Page 50 of A Lady’s Guide to Werewolves

“I can smell you,” Aidan replied quietly.

Sorcha felt unusually shy. “You can?” Was that a good thing?

“You smell like—”

“Please don’t say fish scales.”

“—like sunlight and raspberries and the wind off the moors.”

That was so much nicer than Hecuba’s description.

“Even in the Cauldron?” She could imagine the competing smells of mud and blood and sweat and ale and fear. And magic, both simple and baneful. It had been overwhelming for her own very ordinary nose.

“Even then.”

She was not sure what to say after that. Not to Aidan the wolf, or Aidan the earl who was now also her betrothed. They should probably talk about that.

Not right then, thankfully. Not with a group of women who had caught sight of them, walking toward a tent erected over a table lined with baskets of food. They grinned. Maniacally.

Aidan groaned.

Before Sorcha could ask him what it was about, one of the women, in her early fifties, buxom and red cheeked, shouted, “Come on, don’t be shy, Coventry. We want to meet your bride.”

Sorcha stumbled, but tried to make it look as if she had tripped over something in the mists. Which were clearing. Most unhelpfully. “I’m sorry about this,” Aidan murmured.

“I heard that.”

“Good,” he returned. “Lady Sorcha, this is Agnes.”

Sorcha smiled and wondered if she should curtsy. It seemed odd in the middle of the forest with a naked man walking past. “How do you do?”

Agnes sniffed the air, her smile growing bigger. “You’ll do, Sorcha. Come and sit with us.”

“She needs to eat,” Aidan grumbled.

Agnes snorted. “Who do you think you’re talking to?”

Aidan seemed endearingly uncertain about leaving her to the clutches of a pack of wolf women. Besides Agnes, there was the woman with the blonde braids Sorcha had seen yesterday, two women wrapped in plaids, and another who looked so much like Agnes that they had to be sisters.

Agnes shooed Aidan away, forcibly pulling Sorcha into the tent and shoving her onto a bench. He hovered until Sorcha shot him a smile. She might not have experience with wolf women, but she knew debutantes and she knew vampires and unicorns. She had even petted a hellhound once. Only once, but still, it counted. So how hard could this be?

Besides, she was starving.

“May I?” she asked, reaching for a bun, an apple, and a piece of salted cheese before anyone had a chance to reply.

“This is my sister, Catherine,” Agnes said. “And that’s Gretel, and Odessa and Portia.” She passed Sorcha a bowl. “Have some eggs too.”

“We heard you went to see Freya last night,” Catherine said. She had the same brown hair, streaked with more silver.

“I did.”

“And you emerged with all of your limbs.”

“Seems that way.”

“And a betrothal.”

“Yes.” Was Sorcha supposed to simper? Say something romantic? How did one pretend to be betrothed? Especially among the wolves. Wouldn’t they smell a lie? She hadn’t considered the logistics of this. She stuffed bread into her mouth, then paused. “These Welsh cakes are divine. You used a bakestone, didn’t you?”