Prologue #3
Ephraim waved him off with his good hand, his face pale but stoic, the pragmatism of a lifetime in service shining through. “Just some scratches, m’lord. I’ve had worse from a thorny hedge or a bad-tempered boar. Nothin’ a bit o’ brandy won’t mend.”
As Lucien steadied the older man, ensuring he could stand without faltering, his gaze fell on the wolf’s form. It seemed smaller in death, the majestic bulk diminishing and pale, as if the life force that had animated it had fled, leaving behind a husk.
But as they turned to inspect it more closely, horror bloomed in Lucien’s chest. Where the wolf had fallen now lay not a beast, but a naked man.
With a sickening dread coiling in his gut, Lucien pulled the body over with hands that now shook uncontrollably.
That face. Familiar lines etched with the wisdom of years, eyes that had once sparkled with paternal pride, now staring sightlessly upwards.
“No!” Lucien yelled in torment, the sound ripping from his throat like a wounded animal’s cry, echoing through the woods and destroying the night’s silence. “Father!”
The pieces fell into place with sickening dread, a puzzle he had never known existed now assembling before his eyes.
The Northwood family crest, a black wolf rampant on a silver background, clutching wolfsbane in its paw with a fleshy red tongue lolling out.
It was a symbol he had always taken for heraldic fancy.
He thought of his uncle Alden’s mysterious hunting accident decades earlier, spoken of in hushed tones and never fully explained.
His father’s odd remarks over the years about remaining indoors during the full moon, warnings dismissed as eccentricities.
His father’s insistence on silver ammunition, always silver, as if warding against some unseen foe.
Lucien’s mind reeled, realizations assaulting him like shards of broken glass.
“No! It cannot be true!” He collapsed beside the body, his arms closing around the cooling form of the man who had taught him everything. Another howl ripped free, wild and desolate.
“No!” Tears streamed down Lucien’s face, hot and unbidden. “Please … tell me I have not killed my own father!”
Ephraim staggered back a step, nearly falling over. The gamekeeper’s face was ashen, not merely from his wounds but from the horror unfolding before him. His mouth worked soundlessly before he found his voice.
“By the saints, what devilry is this?” Ephraim muttered, his voice rough with shock, crossing himself with his uninjured hand. It was a rare display of piety from the surly soul.
Lucien continued to cry, his father’s limp form cradled against his chest, the earl’s once-strong hands now slack and cold. The metallic scent of blood mingled with the earthy musk of the woods in his nostrils.
“Lycanthropy,” Lucien whispered, the word tasting foreign and forbidden on his tongue, like a curse uttered in a drawing room full of genteel company. “The old legends. They are true. Our bloodline is tainted, Ephraim. My father, he became this beast under the full moon’s sway.”
The gamekeeper shuffled closer, wincing as he knelt beside Lucien, his eyes wide with a mix of fear and disbelief. “I’ve heard the whispers, m’lord. Tales from me grandsire about moon madness. But I ne’er thought … Gad, what a coil! Ye shot true to save me life but at such a cost.”
“Why did he not tell me?” Lucien choked out, his voice breaking like a young boy’s. “This curse lived within him, yet he hid it from me, and now he is gone because of it. What am I to do, Ephraim? How can I bear this burden?”
Ephraim knelt frozen in the shadows as the night swallowed his lord’s anguish. He simply watched with grieving eyes, offering no response, no word of comfort. None, perhaps, existed.
Then, he reached out tentatively, placing a rough hand on Lucien’s shoulder, a gesture of solidarity that bridged the chasm in this moment of shared nightmare. After a moment, he looked away, his eyes fixed upon the ground as if hoping the earth itself might swallow the horror whole.
The freezing earth bit through his buckskins while he held the limp body against him. The arms that had once lifted him as a boy now hung heavy and dead in his own. Grief tore yet another howl from his throat, raw and broken, echoing through the moonlit copse.
Yet even as his cry faded, something answered from the very depths of his soul.
It started as a faint vibration beneath his ribs, a subtle thrum that matched the pulse of the night.
Then it deepened, a low, resonant note that coiled through his blood like warm brandy on a winter evening, both terrifying and intoxicating.
His breath caught. The sensation grew, spreading outward from his heart in slow, inexorable waves until every fiber of his being seemed attuned to the bright silver disc overhead.
A strange heat blossomed beneath his skin, not fever, but something wilder, more primal. His fingers tightened upon his father’s arms, claws of sensation prickling beneath his nails though nothing were there.
Lucien shuddered and looked up. Suddenly, the moon’s light upon his face felt intimate, almost caressing, as though it recognized him and claimed him in return.