Page 33 of Wolf's Return
Shame twisted in his chest like a solid entity. He had taken advantage of her. Again. Yet even then, when he had collected his wits and pulled himself off her, she had not been angry at him. Or cursed him for taking from her, nor failing to give her what her body desired, the release she needed. No. She had reached out to him. She had thought only of him and his pack. Not her own denied pleasure, nor her right to be angry at him for forcing himself on her while she slept.
He sat on his haunches, the familiar hint of pine, oak and the damp earth of the forest surrounding him, hoping for the calm it usually brought with it. But the forest held other spoors. Crisscrossing trails of his brother, Ulrik, Aimon and their mates. It served only to remind him of Constance, standing in the kitchen doorway, her chemise hanging at her sides and her beautiful body bathed in moonlight.
He lifted his muzzle to the sky and howled. It echoed through the forest, a mournful sound carrying all his frustration, his confusion and his longing.
An answering howl, close and familiar, echoed back. That voice did not belong here inthisforest, but D’Artagnon made no move to rise. Instead, he waited, until a big wolf, larger than D’Artagnon, larger even than Gaharet, with gray peppering his muzzle and brow, padded into the clearing.
With a crack and pop of bone and muscle, the wolf’s body distorted and changed. His spine elongated, his hips straightened and his paws became hands and feet. The gray wolf’s snout shortened and his large canines disappeared, revealing a face D’Artagnon knew well. This was not his enemy, but his friend. His—dare he think it?—mentor. What was he doing here, so far from his home range?
Vladimir. A man in his seventh decade, yet still strong in a lean, wiry way. Perhaps stronger than any wolf he knew, despite the hard years of experience marked in the lines of his face.
Vladimir raised his bushy gray eyebrows. “You think I would not follow you? That I would leave you to hunt the one who cut you down alone?” The old wolf sighed. “Bratishka.” The word a gentle chastisement.
Little brother. At a time when his body had healed but his heart and mind were broken, the old wolf had taken him in. Had spoken for him to the Rus pack when he could not, had chosen not to speak for himself.
D’Artagnon shook his head. The old wolf should not have come. This was not his fight.
“Your fight is our fight, Bratishka.”
D’Artagnon huffed. He had not wanted to involve the Rus pack. They had done enough for him. For a wolf whose name and origins they may have suspected but for whom they had no confirmation.
“Another wolf has cut you down, with a blade, no less. Such a wolf is a danger to us all.” Vladimir settled beside him on the forest floor, his back against the smooth bark of a beechtree. “You may not talk, Bratishka, but it was not difficult to determine what befell you. Why you had to leave your pack when you were injured so.”
D’Artagnon stared out into the forest. It had seemed so simple when he had set out from Rus, his thirst for vengeance, for retribution, to acquit himself of his failures, a driving force. His anger at his betrayal, a thing of purity. Too long had he skulked around the border of the Rus wolves’ territory, hiding himself away. He had thought himself restored. Ready to face his past. His uncontrolled shifting, and his panic when he had stood as a man, suggested otherwise.
With a single-minded focus he had tracked his nemesis, but the moment he had stepped into the d’Louncrais keep, surrounded by the walls of his childhood home steeped in memories, and stood before his newly mated brother who pleaded with him to stay, his determination had wavered. With Constance’s arrival, things had become complicated, his path no longer clear cut, the edges of his control fraying, and the simplicity of his purpose compromised.
“You were ready, Bratishka. But coming home, facing the man who had done this to you, and being around your pack again was always going to test you.” Vladimir raised his head and sniffed the air. “And there is something more.” He sniffed again. “Female.” Knowing eyes stared at him. “Her scent is all over you.”
D’Artagnon tracked the flight path of a tawny owl before it disappeared in the gloom of the forest.
“You shifted?”
D’Artagnon hung his head.
“Good.”
D’Artagnon bared his teeth. He understood why Vladimir would think so, but it wasnotgood.
“Ah, you did not call upon the change.”
Perhaps it was the way of wolves. Perhaps it was a consequence of Vladimir’s long life, and a knowing that only came with age and experience, but Vladimir had never had any trouble understanding him.
“Then what made you shift, Bratishka? Is she your mate?”
D’Artagnon jerked his head up. Hismate?
The old wolf smiled. “Even one as wounded as you has a mate. Perhaps fate has sent her to you when you need her most.”
D’Artagnon flattened his ears against his skull. When he needed her most? Then why was Constance here now, and not when blood had poured from his shoulder and the slash across his face that had taken his eye? When, grievously injured as he was, he had had to keep his wits about him to evade his attacker. As he had slunk through the forest, barely able to stand, looking for a safe place to hide and heal, the skills of a healer would have helped him beyond measure.
Instead, here he was now, out in the forest, hiding from her, when he should be hunting his enemy.
And hismate?Fate was a cruel mistress if she thought to saddle some poor woman, Constance or any other, with him. He had not, for one moment in nigh on a decade, thought beyond his nemesis and his mission. To what he would do, where he would live. If he would live at all.
He stared out into the forest, the gloom beckoning, trying to envisage himself once again taking his place beside his brother, living in the keep as a man. As D’Artagnon. His stomach sank, heavier than the armor he had long since abandoned.
The life he had once lived was a thing of the past. The old D’Artagnon was gone. He did not belong here anymore. He did not belong in a keep, or around people. The only thing he knew, the one place he felt at home, was in the forest. A life Constance had lived her whole life through no choice of her own. No,Constance could not,wouldnot, be his mate. He had nothing to offer her.
