Lexi should have explained protocol to the man on the way up to the tower, but she had blindly expected him to behave. Or to have a rudimentary grasp on pack procedures. He’d shown such courage and leadership so far. Was he not a member of a pack? Had he never approached a principal before?
“He’s heading the rescue team, Father. Please accept my apologies for his rudeness. If I had known …” She sighed. She’d been running on full throttle since the disaster, hadn’t eaten, and right now was feeling as tired as her father looked. “Trystan Hawkes has helped our men bring up six who were buried under the snow. And he seems determined to find the remaining six.”
“I see.” Her father looked aside and smoothed his palm caressingly over the titanium case. “I suppose I can overlook it this time. Knowing his father, Rhys Hawkes, I should have expected the insubordinate behavior. He didn’t bring up his son in a pack.”
“He’s an omega?”
The principal nodded. “Where is Vincent?”
Lexi sucked in a breath. This was the part of chatelaine duties she did not enjoy. Reporting to her father was easy. She’d been doing it all her life, ever since her dreams of growing up like Lana had been smashed at puberty. But she never liked delivering bad news to her father, which had to be done on occasion, and most especially now, when he was not well. Stressful news could make him weaker, but neither would she dream to hide the truth from her father.
“Vincent Rapel didn’t make it. Natalie and Reese looked him over and suspect all his bones were crushed. She also concluded he died instantly as a rib bone appeared to have pierced his heart.”
“The witch doctor?” He named Natalie that because she was a real witch who had been taken in by the pack decades earlier. She’d been nurse to Lexi and Lana when they were little, and Lexi had great respect for her, though she knew her father often conflicted with the woman’s “spiritual” ways. “She suspects? She concluded? We need a real medical doctor here, Alexis. Immediately. If there are wounded, they’ll need more than herb-craft and moon voodoo.”
“Father, don’t worry yourself, please. Reese is working alongside Natalie, and you know he has medical training.”
“Veterinary training.” He grunted and slammed his shoulders into the easy chair. “We are not dogs. Why I allowed Natalie to recruit him is beyond my ken. Call Paris. There’s a few practicing werewolves in the city. Check with Rhys Hawkes, he’ll have their contact information.”
“I will. You should be in bed resting. How are you feeling?”
“The same. Weak. Like my blood is sinking to my feet. I’m so light-headed. But this.” He slapped the case. “I’ve had this for ages. This may be my last hope.”
She had no idea what was inside the case but would learn soon enough. “Do you want me to call Natalie here to help you with it?”
He sighed, his drawn face saggy. “Yes, she is my only option at the moment. And Alexis?”
“Yes, Father?”
“I’ll have to elect a new scion since I’m not doing so well.”
“Don’t talk like that. Whatever Monsieur Hawkes sent along in that case will help you recover, I’m sure of it.”
“You don’t even know what it is. Nor do you have any idea who Rhys Hawkes and his son Trystan are.”
That statement took her back for a moment. What did it matter if the man had helped only since arriving?
“Trystan seems trustworthy and a man to have around when the chips are down. He’s focused. He impresses me.”
“Yes, well.” Edmonton sighed and gestured she help him to stand. “Be wary, Lexi. He is not from this pack.”
“I will.”
Lexi walked her father into the attached bedroom suite and helped him onto a bed topped with a plush goose-down coverlet.
Her father was a young wolf, only a century old, and had been the picture of health two weeks ago. But he’d begun to decline, slowly yet steadily, and three days ago he’d taken to his bed. The witch doctor hadn’t a clue, but Natalie kept divining her father’s blood, with no results.
Edmonton wouldn’t let her cast a healing spell upon him, because he didn’t believe in witchcraft.
Another reason Edmonton’s mistrust of Natalie ran deep was due to the affair he’d had with her twenty years earlier, after Lexi and Lana’s mother had died. Edmonton Connor was a rogue of the first water, and never apologized for it. Lexi understood he needed connection, love and, yes, to answer the physical cravings all werewolves felt. But the past few years, as far as she knew, he’d not taken any woman under arm or even to his bed. Instead, wanderlust had brightened Edmonton Connor’s eyes, but he tamped down the urge to travel because he had a pack to look after.
Now he’d been reduced to a feeble man who looked as old as he should be were he mortal. And for no apparent reason. Werewolves did not suffer mortal ailments. He’d not been physically injured. How to understand his failing health?
“I’ll contact Monsieur Hawkes and ask for a recommendation on someone who practices on our breed,” she said, and kissed her father’s cheek. “I’ll have him flown here as quickly as possible to look over the casualties in the keep and then I’m going to assign him to your bedside. I love you, Father.”
She took the case and left, blowing him a kiss as she closed the door behind her. She’d bring this to Natalie. She trusted the witch any day.
Chapter 3
The day had been long, and Lexi startled awake from her sitting position by the arched door opening into the keep. Her room had not been damaged, yet she hadn’t made it back there after overseeing the disaster and establishing triage in the keep. Now she stretched her legs out before her and arched her back. She hadn’t removed her long coat and she was warm. Too warm, almost stifling here in the windowless room that may have, in centuries past, often housed the entire castle inhabitants as they waited out the enemy.
Rubbing her eyes beneath the sunglasses—she never took them off—felt great. Checking her watch revealed it was three in the morning. Most of the keep was quiet, save a few who sat near the cots with wet towels and worried looks as they tended the wounded.
She stood, stretched again, and decided she could manage a few hours of sleep in her own bed, and a shower. Her kingdom for a shower.
She did have a small kingdom, actually. Well, Lana was the one who insisted on exploiting the princess title. Lexi thought it was ostentatious. Daughters of werewolf principals were referred to as princess—their sons were princes—but that didn’t make them royalty or heirs to a nonexistent castle and crown. But they did live in a castle and, despite the lacking crown, Lana certainly liked to play up the privileged princess routine. It worked well for her. Entitlement had always been her mien.
Lexi would rather choke on a watermelon than play soft, pink and delicate. If she didn’t have a hand and nose to the action, she wouldn’t know how to function. It was a natural compulsion to show her father how much she was willing to help. It was hard enough to get his attention, what with Lana’s pandering. Her sister could win a new Porsche with a bat of her lashes, and she had two in the shed to prove the power of that expert move. Lexi owned a battered old Range Rover. It got her where she needed to go, and that included flooded roads, muddy ditches and icy drives.
Wandering through the darkened halls of the castle, Lexi tugged off her coat and pushed the sunglasses up onto her head. It always took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust and color her surroundings a little brighter than when wearing the glasses, even despite the darkness inside the castle. Her breed had excellent night vision.
Her exhaustion felt as if she were dragging lead pipes for legs, and her shoulders ached. A cup of chamomile tea after her shower would relax her into a restful slumber.
Suddenly she stumbled and, before falling, caught herself with a balance of her hands. Turning swiftly, she saw she’d tripped over a man’s legs. He sat sprawled on the floor across from the lobby doors that had been blocked off with wood boards. Bitter cold air whisked through the hallway about her shoulders and she shuffled her coat back on and tapped down her glasses before kneeling to shake the man’s shoulders.
“Monsieur Hawkes?”
He mumbled something but didn’t open his eyes. His coat lay over his legs, and melted snow from his heavy pack boots puddled around his feet and legs.
“What are you doing here?”
“No place to sleep. Tired. Still missing … one man.”
It had been a good eighteen hours since the avalanche had struck. And this wolf had been working steadily to rescue the missing men. Only one left? He must have fallen asleep standing or, apparently, sat down and nodded off. Even wolves eventually got exhausted and couldn’t go without sleep.
She tugged his arm, provoking him to a grudging stand. “Come with me. We’ve a few open rooms.”
He twisted toward the boarded doors, which swung her around ungracefully as he looped an arm over her shoulder and stumbled a few steps as if a drunken man. “Have to find last one.”
Walking and talking in his sleep, this guy. “You can resume the search after you’ve rested. Is there a backup team out now?”
“Yes, three men volunteered. They’ve had rest. But I should help. Can’t let them down.” With a shake of his head, as if to chase off the exhaustion, he suddenly set back his shoulders and assumed a modicum of alertness. The move stretched him a head taller than she. He blinked a few times in the cool darkness. “Princess Connor. Sorry, I didn’t know it was you.”
“It’s Lexi,” she said, and tugged him toward the south wing. “And you’re not going anywhere but to bed.”
“Best offer I’ve had in a long time.”
She rolled her eyes. She had walked right into that one. For lack of practice in defense of horny males, surely. She couldn’t remember when a man had last flirted with her.
