Chapter Twenty-Four
Isobella leaned her head against the stone wall. Her lips tingled and her body thrummed, but her mind… She closed her eyes. She didn’t know what she was thinking. Her wolf urged her to go after Aubert. Aubert and Edmond. But what if they didn’t want her to?
The idea that she might be the mate of a Langeais wolf had fueled more than a few of her fantasies and, if she were honest, had played a part in her decision to undertake this mission.
Gabriel doted on Annabelle with a single-mindedness Isobella envied.
He’d used an evil witch’s spell with zero preparation, risking his life to go back in time and save her.
She couldn’t have counted on Douglas to stop by the drugstore or cook her some chicken soup when she was laid up in bed with the flu.
And that was early in their relationship. Before Irena had come along.
Isobella couldn’t deny it. She wanted what Annabelle had. But with a man who, despite kissing her as if he couldn’t live another minute without her, didn’t want her?
And Edmond? He’d run after his brother. Of course he had. They were twins. Like Pierre and Louis. Those two did everything together. Aubert and Edmond were likely the same. Inseparable, Anne had said. Isobella would not come between brothers.
“Isobella?”
She snapped her eyes open. Gaharet stood at the end of the corridor, his dark eyes radiating concern.
“Are you well?”
Was she? She was alive. She was healthy, strong—stronger than she’d ever been—but… “Training has been a bit…difficult this morning.” Did Gaharet notice the whisker burn on her face? Did he smell Aubert on her?
He moved closer. Alone with him in the corridor, he was no less intimidating than when she’d first met him.
“Aubert was hard on you this morn.”
Her gut churned, and she fought the flush of heat threatening her face. She supposed everyone in the keep would know that. Every werewolf. “He’s working really hard to get me up to speed.”
Gaharet frowned. He didn’t believe her?
She pasted on a bright smile, as though her muscles didn’t ache and her heart wasn’t sore. “We don’t have time to waste. Cordelia is out there. Douglas, too. And let’s not forget the reason why I’m here. Faucher.”
“Mm.”
Isobella clutched her boots to her stomach, unnerved by Gaharet’s intense scrutiny. Mm? What does that mean?
“And Edmond?”
Isobella raised her chin. She might compare them in her mind, but she wouldn’t disparage either of them to their alpha. “Edmond is working me just as hard.”
“Mm, mm.”
Isobella was conscious of the soles of her boots digging into her palms.
Gaharet inclined his head toward the stairs. “Get some rest. You will have training again on the morrow. For, as you say, we must prepare. I will have the servants ready a bath for you and one of the girls from the kitchen bring you up some food.”
“Thank you.” Ducking her head, she slipped past Gaharet.
“Isobella,” Gaharet called after her.
She paused at the top of the stairs.
“Before you set your mind about Aubert, ask them about Sabine.”
Sabine? Could that be what Anne had been referring to? A woman? One they had competed over? Isobella made her way down the stairs. All the more reason not to come between them.
Gaharet lingered a moment in the corridor, staring into the empty training room.
Isobella’s arousal tainted the air. As did Aubert’s.
Edmond’s too. Yesterday morn she had insisted she bear full responsibility for her turning.
That any repercussions fall on her, not the twins.
And now, after experiencing a more punishing training session than Gaharet had ever been witness to, she refused to speak ill of Aubert.
She had every cause to, but she had not.
Edmond was right. Isobella was nothing like Sabine.
Yet, it concerned him all the same. Her very difference, her sweet nature, could only make the situation more complicated. For the twins, for her and for the pack. Because in the end, whether she pitted them against each other or not, she would have to choose.
Gaharet descended the stairs, ordered a servant to see to Isobella’s bath, then continued down to the kitchen.
Anne hovered over a pot of stew, her face flushed. “He has been hard on the poor girl this morn.”
It should not surprise him that Anne, though not a werewolf, had the measure of what had happened in the training room. “He has.”
Anne abandoned her pot, slicing several slabs of meat from the haunch over the fire. She filled a plate and handed it to a servant girl. “Take that to our new guest.” The girl bobbed her head and disappeared. “You are concerned about her. And Aubert.”
Gaharet sighed and leaned on the bench. “I am uncertain how all this is going to play out. What it is going to do to the twins.”
Anne went back to her pot. “Fate will find its way. It will all work out as it is meant to. Like you and Erin, and all the others.”
Fate had not worked out so well for Aubert and Edmond last time. Nor Lance. Nor Godfrey.
The weight of Godfrey’s disappearance sat heavy on his mind.
Kept him awake at night. That D’Artagnon was alive and home again went some way to easing the burden of leadership.
And gave him hope for Godfrey. Speaking of…
Gaharet searched the kitchen, finding no sign of the old wolf, Vladimir.
The old Rus wolf had arrived with D’Artagnon and had chosen to stay. “Where is your faithful shadow?”
Anne snorted. “He will show his furry head soon enough. When he has a mind to.”
As if talking about him had summoned him, the door to the bailey opened and the grizzled wolf slunk in, a large hare in his jaws. He dropped it at Anne’s feet.
“Hmpf.” Anne scooped up the hare and slapped it on the bench. “At least you have brought me food for the pot. Something good has to come from you being under my feet all day.”
Gaharet cocked his head. “He brings you food?”
Anne grabbed a knife and cut a slit in the hare’s fur.
“Fresh kills every day. Paying his way, I guess. So he should. He is one more mouth to feed.” She worked swiftly, skinning the animal.
“I am not saying I do not appreciate it, mind, but the least he could do is skin and gut it. No, he kills it and leaves all the work for me.” With a deft slice of the blade, Anne sliced open the stomach and gutted the carcass.
“But one needs hands to skin and gut a carcass, and the old fool has not shifted once since he came here.”
Every day? Gaharet narrowed his gaze on the old wolf.
With his head on his paws, the old wolf stared up at Anne, and Gaharet could not fail to recognize it.
That look. The one his father had had on his face every time he had looked at his mother.
It was in Aubert’s eyes every time he looked at Isobella, though he tried to hide it.
Edmond’s, too. Anne had accused him of having it when she had caught him staring at Erin. It was in Vladimir’s eyes now.
Anne was Vladimir’s mate.
Before he had a chance to let that truth sink in, Erin burst into the kitchen, his father’s journal clutched in her hand.
“There you are.” She slapped the journal onto the bench. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. What are you smiling at?” She waved off any explanation. “Never mind, I’ve had an idea. Well, a thought really.”
Her face was flushed, and her eyes were bright. A sure sign his mate had made a discovery.
“I’ve been thinking about what you told me about Sabine and the twins.”
His cock twitched in his breeches. He loved seeing his mate like this. It had him wanting to throw her over his shoulder and disappear with her into their bedchamber and not resurface for days. Instead, he asked, “You found something in the journal?”
“Not about Edmond and Aubert. At least not yet. But remember that entry of your great grandfather’s, where he wrote about meeting Cordelia?”
Awareness tingled up his spine. This time it had nothing to do with his mate. “Go on.”
“Your great grandfather mentioned he was called away by a fight between two wolves over a she-wolf.” Erin opened the journal and flicked through the pages until she found the one she wanted.
“Well, I looked into that fight. It turns out the two males fighting over the she-wolf were Montagnes. Twins.”
Gaharet stared at the slanted writing on the page. This had happened before?
“It didn’t end like it did with Aubert, Edmond and Sabine. Not at all. One twin conceded, letting the other take the she-wolf as his mate.”
Disappointment settled in his entrails. He had shared his concerns with his mate.
Erin was an intelligent, educated woman, and she was from the same century as Isobella.
He had hoped she would have some insight.
Had hoped for a solution, but this was exactly how he imagined it would end with Isobella.
Erin held up her hand. “Wait. There’s more. The twin who bowed out, he never took a mate, but both twins continued to live in the same keep. With the she-wolf. And everybody lived happily ever after.”
Gaharet frowned. How was that possible? For the unmated twin, it would be… Gaharet could not imagine the struggle of having to watch your mate with another man. It had driven Lance to murder, though the woman he had wanted, Gaharet’s mother, had not been his mate at all.
“You’re wondering how it all worked. How they could be happy living like that, one twin mated, one not.
Well, here’s the interesting thing.” Erin pointed to four lines of writing.
“Your great-grandfather suspected the unmated twin hadn’t given up his chance of a mate at all.
That behind closed doors, both twins had both claimed her as their mate. ”
They had shared her?
“Your ancestor observed them for a time, and the she-wolf seemed happy”—Erin shrugged—“so he didn’t intervene.”
Gaharet scrubbed his face. Was it possible? Could Edmond and Aubert come to a similar understanding?
“Here’s what I’m thinking.” Erin’s eyes sparkled, her excitement barely contained.
“Twins appear to be a thing with the Montagnes. I’m betting there’s been more than a few sets between now and the twenty-first century.
What are the chances at least some of them have encountered the same problem as Aubert and Edmond?
And made a similar choice as their ancestors?
Isobella knows a lot about the Langeais wolves, Gaharet.
Do you think she might already know of Montagne twins who share a mate? ”