Page 42 of Wolf's Return
She cleared her throat. “Perhaps, on the morrow, we should make the journey back to the d’Louncrais Keep.”
She would feel safer at the d’Louncrais Keep, after what she had seen in her vision. And now he had shifted—and remained so—there was no need for them to stay out here in the forest. Despite her ward and Monsieur D’Artagnon’s reassuring presence, she was still a little off kilter, and a lot unnerved. She calmed the tremor in her body.
Her greatest fear, one she had harbored through her childhood and into adult life, was that one day the villagers, or the local aumônier, would do more than move them on. Being forced from their cottages to wander from village to village, seeking a permanent home that would never eventuate until they finally settled in the forest, had been hard, but it was far preferable than the alternative.
He glowered at her, a rumble rising from deep within his chest.
Constance pursed her lips. There it was again. The sense there was more. Something she could not quite see that hovered in the corner of her eye. That he felt betrayed, angry, that he grieved was unquestionable. That his scars bothered him, obvious by the way he hid the one on his face with his hair.
Constance calmed her mind, pushing out all thought of herself, her fears and her hopes, and focused in on Monsieur D’Artagnon, trusting her ability, the power of her herbs and the spell she had woven to guide her, to give her the answers she was seeking.
Pain flowed from the black wolf, its suffocating presence filling the cottage, and it hit her with sudden conviction. Shame, and a dark, insidious thread of guilt. He had stayed away forso many winters because he was ashamed. Not for the way he looked—though it served as an uncomfortable reminder, a visible manifestation—but for how he hadfailed. His parents, his brother. It would be easy to assign his sense of failure to not prevailing against the traitor, the werewolf who had killed both of his parents, but Constance sensed something more, something deeper that continued to dance beyond her understanding.
As a wolf, she had sensed the damage in him. As a man, those emotions were bigger, carved into his soul as clear as his physical scars marked his body. Her heart broke for him, and she longed to reach out and comfort him.
She took a step toward him. He growled, and she retreated.
“Did you…want to talk about what happened to you? Tell me who did this to you?”
He grunted, coarse dark hair sprouting across the back of his hand and along his jaw.
“Or not,” she rushed out, and his wolf retreated once more. “Well, then.” She smoothed her hands down the front of her dress, resisting the temptation to reach for him again. “Perhaps you are right. A few more days is neither here nor there.” She hoped. Seigneur Gaharet would not be expecting them to be back so soon. That Monsieur D’Artagnon had shifted on their first day here was something no one, least of all Constance, had anticipated. She reached for the flint on the shelf. “I will light the fire and prepare a meal.”
Monsieur D’Artagnon loomed behind her, his movements so sudden, so fast, she gasped. His body flush against her back, he laid a large hand over hers, slipping the flint from her nerveless fingers. Her stomach fluttered, and the urge to sink back into the warmth of his body was almost too strong to resist. Then he was gone, snatching up kindling from the pile stacked against the wall and kneeling before the fire pit.
Constance turned away, hiding her breathlessness, and rooted through their supplies for some vegetables for a stew. The fire lit, he rose, dipped his chin at her and returned to the table, and to reading her grimoire.
Constance filled the large pot hanging over the fire with water and dropped pieces of butchered hare in. Her gaze slid over his shoulder to the sleeping nook and the single cot, barely big enough for two. Heat swirled in her stomach, sliding lower. Last eve he had… She had almost… She swallowed.
He looked up, his nostrils flaring and his eye boring into her.
“I… I…”L’enfer.Was she a stuttering fool? Best to speak what was on her mind. She heaved in a quick, shaky breath. “Will you sleep in the cot this eve?”
He glanced over his shoulder at the cot before turning that intense, singular gaze on her, dark shadows flickering in its depths. His eyebrow rose.
Did he think she was asking him into her bed? Was she? After what had happened yestreen, she would not deny him if he so chose.
He continued to stare at her. Her skin prickled. Moisture pooled between her thighs. She had not missed the weight of his stare as she called on the directions and the elements, the heat in his eye when she had stood before him, naked and vulnerable. Perhaps some of her herbal potion remained in his system still. Perhaps he feared he would succumb to its influence once more. Maybe it had little to do with her potion.
His steady gaze did not waver.
Or mayhap… A different kind of heat flushed her face, and she shut her eyes, mortified. “My apologies, Monsieur D’Artagnon. Of course you will sleep on the cot.” She opened her eyes, but kept her gaze fixed on the table, on chopping the vegetables. “I will sleep on the floor.”
Monsieur D’Artagnon growled, drawing her attention. He lifted his chin at her and jerked it at the cot.
“Oh no, Monsieur D’Artagnon. It would not be right for me to take the cot. I am but a poor—”
He snarled, repeating the gesture.
The fire in her core rekindled. Did he mean…? Was he asking her to join…?
He stood, turned his back and slipped his tunic over his head. He shucked his breeches next, and before Constance had a chance to take in the expanse of his naked back, buttocks and muscular thighs, he had shifted. The black wolf turned to face her, leaping up on the seat. He blinked. Blinked again and nodded, seeming satisfied with his solution.
A wave of conflicting emotions washed over her. Consternation he was once again wolf, with no guarantee he would return to his human form, and disappointment, thick and sharp.
Ever since she was little, the black wolf had enticed her. From the story in her grimoire of the first black wolf, to her vision and her childhood dreams. Those feelings, those hopes, had rested on an idea. Something vague and undefined. Monsieur D’Artagnon, in the flesh—man or wolf—was none of those things. He was as solid and real as the table beneath her hands, and the roof over her head. Yet here, with him a mere few paces from her, he had never been further away.
Chapter Twenty-Six
