Page 2 of Wolf's Return
She clutched it to her chest. Jacques d’Louncrais might be dead, but his son was not. A new Black Wolf walked the earth. According to village gossip, he was more powerful than his father. Despite what her mother said, therewouldbe a time he would seek her out. Hewouldneed her. Her visions did not lie. The Black Wolf would come to her in the dead of night. Her heart stalled as another image flashed across her mind. A clearing, a cottage, a black wolf, her and…someone else. She gasped. A child. With flowers in her hair and grass stains on her feet, she danced around them. Their child.
Constance’s heart soared, banishing the tightness in her chest. Hewouldcome for her. One day. Shewouldhave the life she wished for. She would not be alone forever.
Chapter One
Nine years later
Frankia 999
Constance closed the big book shut on the page dedicated to the Black Wolf and swallowed the lump in her throat. Her mother had warned her about the heartache she could bring upon herself, but she had not listened. Her mother had not the gift of sight. How could Helene have possibly understood the deep, unshakable belief that accompanied her visions? Constance had cast aside her mother’s words of wisdom, trusted in her own truth, and paid the price for her foolishness.
She rubbed her hand across the book’s worn binding. The Black Wolfhadcome. Hehadneeded her. She had opened the door to him and the love and longing in his dark eyes had been everything she had hoped for. Everything she had envisioned. Only… She heaved out a sigh. It had been for the woman in his arms. For Erin. Not for her. A woman far from her own time, wounded and in the throes of a turning. His mate.
The Black Wolf had needed Constance’s skills as a healer and her knowledge of his kind. Nothing more. The flame of hope that had sustained her through long years of solitude had been snuffed out in an instant. The one vision she had hoped above all was true, and it was but a delusion of her childish dreams.
Constance set the book aside. There was naught she could do to change it. Naught shewoulddo. Only a fool would attempt toseparate a wolf and his mate. What sheshouldspend her time on was helping the Dufont boy, and perhaps save his life.
She assembled the ingredients she would need on the table—garlic, rosemary, horse chestnut, horsetail and honey—and set about grinding them into a sticky paste. She would make the journey into the village at first light, give them the remedy and impress on the boy, and his mother, the importance of following her instructions closely. With any luck, they would journey to meet her, and she would encounter them part way on the path. Then she would have no need to spend a night in an empty stable stall with naught but a rough horse blanket for warmth.
A sennight ago, Madame Dufont had sought her services for her son’s cough. Constance’s most recent vision told her the foolish boy had gone swimming in the millpond against her advice, though he had not confessed such to his mother. Now he was wheezing, and Constance suspected his lungs were filling with fluid. If the boy were to die… Well, Constance had experienced such circumstances before, and it would not be the boy’s disregard for his own health the villagers would lay the blame on.
It had been many years since villagers had last forced her from her home, but the memories remained. Of their angry faces and the taunts of ‘witch’.The village aumônier knocking on their door. Their frantic packing to save what they could before someone set fire to their humble home. At least now, she would have somewhere to go. Someone to turn to. The Black Wolf. Constance would call on him if she had a need, but bearing witness to the bond between him and his new mate would be almost too much to bear.
She paused in her grinding.Enough wallowing, Constance. You shouldbe grateful.
Her reconnection with the wolves of Langeais was not without benefit. Having a wolf in her home for a time had ensureda ready supply of meat. That the wolf was Seigneur Gaharet d’Louncrais, the alpha of the pack, had afforded her much more. Luxuries she had never known until now. Though he had forsaken his title, his estate, and had fled the Comte de Anjou, he had support still. He had seen to it Constance had everything she could need.
She ran her hand down the bodice of her new dress. A lovely deep blue and of fine, soft wool, unmarred by constant darning and patching. Another two of similar quality lay folded neatly near her sleeping cot. Her baskets of vegetables and fruits and her salt pot were all full. The barrel of mead nudging the wall beneath her shelves was rich and strong, unlike the watered-down wine she had exchanged for healing the merchant’s sleeplessness. On the table, several new knives gleamed, their edges sharp and their elaborate handles beautiful beside her plain and well-worn ones.
She had stores of dried and salted meat, a pot full of venison and a deer hide and horns to trade with. She could not remember living so well. Yet one thing had not changed. Constance was still alone and still an outcast.
Tears pricked her eyes, and she blinked them back, taking in her little hut. The slab table with its nicks and stains, the dirt floor she swept daily, her pots of herbs, her collection of pretty rocks and feathers she had started as a child—they held so many memories. Good and bad. For nearly a half score years she had called this place home. Eight of those years she had lived here alone, her mother gone. Yet it had never felt more empty than since her reconnection with the Langeais wolves.
A tingling up her spine and a pounding of hooves from approaching horses snapped her from her melancholy. Someone had crossed her warning ward beyond her clearing. Villagers rarely approached on horseback. The Dufonts did not own one.Nor their neighbors, and she had received no other vision of a sick child, or a villager in need of care.
Unease prickled up her skin. Seigneur Gaharet had warned her to be wary. Could this be the unknown presence from the night of the storm? The night Seigneur Ulrik and his mate had sought her out? The one who had crossed her ward, yet not revealed themselves?
Her gaze skipped to the length of timber resting beside the door.L’enfer.With wolves beneath her roof, she had gotten into the habit of not barricading her door. Nor had she resumed her practice of replenishing the protection spell over it every morning. She swiftly hoisted the block of wood across it, headless of splinters, and slammed it into its slot. It would hold, but not forever. There was no time to compose a spell. She skirted the table, putting it between herself and the door, and grabbed one of her new knives. With it hidden in the volumes of her skirt, she faced the entrance and waited.
The rider dismounted, and footsteps approached. Her heart thudded in her chest and her hand, gripped around the knife, grew slick with sweat. Was it the keep guard? Or others of Seigneur Gaharet’s pack?
A heavy fist pounded on the door. “Constance.”
Her body trembled, but she stood resolute. For all that it was not much of a life, and lonely living out here in the forest, she had no wish to die today.
“Constance.” The man banged on the door again. “I know you are in there.”
Her grip on the knife tightened. He could smell her. It could only mean one thing. A wolf was at her door. One she could trust? Or one she could not?
Her bottom lip quivered. “Who are you? What do you want?”
“It is I, Aimon. The white wolf.”
Was it truly the young white wolf, so loyal and dedicated?
Oh, where is my second sight now? What use is it if it does not warnmeof danger? If it helps everyonebutme?
“I am sorry I have frightened you, Constance, but Gaharet has sent me to fetch you.”
