Chapter Text
It starts the second her mother leaves. Gladys knows it does. Sarah doesn’t take her humiliation lying down and it’s clear Hector chooses his sister. No amount of sweet talking and smirking over the table can change that. Gladys had not even spoken a word. Her mother had been the one to coolly ask the Duchess if she was getting up for dinner when Sarah did. Gladys had looked at her plate and shook her head and then that night her mother had told her she needed to take her power back.
“You have a remarkable opportunity that most woman including myself would give their right hand for. You need to stand up for yourself”
“Is that why father is not here?”
Her mother had looked shocked. It had been a beautiful distraction throwing the problems that her mother and father had back in her face. Gladys had read Larry’s letter sent post haste that said their father had moved out lock, stock and barrel to the Union Club and had made it clear that he didn’t want to come home because as he put it—I am not enough, never was and I actually did fall in love with her eyes Larry son—whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean.
But then her mother had been parcelled back to America. Gladys had not hugged her. Looking back now she was thinking she might have regretted that. She had turned and seen Sarah and Hector standing there. She has no love here, she has no staff…Adelheid is gone, that was the first thing that alerted her to what was going on. The staff are uncaring and cold and spying on her (she knows a spying servant when she sees one) and her husband has not touched her. She has not told her mother that she is a virgin still. When she turns Sarah is draped over her husband’s shoulder and Gladys knows…she does not know what the word for it is. But she knows…
And she knows in the same way she did when she walked into the room and saw her mother and father and the Duke standing there…that her life is over.
But then she ends up here.
In the dungeon.
In the actual FUCKING dungeon.
Because Sidmouth Castle HAS a dungeon.
She’s an American she doesn’t know these things but this has got to be the most amazing thing that she has ever seen. It’s almost surreal. There is a dungeon with bars and a window high up and when she is thrown down there, backhanded, dragged by her hair, face smashed into the iron bars—
She gets a second to see a shadow in the corner and then a man is there and she barely yanks herself back as Sarah throws her to the side and she crumples her side aching, her face bleeding and she pushes herself up as she sees—
That’s when she learns about werewolves. You know…the thing in books, horror confession stories of huge hulking wolves that turn into men. Larry used to crawl into bed with her when they were little and they were in that very small apartment and he would tell her all the stories about ghouls and ghosts and werewolves, vampires that suck your blood and zombies walking around with their flesh falling off. Larry would demonstrate at the age of six his arms outstretched sometimes wrapped in the sheets to imitate a mummy and she would howl with laughter, the four year old and her six year old big brother being monsters.
She remembers her mother and father watching from the doorway and her father would come into the room hoist Larry up into the air and say he was being caught by the monsters! The big scary monster has caught me Bertha! Him and his little precious sidekick…and she would laugh and laugh and her mother would laugh too and they would all be happy and crumpled on the floor and it didn’t matter about society and it didn’t matter about operas or jewels or portraits. What mattered in that tiny apartment was that they loved each other. Money didn’t matter. Money had never mattered.
And to cut a long story short that is how she finds out werewolves exist.
It’s all dreadfully easy to believe. The man with the shock of dark hair half naked (and look Gladys might be bleeding but she is still an eighteen year old girl—she can appreciate a body carved out of marble as much as the next giggling socialite) and golden eyes snarling with large fangs. Hector gets in his face and he snarls back and her husband jerks backwards like a girl with his dress caught in the press.
The Verde’s are apparently very into hunting werewolves. Have been Hector tells her as he paces the length of the dungeon, for a long time. This one they imported—imported as if that is something that they can do—import werewolves as if it’s a bottle of wine—from America. From Colorado! Gladys can barely point to Colorado on a map. She knows it’s mountain country and nothing more. She doesn’t even know if they have a train station.
A sharp yank of her hair pulls her back to the story.
This one…this…werewolf…who actually looks more like a man than wolf but what does she know…is apparently their pet. They want to weaken him, break him down and then set off hunting him like he’s the fox and the hound and she has never heard of a better way for someone to get killed because the werewolf does not look like he plans to go down without a fight.
They throw her into the cage with him and leave one little candle. She is in the dark with a half naked werewolf bleeding and Hector takes his sister and kisses her as if she is the love of his life and points out that they now have all the money in the world to spend and they leave her there shaking, bleeding, wondering how in the space of two hours the world has fallen apart on her again.
Her mother will not even be at the coast right now, she will not be on the ship. And here she is failing at the one thing her mother loved her for. Her marriage.
Gladys curls into the side of the wall in the corner as he drops down to the ground and glowers at her. There is no other word for it he glowers at her which she thinks is rather unfortunate considering she never wanted to be here and if she could have her way she would be back in her bedroom with the dolls her mother never shuts up about and this would all be a bad dream.
There’s a flicker of a smirk on the face and she realises she might have said that last bit out loud.
She sits there in the cold as he inches forwards bit by bit and then—
“So…you’re the new wife?”
His voice is American and here in this cold land with these cold people it washes over him like a balm. He shifts into the light from the flickering candle and she can see his face. Jawline sharp and sculpted, dark beard, green eyes that flicker gold in the candlelight, dark hair and eyebrows that are glued together almost by the scowl that only serves to make him more handsome. He’s the kind of man she thinks dazed blood dripping down her hairline, that would have stopped everything in New York including traffic. Even Marian Brooke who is arguably the most sensible woman in New York (other than her Aunt Agnes) would have had a heart flutter seeing him in formal dinner wear. The Gladys that she used to be would have gone gaga over him.
She realises that he is waiting for an answer and she licks her lips, once, twice, darts her pink tongue out and watches from a long way away as he tracks it with his eyes.
“Yes” she says croaking—she brushes her hair out of her eyes. Her elaborate hair do is coming loose. She unpicks each hairpin one by one the diamonds clinking to the ground and then she leans against the wall and she is unable to speak for a moment—
“Your bleeding” he says roughly.
“Yes” she says quietly. She wipes the side of her face her hands sticky with blood and she thinks she might be on the verge of a panic attack. She doesn’t know how she got here, how she got from upstairs to here, from her home to here, from her life to hear.
He scoots forwards and she can hear the chink of the chain that is keeping him chained here and then he reaches out almost on his belly watching her intently his hand outstretched. He flips the palm up and stares at her evenly and waits. She stares at it and then slowly she puts her hand in his. In truth she has no idea what he wants but she thinks it’s instinct. His skin is warm, warmer than her own and his hands close over hers and she can feel her eyelids flutter shut as the touch takes her.
She cannot in that moment describe what it is but she thinks it’s soothing in a way that nothing else is. It washes over her the simple touch and she closes her eyes as the panic that clings to her disappears and the pain in her temple goes to. When she opens her eyes she can see the veins have turned black as if he is siphoning off her pain.
“Neat trick” she gets out.
“Eh it’s got some perks” he says with a smirk.
“So” he says after a pause “You’re the new Duchess…how do you like your castle now Yankee Girl”
She looks around the dungeon and then—
“This is real isn’t it?”
“Fraid so”
“He…he is…he is…with his sister?”
“Has been for some time” he says almost flippantly. He lets go of her hand and her fingers clench into a fist on autopilot. His jaw does a complicated twitching thing that makes him look even more menacing and a great deal more attractive and that is a thing that seems even more impossible than the whole werewolf thing.
“And you are—”
“Yes”
She sighs and then she pulls her hands into her lap.
“I don’t know how I got here” she says looking at her hands.
“Well” he says in a tone that could be almost amused. “That makes two of us.”
“My name is Gladys”
He watches her and then he nods.
“Jax”
“Jax? What kind of a name is Jax?”
“A very popular one in the werewolf community” he deadpans and look…looking back she knows that he is being sarcastic but she cannot help herself. Emotionally she doesn’t know which way is up right about now and—
“There are more of you?”
He nods and leans back, his leg is at an odd angle. They’ve given him trousers but his arms are coated in what looks like ugly burn marks. He leans back and watches her and—
“Well…if were going to be in here together…do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”
He blinks as if a question and answer session with her was the last thing that he expected and to be fair looking back at this she can see his point. This is a bizarre situation that she is in, a really, really, fucking bizarre situation. It makes her want to laugh and cry and curl up in his lap all at the same time. Dungeons are not supposed to exist after all…but here she is and at some point the adrenaline is going to crash and the panic is going to set in. She’s gone from dinner with her mother to being in a dungeon with a strange man with flashing eyes who is apparently a prominent member of what sounds like a very well structured supernatural society and she knows at some point the panic is going to set in. She was fine during that dinner, fine when her mother fawned over Hector’s return and her father couldn’t look her in the eye and her brother couldn’t say two words to anyone and then when she had gotten upstairs the panic had crashed over her in waves and she had nearly fallen over before Adelheid had caught her. She knows her own body and she knows her own body’s response times.
“Eh…sure” he said shooting her a long look that clearly questions her sanity. “But you’re going to answer a couple of mine too”
She nods and then she feels a bubble of hysteria creep up in her throat that turns into a sob. He tracks it with a spasm across his face that she doesn’t understand.
“Alright” he says and he settles back and watches her evenly as if he knows as well as she can that she cannot stand to be touched.
“Ask away”
That by the way is how she ends up knowing about werewolves, mates, community in Colorado, Alpha’s and Beta’s, pack structure and mates…her husband throws a party in her own home for his sister and his friends while she listens to it and he tells her about mates, about fated mates and about a love so strong she longs for it. About being with your mate come hell or high water, about standing by them, defending them, loving them with a passion that it makes you ache. He tells her about his parents, the witch who told the werewolf they were getting married and the world that he grew up in, about how humans are accepted, even revered as mates. As Hector spends her money on Sarah’s gowns and forges letters to her mother saying all is well and that they are still adjusting to being married and there is no need to come over to see them and no unfortunately she will not be there for Larry’s wedding but could her father send some more money over please—she listens and she thinks that this is the love that she wanted, this passionate love affair that she wants more than anything, not some cold castle and diamonds and status. She wants the nice house in the woods and the husband who came home and kissed her and looked at her and only her, she wants the passion of lovemaking with a man who loves her, sheets tangled around their ankles and whispers of just stay, just five minutes longer, just stay please…and then she wants children.
It’s not hard to love Jax.
Hector leaves her alone but he comes down sometimes, he feeds her—clearly he has learnt that she is better off to him alive, he lets her wash, he occasionally throws her a gown or a bit of news, they give them water but she learns what wolfsbane is very quickly when Jax burns when he drinks it. She strokes his hair back as he recovers and he looks at her eyes bleeding very, very gold and he tells her that they are mates, that he knew from the second he saw her and that he loves her and God knows she loves him too and she tells him that.
That Second Christmas she makes love to him. Hector doesn’t bother with her, she doesn’t know that her mother and father are beginning to both seriously start to panic, that Marian is pregnant, that New York is beginning to wonder what happened to that girl that became a Duchess. All she thinks of is the movement of his fingers, the way he holds her, the way he wipes her tears and looks at her as if she is something precious despite the fact that she has not seen sunlight in so long and he can count her ribs.
They give off an impression of impassive acceptance to one other in public the Yankee bitch and the dog is Sarah’s favourite joke. At night they are passionately in love.
It’s not what she wants, and God knows she will never, ever forgive either one of her parents for putting her in this situation but she thinks at least she has this, at least she has the werewolf in the dungeon, at least she has love.
It’s a small victory but her life is about small victories. Gladys doesn’t think about anything else.
It’s part of the happy ending…a small little piece of the fairytale narrative her mother built for her in her head with her big wide eyes and her poutingly false smile she wants to rip off with her overgrown nails.
It’s no small thing this part of the happy ending.
And she will make that enough.
Jax shifts in his sleep next to her chained to the wall and Gladys stares at the dungeon ceiling, damp stone and stale air and thinks she will make this enough.
She has to.
There is simply no other option available to her.