Page 119 of Oath of Revenge

He blinked and images swam in his mind, his head pounding with each flash of memory. The funeral pyres. A little hand holding his as they walked through the graveyard. A brown haired girl who frowned too much and worked too hard.

The girl at ten when she’d stopped asking him to lace her shoes. The girl at fourteen when she’d grown too cynical about men. The girl at fifteen when he’d led little Eirwyn into the kitchens of the tavern, and he’d desperately hoped the companionship would help his daughter to open her brittle heart.

It’d helped, for a while. “The six months before I left,” he said hoarsely. “You made Trix smile more in those six months than she had in the six years before that.”

Eirwyn wiped a tear from her cheek and nodded. “Oh Wulfric, we have so much to talk about, but this isn’t the time of the place.”

The butler, Hobbs, announced dinner, and Knox led Scarlet back to him. Scarlet frowned and Knox glared at Wulfric for making his wife cry. But his entire world shifted around the idea that he still had a daughter. He still had a daughter.

“She’s alive?” His chest ached, and he wanted to roar at all the missed years.

Eirwyn smiled and nodded as Knox led her into dinner. Where was she now? Was she happily married and running the tavern still? Had she found joy and laughter or had his death led her to be even more bitter than she had been growing up?

He needed to make this treaty work even more than before. If his daughter was still in Busparia, he had to get to her, save her. He finally understood the need that drove Brody to attack him.

Scarlet waited with him, smiling and nodding as everyone filed past them.

“Wulfric, what the fuck’s wrong?” Scarlet asked when they were alone.

He shook his head and swallowed hard. “I—I’m not sure if anything’s wrong exactly. Everything might finally be turning up right. I have to make this treaty work.” As if in a daze, he followed, dragging Scarlet by the hand behind him.

Chapter 38

Scarlet sat between Knox and Wulfric at the table eating her soup. Something had happened when Wulfric had talked with Eirwyn. She’d thought about speaking to him about it, but he was busy smiling and talking with the couple beside him.

He was in his element. It should have been impossible, a Growler, a monster at a dinner party. But he was a predator on a mission to force every single person near him to surrender. Was there anything he wasn’t good at? She seriously doubted it.

Knox turned to her and smiled. “Are you making it, Red?”

Her nose wriggled at the dreaded nickname. “I’m fine. Thanks for sitting me next to you. You know I’m no good at these social situations.”

He shrugged. “I wouldn’t say that. I’d say you’re just very selective in social situations.”

The servants brought the next course, and Wulfric engaged the couple across the table from them. They’d been prominent nobles back in Busparia but had spent the past six months trying to build a road to the gem mines in the north. She’d expected them to give up well before now like the pampered nobles they were, but they were still pushing strong.

A quarter way down the table, voices rose higher.

“I’m not so sure a treaty benefits us at all,” said one of the Robins on the Confederation Council.

Ashur crossed his arms and leaned back to glare across the table. “I disagree. They’re a ready army should we need them. You’ve heard the stories as well as I have.”

The Robin glared back. “Exactly. It’s not safe. Besides, what use have we of an army when the Robins are still ready to meet whatever need our king declares?”

The other conversations around the table faltered until Eirwyn at the end of the table cleared her throat. “An excellent point, gentlemen. Perhaps—since you obviously do not wish to wait until tomorrow to talk politics—we can discuss it right here, right now. Wulfric? An introduction, please.”

Wulfric stiffened beside her, and Scarlet put her hand on his thigh under the table. He gripped her hand tightly but smiled down the table. “Very well, princess—“

“Queen,” Knox said quietly.

Wulfric paused and nodded, “Pardon, my queen. Many have heard stories of Growlers as mindless beasts who hunt, fuck, and kill indiscriminately.”

Several of the ladies gasped at the crude language, but Wulfric ignored them as he smiled and let his face shift into the Growler. The seams of his shirt at his neck tore, and he reversed the magic back to his normal self.

“Growlers are much more, as you can see. I’m sitting here eating and drinking. I’m not tamed, but neither am I a monster. In fact, I was born in Busparia right on the edge of the Feral Forest. I grew up listening to those same stories of Growlers.”

“Then where do the stories come from?” someone asked.

Wulfric explained. “Excellent question. Three hundred years ago, the Growlers were all natural born but dying off. Very few pregnancies led many to fear that the entire race would go extinct. The goddess decided to spare the Growlers and taught them how to weave a spell to turn humans into Growlers. That’s what I am, a turned Growler.”

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