Beneath the Skin (13 page)

A lot of things can happen in nine months, can’t they?”

I shrugged.

“Thank you, Murphy.” I made myself look at him. His eyes were dark enough to drown

in if I let myself. He was already starting to be familiar. I felt the extra weight of his pearl birthstone on the pendant around my throat. I could see the green peridot in his pendant wink in the French sunlight. “You didn’t have to do this for me, and I know I’ve been really awful to you when I should be on my knees in gratitude. I keep thinking about Grey and Elena, and even Rudi, and comparing you to them and that’s not fair.”

“Why not?” His wistful smile told me he wasn’t mad or insulted. “I’m comparing you to Sorcha.”

“Oh, I’ll never measure up to her.”

“There is no measuring, because you’re not her and it’s completely different. I’m just saying, Constance, that we don’t have to shove our pasts behind us and feel guilty about them just because they were wonderful. A little bit of feeling nostalgic, of feeling lost, that’s only natural under these circumstances. I’m sorry I don’t have a pack for you. I know you looked forward to belonging to a pack again. And you deserve one. If I have to start a pack myself, I’ll get you one. You believe me?” He touched the hand I had on the table and his fingers were warm and strong.

“I’d say I’d find us one, but I somehow think you’ll have better luck than me.” I laughed, trying to make a joke, but he didn’t smile.

“If you didn’t walk around with a target on your backside, inviting people to kick your ass, they wouldn’t, you know?” He took his hand away from mine and gave me an impatient glance. “I’m Constance Newcastle, I killed my bond mates. I know I’m not good enough for you to even talk to let alone let me into your pack.”

I flushed.

“That’s the message you’re sending off. Loud and clear. I picked up on it the first night we met. That bitch, Mary, she was testing you. And you failed. Big time. Why don’t you try defending yourself a little bit instead of rolling over and giving us your throat?”

“I did kill them.” My voice was a guilty whisper. “I was driving the car. It wasn’t raining.

It was barely even dark. I wasn’t drunk, but I’d had a couple glasses of champagne. I didn’t know the car, because it was only the first day I had it and I drove it over the embankment and we crashed. Elena died on impact. She was in the backseat.” I was crying now, but I couldn’t stop talking. I wanted him to know. “She broke her neck on the back of my seat. The airbag saved me, but Grey was thrown out of the car. He broke his back in the fall. I got out of the car somehow and ran to him. There was blood coming out of his mouth and his body was all wrong.

Twisted. I knew I shouldn’t touch him, but I did. I wanted him to tell me he was okay. And he tried to. He always knew what I needed to hear. But he couldn’t talk, because of the blood in his mouth, in his lungs. He clutched at my hand and his...his eyes. He was looking right at me when he died. Just like Rudi was. And I saw his essence leave his body and dissipate into the wind.

Just like I saw Rudi’s. I didn’t kill Rudi. But I did kill Grey and Elena, and nothing you can do will ever make me say any different.”

“Were they not wearing seatbelts?” Murphy asked. He handed me his linen napkin and I wiped my face with it.

“No, they never did,” I said around the fabric.

“Well, he wouldn’t have been thrown from the car if he’d worn a damn seatbelt. And she might not have hit the back of the seat if she’d worn hers.”

“Oh, bullshit, Murphy. That’s what Allerton tried to tell me too. Such bullshit. I drove the car over a cliff, goddamnit. Seatbelts or not, I shouldn’t have done that.”

A shadow fell across us and, with a flustered start, I recalled we sat in the grand ballroom where dozens of people milled around.

A tall curly-haired man stood looking down at us. His eyes were two different colors. The right one was blue, the left brown. The eyes were set in a handsome, very Irish face. He had on a Fair Isle sweater paired with tweed pants and his name tag said
Padraic O’Reilly, Mac Tíre,
Dublin, Ireland
.

Mac Tíre was one of the biggest and most influential packs in the world.

“Paddy,” Murphy said, a certain tension gripped his face. I realized they knew each other quite well.

Padriac said something in Irish and Murphy looked at me then answered in English.

“Sure, I’ll introduce you to my bond mate. Padriac O’Reilly, Alpha leader of Mac Tíre, this is my bond mate, Constance Newcastle. Constance, this is Padriac.” Murphy’s voice was sarcastic, his eyes very dark. A mocking smile crossed his face as he added, “Most people call him Paddy.”

“My friends do, yes,” said O’Reilly. He and I stared at each other. I was certainly not looking my best, but the way he gazed at me let me know in no uncertain terms that he found me very attractive. Heat sizzled between us--something raw and sexually blatant.

Murphy was pissed. His jaw tightened and his eyes became very narrow.

“You look like you’ve been crying. Has my man been saying something to upset you

now? Sure and you aren’t fighting after only one night in bondage.” He laughed at his pun and broke our sizzling eye contact. Murphy scowled.

“I’m sure you’re both upset at my decision about not letting you into the pack, but you’ll not hold that against us, will you?” O’Reilly put a hand on Murphy’s shoulder and Murphy shrugged it off.

I tried not to gape.

“Are you here to tell us you’ve changed your mind, Paddy? Because I can’t think of

another reason why you’d talk to me after what I said to you last night.”

“You were angry last night.”

“You’re damned right I was. I still am. So unless you’ve changed your mind, fuck off.”

I did gape then. Telling the Alpha leader of a pack as big as Mac Tíre to fuck off was almost like telling a Council member the same thing.

O’Reilly didn’t get angry, though. He winced. The arrogant smile faded from his face and, for a moment, I saw remorse and frustration.

“Give us some time, Liam,” he pleaded. “Nobody’s sure of this woman yet. Give it a few months and then come back to talk to me.”

“What? If I survive a few months you’ll suddenly change your mind? You coward. You

bloody coward. I’ll never ask to join your pack again, Padriac O’Reilly. Got it?” Murphy was so angry one whole half of the ballroom could probably smell it. Most of them stared at us.

“Well, maybe I’ll be asking you then,” O’Reilly said wistfully. “But you’ll have to wait.

You’d do the same in my shoes, man. You know you would. You wouldn’t let someone

dangerous join our pack.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” Murphy agreed, shoulders tense. “Constance is about as dangerous as that Fair Isle sweater you’re wearing.” He looked as if he wanted to spit at O’Reilly’s shoes but he didn’t.

“Let’s agree to let time tell that tale, shall we? It was nice to meet you, Constance.”

O’Reilly gave me another one of his sizzling stares, but this time I refused to let it affect me.

“I wish the feeling was mutual, Mr. O’Reilly, but maybe time will change my mind.

Anything’s possible. Even homicidal Fair Isle sweaters I imagine.”

O’Reilly burst out laughing and so did Murphy.

“Good one,” said O’Reilly and there was something almost like regret on his face as he walked away.

“Can’t take you anywhere,” said Murphy. He sounded downright pleased about it.

“Mac Tíre,” I declared. “Mac Tíre, Murphy. Only one of the biggest packs in the entire world. Maybe the biggest. There are over a hundred members of that pack alone!”

“One hundred and fifty-two. In Ireland. But who’s counting,” muttered Murphy.

“You. You were Alpha of Mac Tíre?” I said it as if it were an accusation.

“Once upon a time, yeah, I was,” he agreed, a small smile playing about his lips.

“Counting one old grandfather inherited from Jonathan’s birth pack, there are six

members of the Riverglow pack. In our halcyon days when my triad was intact, there were nine of us. In my birth pack, which I thought was huge, there were twenty-four members. Twenty-five when I belonged. And you led a pack a hundred and fifty-two strong. Jesus H. Christ.”

“It’s just numbers, Constance.”

“In Ireland?” I really heard what he said. “Oh, shit, that’s right. Mac Tíre is throughout Great Britain isn’t it?”

“Yes, but there’s an auxiliary Alpha pair in each country. The Irish Alphas are only figureheads in those countries, for all intents and purposes. They just use the name, basically.”

“Bullshit,” I cried a little louder than I’d intended. Murphy grinned at me boyishly.

“I was Alpha for two years, Constance. Nobody’s Alpha for longer than five, it’s a rule.

Got to let the women of childbearing age have a chance if possible, right?”

His grin dimmed a little when he mentioned childbearing. I thought of his bond mate dying in childbirth.

“Was Mac Tíre your birth pack too?” I asked.

He nodded, a shadow darkening his face.

“Why didn’t you join a duo and become a triad?” I was honestly confused. Why wouldn’t anybody with that kind of an option take it? And his pack was huge. He’d have had many different options.

“I told you. I never wanted anyone but Sorcha.” Murphy’s eyes burned bright with the heat of her memory. “Don’t you get it?”

“I’m sorry. I’ll shut up now.” I was ashamed of myself for questioning him. His grief was so near the surface it wasn’t fair to poke at it and stir it to the top.

“No, you need to know all this. You should know all this.” He sounded more like he

convinced himself rather than me. Instead of looking at me, he turned his head to stare at something across the room. Grief was stamped across his face. I wanted to reach across the table and touch him, offer him some sort of comfort, but when I did, he was up and out of his chair to go across the room and speak with somebody he knew. He didn’t bother to bring me with him.

I found Sarah and returned her dress. She was no less morose than the night before, but confided Lucas was pretty decent in bed so she had that much at least.

Mindful of Allerton’s words, I said little and steered the conversation out of the tricky depths of relationships and birthdays into safer ports.

When I walked away, I figured I would probably never see her again, and it was a

sobering thought. So many times when you said goodbye you never really let yourself believe it was for the last time, but so often it was.

Lots of people hadn’t bothered to come to the chateau for the last day--they’d stayed in Paris and gone sightseeing together. Rudi’s death had cast a pall across the Gathering. It would be remembered, but not in a good way. I wondered if it were an ill omen to be bonded at a bad luck Gathering like this one had been. I thought of Murphy’s face as he’d examined the shell box I’d given him. His bonding ceremony with Sorcha had no doubt been a joyous occasion--like mine had been with Grey and then Elena. Joyous was never a word that would describe our bonding ceremony--Murphy’s and mine, but maybe there was joy in our future. At least I hoped so.

I looked for Roxanne, Lucy and Theresa, but I never found them. I wanted the closure and instead I got a vague sense of guilt of things left unfinished.

I sat on the stone steps of the chateau, enjoying the sun on my shoulders when I saw the hearse roll up. A side door to the chateau on the ground level, opened and four men carried a coffin to the back of the hearse.

I’d have thought there would be a back entrance to a place as big as a chateau. Maybe they could have waited to bring Rudi out when nobody was there.

Perhaps they delayed until his pack mates were gone, because they surely weren’t there to watch his body being loaded into the back of the hearse. But I was there.

As the men struggled to shift the coffin into the back of the black hearse, I could barely breathe. I clutched my new pendant in both hands and couldn’t help but think of a Louisiana cane field and a tall, gangly German boy who spoke barely any English but could kiss like a dream.

“Oh, my god, I just want to go home,” I said through the tears that poured down my face.

They were cold. It was a cold day despite the sun.

Murphy appeared from nowhere to sit beside me, his shoulder brushing mine.

“All you ever do is see me cry,” I said with resentment. “I can do other things, you know.”

“I know.” His mouth tightened. “They picked a hell of a time for this.”

“That’s what I thought too. It’s like they knew I was sitting out here.”

“I think maybe one person in particular did,” Murphy muttered.

We both watched the hearse drive away, tires crunching loudly over the gravel. The sun struck the chrome bumper and burned into our eyes.

When the hearse had pulled out of sight, I shifted on the stone step I sat on and looked at Murphy.

“When can we leave? Is there any reason why we’re still here?”

“Just waiting on Allerton,” he told me. “Maybe I was wrong, though. Maybe all he

wanted us for was to bond, but I could have sworn there was something else.”

I shivered and looked down at my shoes. The leopard print was scuffed on the toe of the left one. I scowled. I’d worn them too many times in a row. I wanted to wear boots, because my feet were freezing. I wanted socks. I wanted a new pair of jeans and another sweater, and I was tired of going commando, because I had no fresh panties. I’d managed to lose one of my favorite earrings and my watch was still in the broom closet room, which meant I’d probably never see it again. I was supposed to have checked out of my Paris hotel three-and-a-half hours ago and my passport was in the safe in that room, as well as all my luggage, including the stupid souvenirs I’d bought before this goddamn Gathering had begun. Souvenirs I’d been excited about bringing back to my tiny little condo in Boston, and now I could barely remember what they were. My tiny little condo in Boston was probably never going to be home again, because why would Murphy want to leave Ireland, and why should he? He’d already fucked up his life enough by tying himself to me, why should he have to give up his home too?