Chapter Eighteen
Aubert threw back the last of his wine, refilled his goblet and settled in a chair in the library. Edmond was not happy with him. It oozed from his twin’s pores, his face scrunched up in an unfamiliar scowl.
He had been harsh with Isobella. Harsher than he’d needed to be.
Aubert resisted the urge to rub at the ache in his chest. It was rare he was at odds with his twin.
Since Sabine, he could count the times on one hand.
He gritted his teeth, refusing to meet his brother’s gaze as Edmond settled in another chair beside him.
Gaharet eased behind his desk then pulled out parchment and ink. He ignored them both, as the scratch of his quill across parchment filled the silence.
His alpha was unhappy, too. Because of the news they had brought? More challenges for the pack. Or because of them? A private meeting with their alpha… They were not here to discuss trivialities.
Gaharet put the quill down, leaned back in his chair and regarded them both.
Aubert had stared down the chevaliers of opposing counts across a battlefield, pitted his skill with a sword against far larger numbers than any other warrior would dare challenge, but he quailed in the face of his alpha’s scrutiny.
“Lance is still out there. He is a threat to us, to our mates. Erin is with pup. Constance’s father, Didier, has crawled back into whatever putrid hole he emerged from, and Faucher…
” Gaharet focused on his hands for a moment, his brow furrowed, before fixing them both with a stare.
“I do not need to tell you both that the pack is undergoing significant challenges right now. More than ever before, we have reasons to fear for our continued existence.”
Lance lived? It had been too much to hope Gaharet and Lothair would have tracked the traitorous wolf to his death.
Wounded or no, Lance was not an inexperienced pup.
While he hid away healing, he would be scheming against them.
Fate could not have picked a worse time for them to have found Isobella.
Gaharet sighed. “I need to know. Is Isobella your mate?”
Edmond did not hesitate. “Yes.”
“Aubert?”
It hurt to admit what Isobella was to him, but there was no hiding anything from Gaharet. “Yes.”
Gaharet nodded. “We cannot ignore this. Mates… We need them. As wolves, as a pack, but…”
“This will not be like before,” assured Edmond.
“How can you say that?” demanded Gaharet. “You have already defied pack law by turning her without sanction.”
“What?” Aubert straightened in his chair. “No.”
Edmond looked as shocked as he. “We sent Remi—”
Aubert jabbed his finger at Edmond. “You sent Remi.”
“After you had turned her,” said Gaharet.
Aubert gaped at his brother. “Edmond, did you tell Remi to—?”
“No!” Edmond snarled. “Yes. I sent Remi well before we agreed to turn her, but—” Edmond huffed and raked a hand through his hair. “It should not surprise us that the little thief is also a liar.”
Aubert met his alpha’s gaze head on. “I would have turned her, sanction or no. Our mate was dying. It left us little choice.” Aubert would take responsibility for their actions. Edmond could take Isobella.
“No. No, Aubert. You will not take the blame for this.” Edmond met their alpha’s stare head on, stabbing his chest with his finger.
“I was the one who wanted to turn her before we received word from you. Aubert wanted to wait. But she was dying, Gaharet. We have already lost one mate. I could not go through that again. Seeing Sabine like that…” Edmond dropped his head.
“I could not let Isobella die. Remi arrived with the potion as I was about to turn her, but…” His sigh was heavy but contained no regret. “I would have turned her, anyway.”
“You said the pack needs mates,” said Aubert, backing his brother. “Would you have us let her die?”
Gaharet rose and refilled his goblet from the jug on the side table, giving them his back. When he resumed his seat, his expression was troubled. “Have you forgotten what happened with Sabine? Between the two of you? I have not.”
How could Aubert forget? His brother’s eyes swollen, his nose broken and his lip split.
The bruises, the livid handprints on Edmond’s throat where he had almost choked the life out of him.
His own body bloody and battered. Edmond had been no easy conquest. Well matched in strength and prowess, they had both fought with everything they had. Over her. Sabine.
’Twas not his mother’s screams, his alpha’s orders, the hands that had fought to pull him off, nor his brother gasping for breath that had penetrated his rage-fueled haze, but Sabine’s cries urging him on.
To kill Edmond. It had pierced through the fog that had descended over him with sudden clarity, and he had released Edmond, staring at his hands as he had backed away from his brother.
The horror of it. Had he not stopped, Edmond would not be sitting beside him today. His brother. His twin.
“Things will be different this time,” Edmond assured Gaharet. “Aubert and I have discussed it, and we have agreed not to fight over her. To let her choose. The way we should have with Sabine.”
The female’s right to choose was inviolate, but with Sabine they had done everything in their power to best each other.
To be her choice. Aubert could have lost more than his brother that day.
Denying Sabine her right to choose could have had him banished from the pack. In the end, they had both lost her.
Gaharet’s eyes narrowed on him. “Aubert?”
He could make it easy for Isobella. Make Edmond the only choice.
It would not be hard. He never could compete with Edmond when it came to women.
The way words slid off his brother’s tongue with such ease.
All Aubert had to offer was his strength and prowess in battle.
His loyalty. That did not count for much when women wanted pretty words.
He was the grumpy twin. If he made no effort to change that, Isobella would choose Edmond.
After what he had done, it was a fitting penance.
He nodded. “Edmond and I have agreed.”
Gaharet’s gaze lingered on him, as though he could see right through Aubert’s soul. Let him look.
“We have not told her she is our mate. Not yet,” said Edmond. “We wanted to take things slow.”
Gaharet scoffed. “Isobella knows a lot about the Langeais wolves. Who we are, what we can do. It is fair to imagine she knows about mates.”
He shared a look with his brother. Did she know? She had not said a word.
“Mayhap she does, but we vow it to you, Gaharet, this will not end as it did all those years ago,” said Edmond. “Isobella is not Sabine.”
What little they knew of her, Aubert had to agree. Isobella lacked the arrogance of Sabine. So humble, almost embarrassed when she had admitted she did not know why she had been chosen.
That was not the only thing that was not the same.
That simple touch in the hall—Edmond’s thumb swiping across Isobella’s lip as she chewed on meat she had not wanted to eat but needed—should have had him throwing his brother to the floor.
He should have raged like a wounded boar.
Were it Sabine, he would have. He had done. Everything about this was different.
Why? Was it, as Edmond had pointed out, because they were older? More disciplined, their bond stronger? He frowned. They never had uncovered the truth behind Sabine’s demise.
Gaharet was watching him, those keen eyes missing nothing. “Aubert?”
“I—” What was he thinking? That something was amiss about their bond with Sabine? “It is nothing. Memories from the past.” He would think on it. Say nothing for now until he had something other than a feeling of uneasiness to share.
Gaharet sipped his wine, studying them both over the rim of his goblet. A coal shifted in the brazier, sending sparks into the air. The subtle hum of conversation and a feminine laugh echoed through from the hall.
Gaharet tugged on his beard. “Very well. She is your mate. And a newly turned wolf in need of training. You will both take on this task—”
Aubert opened his mouth to protest.
Gaharet held up his hand. “You will both take on this task until such time as Isobella chooses one of you to claim her. At the first sign from either of you that this is a repeat of what happened with Sabine, I will interfere. I will train her.”
Both he and Edmond were on their feet growling at their alpha.
Merde. No one would train his mate but him. He frowned, pulling his wolf back. And Edmond. Yes, Edmond. Though the thought of his brother training Isobella did not raise the same possessiveness from his wolf as if it were Gaharet. Because he had already decided Edmond would be the one to claim her?
He caught a familiar scent on the air and lifted his nose. Aubert scowled as he crossed the room. He wrenched the door open, then grabbed Remi by the back of his tunic, dragging him into the library.
Edmond rolled his eyes. “We are paying you to spy for us, not on us.”
Remi huffed. “I would never know what was going on if I did not take it upon myself to find out.”
Aubert shook him.
“Ease up,” Remi protested.
Aubert shook him again. “You lied to our alpha.”
“What? No, I—”
“When I sent you to get the potion for Isobella’s turning,” said Edmond.
“Oh, that.” Remi’s contrite expression fooled no one. “Well yes, I might have told him you had already turned her.”
“Might have?” Aubert snarled.
“What?” Remi held up his hands. “You were going to do it, anyway. I almost missed it, you were in that much of a rush.”
Aubert snarled. The boy was too impudent for his own good. He needed a good thrashing.
“I got you the result you wanted, did I not? You thought Gaharet would say no. This way, he could not. Would he want some poor woman to suffer? Hm?” Remi cocked an eyebrow, a jaunty tilt to his head. “I think not.”
No, Gaharet would not wish to see some poor woman in pain, but he would not have taken lightly to them turning her without sanction. And yet… There was a hint of a smile on Gaharet’s lips.
“What are we going to do with you, Remi?” muttered Edmond. “And it is Mon Seigneur Gaharet to you. Show some respect.”
Gaharet held his hands up. “We cannot change what is done. All we can do is deal with the consequences. Isobella needs to start her training first thing on the morrow.”
“Edmond will do it,” said Aubert. Now Edmond looked like he might protest. “I will take Remi to Langeais. Keep the boy out of trouble. The beggars might have new information.” About Faucher, his alliance with the comtesse and this witch Cordelia.
And the warlock, Douglas. Aubert had a need to track down Douglas for more personal reasons.
He would not claim Isobella as his own, but he would see those who had hurt her paid for their betrayal.
“Are you sure that is wise?” asked Edmond. “If Faucher sees you, or if any of the chevaliers from House Allard do, they will not fail to recognize you. We can send Ulrik with Remi, then we can train Isobella together.”
“Remi trusts me more.” It was a lame excuse even to his own ears, but the more time Edmond spent with Isobella—alone—the better.
“And we will use the pleasure house.” During their hunt for Lance, they had learned from Remi of the secret entrance into Langeais—over the wall and through the pleasure house window.
It had proved useful then. It would aid them again now.
“We will hide there. Remi can make contact with the thieves.”
“I will be faster without you. Quieter, too.” Remi smirked. “Mon Seigneur Aubert.”
“Without werewolf senses, you might stumble on Faucher or his troops on the road,” he countered.
“Remi is right.” Gaharet’s grimace said he did not like admitting that.
“But so is Aubert. On the morrow, Aubert, you will escort Remi to Langeais. Once he is safe in the pleasure house, you will come back here. Edmond, you will begin Isobella’s training.
Aubert will join you upon his return.” Gaharet’s tone brooked no argument.
Merde.
“Now we have settled that”—Remi’s gaze bounced from Aubert to Edmond—“who is Sabine?”
Aubert snarled and hauled Remi toward the door, ignoring his brother’s glare.
He was trying to do the right thing. Separate himself from Isobella.
It would be hard leaving her, leaving his brother.
It had been a long time since he had undertaken a mission without Edmond, and the thought of it had a lump settling in his chest heavier than a blacksmith’s anvil.
Is this what it would be like when Isobella chose Edmond? For Edmond would want a life with his mate unencumbered by his brother’s constant presence. Would he lose not only a mate, but his connection with his twin as well?
After the twins departed, dragging Remi along with them, Gaharet sat at his desk staring at the coals in the brazier.
He had been but a score years old when Edmond and Aubert had met Sabine.
A peasant girl with ambitions to rise above her station, she’d seen Aubert and Edmond as her way out of poverty.
Gaharet had never liked her. Everything about her had left a bad taste in his mouth, but his father had cautioned him against speaking his truth.
She was Edmond’s and Aubert’s true mate.
Though Gaharet was certain his father had found no more appeal in Sabine than he had.
And it had troubled his father that both Edmond and Aubert had experienced the mating pull.
His father’s fears had not been unfounded.
Gaharet sighed, testing the ink on the parchment.
Satisfied it was dry enough, he folded it, dripped a blob of hot wax on it, and stamped it with his seal.
“Gascon,” he called his head steward into the room, and handed him the parchment.
“See that Comte Lothair receives this with all urgency. Make sure it is delivered into his hands personally.”
Gascon bowed and left the room.
Edmond was right. Isobella was not like Sabine.
Gaharet liked her. Her honesty shone through in every word, in every emotion she made no effort to hide.
There was a goodness about her, a softness Sabine had been lacking.
Would that she had been their first true mate, perhaps things would not have escalated as they had.
Maybe… He crossed his ankles and leaned back in his chair.
There had been a remarkable lack of scent trail—no scent trail at all—to explain how Sabine had ended where she had, her throat slit and her body thrown in a ravine.
Or who had led or carried her there. Not a full day after Aubert and Edmond had reconciled.
Had there been something else at play? Witchcraft?
Distorting the call of a true mate? With a time-traveling witch worrying at the pack’s heels, Gaharet could not afford to discount anything.