Page 65 of Wolf's Return
Whoever carried her was moving fast. Moving where? She had blacked out and… Constance froze. Someone had grabbed her. The man who held her?
Constance struggled, flailing her arms and kicking her legs. The man grunted, dropping her to the forest floor. She scrambled to her feet, but not before he grabbed her arm.
He tugged her forward, and she almost lost her balance. “Now you are awake, you can walk.” He propelled her forward.
“No. Wait.” She dug her heels in and locked her knees, but he continued to drag her along. “What do you want? Where are you taking me?” She was not supposed to be here. Out in the forest.She was… She glanced over her shoulder. The d’Louncrais keep, silhouetted by the moon, moved further away from her with each step. No.Shewas moving away from the keep.
“You will see soon enough.”
“I’m a healer. They need me at the keep. Tumas…”
The haziness in her head cleared. Tumas was dead. He had no need of her skills now, but someone else might. Erin, Rebekah, Kathryn. Anne. “I have to go back. Anne needs me. Did you not hear me? I am a healer.”
“I know what you are, woman. You are far more than a village healer. Those eyes of yours do not lie. And you are far more valuable than yoursoft-heartedmother.”
Constance squinted through the dappled moonlight at the back of the man’s head. “Who are you?”
“Who am I?” The man laughed. “The question you want to ask is, who areyou? The very image of Helene and with the same eyes as my mother, you can only be one person.”
She tried to wrench free of his grip, but he was too strong. “I do not understand.”
“Your mother never told you about me? Never mentioned the name Didier?”
Constance gasped. “Didier?”
He halted in front of a horse, untying its reins from around a tree. “Yes.Youmust be my daughter. And you are coming with me to Langeais.”
Chapter Forty
D’Artagnon rode up to the keep, the Langeais wolves and Lothair at his side and a full contingent of keep guards at his back. The ride had been long and the horses were tired, but at the sight of the raised portcullis, he pushed his horse to canter up the hill. He had known something was wrong when they had ridden through the village, the peasant women urging them to hurry on to the keep.
D’Artagnon reined his horse in and leaped down, racing through the open main door, Gaharet close on his heels. He caught a scent, familiar and yet out of place, but he brushed his concern aside, ran down the corridor and burst into the hall.
The room was in chaos. Villagers and guards from the ramparts milled around. Torn clothing, women’s clothing, lay scattered about the floor. Anne and Erin clutched each other, Erin, a cloak wrapped around her and Anne’s face red and puffy from crying. Erin was safe. Gaharet’s relief filled his senses, matching his own.
“Where is Lance?” asked Gaharet.
Erin shook her head. “Gone. He zapped himself out of here the same way he zapped himself in.”
D’Artagnon looked around for Constance. Both Bek and Kathryn hovered beside Erin, also wrapped in cloaks. The she-wolves had shifted. Then he spotted it. The body, covered in a blanket, a pool of blood seeping from beneath it. Two separate shapes beneath it. One large, one small. A torso and a head.
No.He stumbled forward and sank to his knees. With trembling fingers, he lifted the blanket. The rheumy eyes, glazed in death, of Old Tumas stared back at him.
“It is Tumas,” he croaked.
“Yes. He saved us,” said Erin, a heavy sadness in her voice.
“Where is Constance?”
“I…” Erin frowned, looking over her shoulder and around the room. “She was right here.”
D’Artagnon searched the crowd. “Constance!”
The room fell silent.
“Constance,” he roared, pushing through the crowd of people. Wherewasshe? Was she hurt?
“She would not have left, do you think?”
