated her with had evaporated as soon as they had landed in his homeland. Grunts and monosyllables had been his chosen method of communication. Even his lovemaking had rather left something to be desired – technically excellent but perfunctory. Like a chore that needed to be ticked off a list.

She reached for her cell phone. The signal had been spotty, to say the least, but in this corner room, where weak Welsh light attempted to break through the gloom, she sometimes got a bar or two. She sent a quick message to Anna, Take out again.

Being a modern girl, Anna was never far from her phone, so her response was nearly immediate. The angry red emoji, followed by a practical suggestion, Go with him?

Leah heard the side door open and she tossed aside her book, embracing this idea. “Wait for me. I want to come,” she called. Anna was right, of course. She was so used to taking her cues from Bran that when he had declined to invite her each evening, she had not pushed. She should have done.

Navigating this newness was proving a challenge.

Her husband, who had not lost manners enough to ignore her response, was waiting at the door. He was not pleased, the ends of his mouth turned down, but then that was par for the course these days.

She pushed her socked feet into the waterproof boots and, though Bran had forgone his in lieu of a zipped-up sweater, put on her waterproof, zipping it up to her neck and pulling the hood over her hair. It was raining.

Again, par for the course.

*

As it happened, Leah had not noticed that there had been something wrong with Bran for several weeks. Absorbed with her own grief, her own emotional challenges, Bran’s short-temperedness and tendency to get lost in thought had felt in keeping with her own mood. The mating bond laid open between them now, fraught, a live wire. Just generally very new and confusing and unpleasant. Again, she thought that was a reflection of both of their mindsets and not anything to be surprised at.

Time passed, as it always did. Her wounds eased into something manageable. Just before the full moon ceremony, they held a small funeral for her children – Anna’s idea, naturally – and though she had not shed a tear, it had felt cathartic to lay them to rest in a way that her Christian upbringing had taught her.

But whilst Leah might have begun to reach that new normality she had sought, Bran’s mood did not change. Indeed, if anything it grew worse. He snapped at all and sundry, the pack, his son, his daughter-in-law. He was not interested in his new grandchild. Only Leah was vaguely excused and only, she suspected, because of her recent circumstances and because of his – perplexingly less recent – change in feelings.  

Eventually, after yet another day when the pack was very obviously absent from the great house, avoiding their irascible leader, Leah approached him. She brought cake, as her husband had a sweet tooth and was more malleable when it was satisfied. Beyond that she did not look to manipulate him further and spoke plainly, “What is it? Why are you so prickly? It’s not her, is it?”

Bran, forkful of frosting and sponge in his mouth, glanced at her. “Who is ‘her’?” he asked, swallowing. The near permanent frown line down the center of his forehead smoothed momentarily.

He truly did not know. His mind – what she had access to – was ruffled with confusion. Leah sighed. This response was more of a balm than he knew. “Never mind. What is wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” he lied, taking another stab at cake. Bran’s bottom lip, slightly fuller than the top, stuck out. He did not often look childish, to her, because he was so jam-packed with power, but this was close.

Leah waited, watching him eat. Behind him through the window, the sun was setting through the trees, rays of red-tinged gold and orange catching the raindrops on the long grass of their back yard. She had not been attentive that summer. Things were overgrown and in need of cutting back. It was only a vague bother to her. She was less bothered by many things than she used to be.

Bran finished his cake. He put the plate down. She felt the push, push of his mind. He wanted her to leave his office.

She settled further into his couch and crossed her arms.

He huffed. “Nothing is wrong. It’s been a difficult few,” Bran stumbled, almost imperceptibly, “months.”

Months. More than half a year, since she had started singing. Bran, closest to her in all senses, had been the first to notice. Maybe the only to observe her singing, her distraction. It was only in the last handful of weeks that Leah had felt a change herself, missing time, finding herself lost in fuzzy memories. That tug in her belly, pulling her west.

She shivered and pushed this memory aside. It had been a near thing.

“That may be so,” Leah acknowledged, scrutinizing the fireplace rather than him. “But there is something else. Some—” She chewed on it, trying to understand what she felt. “Some pressure,” she settled upon. “On you.”

Leah was sure, had she had the facility of the mating bond for the decades she should have, she would have been better able to explain herself. Better able to command it. But she hadn’t and didn’t and instead she had only nebulous thoughts and feelings. Which was frustrating to the extreme because with Bran explaining herself aptly was paramount. Stupid people couldn’t communicate properly. He despised stupid people.

Her mood lowered.

Bran chased a crumb with his fork, his eyes shuttered. A long minute passed. Then another. He gave in, thank God, “Someone, or something, is encroaching on my territory.”

“That… that is outrageous,” she said, relieved with this prosaic explanation but also baffled.

“Yes.” Her husband put the plate aside and rubbed his hands on his knees, the permanent callouses on his fingers that had travelled with him beyond the Change rasping against denim. His eyes drifted to the fireplace, where the fire burned low. His gaze became distant. “It is not here. I have checked. Perhaps— my territory is not so cut and dried on this continent. Could it be the Tri-Cities? But my wolf still considers Adam an extension of—” Bran paused. His eyes flickered to Leah briefly, then away.

Now he spoke of her. Leah’s teeth clenched.

Another minute passed before Leah, well used to going over Bran’s words time and time again for meaning, said, “This continent?”

He had become distracted again. His attention returned to her, hazel eyes blinking away his thoughts. He had pretty eyes. Too pretty for a man, framed thickly with dark eyelashes she had to achieve with layers of mascara. “I’m sorry?”

“You said this continent. Do you have territory somewhere else?”

Bran’s eyes focused, penetratingly clear and now with understanding. “Ah.”

*

The pub was down a hill. The rain – it had not stopped raining since they had arrived, sheets of it falling from a low, dense grey sky – had turned the road into a swift-moving stream and she was wet up to her knees after a few yards. A duck cruised past, wings tucked neatly in. A Mallard, she thought, her mouth twitching.

Had her husband been in a better mood, she thought they would have laughed about this. He enjoyed whimsy. Instead, he kept on trudging down, looking nothing so much as a moody teenager. Sighing, Leah took out her cell phone and snapped a photo of the innovative bird to send to Anna and Kara later. They would enjoy this.

Bran’s house – and it was Bran’s house, built on land that had belonged to his family for centuries – was set apart from the village, and she followed behind her husband for a mile, keeping to the left to allow the very occasional vehicle to drive past. The cars were small, as they had to be. The roads themselves were single tracks, narrower even than the backwoods tracks at home, but the cars drove at great speed as if they didn’t fear what they might meet around the corner.

It had been a hair-raising journey from the airport.

The pub, a quaint, white-washed building that clung low to the side of the hill, was a welcome sight. A worn, hanging sign declared it The White Lady, accompanied by a ghost-like shape drawn against a backdrop of green. Bran gave this no notice and pushed open a lead-paned door, letting out a roar of sudden heat and noise.

Inside the front entrance, in a small vestibule, a baffled Leah followed Bran’s lead and removed her shoes, adding them to the piles of wet and muddy waterproof boots clumped together on a shoe-rack. Looking around, she saw the collection of damp humans chattering around the oak bar were all in nothing but thick socks, as if walking around without shoes was perfectly normal in public places.

She side-stepped a dog, who barely roused himself at the entrance of two werewolves, and tried not to cling closely to her husband. It was loud. And humid – a fire burned fiercely in the grate, heat rising to the low ceiling, where hops were festooned over wooden beams. She felt her cheeks flush and sweat immediately prickled at her temples. She shrugged her waterproof off and folded it over her arm, pinching the front of her light sweater and billowing it out, trying to get air to circulate.

Though they had only been in the village a few days, the barman greeted Bran in Welsh like a long-lost friend. A lanky, thin-faced man – human – he glanced over Bran’s shoulder at Leah with curious eyes and switched to English. “This must be your fair lady.”

“Yes,” Bran said, not looking over his shoulder at her and instead gesturing at the blackboard, hanging on the wall beside the bar, where the specials of the day had been written in flamboyant cursive. “Two lasagnas, please. And two sides of garlic bread and two of the parmesan chips. Large.”

Leah blinked at this rudeness. “I’m Leah,” she said firmly.

She smiled the kind of smile she used on human men to get her way and the barman smiled back at her. He had very kind, grey eyes. Twinkly, in the truest sense of the word; there were fairy lights hanging from the bar and they sparkled in his eyes. “Croeso i Cymru.”

His accent was different than Bran’s, but understandable. Bran had mentioned that out here, away from the cities, a few more people might speak Welsh, even though all the road signs had both English and Welsh on them. “Diolch,” she replied, dropping the wattage of her smile to something more appropriate.

The grey eyes lit up without the need for reflective decoration. “Wyt ti'n siarad cymraeg?”

Leah wrinkled her nose and wiggled a hand horizontally in the air, the international sign of ‘a bit’. “Tipyn bach.” She could understand more than she could speak. It had never been Bran’s objective to converse with her in Welsh, after all. Just with his sons.

Though it was loud, and she had been directing her limited comments to the barman, she had drawn the attention of the man slouched on the nearest bar stool, who turned rather rheumy eyes in her direction. “But you have a good accent,” he said, in his own heavily-accented English. He then squinted at her and Leah’s wolf’s ears pricked. “I thought you were Americans.”

“We are,” Bran said briskly. His body language was giving distinct leave us alone vibes. “And two sticky toffee puddings.”

“Actually,” Leah said, really more to have her own voice heard than anything else, “could I have the jam sponge? With custard.”

The twinkly eyes twinkled further. “Good choice. That’ll be forty-eight-fifty, please.”

Whilst Bran paid – tapping his card on the card machine - the old man continued to study Leah, his dark eyes like little raisins. It wasn’t a particularly threatening look, certainly not from a gentleman who was probably eighty if he was a day, but it still bothered her wolf. “You look very familiar,” he said eventually. “Do you perhaps have family in the village?”

“She doesn’t, no,” said her husband and this time he about-turned and placed a very firm hand on her. “Why don’t we sit over here whilst we wait.”

Bran all-but frog-marched her over to a tiny table in a dark corner, with a hanging sign that entitled this spot as the ‘Old Fart’s Table’. “Charming,” she murmured, sitting down. Bran did not join her, just decided to loom over her, doing – frankly – a very good impression of the Alpha he normally pretended not to be.

She raised her eyebrows up at him. “I could have family here,” she pointed out, tugging his damp sweater away from his skin. It was by no means as wet as it should be which was either a case of the heat of his body drying it or his – well – rather mysterious magic. “I’ve no idea where my people came from.” A little tidbit, a lost piece of history, added further potential to her story, “Wasn’t North Wales on one of the routes between the Viking strongholds in Dublin and York? I thought there was a strong presence of the Vikings around here in the Middle Ages.” 

“That’s North Wales,” her husband muttered, not questioning her assumption that her height, and fairness, had its genetic routes in Scandinavia. He had said as much, in the past, sometimes comparing her to the Valkyrie warriors of Norse mythology. That was about as complimentary as Bran had ever got about her appearance. At least she had always taken it as complimentary.

As far as Leah had been able to see on the slow loading map on her cell phone, Bran’s territory was pretty much bang in the middle of Wales. But ‘North’ was not so far from here. Neither was South. The country was 8000 square miles. You could fit Wales into Montana nearly twenty times.

Still. She chose not to tease him further on the unlikely possibility that she was – coincidences of coincidences – somehow connected to the land of his birth and re-birth. He was not in a teasing mood.

Leah looked around the pub, its merry occupants, the snoring dog and the steamed-up windows. It was charming. A classic example of the kinds of public houses she’d read about in books, unchanging for centuries except for the small signs of modern life – the card machine, the Wi-Fi sign, and of course the human occupants with their cell phones and Smart watches and expensive waterproof gear. She wondered if they were all local or, like they purported to be, holidaymakers. Hikers. There was a castle ruin, somewhere nearabout. Not that she had seen that. 

“Who is the White Lady, do you think?” she asked, thinking the question an innocuous one.

“My mother,” growled Bran, looking down at her, and his eyes flashed gold.

*

He had not wanted her to come with him. They had argued – real, bombastic rows, the kind the shook the house. It had been a long, long time since they’d argued like that. Bran had always treated her to cold silence when he was angry, she suspected because he knew it was the most effective way to get her to back down. Not so now, as they screamed across rooms, circling various arguments – his belief that it was a waste of time, likely a dead end, and she had better spend her time supporting Charles, a new father, with the responsibilities of the Marrok – and hers that if his wolf was close, as she believed it to be, then he would need her. Didn’t he need her?

They slept apart for a week whilst he made his travel arrangements. And then, when his bags were packed and Charles was briefed, the most unexpected thing happened. Mid-argument-two-hundred-and-twenty, red-faced with fury, Leah had burst into tears.

Tears had never worked on Bran. She had learnt that very early on. Not that she’d ever really been prone to them, but she had observed it was a tactic that some women used with their husbands to get their way so she had tried it a few times. He would inevitably snort and tell her to get a hold of herself. It was beneath her to cry at him.

He had been right, then.

These tears, however, were not the crocodile tears of the past. They were real. An upheaval of emotion, reflecting all the things she had not been able to argue out loud. Don’t leave me, she wanted to say. My heart hurts when you’re gone. And the final, truly pathetic argument, one that could only be voiced in a small, toxic voice, and only inside, You said you loved me.

She said none of these things, however. But her tears did.

Bran, open-mouthed with shock, took a step towards her. “Don’t,” he said, his fisted hands lifting from his side, “please, don’t.”

Leah couldn’t stop it now. Her chest heaved, whooping with something approaching near hysterics. Streams of snot joined her tears and she swiped at them furiously. There was nothing delicate, nothing ladylike about this. She couldn’t bear to face him and dove out of the kitchen, down the hall and slammed the door to her small study behind her. Sinking against it, she tried to regain control, hiccupping like a child. 

Her husband came to stand behind the door. She felt him lean against it. “You are right. Come with me. You must come with me.” His fingers scratched at the wood. “Just… will you let me hold you? Please, let me hold you.”

*

They ate the take-out at the tiny kitchen table, squeezed in against the deep stone lip of the lead-paned window. The trash can was by her left elbow and a wheely vegetable cart was by Bran's. Every time they used their forks, they hit something.

The food was excellent. The lasagna was dense with layers of meat and sauce, the pasta crisp around the edges but perfectly al dente. The garlic bread oozed with salted butter. “I think there’s truffle on these fries. Chips,” she corrected. The British called these chips, like thick-cut fries. Crisp on the outside and fluffy in the middle, smothered in parmesan and definitely a hint of truffle. Perhaps an oil? She took another and savored it. Wow.

Bran nodded. He dug his fork into the complimentary side salad. “It’s become a very popular spot. Makes good money.”

She paused in her enthusiastic mastication. “Do you… own the pub?”

He didn’t hesitate to confirm. “The village.”

Leah took a sip of her water. She hadn’t realized his territory was so literal, as it was at home. She thought back to the little she had glimpsed as they had driven through the village. The pub, of course. A dozen little houses and a post office. Had there been a church? “I didn’t realize.” You never told me.

He lifted and dropped a shoulder. “Charles deals with it.”

Obviously, she wasn’t stupid – she knew Wales held both good and bad, very bad, memories for him – but this was a whole village. “Do they know you?”  

“No. Charles deals with it,” he repeated, with a hint of you’re not listening.

Leah rolled her eyes. “All right. Forgive me for wanting to have a little more information on the matter.”

“It’s not a big deal. It’s a speck of a place.”

“A speck of a place that is being invaded and bothered you from the other side of the Atlantic.”

Bran turned his head to the side, so that she wouldn’t see the tell-tale flash of gold in his eyes. He had not anticipated the reflection in the dark windows. He reached across to pull down the blind, tugging hard so that the screws that held the blind into the ancient walls groaned.

And that was dinner conversation over.

*

It was an unhappy night’s sleep.

The bed was small and some painfully pathetic part of her longed to comfort him, for Bran was unhappy, bothered by the speck of a place he had never told her about and had flown across the world to visit. But she did not know if he wanted her comfort and knew herself well enough that if he rejected her now, something in her might break. Again. So that circling argument kept her brain going, resisting any attempt to sleep.

They slept without the duvet and kept the windows open, to allow the cool, wet air to circulate their werewolf body heat. It might have otherwise been pleasant. At home they didn’t leave the windows open to the elements, lest the nightlife join them, but here all it let in was the sound of the rain, the endless rain.

It was close to dawn when Bran roused himself from his pretend slumber and swiveled out of bed to sit up. She studied the familiar curve of his spine as he studied his feet. She had kissed that spine. She had kissed the curve of his shoulders. She had, when the mood took her, dug her heels into the globes of his firm ass to spur him on. Usually that kind of thought would stir something in her but her lust for her mate was temporarily on the backburner. It was a strange time. Another strange time.

Today, Leah reached out with tentative fingers and brushed a small scar perhaps only she knew was there.

Bran’s head turned. “It doesn’t usually rain all the time, you know.”

She had been moved to look this up. The bad weather had made the national news. It had exceeded the record last set in 2015. “It’s an unusually wet winter, apparently.”

He nodded. Then, very slowly, he lay backwards, managing to curl himself into her side, the little spoon to her big spoon. Surprised – this wasn’t like him – Leah froze for a moment, trying to decide what to do. Obviously, he did want comforting, but on his terms. She settled for carefully tucking her head behind his, her nose in his hair, and resting her hand on his hip. He smelled delicious, as he always did. The heat of his skin elevating the notes of forest and earth and man. Her man. Her mouth salivated. Perhaps her libido wasn’t so tame after all.

She cleared her throat. “Will you be in that room again all day?”

He nodded.

Leah had asked him, after the first day, what he did in there, with the door closed so firmly behind him.

‘Meditate’, he had said. She had never seen Bran meditate in her life.

But she had peeked one evening, when he had gone to get their takeout, to find there was nothing more in there than a pair of twin beds, and a small chest of drawers. The tatted rug on the floor had been slightly disturbed, as if he had been sitting on it. Perhaps he really was meditating. In her experience it was not a technique werewolves excelled at. She had once seen Charles’s uncle try to teach him.

“Is that what you did at home?” she asked, thinking she had missed this. He did stare into the fire a great deal – was this a form of meditation?

His shoulders twitched, a miniscule shrug. “It’s harder here.”

“Oh?”

Bran didn’t say anything for a moment, a long enough moment that she thought he might not say anything at all. Then, “At home, my magic is not native to the land. I can pass through my territory with ease, seeking out anything unusual purely because of the difference in magical interference. Here it is different. This land is saturated with magic like mine. Some older, some newer. Differentiating is proving a challenge.”

He took her hand, clasped it against his belly. “I may have to resort to a more manual approach.”

“Which is?”

“Running the territory.”

“Well, that shouldn’t take very long.”

Her husband rumbled under her hand. “Well.”

That was not a noise of agreement. She began to have her suspicions. “A speck of a place, you said.”

“In comparison.”

“To?”

He exhaled. “The United States, I suppose.”

“Are you telling me that your territory—”

“—is all of Wales. Yes.”

*

Leah looked at it on a map and then Googled. How long to walk the Welsh coastline?

A reasonably fit person could take six to seven weeks, was the answer. And that was just the coast. That didn’t include inland, the border with England and Wales. Though certainly she and Bran were more than ‘reasonably fit’ by human standards and it would be considerably quicker in their wolf forms, they – and she was including herself in this endeavor – couldn’t do this on four paws. Sparsely populated it might be in areas, it was by no means like home where you could run for miles and not see a single soul. There were humans and plenty of them, particularly along the coast. They had barely managed an hour’s furtive scurrying as their wolves even around here.

“So I suppose,” she said to him, putting down her phone, “it’s like home. Aspen Creek is this village. Your primary territory. Then outside is – what? Like Montana? The rest of the States?”

He had a stronger bond to Montana. For the States, his connection was through the packs. Were there packs in Wales? They’d had to fly privately from Heathrow to get to Cardiff because Bran hadn’t wanted to disturb the fragile peace he had with the British Alphas – but she’d thought that had been more of a courtesy than anything else. Presumably there were no other packs in Wales. Perhaps this, too, was part of Arthur’s resentment of him.

Bran, who was today responsible for the different egg permutations they enjoyed for breakfast, was sawing through the loaf of bread he had delivered each morning from the post office shop. “Similar.”

“Tell me exactly,” said Leah darkly, giving the wood beams of the living area a stern look. “Use your words.”

She probably imagined him grinding his teeth. “This village is family land. My father’s family – it was handed down to my uncle, when my father… took my mother as his wife. Then when there were no heirs, Sherwood and I inherited, though we could not claim it, not when she was alive. We made sure it was kept from her hands through a trust, of a kind. A pact.”

Leah pulled a confused face. “A pact?”

How could land be held through a pact? And he had been a werewolf, under his mother’s wicked thumb, for several centuries. What pact would withstand that?

“A blood pact.”

She caught on. “A magical blood pact?”

“Something like that.”

“Exactly like that?”

He slammed something in the kitchen. “Yes! Exactly like that.”

Leah felt for certain that Anna would be pleased with her interrogation of her own husband. ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ had been the name of the game for so long that she had become almost inured to it. Now she would ask, dammit. And he would tell. She was immune to his crossness, now. He did not want to lose her, ergo he would not put her aside.

And she would do it to his face, Leah decided, rolling off the couch that had become part of her day to day. She had formed a great fondness for that little front room and she brushed her fingers over the door with genuine affection as she passed.

“How would that work?” Leah asked, stalking him into the kitchen and leaning against the humming refrigerator. A refrigerator so small it would fit into her own one back at home twice over. But here she was not feeding an army.

Bran kept his back to her, vigorously buttering toast. “It is an understanding, passed down through generations of the same family. A caretaker family.”

“Do they still live here?”

“Yes.”

She attempted a little mental push, push through the mating bond. Who were they? Had she met them? Did they know who he was?

Bran put down the butter knife hard and his hands rested on the wooden countertops as he leaned forward. In a low voice, he said, “You have to understand, I do not speak of these things, Leah. It is delicate. Centuries of weaving go into this kind of magic and the older it is, the more fragile, or destructive, it can become.”

“Thank you for finally explaining that to me, Bran,” Leah said, layering on a patronizing tone thickly, “something you could have done from the first so I don’t disturb this so-fragile ecosystem of magic.”

Wisely, Bran did not snap at that, knowing she was right. He had been light on the details.

Instead, he spooned scrambled eggs onto toast, liberally salted and peppered them and set the plates on the table. “Tea or coffee?” he asked, almost perfectly equitably, except for the spark in his eyes.

“Tea,” she said politely. Sweetly. And she was sure there was an answering spark in her own eyes.

*

Bran returned to his room for ‘one more try’, leaving Leah once again to the limited – though entirely to her taste - selection of books, the spotty cell phone reception and a TV that, once turned on, received only Welsh TV channels. She sat watching with glazed eyes a soap opera drama set in a rural community that she just about managed to understand, until – with a jerk – she realized that with Bran in his room, she was essentially unsupervised.

He might not want to wander around the village that he owned, but she certainly did. Particularly now she knew it was his and, as she viewed it, therefore hers.

Dressed in light layers, under the essential waterproof, Leah paused at the base of the stairs, boots dangling from one hand. They had the same stair runner at home – a fairly resistant sisal – and had a wonder if Bran had any decision-making powers in the decorative choices made in his ancestral home.

Then she shook her head – he had little interest in the decorations of their actual home, she was certain he’d had nothing to do with the tasteful rural simplicity around her – and focused on her moral dilemma. To tell Bran, or to not tell Bran, that was the question. If she told him, interrupted his ‘meditation’ there was a distinct possibility she would a) irritate him and b) he might say she shouldn’t go anywhere without him.

She settled on a grey area. She would tell him – by unintrusive text message – which was more information than she would give him at home. His phone was on the kitchen counter, so he wouldn’t see it immediately. She would probably be back before he even noticed she’d gone – if he did at all.

Somewhat assuaged, Leah closed the door quietly behind her as she left and set off down towards the village proper.

The road stream wasn’t quite as vociferous as it had been yesterday, but it was still enough that if she didn’t tread carefully she would soon be sodden, so she kept to the middle, where a raised grassy hump in the asphalt somewhat protected her. Despite the heavy pattering of rain on her waterproof, she was reasonably certain she would hear a car. It wasn’t a main thoroughfare.

The first building Leah came to was the pub, which wouldn’t open until twelve. She peered in through the window to see a man cleaning the floors and then read the lopsided note in the glass-fronted case by the entrance.

The White Lady, it said in a handwritten font, Legend says that this old pub is built on the resting place of the most powerful witch in Wales and it has been serving alcohol in her memory since 800 AD! Then someone had drawn a smiley face.

“Ooof,” said Leah, blanching on behalf of her husband, whom ‘legend said’ had consumed said witch. How macabre.

She continued down, passing a trio of prettily painted pastel cottages with thatched roofs, then a detached, gracious-looking symmetrical stone house that was set back a little from the street – clearly the abode of someone more prosperous, and built a century or so later. She paused to admire this. It had original sash windows and the front yard was well manicured, with herringbone red brick running up the path. Lovely.

The post office store was next, the start of another row of small, terraced houses, this time all uniformly painted white. They each had a name, in Welsh, and Leah translated with difficulty. ‘White Cottage’, she thought one was. Another was named ‘Little’ something – she didn’t know what the other word was. One was ‘The Sitting Place’ and it had a bench built into the front. She wondered who had decided on the name of these cottages – and when. They’d chosen theirs, at home, after it had been built. Aspen Manor. Not that anyone called it that. ‘The Big House’ was the more colloquial terminology for the place Leah had long called home.

Opposite these homes was a small school, still in working order judging from the canvas stretched across the iron railing declaring their ‘Good’ Ofsted results, then a few more houses before the post office shop itself, which she intended to return to. Then there was a small hairdresser – ‘Betty’s’ – and what looked like a hardware store-cum-tearoom which had some very odd opening hours.

Beyond this there were another trio of cottages and a little side alley, signposted with a ‘public footpath’. She considered this. The path was cobbled but it soon turned to thick mud, passing through a line of trees. She couldn’t see much further.

“I wouldn’t. Not today. Not this week, if the rain doesn’t stop. It’ll be a mud-bath.”

The voice came from above. Leah looked up to see a woman – a young one – leaning out of a window. She smiled, because that was polite, though her first startled instinct had been to growl. “Good warning. Thank you.”

“Diolch am y diod.” The young woman leaned further out of the window, shielded from the rain by the large lip of the thatched roof that overlapped the front of the cottage. She had a cloth in her hand and an avaricious expression. “You’ll be the American then. Staying at Cornish Hill.”

Leah’s mouth twitched. Some of Bran’s aliases, and her own, were ‘Cornish’. She had not realized this might be Bran’s original name or a derivation of it. “Is that what it’s called?”

“It is, yes. Named after a family that lived hereabouts that we all claim to be all descended from.”

Ah. Though she was aware she was participating in an exercise of nosiness, Leah scrutinized the girl more, looking for any resemblance to her husband. There was none – and nor would there be, after centuries of dilution. She was dark haired and had clear, blue eyes, and a Roman nose that saved her from being generically pretty. A good-looking girl.

“You’ve chosen a fine time for a holiday.” The girl looked up at the skies, wincing. “It hasn’t stopped raining for more than a month. Normally, it would be coming on snow.”

That had been what Leah was expecting, she had to admit. She had packed accordingly, but thankfully there was little difference between rain and snow when it came to all weather gear. And it was comparatively mild here compared to home.

“I don’t mind,” she replied, honestly, as she had not travelled to Wales for a vacation but to accompany her over-wrought husband. She lifted a hand. She wasn’t one for idle chatter and tilting her head up at this angle meant she was getting a wet face. “Thank you for the warning.”

Leah headed back up the high street. She peeked in houses – there were more than she thought – as the street curved up and around the hill that this village appeared to be wrapped around. Occasionally she caught a glimpse between trees of what she imagined what would otherwise be a very beautiful view of rolling hills and pastures but now was sunk in cloud. Deeply sunk in cloud – there was no definition there, just thick, flat greyness, as if the sea had inverted to the sky. In the distance she could hear the occasional rumble of thunder.

At the end of the high street, there was one more shop which had a vague name. ‘JJB’ was hand-inscribed on the wooden header panel. The black paint was peeling.

She peered through the window – as the closed sign indicated it was not open. The glass had a protective film over it, giving everything inside a sepia tone. Through the gloom she made out bookshelves, which gave her some hope. It was something Bran might be interested in, not that they were here for some light reading. But, given the distinct lack of attractive window display, it was the type of bookshop that he liked. Cerebral. Dusty. Not likely to house a collection of tatty murder-mystery-romances, like the shelf she had been working her way through in the house.

She looked for any indication of opening hours but couldn’t find any. Perhaps, much like their own general store, it only opened when people needed it.

*

Deciding against further exploration uphill, where she guessed the remains of the castle lay, Leah made her sodden way back to the post office shop, intending to purchase something. She wasn’t holding out much hope for the prospect of expanding their pantry. Bran had arranged for the bread to be delivered every day but otherwise all he had purchased was butter and three packets of sliced ham. And eggs, of course. Lots of eggs. She supposed they should make a trip to one of the larger grocery stores – but like many things, the urge to put in place some sense of organization or creature comforts had been absent from her usual drive.

But she found herself pleasantly surprised. The post office shop was far more expansive than she had been expecting. Yes, the main shopfront was small, like its counterpart stores along the high street, but there were rooms shooting off from left to right, joining up at the back before a strip-light lit hallway returned her to the main room.

In one such room, she discovered a deep freeze filled with meat from a local farm and homemade ready-to-cook dishes in unbranded packaging. Then there was a small but perfect array of fresh fruit and vegetables – wonky, dirt still clinging to skins and smelling nothing like the pesticide-sprayed produce bought in a grocery store. There were loaves of fresh bread, accompanied by a selection of golden-fresh pastries. There were some local cookies, or biscuits, as they were called here, and strange flavored chips. Prawn cocktail. Sounded revolting. She had to try it.

In the end, Leah had to go back to the beginning to pick up a wicker basket, as she had her hands full. Before returning to pay at the counter, she found a newspaper – The Guardian – and even perused some postcards with drawings of the village. Including, she noticed, the cottage they were staying in. She selected a few of these, thinking she would send them home. People did that, when they were on vacation.

The man at the counter was another dark-haired and light-eyed representative of the local population. He smiled – very white teeth – as he scanned everything she bought. Leah kept an eye on the digital counter. She’d grabbed a couple of notes from Bran’s wallet but she wasn’t entirely au fait with the exchange rate.

The smiling boy spoke in a lightly accented Welsh English, “You chose a good day to do your shop. We just had a big delivery.”

“Oh… good.” Perhaps Bran hadn’t been needlessly basic with his purchases, just subject to what was available.

He scanned the ready-prepared curry. From the label, Leah believed it was made locally, which was confirmed when the young man said, “My mum makes these. This one is her favorite.” His smile increased in wattage. “We have it a lot at home.”

Leah was pleased. She liked supporting local entrepreneurship. “I’m looking forward to it.”

He scanned the bag of rice. “You’re the Americans, then? Staying up at the Cornish.”

She nodded, rationalizing that in a small village they would be known, even if she personally found it unsettling. “Do you get a lot of Americans?” The way everyone put it, it was almost as if they found their presence curious. She thought American tourism was fairly rife in the British Isles.  

“Not really, not around here. We don’t get many tourists at all.”

“Ah.” She nodded again, vaguely, rather distracted by the sound of his voice. The lilting hint of Welsh was a very nice accent. Soft and musical. Bran didn’t really have it anymore, which was a shame. He sometimes slipped into it when he was angry – and he had been angry a great deal recently – but otherwise his intonations were very modern American. Mid-West, if anything. That was on purpose. He didn’t want there to be anything distinguishing about him.

She had a feeling, really more of a memory of a memory than a vivid recollection, that Sherwood had once had a strong Welsh accent. When she had first met him.

“Will you be staying long?”

Leah was about to shake her head – then she considered the six-to-seven week walk of the coast. “Unclear. My husband is working on a project.”

“Oh really?” For some reason, he looked a little disappointed. The smile wavered. “Er. A book, perhaps?”

It was as good a suggestion as any. Leah smiled. “Something like that.”

Inhaling deeply, Leah wrinkled her nose. She had become aware of a scent – not unpleasant – and looked around for the origins of it. Something peppery. Perhaps a candle? But the shelves behind him only carried little hand-made knick-knacks with handwritten price tags. If she wasn’t mistaken, one was the ghost-like form that had featured on the pub sign. She would not be taking that souvenir home.

“That’ll be thirty-eight pounds twenty, please.”

Leah handed over two twenty-pound notes. Close.

*

Back at the house, Bran was waiting for her, sitting at the bottom of the stairs in the small entrance hall. He silently took the bags from her whilst she dispensed of her wet things. At his somewhat startled expression when he saw the quantity of her purchases, she repeated the boy’s statement about a delivery.

“Must have done,” he agreed. He sounded pleased. She had been right, then. Pickings had been slim.

“I thought we could have the curry for dinner.”

He nodded enthusiastically and pulled a package from the bag for inspection. “Oh, you got naan, too.”

She had. And a jar of mango chutney. She used to make butter chicken at home fairly regularly, part of their rotation, and the accompaniments were part of the pleasure. She enjoyed lots of different textures and flavors in her meals.

It had been a while since she had felt much enthusiasm about cooking – even ready prepared things such as this. This was a curious thought that she would need to dwell on further.

They unpacked the rest of her shopping and Leah pointed out the obvious. “You’re not in your room.”

“I got distracted when you left.”

“I’m sorry.”

He lifted and dropped a shoulder, unconcerned. “It’s fine. There’s a pot of tea on the table. It should still be hot.”

It was. Piping. Leah unboxed the biscuits and put a few on a pretty china plate, far too nice for a place no one called home. They sat together, eating and drinking and looking out the window at the rain. Across the road there was a low hedge, then a gently sloped hill that was covered in various broadleaf trees. Birch. Boxwood. Ash. She’d had a nosy around it in the early hours of yesterday. Plenty of rabbit burrows.

“Are you still angry with me?” Bran asked conversationally, when the biscuits were gone and the last dregs of the tea had been drunk.

Leah thought about it, still pondering the window scene. She had hoped to see another enterprising duck. “Not as much.”

“Then can I take you to bed?”

The roar of unexpected need had her jolting upright in her seat. Through the mating bond she felt the pulse of desire from Bran, a pulse that settled between her legs. Oh, yes, she thought.

*

It was a rather better performance than on other recent occasions, in that it was significantly more leisurely. Leah didn’t dislike a good hard fucking but in the last few weeks she had missed the more tender side of her husband’s lovemaking. He did have one. He had always had one. He had a particularly talented tongue, too, and that morning, her thighs over his shoulders, she got to experience that to her rather loud pleasure.

“Should have closed the windows,” Leah murmured afterwards, her cheek mashed on his belly. She saw his cock twitch and thought, vaguely, about putting her mouth on him. She liked to make him hard with her tongue, feel him grow under her own power.

Bran touched her head. “Please feel free.”

He wasn’t talking about the window. “Funny how you only read my mind when it’s about sex.”

His belly quivered under her head, his laugh silent. “Not only.”

Well. Whilst she wasn’t currently seething, Leah wouldn’t say she was of a mindset to rock his world with her own expert oral technique. She pushed herself upright and shook her hair back; he always untied it. It tickled her skin but before she could scratch, his fingers reached out to do it for her. She shivered as he hit the spot. “I should shower. If we’re not going to get take-out tonight, can we go to the pub for a drink?”

“Sure.”

He didn’t sound overkeen. She cast him a look, caught his fairly slumberous vulnerability before he hardened his gaze. “Do you not want me to talking to the locals?”

“I don’t want to talk to the locals. For the same reasons as before.”

Oh yes. Fragile balance blah blah blah. “Sometimes magic sounds more annoying than helpful.”

“You have the right of it there.” Bran jumped off the bed and bent down to pick up his underwear, presenting her with the bottom she had admired earlier. “Don’t shower.”

“Why not?”

“Because he finds it comforting when you smell like me.”

She had not expected such a blunt answer. Typically, Bran liked to skirt around truths he found difficult to admit to.

She nodded in any case, accepting this as a fact because her wolf felt the same way. Perhaps not with the same sense of distinctly male possessiveness that emanated from her husband. “Always or particularly now?”

He snapped on his jeans, not looking at her. “Always but particularly now.”

Very well. At least out here no one would have the nose to know what they had been up to. Leah reached for her underwear, caught on the end of a bedpost. “I’ll make lunch.”

*

Bran emerged just after five, drank a pint glass of water and told her he had found a clue.

“Oh?” Leah had laid out the preparations for the evening – the rice was rinsed, she had doled out mango chutney into another pretty blue dish, and the naan were resting on the tray that would go under the broiler after the curry had been cooked. She had even laid the small table. It was not surprising how easy it was to manage a small home – all of this effort had taken five minutes.

They’d once had a small home. Sometimes she missed it.

He leaned against the humming refrigerator. “The problem is somewhere north.”

“Why don’t you look pleased.” It was a statement.

His mouth pressed together into a thin line. “It’s complicated.” Bran was willing her not to ask questions. Practically vibrating with it.

Leah felt that burning sensation in her belly that warned an explosion was imminent. “Do you mean to be insufferable?” she demanded.

“I—” Bran paused with his mouth open, at least giving her the courtesy of actually thinking about it. “I am uneasy of speaking about subjects that I have not spoken of for centuries. Subjects about things I wish to forget. That… pains me.”

Oh God. That was almost reasonable. Leah exhaled, trying to force the anger from where it had risen to her chest, where her wolf sometimes lay. “I’m going to change and then let’s go to the pub.”

He moved out of the way so she could escape but she felt his fingers brush her side as she passed. She stomped up the stairs. At some point she hoped that the changes to her marriage – seismic though they were – might settle down to something she could manage. Unsatisfactory though her marriage had been, not that she had ever labelled it as such, it had at least been predictable. She had known Bran’s limitations.

Now, his limitations seemed to be all over the place.

Leah had given some thought to her evening’s outfit. Her observations of the night before had suggested that the evening attire was even more casual than she had predicted. Instead of the smarter, dark pants she had chosen yesterday – which really would only get damp and didn’t breathe – she changed into a pair of stretchy black running leggings. Over this she put on a black vest top and then a thin, grey long-sleeved shirt – something she also wore when running.

She viewed this ensemble in the narrow mirror on the inside of the bedroom cupboard. Whilst it was by no means the kind of outfit she would ever wear socially, it was certainly more weather appropriate, and the layers would mean she wouldn’t overheat.

The leggings also did have the benefit of making her ass look fantastic.

She put on a pair of thick socks and jogged downstairs to join Bran. He was holding her waterproof and absently helped her into it, clearly thinking about something else, not that she expected him to comment on her clothes. He was a stickler about such things but it had been a very long time since she had not met his standards.

Still, Leah was pleased with the day’s work. She had got out of the house. Bran had his clue. And they were going for a drink in a pub, within walking distance of their abode.

She had never gone for a drink anywhere with Bran. She had been indoctrinated enough by popular culture by now to consider this momentous – never mind that they had been married two centuries. They were going out.

After yet another soggy trek up hill, the door to the pub opened just as they arrived, expelling two guests who laughed and apologized automatically in that way people of the British Isles seemed to. Leah followed behind Bran, taking off her wet boots and feeling at ease now in her socks, joining the crowd.

They couldn’t all be locals, she decided. Not unless every single house had come for a drink that evening. Quite a few looked curiously in her direction and, not wanting to be caught staring, she cast her eye more vaguely about the room.

Before heading to the bar, Bran pushed her towards a table – a different one, closer to the fire – and Leah took her seat, shedding her waterproof and then after a minute, tugging off the long-sleeved shirt, pleased with her choice of layers.

Her husband re-joined after a few minutes, placed a glass of red wine before her and looked – absolutely unashamedly – down her top. “Hmm,” he said.

“What?” Disconcerted, Leah, plucked at the neckline. The cleavage was not obscene, she thought. There was a woman at the bar who was revealing significantly more.

“You look nice, that’s all,” her husband managed, sitting down and shedding his own jacket.

It was not the most effusive of compliments, true, but it wasn’t as if she was dressed to the nines. She sat a little straighter in her seat. She would take it. “Thank you.”

She sipped her wine, scanning the bustling room. A family of five had the table by the window – two parents, three children. The dad was tending to the baby in a highchair, the mom corralling a little boy who seemed intent on standing on his chair rather than sitting, leaving the remaining child to her iPad. There was a group of men at the bar, dressed in jeans and sweaters, their glasses nearly empty. One was ordering fresh drinks, making a jokey comment to the bartender who had served them the other night.

Did these people work? Was this a stopping point on the way home?

Beyond the group of men, sitting at the other end of the bar, Leah caught the eyes of a familiar face. The boy from the shop raised his hand at her and smiled. Then stood.

“Oh dear,” she murmured, unthinkingly. She didn’t really feel sociable.

The boy – really, a young man – strolled over. “Hey,” he greeted her warmly and then, an after-thought, glanced at Bran. He gave Bran an up-down look before turning back to her. “Out for dinner?”

“Just a drink. We’re having your mom’s curry for dinner.”

As before in the shop, his smile increased. “I hope you enjoy it. I’m George, by the way.”

“Leah. And this is Bran, my husband.” The husband part seemed to need repeating. She had noted that younger generations set far less store in the bonds of marriage but this was becoming ridiculous. Perhaps she should have brought her wedding ring.  

Bran smiled benignly. “Do you want to join us?”

“Ah, thanks, but I’m with some friends.” George gestured, vaguely, back to the bar. His gaze turned wistful. “Maybe another time. If you’re staying a while?”

This suggestion was clearly only aimed at Leah. She frowned, now a little annoyed that he could be so bold. Bran was right there. “We’ll see.”

George returned to his friends and Leah picked up her glass of wine. She couldn’t help it, she really couldn’t, a smile spreading across her face, “George thinks I look more than nice.”

Her husband gave her a darkling look. “Drink up your wine, Mrs. Cornick.”

*

Dinner was a success but afterwards a familiar itch assuaged her. “We should go for a run,” she suggested, handing Bran a plate to dry. It wasn’t really a suggestion. She knew his itch would be more than hers.

So of course, Bran agreed and slid the dried plate into the cupboard above their heads. “I think I’ve a better route. We’ll need to take the car, though.” He gave her a sideways glance, faintly amused. “Do you want to try your hand at driving?”

It was now dark and, of course, raining. She had obviously driven in worse but not on unfamiliar roads and not with the steering wheel on the other side. “Do you know, I think you can have the pleasure.”

He bumped her shoulder with his. “You can practice tomorrow, in the daylight.”

“Oh?” She handed him the last plate and pulled the plug out of the plughole. Water gurgled its way down the drain.

“Yes, we will be taking a trip.”

“Where to?”

For some reason, Bran looked around the room. “I’ll tell you when we’re on our way.”

She looked around the room herself, wondering what it was that he saw. “How mysterious.”

He closed the cupboard door and placed a wet hand on her ass. He squeezed. “Time for a run.”

*

They woke late, as it had been a late night, a good run. Bran’s new route had taken them further into the valley, where they had parked in a secluded spot. The rain and the darkness had ensured that their run had been without human interference, though certainly there had been moments where she had scented humanity.

Leah stretched, dislodging Bran from his resting place sprawled across her stomach. A breeze from the open windows teased the hairs on her thighs as, once again, they had left them open all night. The faintest sense of embarrassment tickled her. The post-run sexual high could sometimes be a little… liberating.

“It’s unlikely anyone was passing,” Bran said to her belly, before turning his head and kissing it.

Now she did blush, as he had followed her thoughts so easily. “Let us hope so.”

He climbed out of bed, heading towards the door and no doubt the shower. “In any case, they could surely only be envious.”

She huffed out a laugh, then a groan, covering her face with her hands. She had been very demanding.

A memory returned, one that was shaped like her wolf’s. “Oh,” Leah said, just as he turned on the shower. She scrambled out of bed and along the short hallway.

Bran was already standing under the water, hair wet and plastered to his head. “Are you joining me?”

He looked, for a moment, incredibly hopeful. Like a boy being given an unexpected present.

Leah took a half a step before she caught herself. “In that set up?” She indicated the compact bathing situation – the shower over the bathtub, the retractable acrylic shower panel. It would be very difficult for two people to only wash simultaneously, let alone anything more athletic.  

“I could make it work,” he said with a winsome smile.

Leah firmed her convictions, though they were certainly wavering with curiosity. “The werewolf. Last night.”

“Oh yes.” Bran squirted shampoo into his hand. “An old scent.”

“Was it one you recognized?”

He thought about it. “I’m not sure. Perhaps.”

“It’s your territory. You don’t seem that concerned.”

“It was at least a year or two old.” He scrubbed at his hair, the shampoo foaming quickly, suds rolling down his toned torso, the defined abdominal muscles. His cock was half-hard, had been since she had entered the bathroom. Determinedly, Leah looked at his face whilst he spoke. “And I’m not here to chase rogues out of territory I don’t even want.”

“You don’t want it?” This was news to her. Though she personally held no territory, she felt some kinship to the land her husband claimed. More was always better. Wasn’t it? “Why on earth does it bother you, then?”

“It’s still my territory. I could scrub your back for you?”

Rolling her eyes, Leah left the bathroom quickly. Honestly. At home their bathroom was three times the size of this one and the shower had been expressly designed ‘for two’ – not that Bran had known that. Never once had he invited her to join him. Not once.

*

Bran was firm; she would drive. And Leah was not to be outdone by such a meagre challenge so she confidently jumped behind the wheel.

She eased out of the tiny space to the side of the house back onto the road, the windscreen wipers fighting for their lives. “Why is the weather so bad?”

“The Jetstream, apparently. It’s an unusual shape for this time of year.”

Leah had of course heard of the Jetstream, usually in the context of La Niña, which would sometimes bring more snowfall during winter. Of course, the world was connected so that wasn’t localized to Montana.

“Go straight down here and take the next left.”

Leah was Bran’s subject, as well as his mate, so she found taking instruction from him easy, particularly in circumstances where her flight or fight was alive and well. Her wolf wanted Bran’s orders. Eyes on the road and as far as she could see through the milky rain, she turned as he bid, stopped when he suggested, and on these winding country roads became so turned around she couldn’t have pointed out which way was back home.

She was not in the best of moods. Not being in control had never sat well with her.

Meeting the tractor on the tiny stone bridge was something she might have preferred to avoid, its wheels nearly the same height as their little car. As was reversing to the ‘nearest’ passing point when she came face to face with a grocery store delivery lorry – an extraordinary sight, out here. The tires span on mud as she smiled fixedly at the man driving the truck, his hand raised in thanks.

Bran reached over to rub her thigh. “You’re doing really well.” It was said genuinely, and she accepted it with a gusting exhale.

When a little Fiat aggressively overtook them, going at least seventy miles per hour, Leah came to a halt to look at her husband as they took refuge tucked against a dripping, prickly hedge, “This country is insane.”

His smile was faint but very definitely proud. “You race around Aspen Creek just like that.”

That was true but it was also different. She wasn’t going to meet a combine harvester at home. And she knew their land like the back of her hand. Better; who stared at the backs of their hands?

“No,” he said, reading her mind, or as he saw it ‘the obvious direction of your thoughts’, “but you might meet a moose. Or a grizzly. Or a wildling.”

Leah had done all those things. And come out of the situation unscathed. “I don’t think this car would survive a moose,” she muttered.

Bran patted the dashboard, affectionately. “You’re doing very well, too,” he said.

*

If they had harbored any hopes that the weather might miraculously clear when they reached their destination, this was dashed. Repeatedly. “That should be the sea,” Bran sighed, as she crested another hill.

They were at least on a wider road now, had been for over an hour, and Leah was becoming used to being on the wrong side. But ahead of her, all she could see was dense cloud. Or was it fog, this close to land? It seemed very low down.

Bran continued directing her, taking her off the A-road but at least onto more respectable two-lane highways where Leah could relax her shoulders. “There should be a spot to park, just up here.”

There was, though it was little more than a resting point, somewhere to pull over and take pictures. Naturally, the visibility being what it was, there was no one around. Leah chose a spot that was only ninety-percent puddle.

She could smell the salt of the sea before she’d even opened the door. And when she did, she took a deep breath, let the taste of it settle on her tongue. Sea salt. Seaweed. She could hear the water, down below. It was deliciously different. In her long life, Leah had not had cause to spend much time by salt water.

She hurried to shelter under the open door of the car trunk as Bran sorted through the variety of items he had packed for this adventure. “What sea is this? Not the English Channel, I think.”

“The Irish Sea.” Bran held out her waterproof so she could slide her arms into it.    

“Of course.” The mental picture of the map formed in her mind. “Is it cold?”

“Extremely. As is the Channel,” he said with a smile.

“And this is where your clue is?”

“Feels like it.” He jerked his head. “Somewhere down there.”

Zipped up and protected from the fairly brisk wind of the coastline, Leah followed Bran down along a winding road, towards the water. It was much colder here. Maybe the wind, maybe the exposure to the sea. No wonder there was no one around.

They headed west, along a coastal road with a sidewalk built for the purposes of people enjoying such a walk on a sunny day. It was winding and they were heading downwards in a very circuitous fashion. A low wall on Leah’s right stopped her from taking an accidental tumble down a fairly steep cliff. She leaned over, periodically, to where waves hit the seawall. It was fierce. Even the occasional vehicle seemed mindful of the weather, taking the road at a cautious pace.

After about thirty minutes of silence, Leah picked up her own pace to catch up with Bran, who was striding determinedly ahead of her. He gave her a distracted look but, to her surprise, reached out to take her hand. His fingers were warm.

“What does it feel like?” she asked, as their hands swung between them.

“Like a tear in my psyche.”

“That sounds unpleasant.”

“It is.” He grimaced and his hand squeezed hers momentarily. “It’s getting worse as we get closer.”

“And this is the invasion into your territory?”

“I am hoping so.” He exhaled. “But equally it might be something else. I had forgotten what an attack on the senses it could be. Great magical workings have taken place in these isles. Powerful witches and sorcerers. Gods and myths.” Bran shook his head. “It lingers.”

Since Leah rather thought Bran was one such power, she considered it odd to hear him speak of it in such a detached way, as if he were not a part of it. “You didn’t mention the fae,” she said, her voice lowered cautiously.

“Ha, you’re right.” He squeezed her hand again, giving her a warm smile. “There are only a handful of fae left in the British Isles.”

She had not realized the exodus had been so great. “You sound almost sad about that.”

“Well, they could be considered part of the magical ecosystem. There is a balance, to be had,” Bran said wistfully. “An order to things.”

“And would you consider us to be part of that balance?”

“I would.”

They continued on in silence for a while. The sound of the waves was getting louder. As she took more bracing sea air into her lungs, Leah considered his words. Pubs named after magical beings aside, she had found Wales no more ‘mystical’ than she did home. There wasn’t anything in the air that she could feel. If anything, without the closeness of the pack, she felt almost magically dulled.

But then again, Leah had long considered herself something of a dumb creature when it came to magic. She hadn’t been born ‘special’, like her husband and his sons. And his grandchildren.

“At home,” she mused, “I suppose there is balance?”

“No,” Bran said firmly. “It is a melting pot of magic. Different origins. Different cultures. Many evolving. Maybe in a few centuries it will come to some kind of equilibrium but right now it is in a state of flux. Dangerous.”

For the first time, Leah could see that. And it struck her as odd that she had never seen it before.

Sometimes when he talked, or more properly she actually listened to Bran, she experienced a sensation much like her brain stretching. She had lived a very focused life. Being the mate of an Alpha meant her world was necessarily quite small. Home and pack. And, yes, there was a touch of her personality in there – she was not a woman who had ever wanted to expand her boundaries and challenge herself.

Leah felt her mouth twitch into an unhappy grimace. No, maybe that wasn’t personality. Maybe that was self-defense that had become part of her personality. Having now much clearer reflections of the last years of her youth, she recalled the alacrity with which she had set off on her father’s ridiculous journey. Excited at the prospect of discovering new - rather than the prospect of educating the native people of the land about a Christian God Leah had been very much neither here nor there about.

With the loss of her memories, and some purposeful forgetting on her part, Leah had focused on creating a home in Aspen Creek because she had lost hers, in a dramatic and mysterious way. And the man to whom her life was now irrevocably tied, the man who had become home to her, he had not been a stabilizing presence. The bargain that had been made between them was one-sided and unwanted and it had been a physical and emotional necessary for Leah to create stability.

So she had put all her efforts into him, and their surroundings, into their people to make herself a home. To make herself part of it. To feel like she belonged.

This time, Leah felt her brain stretching of her own accord. She was still thinking deeply – an unravelling of her own making – when Bran paused and, letting go of her hand, hopped suddenly, and surprisingly, over a wall. His feet landed softly and within a few feet, he had disappeared into the fog.

She could still feel him but it was visually unnerving. “This doesn’t feel natural.”

“You’re right.”

Leah followed him, crossing a short crop of sodden grass that gave away to rocks and then pebbles. They were on a small strip of beach. Leah could hear, but only just see, the waves hitting the shore – she certainly felt the spray on her face. “Is this high tide?” she checked. The shoreline was about twenty yards away.

“Yes, you’re not in danger of being swept away; this is as far as it’ll come.”

Bran, wearing a red waterproof, dissolved back into view. He was looking down at the pebbly beach. Before she could ask, he said, “What I’m looking for, is something— out of the ordinary. Look for debris. Or color. You may be able to feel something unnatural. Don’t touch anything.”

On this meagre information, Leah began to sweep the ground with her gaze. “How far?”

“About a ten-meter radius.”

Nodding, Leah took a few steps back and away from Bran and they naturally began to move into a classic searching method, sweeping outwards from each other. She was soon very wet and, as the wind had picked up, getting cold.

“If I had known we were going to be on the beach, I would have worn something different,” she said, licking the salt from her increasingly chapped lips. She bent to investigate something but found only seafoam.

“I can’t speak freely in the house.”

“Why on earth not?” She stopped to look in his direction. She couldn’t see him but knew where he was. It was spooky. It would have been spookier without the reassurance of their mating bond. “Is it that fragile magical ecosystem again?”

“Yes.”

She took this further. “You think the house is listening to you?”

“Something like that.”

Leah felt her eye roll could have been visible from space. “And? So what?”

“There’s a distinct possibility my ancestral land is… in on it.”

She barked out a laugh, a rolling laugh that grew in size and possibly hysteria until she had to bend to rest her hands on her knees. “Oh boy.”

Her cross-looking husband rematerialized, like a red-jacketed Merlin from the mist. The sharp edges of his cheeks were pink from wind-chill. His eyes were glittering, dark, the green lost to the overcast sky. “I know how that sounds.”

“I really don’t think you do.” She laughed again – he was so cross! – and was somewhat surprised to see her husband find his own sense of humor.

“I know how it sounds,” Bran insisted, his mouth curving reluctantly upwards. “It’s just a feeling I get. The house, my land, it’s unsettled. It’s angry with me. It feels like its listening in, disapproving.”

For some reason, this only increased her hilarity. The inanimate house. Disapproving of Bran. Salty tears run down her cheeks as she laughed hard. God only knew what this would look like to onlookers. If they could even see them. “My goodness, Bran. The Marrok… reduced to being afraid of a house.”

Bran sighed, letting her have fun for a minute more. He then withdrew a handkerchief from his pocket and presented it to her. “Enough now.”

Leah wiped her cheeks and eyes and then blew her nose. Her thumb rubbed against a raised bump on the cotton and she pulled back to see Bran’s initials, embroidered on the corner. Her first thought was a furious one – that someone had gifted her mate something best left to wives and daughters. Then she came to her senses. “Oh, I did this.”

“Yes?”

“But— decades ago.”

“They’re still good.”

“You have more than one?”

“Two or three.” He crunched back into invisibility. “A gentleman should always have a handkerchief.”

Not anymore, Leah thought, wistfully stroking the neatly stitched initials that she had once, lovingly, embroidered at a time where gentlemen did regularly walk around with handkerchiefs. Before disposable tissues and lax manners.

She was touched. She shouldn’t be; he was a practical man. He liked practical gifts, as these had been. Likely he thought it no more than that.

Leah folded the handkerchief up and tucked it away for safe keeping.

*

Leah couldn’t say she saw something. She just found herself coming back to that same patch of seafoam two, three, four more times. There was nothing unusual about it. There were other patches of seafoam.

Nevertheless, Leah nudged this one with the toe of her hiking boot. It bubbled and popped, as seafoam was wont to do.

Sensing her consideration, Bran crunched over to her. He’d put down his hood, or it had blown down, and his hair was now plastered to his head, his eyelashes darkly clumped together. “What is it?”

“I don’t know. Nothing probably.”

They both pondered the small patch of beach. Grunting, Bran pulled a trowel from his pocket and crouched down, started digging, as if this was perfectly normal.

“Where did you get that?” she asked as pebbles went flying. “What else do you have in those pockets?”

“Two sandwiches and a thermos of hot cocoa which I will share with you if you behave.”

Leah smiled widely. Honestly, she didn’t think Bran had been this amusing in months, unintentionally or otherwise. She took two steps back as he put his werewolf back into it, digging up this little Welsh beach with alacrity. She was glad for the cover of the mist. She wasn’t certain this sort of behavior was legal.

A few minutes later there was a clunk as the little tool Bran had brought for this job hit something that wasn’t pebble, sand or rock.

Relegated to observer, Leah leaned over, trying to see beyond him, pebbles cascading down the four-foot square hole he had dug. “What is it?”

Bran continued to dig, this time more purposefully. It was very wet, his trowel making sucking noises. “A box of some kind. Yes.” He moved, blocking her view completely, and she half-made a noise of complaint which turned into a noise of alarm when he suddenly slumped backwards, unconscious.

Instinctively, Leah grabbed him by the arms and hauled him backwards, out of the hole. She dropped to her knees and turned his face towards her. His eyes were closed but he was breathing. She tapped his cheek. “Bran?” She tapped harder, more of a slap. “Bran?”

Nothing about this was amusing anymore. She scrambled back to the hole, where a box – wooden, with decayed leather straps – was half submerged in wet sand. It was clearly very old, but she was otherwise none the wiser.

She returned to her husband. Still breathing. Still unconscious. Her hand rested on his chest, more to feel the reassuring rise and fall of his chest, whilst her mind raced. This was the work of something magical. Something on his psyche.

Picking Bran up under his arms, she dragged him further up the beach, laying him down on the softer grass. He was pale, despite the wind chill. She pressed the backs of her fingers against his cheek. Was he cold? It was hard to tell. She couldn’t feel anything through the useless mating bond, that was for certain.

She leaned close to him. “Bran, please wake up,” she instructed him, firmly.

As he had rarely in their marriage taken instructions from her, Bran remained stubbornly unconscious.

“Shit,” she said to his face.

*

Carrying him back to the car was not an option, it was far too public, so Leah was forced to run back and drive down the winding road, pulling up on the sidewalk and putting her emergency lights on. Thankfully, no one drove past whilst she was suspiciously heaving her unconscious husband into the passenger seat. Nor when she loaded up the trunk with the sopping wet and very malodorous buried treasure.

The next issue – she was breathing hard now, more from distress than anything else – was trying to get back to the house. She stabbed the console on the dash, summoning the GPS. She needed a zip code. A post-code? She didn’t have a post-code.

She dialed Charles.

“Leah?” Charles sounded surprised. As he would be; she rarely called him.

“What’s the zip-code for the house?” she barked.

She would give it to Charles, he didn’t waste time. Just rattled off the six letters and numbers that would get her back to the cottage with pin-point accuracy.

“Is everything… fine?”

“Your father is unconscious,” she said impatiently, as the GPS told her it would take three-and-a-half hours, which at home would be a reasonable journey but here felt like an eternity, “because of the fragile ecosystem of magic and possibly because of something we dug up on a beach that he said was tearing at his psyche.”

“I see.”

“He’s breathing,” Leah added. She wasn’t totally soulless; she could hear he was now worried. She glanced over at her husband. “And he has some color.”

“That’s good.” Nothing in Charles’s tone would suggest it was, in fact, ‘good’. “There’s a healer in Goodwood’s pack. I will send you his number.”

Leah exhaled. “Yes. Probably a good idea.”

“Call me if he’s not conscious by tomorrow.”

She nodded, then realized he wouldn’t be able to see that. “I’m sure he will be.”

*

Bran chose to wake up just as Leah faced her third roundabout in the pouring rain. She was muttering give way to the right when he turned his head to her and spoke. “What did you do with the box?”

She yelped, hit the gas and narrowly missed a Nissan. “Oh, thank God you’re awake!” Thankfully, she didn’t miss her turning. She wasn’t sure she could face that again. “It’s in the trunk.”

“Good,” he said, then he passed out again, his chin falling to his chest.

Casting urgent looks from him to the road, Leah cursed. Whilst it was good news, obviously, that he had woken up, seeing him pass out for the second time wasn’t reassuring. She said his name a few times to no avail and shook his thigh.

Giving up, temporarily, Leah returned to focusing on her driving. If anything, it was raining harder, which was a feat that truly had to be seen to be believed.

The GPS told her she was nearly thirty minutes out when Bran woke up once more. This time, he rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a sandwich, unwrapping it and eating it in three bites.

“Are you back for good?” she demanded, peeved.

He took out the thermos next. “Need calories,” he replied shortly.

The road began to climb up. And narrow. Flight or flight truly activated, Leah’s hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel. “What is it? What’s going on?”

Bran slurped a cap-full of hot cocoa. “I think a warding is failing.”

“A ward?”

“Yes. A big one.” He screwed the cap back on the thermos. “I’m going to pass out again.”

And he did, the thermos rolling into the footwell.

“For God’s sake!” Leah yelled fruitlessly. And he truly wasn’t awake if he didn’t chastise her for taking the Lord’s name in vain. Again.

*

Finally, finally, Leah reached their temporary home and the moment she turned off the engine, Bran rolled his head towards her and blinked his hazel eyes. “Well done,” he said, smiling sweetly.

She breathed out through her teeth. “Thank you,” she said, though she had no idea what precise act she was being congratulated for. The driving home in the rain? The four wrong-turns and the part where the GPS seemed to lose signal and she had to guess where she was? The box? Her general tolerance of this situation? “Will you be passing out again any time soon?”

He unclipped his seatbelt. “The house helps,” was his truly perplexing response given his earlier concerns regarding its collusion with evil. He got out of the car in a kind of fluid, rolling motion.

Leah growled. Sometimes, sometimes, it was all a bit too much.

Bran popped the trunk and she hurried to join him in staring at the box. “What is it?”

“It’s either Sam’s or Sherwood’s.”

“This box?”

“This part of the ward,” he corrected.

She looked up at the sky, seeking strength. Instead, she got Welsh rain in the eye and had to blink out the sting.

Bran, often willfully blind to other people’s emotions, continued as if he hadn’t noticed Leah’s frustration, “I think Sherwood’s, because he liked boxes.” He leaned over the box and inhaled, his fingers working on the battered carved inlay on the lid, like a blind man reading Braille. She’d brushed off as much sand as she could but it was still coated. The surface was very worn. “Yes. This has the taste of my— of his magic.”

He hoisted the box out of the car and jerked his head to indicate that she close the trunk. “Please.”

Leah did so and followed him back to the house. She had definitely locked the door when they left but it opened now under Bran’s palm. She gave the door a wary look as she passed through. True, at home, they didn’t tend to lock the front door much. But they had other doors that Bran unlocked the usual way.

She thought.

He hauled the box into the kitchen, shedding sand over the nice, clean floorboards, and placed it in the sink.

“What’s inside it?”

“Inside it? Oh. Nothing. It’s the— inscription.” His fingers touched the lid again. “That’s what does it. It’s become worn away. It would do, buried where it was. I’m not surprised it’s failing.”

“And it’s part of a ward.”

“Yes. It was, at a guess, supposed to stop me from leaving Wales.” Bran let out a humorous-sounding huff. “What a lot of good that did.”

Leaving Wales. Sherwood. Ward. “You mean—”

“When I was tearing into the populace, yes.”

She pressed her lips together. It’s not that she hadn’t known, or imagined, this infamous period in Bran’s life. But… there had always been an air of myth about it. The possibility that it was an exaggerated tale told to enhance Bran’s status.

This box, this ward Bran spoke of, suggested otherwise.

“This box was part of the ward that was supposed to cage you in Wales.”

“Indeed. You know, I have no idea if it worked? Maybe it did, maybe the monster would have roamed inland had it not been for this.” He shrugged, as if his brother’s attempts to contain him were irrelevant. “Either way, we’ll have to find the others and destroy them now because the magic that fueled it is what is irritating me.”

Her shoulders drooped. “Does that mean more driving?”

Bran put a consoling hand on her shoulder. “We can take turns.”

*

Bran was remarkably more cheerful after that. Now they had found the object of his botheration, he had a focus. He was exuberant. She had seen him like this before, of course. Many times. And other wolves, of course, including herself. It was the high of the chase.

And it was a chase. Because Bran did not want to call his brother. “He won’t remember,” was his repeated refrain, complete with a small frown that told Leah he did not like the question.

Leah suspected there was something wider at play here. Something to do with the Colombia Basin pack, with their severance from Bran’s authority and the fine line between Sherwood’s old life and new. They’d heard that Sherwood’s memories had returned, but nothing since.

Bran was apparently actively willing to let that lie.

Considering the role he had played in Leah’s life, she did not dwell on Sherwood too often. He was part of her past and she was of a mind to now keep that firmly in her past, memories and all. She couldn’t even say she particularly knew him. Their interactions in the Singer’s camp had been furtive by necessity and dictatorial, on his part. He had told her what to do and she had done it. They hadn’t exactly shared life stories.

After the fact – long after – Bran had told her that he was his brother, that this was not something to be shared, and that he had once been his enforcer, but little else than that. Sherwood had been sensitive conversation, for both of them, likely for different reasons.

“So, he wasn’t part of the pack that your mother… founded?” she asked as they sat in a parking lot overlooking another landscape of sheeting rain, eating sandwiches and drinking cans of Coke kept barely chilled by the cool bag.

“No, he escaped that particular fate.”

Encouragingly, this answer did not sound as if Bran didn’t welcome more questions. “What was he doing when you were—,” she gestured with her sandwich at the view, such as it was, “—busy.”

“Not sure. I don’t think I ever asked.” Bran studied the contents of his sandwich, then took a bite. He chewed for a moment and thumbed away a crumb caught in the corner of his mouth. “He was mostly on the continent. It took a while for Sam to find him.”

Though this was certainly more information than Bran usually shared, there was an odd note to his voice. Almost crisp. She pondered it as she ate. “Perhaps you could ask Sam. Maybe he’ll know about where Sherwood buried them all.”

“He doesn’t want to speak to me.”

“Why not?”

“He asked me not to. If he speaks to me, he’ll ask about his niece. And he doesn’t want to know about her yet.”

A tender note of sympathy strung in Leah’s heart. “Ah,” she said, understanding.

Bran rifled in the cool-bag and plucked out two bright colored packets of chips, one pink, one blue. “Which flavor do you want?”

“Prawn cocktail,” was her definitive answer. She had developed a taste for them.

They finished their snacks, and their drinks, and then ventured out into the weather. Now more appropriately dressed head-to-toe in waterproofs, they trekked across a nearly empty parking lot, then down a path strewn with grey rocks to the middle of a sandy beach that stretched perhaps for a mile around a cove. Not that Leah could tell that now as it was, once again, impossible to see further than four feet in front of them.

Bran sighed with disappointment and stared out towards the direction of the water. “This was a very pretty spot.”

“You remember?” she asked.

“I played here. As a child.” Sticking his hands in his pockets, he headed up the beach, his head bowed low.

A remarkable idea: Bran as a child. Almost impossible to fathom.

Leah took herself off in the opposite direction and soon Bran was lost to the thick sea fret and were it not for the mating bond she would think herself quite alone. This time, the beach was reasonably near urban life – there was a marina not too far away, and a train station with fairly regular trains.

Still, despite the noise of lives carrying on, it was a little eerie. As if she was lost in a dream.

Eerie or not, Leah had a job to do. As before, she paced the beach with military precision, looking for anything unusual. Feeling with her senses, beyond her eyes and her nose. Her boots squelched with every step, the sand dense with water. The beach itself was very disturbed by activity. She mentally documented the familiar tracks she could see. Human. Birds. Dogs. Something that skittered – crabs, probably.

Instinctively, Leah edged around a square of pristine sand, not wanting to ruffle it, and then she walked maybe six feet up the beach, paused and came back.

She was pondering this patch of perfect sand when a squelching indicated her husband’s presence.

Bran pondered it too. “You found it again,” he decided. There was a slight emphasis on ‘you’.

“I can’t feel anything,” Leah said slowly, trying to decide as she spoke whether she couldn’t, actually. Maybe…? Magic was so nebulous.

This time, Bran had bought two trowels. They got down on their hands and knees and began to dig.

“Are you going to pass out again?” she asked, conversationally.

“I don’t know. Let’s hope not.”

*

Leah had parked as close to the beach as possible so it wasn’t actually too laborious to carry Bran back to the car and she was significantly less stressed, as Bran’s condition would – presumably – be temporary.

They had come prepared and lined the trunk with garbage bags and a plastic crate they’d found in the little cupboard under the stairs, which took the second wooden box perfectly. This was a little smaller than the last.

She fitted the lid on, shucked off her sopping waterproof and shoved it alongside.

In the car, Leah just had to select ‘home’ from the GPS display and a neat route mapped their return journey. Just under four hours, thanks to a variety of diversions due to flooding. Perfect.

She called Charles without particularly thinking about it.

“Hello?”

“He passed out again. But he’ll be fine.” Leah glanced over at Bran, angelic in sleep. “Probably.”

“That’s comforting.” Charles’s voice was tinder-dry. “How’s the weather?”

Anna must have told him. “Still torrential. The rivers are bursting.”

“I saw on the news that the government had some kind of emergency summit about it. Nearly twelve deaths.”

She smiled faintly at the thought of Charles checking up on their location on the international news. “I’m not surprised.” As Bran’s village was on high ground, they were mostly saved from the main repercussions of this unseasonable weather but elsewhere there were an enormous number of diversions. Flooded towns. Bridges under water. It was making their task even more tedious.

She sighed.

Since they had exhausted the only topic that they could typically manage without disagreement, they said their goodbyes and Leah set off on yet another interminable journey, the only accompaniment to her thoughts the whooshing of the frantic windscreen wipers and the constant noise of water under her tires.

At one point, as before, Bran woke up, turning his head to the side to look at her. He smiled sleepily, if not lovingly. “Good job,” he said, then he passed out again.

*

It actually took closer to six hours to get home, because another river had broken its banks and Leah was forced to take a circuitous, cross-country route, along with a dozen other frustrated-looking inhabitants of this wet country. The roads were tight and each time she came across a burst river she longed for her SUV and not this little European car that was practically eye-level with the water and at risk of floating off.   

She kept catching the eyes of other drivers in the passing, slow moving traffic and exchanging rueful ‘how much longer’ and ‘can you believe this?’ looks which, whilst giving Leah a real sense that she was temporarily part of this sodden community, didn’t do much to speed up the journey.

When she finally pulled into the driveway of the cottage, her hands were vibrating from clenching the wheel for so long. She opened and closed her mouth, trying to release the tension in her jaw.

Bran stirred, then sat up. “Woah,” he said gruffly.

Speechless, Leah looked at him as he blinked around, like a newborn foal. Clearing his throat, he reached for the bottle of water in the cupholder. It was nearly full because Leah hadn’t wanted to add finding a bathroom to the journey – or peeing in a wet field – and he drank most of it in a few seconds.

The sound of his gulps was like nails down a blackboard. She glared at him, a feeling of immense dissatisfaction rising in her gullet.

Slowly, Bran screwed the bottle lid back on. His eyes slanted towards her, almost nervously. “I’m guessing that was not an enjoyable drive back.”

“No,” she said shortly. She flexed her hands. The was a sheet of water cascading down the windscreen. Like they were inside a waterfall. Only very much less romantic.

She both wanted to very much be out of the car but also didn’t want a single drop of water to touch her.

“I’m very sorry.” A whisper of a wry smile warned her that he was about to be an asshole because he then said, “Bet you wish you hadn’t come.”

Rarely had the expression ‘saw red’ been something Leah had ascribed to her own reality. She had a temper, yes, but she did not lose control. And yet a haze seemed to dissolve over her vision – maybe not red, maybe it was greyer – but the thought of tearing into Bran’s face with her nails felt like a very satisfying idea.

Though she had said nothing, Bran’s eyes widened. “That was— ah. I regret that. I am very glad you are here. Obviously. I could not have done this without you. And I love you.” His fingers reached for the door handle. “Let me— open the door and get an umbrella. You stay here, in the dry.”

He escaped, with a gratifying sense of urgency, and returned soon with an umbrella whilst Leah sat, puffing like an angry bull.

The door opened and he covered her exit with the umbrella, holding out his hand. “I’ve put the kettle on,” he said, coaxingly. “The house has found your show on the television and there’s a knitted blanket I’ve never seen before that is calling your name.”

“What nonsense are you babbling,” she muttered, climbing out, not taking his hand.

Bran escorted her into the house and, something about the temperature, the smell, the general feeling of home immediately eased her temper. Her husband, still conciliatory, accepted the clothes she shed without comment and nudged her in the direction of the living area.

Her show – the Welsh soap – was on and there was a knitted blanket folded at the end of the couch. She had never seen it before. Was there a cleaning service, perhaps? The house was always clean but then they were clean people and she wouldn’t have put it past Bran to get up in the night for an OCD spot of vacuuming.

She sunk into the couch and, yes, actually the blanket was a nice addition. She tucked it around her. Bran must have found it in a cupboard.

Her husband brought in a tray on which he had arranged a tea pot, a cup and saucer, and a plate of cookies. He was still wearing his waterproof and this sense of seeing to her comfort before his own was so utterly gratifying she gave him a small smile.

“Where did you get the cookies?” she asked, accepting the cup and slotting a cookie on the saucer.

“Same place the blanket came from,” Bran said, also nonsensically. Had he been hiding them? “I’ll get the box squared away and then why don’t we go to the pub for dinner?”

Leah allowed her bottom lip to protrude in a pout. “That sounds nice.”

He bent down and kissed her forehead. “You’ve had a hard day. I’m very sorry for my part in that.”

“Well.” Now, of course, Leah could be more reasonable. She nibbled her cookie. “You have that whole… psyche thing.”

“And we both know I’ve been a delight about that,” he said drily.

Crumbs of cookie sprayed as she exhaled a surprised laugh.

*

Bran was in a very good mood and in the past Leah had witnessed how that good mood would ebb and flow into the pack, like he was a good mood virus. Suddenly everyone would be cheerful, old grudges would be buried, there was laughter and music everywhere.  

With little other experience to go on, Leah had always assumed this was an Alpha thing. As if good moods could be conveyed through pack ties and across the country entire packs were devoted to a singular goal, of ensuring their Alphas were happy.  

So it was intriguing to see how Bran’s good mood could also spread through humans. She watched it happen. A witty comment said to the barman had barman turning to the barmaid to tell her. The barmaid laughed and repeated this to the trio of men leaning at the other end of the bar. One of them roared with laughter and took his glass to the table by the window, where he rested his hand on the shoulder of the woman at the end and regaled the group with whatever it was had them so amused. Chortles and giggles erupted. Something was said back and then everyone was talking and shouting at each other across the bar, drawing in more to the joke. Tears were wiped from eyes and by the time Bran returned to their table with a bottle of red tucked under his arm and two glasses, the pub was a-buzz with good humor and bonne homie.

“I’m told the boeuf bourguignon is particularly good,” Bran said, sitting down, “and you can swap out the mash for fries but they might have a couple of sides of the dauphinoise from yesterday if you’d prefer.”

“That sounds perfect.”

“Good, because that’s what I ordered.”

She would not be the wife of an alpha if she found this overbearing approach in any way surprising. “What did you say to the barman that made him laugh?”

“I have no idea.” Bran glanced over, just as the barman gestured in his direction. He lifted his hand with an answering smile and she blinked and Bran was suddenly the most handsome and charismatic man in the room. Then she blinked again and he was just Bran.

Given the context, it was not surprising that the subsequent meal was one of the best Leah had ever had, possibly in her life. The stew was rich and flavorful, the meat tender and plenty of it. The dauphinoise was melt-in-the-mouth exquisite. Rich and creamy with a touch of onion and garlic. She was just scraping the last crispy bit around the edges when the barmaid came over and placed another bubbling hot plate of the dish before them. “Found another one as you looked like you’ve worked up an appetite,” she said, winking.

No words were exchanged during this meal until, putting his knife and fork down, Bran asked her if she would like dessert. To which her silent look was enough information. “Someone had a trifle over there. It looked spectacular,” he said, nodding to the corner table. “I’ll get two.”

The trifle was spectacular. Whole dark cherries had been soaked in brandy. The custard tasted like melted vanilla ice-cream. The cream was— she was convinced no cream had ever tasted this creamy. She wanted to drown in this trifle.

“You’re going to have to roll me home,” she announced, finally dropping her spoon in the glass dish.

Bran smiled warmly. “You know, there are few things I enjoy more than seeing you eat well.”

Delicately, Leah dabbed her lips with the cloth napkin. She hoped she hadn’t eaten like a savage; she wasn’t sure what had come over her. “It was very good.”

“It was excellent.”

The barmaid took away their plates, receiving their effusive thanks with every semblance of pleasure. “I’ll let Owen know.”

Rather than leave, Bran ordered them a digestif each. A whiskey for her and an Amaretto for himself. They sipped in companionable silence, leaning close over the little table. Close enough to kiss, actually, and as soon as she thought it, Bran closed the gap between them and pressed his lips to hers.

She blushed, unexpectedly. Public displays of affection were non-existent in their relationship. “What was that for?”

He licked his lips. “I wanted to.”

“You should do it again,” she decided, to see if he would. Her cheeks burned harder.

Smiling, Bran did. This time she tasted the Amaretto on his tongue. “We should probably take this home,” he said, his eyes dark with lust.

*

Tangled together in the early hours of the morning, Bran stroking her back, a stray thought flitted to the front of Leah’s consciousness. “What did you mean, the other day, when you said the house likes me?”

His hand stilled. “Exactly what I said. It likes you.”

She wriggled. “Don’t stop.”

Bran snorted and resumed his stroking, three fingers perfectly placed down her spine. Not too hard, not too gentle. “Yes, mistress.”

She smiled against his skin. That was right. She was his mistress here, in bed. No one knew that but she. “What does that mean, though. In the real world.”

“That it’ll take care of you. Make sure you’re comfortable.” Bran’s voice was low, almost slurred with sleep. “Certainly,” he yawned, “fonder of you than me.”

This was a strange and unsatisfactory response, as in Leah’s world houses didn’t have feelings. “Why’s it fonder of me?”

“Mmm, partly because I abandoned it, I suppose. I didn’t mean to.” His speech picked up a notch or two, as if he was speaking to the house itself. “But I had to. I had to get away.”

“So, it’s a comparative thing.”

“No. No,” he sighed. “If I tell you this, will you promise not to freak out?”

“Freak out,” she repeated, enunciating the words carefully.

His fingers trailed down and curved around one of her butt cheeks. He squeezed. “Yes, my love. Don’t freak out.”

She grumbled. “I think telling me not to is halfway to ensuring I will.”

Bran rolled them, covering her from head to foot with his lithely toned body. He braced himself above her on his elbows, containing her. Sensing a trap, she wriggled but only managed to free one leg, which only ensured that she and Bran were even closer together, slotting together like the proverbial puzzle pieces that human bodies were designed for. They were both still damp from their earlier coupling and if his intention was to have a serious conversation she anticipated it would not be for long.

Bran’s breath puffed against her forehead. “I don’t want to bring up a topic you may wish not to speak of.”

“Which one?” she muttered, tensing.

He pressed his lips between her eyes, then to the side of her nose. His hair tickled her face. “I’m sorry.”

“Well, get on with it, then.”

She felt him smile and then for that smile to drop. “I have always thought it interesting that of the hundreds in the Singer’s camp, that my brother focused wholly on saving you.”

Oh, that topic. “Not wholly on me. He tried to save many of us.”

“But you in particular. He singled you out. Early.”

She inhaled and exhaled deeply, Bran rising and falling on her chest. “I… don’t recall.” Which was close to the truth. Whilst her memories of that time had returned, they were tainted by time. And time did not allow for an accurate retelling. She remembered moments with Sherwood, huddled with others in collusion, but he had not spent significant time with her alone.

Bran touched her hair, gently. He seemed to be studying her very intently indeed. “He changed you. He might not have made it all the way, but it was his intention. He was willing to die for you.” He paused and lowered his head until they were a whisper apart. “I know what that feels like now.”

“Oh, Bran,” she sighed, taken in by this rather macabre but romantic statement. She moved until their lips touched.

For a long moment, they did not move, their mouths connected as if they were a part of each other. Then Bran tilted his head to the side, stroked his lips over her jaw and down her neck. “It seems you are innately attuned to his magic. Better than I. This house was built by him. He and my uncle. And— could you stop moving like that, it’s very distracting.”

“I’m distracting,” she protested, stilling her hips that had started shifting instinctively at the ministrations of his teeth and tongue along one of her most sensitive erogenous zones.

He lifted her leg slightly and she felt his hardness brush against her thigh. Vaguely aware that she was supposed to be freaking out about something, that he was telling her something important, Leah ignored his earlier instruction and wriggled until his cock was close to where she now desperately needed it. With his help, she guided him back inside of her. They both sighed.

“Tell me later,” she instructed, winding her legs around his hips, to better contain his long, deep thrusts.

*

Later, in the morning, Bran brought her a cup of coffee.

“You’re dressed,” she said, blearily stating the obvious. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “What time is it?”

“This is a dressed conversation. And it’s just after ten.” He sat on the edge of the bed.

“But I’m naked.”

“One of your best looks.”

She snorted at this inane flattery and pushed herself up, trying to snap out of it. She could tell by looking at him that he’d not only got up earlier than her but also been for a run on four paws. There was always a certain looseness to him when he had ameliorated the wolf. “Ten? I slept late.”

Bran’s smile was smug and then it wasn’t. He handed her the coffee. “We started something last night that I think we need to finish.”

There was probably a risqué joke in there, somewhere, about how much they had both finished that night but Leah really wasn’t up to it. She took a sip of the coffee. “Oh, this is good,” she said in surprise as her tastebuds responded. It was an intense, dark and bitter blend. Very different from the instant coffee they had brought from the shop.

“Yes. The coffee machine, which we didn’t have yesterday, seemed to come with your very favorite capsules.”

She perked up. “Kazaar? Wait. How did we get a coffee machine?”

Bran sighed. “As I keep mentioning, the house likes you.”

“I… don’t understand.”

“This is a witch’s house, Leah. It was built by my brother, a safehouse for the descendants of my father’s and mother’s damned union. There is magic in the walls. There is magic in the earth beneath it. There is magic in the air.”

She stared at him.

“You turn into a werewolf, I don’t see why this is hard for you.”

“Bran. Are you trying to tell me that the house magicked me up a coffee machine because it likes me?”

“That’s it.” He patted her thigh. “Glad we’re on the same page.”

The coffee was scalding. Her eye twitched as she imagined throwing it at him. Viscerally.

Possibly sensing that he was in some danger, Bran stood and began to tidy the room. Some of their clothes were strewn about. The rest, she imagined, were still in the front hall, where he had fucked her on the flagstones, his hand pressed to her belly to keep her still.

Something deep and hungry inside Leah throbbed.

“Enough of that,” she decided, getting up. “I’m on board with the magical house.” She wasn’t. But for the purpose of getting through this conversation, she was going to be. Leah grabbed one of his flannel shirts and pulled it on. Because apparently this was a dressed conversation. “Tell me.”

“I think it’s possible that Sherwood saw some kinship in you. And that is why he needed to save you.”

“Kinship.” She tilted her head to the side. Again, she wouldn’t have said Sherwood had been particularly friendly towards her. Polite, courteous, yes. Certainly a cut above some of the other men in the camp. Men who had not always needed mind control to carry out the Singer’s wishes.

“Yes. It can sometimes happen. Often at the oddest moments,” Bran said wistfully. “You’ll stumble across someone and know that somewhere, somehow, your ancestors crossed paths.”

She’d mistaken his meaning. He wasn’t saying that Sherwood thought her a friend at first glance. “You’re telling me I’m related to Sherwood?” This really was a dressed conversation. Leah pulled on a pair of pants and paused, fingers on a zipper. “Wouldn’t that make me related to you, too?”

He grimaced. “Infinitesimally related. I mean, truly, minute. A least a dozen generations of different bloodlines separate us. One imagines it would not be possible to see on any form of DNA test.”

“I suppose that’s reassuring.”

Bran’s eyes grew urgent. “If anything, it’s more of a magical connection than blood. I wouldn’t be able to pick it out, not if it wasn’t of my direct line, but Sherwood would.”

She frowned. “But I am not witch born.”

“No,” Bran shook his head in relieved agreement, “the witch gene would fade with a few generations. It’s almost more like—” He pondered this for a moment. “Family magic.”

As relieved as he that she was not witchborn, this ‘family magic’ was a new concept for her. Leah whisked her hair up into a ponytail, and caught a whiff of herself. Dressing had been a mistake. She started to take everything off once more. “If this is the case, what an extraordinary coincidence.”

And Bran did not believe in coincidences. But what else could it be – that she, a supposed descendant of an immortal werewolf, would be found by said immortal descendant in a different continent? The odds were surely astronomically small. Perhaps it was an equation Charles could work out.

Bran’s mouth opened and then very solidly closed as he changed his mind and just said simply, “Yes.”

“What were you going to say?”

“That Sherwood’s gift is finding his family when they need him most,” Bran sighed.

“Ah. So if I really am of his bloodline, then it’s not a coincidence at all.”

“No.”

Depositing the clothes on the chair, she pointed to the door that he was blocking. “I need to shower.”

He brightened. “We could try—”

“No.”

*

The third ward marker took them to the most south-westerly tip of the country, to the Pembrokeshire Coast. It was a black day, even more overcast than usual which Leah didn’t think was possible, and they had their headlights on for most of the drive.

Which, given the conditions, took more than five hours.

Leah watched the GPS device readjust itself for the final time. She was the passenger princess for today’s escapade, at least this outward journey, and had mostly been occupying herself by staring out of the window and thinking about how she felt being distantly related to Bran. She had come to no conclusions. “Another beach?”

“Yes. It seems Sherwood had a preference.” He made an acknowledging grunt. “It’s a natural boundary. It ties in well, magically speaking.”

It was not an easy beach to get to by road and unlike the others didn’t have a convenient parking lot. Instead, they had to park up further inland and set off, following the signs towards the coastline.

“From the maps, it’s a fairly steep climb down,” Bran said as they left the village proper and were hit by the full force of the wind. He had to raise his voice to be heard. 

She shouted back, getting a mouthful of salt water in the process, “You take me to the nicest places.”

Bran’s smile as he turned to look at her was sudden and the brightest part of the day.

Visibility was poor in the driving rain and the coastal path they joined had a sheer drop to the side, with no barrier to protect anyone insane enough to be out in this weather. In the distance, she could hear fierce waves crashing against the rocky cliffs. Much, much fiercer than any of the other beaches they had gone to.

“The prevailing wind comes from the south-west,” Bran yelled at her. It wasn’t possible to walk side by side, so he was walking in front. She was grateful for his red coat, which was the most colorful thing around them and gave her focus. Even the grass looked grey in this light.

After about a mile of walking with their heads down, hoods tightened and tied beneath their chins, Bran came to a halt and gestured down.

She glanced over. “You must be joking.”

On a pleasant day, the wide, but steep, winding steps would probably be a fun way to descend to the sea. She imagined children, with their plastic buckets and spades, frolicking down with suncream on their faces and fingers sticky from ice-cream.

Not she. No. Not today. She was going to be descending those steps with a waterfall. Rain was pouring off the coastal path, down the cliffside, using the stone as the swiftest route down. She was wearing, as was Bran, waterproof pants that covered the tops of her hiking boots. But there was no way they were going to come out of this dry.

“We’re going to have to be careful. The coastline is pretty crumbly,” Bran told her, eyeing their surroundings suspiciously. “Rockfall is extremely possible.”

“Better and better,” Leah muttered, just as a particularly violent gust hit them.

“Did you say something?” he yelled.

“No!” she shouted back.

They began their descent. Slowly. After all these weeks of rain, the stone was slippery with algae, making it not only wet but extremely slippery. A fall wouldn’t kill either of them. It might break a limb or two, and that would be inconvenient. Bones healed inconsistently – perhaps changing might hurry things along, perhaps not. It would certainly hamper their ability to find this next part of the failing ward swiftly.

Step by step, they descended. Leah began to count, half-heartedly, thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five… Down and down they went, winding around from west to east-facing. She began to look forward to turning eastward, as on the westfacing return the wind pummeled spiky salt water into her face, and the sound a near deafening roar. What little conversation they had – ‘Watch that step’ and ‘This bit is very slippery’ – only happened when they were eastward facing, when the wind was behind and her ears worked again.

Three-hundred-and-twelve steps down and Leah’s boot finally hit oozing wet sand. And sank about two inches.

“Keep moving,” Bran said, pulling her by her flailing wrist until they were out of the immediate large pool of water where the water was gathering from the cascade down the cliff-face.

Though she could not see further than half a dozen yards in front of her, from the way the sound of the crashing waves was travelling, Leah estimated that this beach was vast. Far, far bigger than the previous two. Her eyes widened at the prospect of the task ahead of them.

This was going to take hours.

But Bran had a plan. “We’re going to do this differently,” he announced, turning to face her. Despite the capped hood he was wearing, the toggles pulled tight so his face was nothing more than an oval of pale skin and dark eyes, his skin was slick with water. “You’re going to follow your instincts.”

“I am, am I.”

“Yup. Just—” He waved his hands in the direction of the beach. “Don’t think, just start walking.”

Tempted as she was to roll her eyes, Leah didn’t want to delay this activity any longer than possible. Bran had a plan. She would execute this plan. This was how this relationship worked.

She swiveled, facing the water and set off unthinkingly as instructed. Which was ridiculous because no action was really unthinking.

Fueled by false belief, Leah tramped down the beach, Bran at her heels. Her cheeks were burning from the sting of the wind. Her instinct was to keep her head down, away from the wind, but that wasn’t the right kind of instinct. That was self-preservation, which wasn’t what they were trying to achieve here.

She turned around. “This is impossible!” she shouted at her husband.

“You are the queen of impossible!” was his absolutely ridiculous response.

It made her smile though.

*

An hour later, this queen was no longer smiling. The burning in her cheeks had gone, leaving behind only numbness. She felt as if she was going sand-blind from staring down at yard upon yard of sameness. Sand and rocks and shreds of sea vegetation. Nothing was sticking out to her.

She stopped to address Bran, finally giving in to a disappointing realization that she had led him down. “I think it would make more sense if you started looking yourself,” Leah called into the relentless wind.

Bran’s face was flushed now. Wind burn. He shouted something back but it was carried away. Frustrated, she took another step closer and her foot hit something hard unexpectedly and she stumbled into him, inelegantly.

Bran caught her, arms wrapping around her waist. He was smiling, cheerful. “We’ve been circling the same space for ten minutes,” he said, bussing her cold cheek with his significantly warmer one.

She pressed against him, shivering in response to his heat. Had she been human, she would have no doubt got hyperthermia by now. “What?”

Her husband jerked his head to the side, gesturing. Reluctantly pulling away, Leah followed his direction and saw that they had created a veritable target in the sand with their footprints. She’d had no idea. Like a pilot, she’d been flying blind, just putting one foot in front of the other.

He squeezed her. “Well done.”

Leah was, as always, enthused by any form of compliment from her husband but she really didn’t think this was deserving.

His hand slid down and he patted her butt. “Why don’t you have some hot chocolate. And I’ll dig.”

In front of their people, Leah had always accepted, if not relished, Bran’s old-fashioned – and guilt-laden – tendency to treat her like a lady. He’d carry her bags and hold doors open and would fetch her food and drink and she would lap it up because she was his wife and mate and he was the Alpha of Alphas.

Alone was a different matter. Alone, they were a team.

Sighing, she held her hand out. “No. I’ll dig. It’ll be over quicker.”

This got her a quick kiss – really, he was being very handsy – and then a trowel was pressed into her hand. They knelt on the sand and began to dig.

It was, as expected, an unpleasant business. Each trowel-ful of sand they removed rapidly filled with water which also needed scooping out. The beach was sodden. As they dug, the edges of the hole grew fragile, crumbling beneath their hands and knees, and several times Leah almost ended up head-first in the deep pool of water they were creating.

“I’m going to have a bath when we get back,” she told him, though she doubted he could hear. “Boiling water. And all the bath salts.” She didn’t know if they had bath salts. Maybe the house that could magic up a coffee machine would magic up some Epsom Salts.

The hole grew larger and Leah and Bran edged further and further apart on either side of the murky, water-filled pit. They were leaning over deeply now to dig, really pushing the limits of how far they could go without climbing inside, arms wet to their shoulders. At some point, one of them was going to have to stand in that water.

And that person, Leah realized, as she watched her suddenly-unconscious husband slow-fall head-first into it, was going to be her.

*

Having recently run across two states without stopping for rest, and a myriad of other examples before that, Leah knew physical hardship like she knew the back of her hand.

She’d also lived in a region that was blanketed by feet of snow for several months of the year, so she also knew cold. Real cold. Cold that was a danger even to werewolves. Cold that required annual preparation and defense against. The battle of man, or wolf, against nature.

Still. Heaving her dense husband’s body up a cliff-face staircase, carrying a cursed box under arm hand and a gale force wind shoving her every which way, was not for the weak.

Which Leah thankfully wasn’t.

She didn’t dare pause, in case she fell over. She just kept plodding away. One sodden step at a time. She didn’t think about the sand in her underwear. The water that had leaked into her socks. She didn’t think about the potential of running into any other lunatics who thought this was the prime weather for a trot on the beach. She didn’t think about any of it until she got to the top and unceremoniously dropped her unresponsive husband on the grass. He didn’t even grunt, just rolled over to a stop like a floppy doll.

Leah pressed her hands into the small of her back and stretched with relief.

The journey wasn’t over. But she was going to drink that cocoa and celebrate this minor achievement.

Two cups later – re-energized from the burst of sugar – Leah hoisted her husband back over her shoulder and clamped the ward box between her elbow and hip and headed east once more.

*

As it had become something of a routine, Leah called Charles from the car. She had undressed down to her damp sports underwear and put the heaters on full blast. The windows had steamed up so there was no chance that a passer-by was going to get a curious eyeful. Not that there would be a passer-by because no one in their right mind would be out in this weather. Even this small village parking lot was empty.

Her step-son answered in two precise rings. “I take it he’s unconscious again.”

“Yes, he is,” Leah ground out. She then gave him a potted history of the last three hours of her life and launched into a complaint about the impending darkness and that the GPS said it would take six hours get back to the cottage.

Charles listened to this diatribe with his typical loud silence and then said, “That sounds rough.”

Leah sighed. It was all she wanted to hear, even if she had to hear it from her step-son. “It was.”

She glared at Bran, blissfully – and deceptively angelically – unconscious in his seat. She’d wrestled off his jacket but he’d been by no means as wet as she was. She leaned forward to adjust one of the heaters so that it was aimed at his damp hair, where his head-first dive into the water had done most of the damage. They would both probably be finding sand in the crevices of their bodies for weeks to come.

“Why don’t I call that pub for you? Get some food delivered.”

“That’s— that’s a fantastic idea. Do you think they’ll deliver?”

“I think a hefty tip will be an incentive.”

She had honestly never felt so warmly towards Charles in her life. And that had nothing to do with the heaters currently bringing back the blood circulation to her toes.

Leah wouldn’t say the prospect of a delicious, hot meal at the end of the journey made the subsequent grueling hours pass by any faster. What she would say was that when night fell, which it did just before 4pm this time of year, there was a noticeable adjustment to the insane driving she had witnessed in this country. She no longer felt like she was holding up traffic when she took a winding flooded single lane at 40mph in torrential rain instead of the national speed limit of 70. Everyone was significantly more cautious.

Which made a pleasant change.

She pulled into the little drive of their cottage just before 10pm and unclenched her hands on the wheel. The job, as they said, was done.

Bran sat forward, as if he had been shocked awake. He smacked his lips and looked around, much as a newborn foal, bleary, unfocussed, and were then suddenly, predatorily sharp. “Who’s that man?” he asked in an unearthly voice.

Leah jerked to the right, where indeed there was a large man, standing in their porch, wearing what looked like a waterproof jumpsuit. Under the porch light, the hood of his jumpsuit entirely shadowed his face in darkness.

He raised a white plastic bag in salute. “Oh. That’s dinner,” she sighed.

God bless Charles.

*

They ate like kings. Charles had overordered, clearly unsure which dish to choose for them so just picking one of each. Lasagna, a cheeseburger with all the trimmings, some kind of chicken stew with herbed mashed potatoes, chicken wings, fried fish, portions of parmesan truffle fries. It was like a tasting menu, Leah thought deliriously, except werewolf-size.

The chicken wings were particularly good. Some kind of spicy seasoning on the skin. Her lips were burning. Burning was better than frozen.

Licking her fingers, she reached for her cell phone and sent Charles a genuine thank you message, along with a photo of the kitchen table laboring under the weight of all the food. Bran was caught mid-way through chomping into a burger, and the flash made his eyes glow like a madman but she sent it anyway.

Her sense of humor abruptly returned. “So, if I’m from Sherwood’s line, does that make you my uncle?”

As she had hoped, Bran choked on his mouthful of burger. She nudged the bottle of cider that had come with their order towards him as he coughed and spluttered. He drank deeply. “No,” he said, finally, thumping his chest.

Leah took a delicate sip of her own cider. Given her history, she thought she was being remarkably composed about this revelation but perhaps Bran wasn’t yet on the same page. She changed the subject. “How many more of those wards do you think are left?”

Bran shrugged. “I’ll burn this one and see. But not many.”

They hadn’t destroyed the box immediately, as the desire to dry off and eat had been more pressing. “Do you want to do that tonight?”

He nodded and picked up a couple of fries, dipping them into the garlic mayo. “Do you still want to have that bubble bath?”

Whilst they had both showered perfunctorily before eating, Leah’s longing for a deep soak had not left her. “I would, actually.”

“You do that whilst I get rid of the box.”

This seemed like a delightful division of labor so Leah agreed readily, taking herself upstairs once they had decimated their take-out and tidied everything away.  

With the bath water running, she undressed quickly in the bedroom and tossed her clothes into the hamper. Though she’d changed after her shower, she still felt like the sand had travelled with her. And probably would for several days.

The window was still open and she watched Bran trudge out to the car, smilingly glad that she didn’t have to go back outside again.

It was in quiet moments like this, often the more domestic moments, that her tender heart fluttered with affection for her husband. It wasn’t when he was swinging his magical prowess around or impressing all and sundry with his knowledge. Not that there wasn’t an appeal to that – there was great appeal – but those were moments shared with everyone else. Only she got to see this side of him. Fighting through the pouring rain without his coat, his T-shirt wet through and his hair plastered to his face. Crushing boxes in their garage. Detailing the insides of their cars or laying the fires. Making his terrible tuna pasta bake.

As he closed the trunk, Bran turned and caught her watching. He dog whistled. “Giving the neighbors a good show, Mrs. Cornick,” he called.

She struck a pose. “Lucky them.”

Jerking, suddenly, remembering the running water, she hurried to turn the facets off. The small bathroom had steamed up, clouding the window and mirror, leaving her nothing but a pale, ghostly shape in the glass. The lighting wasn’t, right, she decided. Too bright. What she could do with were some—

Her eyes alighted on the shelf in the bathroom which previously had only held a small plant. Now there were a couple of expensive brand name glass candles just like the ones she had at home. And some matches.

Of course.

She lit them. Unquestioningly. And then with a sigh of relief, Leah climbed into the bath, wincing at the temperature. Really, she wasn’t usually a bath kind of woman. Werewolves ran hot, after all, but there was something about fulfilling a vision – of the ritual of bathing after a long day, of being a woman of leisure – that was pleasing.

Her nose wrinkled as she sank beneath the water. Why could she smell lavender?

*

Not long after, Bran came to stand in the doorway of the bathroom.

Leah had sunk down until only her ears and nose were above the waterline. The temperature had cooled from scorching to something a little more bearable and she had been pleasantly drifting, no real thoughts sticking, just cocooned by warmth and the flickering glow from the candles.

She saw him and lifted her chin to smile vaguely. “I think the house put bath salts in the water without me seeing.”

“Sneaky.” Bran put the seat down on the toilet so he could sit. He had a slightly sooty look to him, which wasn’t entirely physical. It was more something she could sense. At home he very occasionally had this look after a difficult phone call or conversation.

He trailed his fingers in the water by her elbow. “I think there’s one ward left.”

“Only one! Good news.”

“Mmm.”

It did not pass Leah by that her husband’s eyes were not attentively on her face but lower, to where her breasts were bobbing gently under the water. He had a slight, wistful smile on his face.

Mischief flickered in his eyes. “I don’t suppose—”

Decades of marriage had Leah predicting the direction of his thoughts, as unfathomable as they were. She jolted with alarm, ripples of water fanning out across the milky surface. “You are not getting in with me.”

He reached for his damp T-shirt and pulled it off. “Am I not.”

The noise Leah made was close to a maidenly shriek. She flung herself upright just as Bran’s pants and underwear hit the wall. The next thing she knew, he was bare-assed and inserting himself behind her as she yelped about possible flooding, the incompatible size of the bathtub for two adult forms and Christ how he was cold.

The water lapped dangerously at the edges of the bath, gurgling down the overflow as they maneuvered around, slipping and sliding like sardines in a tin can.

“This is not comfortable,” she protested, deliberately pressing her elbow backwards into something fleshy.

Bran ignored her but she could feel his unholy glee, as well as his more excitable body part, and it was very hard to stay cross when he was being playful. She hadn’t known he could be playful, at least not with her.

His hands wove under her arms to their desired destination. She looked down at the fingers now cupping her breasts. “I see,” she said, mock-disapproving. Again, it was difficult to challenge his overt interest in her assets. There was a hint of feminine pride forcing its way to the surface.

Bran ignored her. He knew she wasn’t really annoyed. “Our tub at home is much bigger.”

Leah splashed a hand in triumph. “It is. So much bigger!”

“Not a lot of time for baths, though.”

She exhaled heavily. “No. I suppose not.”

Accepting her fate, Leah’s head lolled backwards, resting between the hard edge of the bath and Bran’s shoulder. He smelled like brimstone.

Her husband began to toy with her nipples, lightly pinching between thumb and forefinger, turning them berry red and sharp as diamonds. Leah tried not to squirm as the sensation travelled downwards. “We’ll go home then. Once we destroy this final piece of the ward.”

The water sloshed as he nodded, an apparently full body thing. “We’ll go home.”

“Because you are feeling better.”

“Can’t you tell?” he teased.

“If you’re suggesting that you are returning to normal behavior, nothing about this seems normal to me.”

Bran snickered. One of his hands roved further down her belly, his fingers grazing the top of her pubic mound. He was rather restricted in movement, however, and stopped there, the finger tracing the muscles of her abdomen sending quivers in their wake.

“You know,” he said thoughtfully, “if you drape one leg over the side of the bath and scootch up a bit, I can give you a present.”

She thought about it for about a nano-second and then did just that.

*

It was one of those rare occasions when they woke, facing each other. For a moment, neither said nor did anything, just slow-blinkingly relishing the peace that came just after waking.

No concerns. No pressing occupation requiring their attention. Simply coasting the edges of a good sleep.

And it had been a good sleep. Usually, she was aware of Bran’s restlessness – one of the excuses he had always used for having a separate bedroom – but she’d sensed none of that from him that night.   

Fondly, Leah took in his tremendous bedhead – the repercussions of going to bed with damp hair – and the creases on his cheek that told her he hadn’t moved all night. She could still smell the lavender from the bath on his warm skin. She rubbed her feet together in delight.

“Have you noticed?” Bran asked, his voice low and gruff.

“Hmm?”

“It’s stopped raining.”

Leah laughed, because surely this was implausible. With a burst of energy, she rolled over and crawled to the foot of the bed. “It’s still raining,” she announced as she considered the view, “but more of a soft drizzle. But I can see patches of blue sky.”

Her husband crawled behind her, eager. “You jest.”

“Nope.” Leah pointed to a misty patch in the sky that was a lighter shade of grey. “That’s definitely blue sky.”

They contemplated this miracle. He toyed with the ends of her hair. “Shame to spend the morning meditating on the next ward. How about a walk? Have you seen the castle?”

She mock-gasped. “Who are you and what have you done with my workaholic husband?”

He snorted and rolled off the bed like a gymnast, light on his feet and silent. “My turn to make breakfast, yes? How do you want them?”

“Scrambled. With some of the ham.” Her stomach rumbled. “Oh, and there’s hot sauce left from the wings last night. Also, did we finish the garlic bread?”

*

Wiping the droplets of water away, Leah leaned over a very weathered information board, on which the history of the castle – such as it was – was conveyed by the appropriate heritage authority.

Unfortunately, it was disappointingly sparse information, just some vague outlines of what the castle might have looked like based on the remains that could be seen. Prior to this iteration, historians and archeologists believed the site had originally been a Norman motte and bailey fortification. Then there was a timeline of the various invasions that had taken place, showing the times it had fallen to the English and been rebuilt over the centuries.

“Changed hands a lot,” Leah murmured, looking up to try and match what she was seeing on the diagram with the land before her. Essentially a large – very large – sunken grassy pitch. There were outcrops of stonework, here and there, along with evidence of animal burrows and mounds, but otherwise it was no Disney castle. “Was it impressive?”

“I wouldn’t say impressive. It wasn’t very large. There are bigger, in Wales.”

There was something in his tone, something in the vague way he was looking at the fragments what remained, that triggered Leah’s – as Kara would put it – spidey sense. But that spidey sense told her she needed to tread very carefully now to unpick whatever it was that Bran was thinking.

She looked down at the board again. Leah had a very approximate idea of her husband’s age. Never confirmed. Asking a werewolf their age was impolite, particularly if one had the sense they were very old indeed. She’d stopped telling people around about the century mark herself, because the response was never particularly flattering and inevitably led to impertinent questions about historical events Leah had forgotten or ignored.

Her finger traced the timeline thoughtfully. Bran’s effortless adaptation to act the modern man came from experience. For centuries, he had been transforming himself every few years to fit the current mode of the average youth. Hair, clothes, relevant interests in popular culture, even political persuasion, he knew how to be convincing.

And yet he had been born close to or during the Norman rule of the British Isles. When feudalism and God was the accepted glue that held society together. When the common people of this collection of islands believed in the divine right of kings, though which king that might have been was disputed. Love their neighbor. Do unto others. Certainly there were some similarities with society today – or specifically werewolf society today – but otherwise it was an alien time.

“Who was— I guess the lord? Of the castle at the time?” she asked, keeping her voice moderated. Just a light curiosity. Names were missing from the educational board after all. Probably because the English didn’t care enough to record them.

“One of the princes of Teyrnas Powys.”

Leah’s spidey sense continued to ping. Bran’s tone was wistful. And he was staring at the castle almost with longing.

“Bran,” she sighed, for there was no other explanation. “Did your family own this castle?”

He glanced at her over his shoulder. The corner of his mouth pressed in, forming a dimple. “For a while. They had something of a fall from grace.”

“How so?”

“Ran out of viable heirs.”

She pieced it together. “Because your father married your mother.”

“She was a known witch. Not a popular choice for a prince’s eldest son. And then there was the curse.” He held out his elbow to her, ever the gentleman. “Shall we walk the wall? It’ll be damned soggy in the middle so best avoided.”

The wall, the raised grassy outline that surrounded the sunken area where Leah supposed the foundations had once been, was indeed firmer, underpinned as it was by what had once been the castle’s outer fortifications. It did not take them longer than thirty minutes to stroll the circumference, arm in arm, the knight and his lady.

A prince and his princess.

“Why the smile?” Bran asked as they returned to the information sign.

“No reason.” But she couldn’t drop it. It was surely every woman’s dream to marry a prince. And what a prince! She cleared her throat, very much at risk of a giggle. “A curse?”

Bran allowed her mild hysteria to pass with a wry look that suggested he knew the direction of her thoughts. “The curse,” he enthused. “That no man of my father’s line would ever live as lord of this castle again.”

“Ah. Which is where the blood pact came in.”

“Indeed. The people of this village were caretakers, holding the land in trust, until she passed.”

“For you. A Prince of Powys.”

“I was never a prince,” he said, suppressively. “In any case, that line of princes was replaced by other families. Who had more impressive castles.”

“Maybe we could visit one.”

“Maybe. Someday.” Bran squeezed her hand and nodded to the north, drawing her attention to the black clouds on the horizon. “Looks like the weather’s turning. We should get back. If we’re lucky, I’ll be able to find the last ward marker this afternoon. I’ll need a run this evening, too.”

One more ward marker. One more harrowing, wet journey. And then they would go home.

The path down from the castle was muddy and required concentration to avoid the worst areas. If she’d been back home, with their mud room, all the accoutrement of Amazon-purchased boot-cleaning gear and, if that failed, multiple pairs of shoes, she might not have thought twice about trawling acres of mud back to the house. But they would have another busy day tomorrow tramping through Wales’s finest beaches, so preserving her footwear was a priority.

Leah ended up hoisting herself up along a barbed wire fence, knotted with old sheep’s wool. “I suppose the magic house might clean my boots,” she said as she untangled her shoelace from a metal prong.

“Risky thinking,” was her husband’s view.

“Oh?”

“You’ll get used to it. Then where will we be?”

Finally, Bran helped her over the step stile that led them back onto the main path, thankfully stone.

“Will our house become magical?” she wondered.

“Alas, unlikely. Less of my sweat and blood and tears went into the building of it.”

“More of the hiring and the contracting and the financial incentives. How disappointing.”

They trudged down the high street and passed a couple of villagers, who nodded politely and wished them a good morning, no notion that they were addressing a prince.

“It’s been good, you know, being back,” Bran announced, as they passed the pub named after the mother he had eaten. The mother who had cursed his family and changed the course of his life.

And Leah’s, come to think of it.

“Has it?” Leah was surprised. “Truly?”

Bran was almost sheepish. “Yes. I think— I think I needed to come back. Maybe because the ward has been failing for some time. Maybe for other, more nebulous reasons.”

“Closure,” Leah suggested, pulling the term out of nowhere. For some reason, she imagined Anna saying it, complete with a soft look in her whiskey-brown eyes.

Her husband snorted and tugged her to his side to cross the road. “How modern. Yes, closure,” he said the word as if it tasted funny, “but maybe I needed to come back with you.”

“Well that’s true. How else would you have found all the boxes?”

Bran slanted her an amused look. “You know that’s not what I meant. I’m being sentimental.”

Leah smiled and bumped him with her hip. “Next time we come, maybe it won’t be raining.”

“Inconceivable.”

-end