Chapter 4
Farmers stamped their boots against the chill, voices dropping as they spoke of the earl’s haggard appearance that morning, looking like a man who’d wrestled the devil himself and barely lived to tell the tale.
Ahard dawn pressed itself into the world, and Lucien emerged with it, half-buried in a drift of ice-needled snow.
His first sensation was not cold but the scald of his own skin, every nerve awake and pulsing with the aftershock of transformation.
The ache behind his ribs thudded like a hammer on iron, and the air wheezed into his lungs as if he had just run a mile uphill while shot through.
He spat a mouthful of crimson onto the churned snow and rolled onto his hands and knees, struggling to orient himself. A numbness sat heavy on his skull, as though his brain had boiled and was only now congealing back to an original shape.
He pawed at his arms and neck, expecting iron and silver, but found only the raw grooves where the manacles had burned. He was shivering, stripped bare.
Above him, the bare branches of a rowan tree slashed the sky.
The lichen-spotted bark flared with rusty scars, and here and there was a crow’s feather or a ratty shred of a bird’s nest. He braced himself against the rowan’s trunk and hauled upright, swaying as a dizzy spell tore through his vision.
Birds scattered at his movement, wings clapping in the air.
He blinked the stinging from his eyes and examined his hands. The fingers were caked in blood to the first joint, the nails rimmed with a black crust that could only be dried gore. He turned his palms over, flexing the knuckles, then raised both hands to his face, afraid of what he might find.
His cheeks were sticky, jaw stiff, the coppery reek of blood in his sinuses and mouth. He sucked in a ragged breath and let it out slow, then scooped up a double handful of snow, crushed it, and scrubbed at his face and hair.
He forced the slush into his mouth, letting it dissolve and rinse away the sour metallic film clinging to his tongue and teeth. He spat again and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
He crouched there, cold and sodden, and desperate for memory to return. But the night’s passage was a blank, the time between the first fracture of his hand bones and waking beneath the rowan erased like chalk from a slate.
His entire body was hot and a monstrous hunger gnawed at his belly. This was the worst of the quickening, the aftermath. It left him ravenous, as though he had run for a week without stopping, every cell of his body hollowed out for something to fill it.
Lucien bit down on his panic. He needed to get home, get clothed, get answers. Most of all, he needed to know how he had breached the cellar again and why, after four years, the wolf was now running free.
He studied the rowan tree with deliberate care, reading its limbs.
The trunk would not take a heavy leap or high grip, so he’d have to climb carefully, balancing on smaller branches.
He found the thickest bough, calculated the climb, and inched his way up, hand over hand, the bark scraping skin from his arms and thighs as he shielded his manhood best he could.
It was a scrambling, breath-held ascent, not a swift or comfortable one. Still, he soon crouched on a high branch, clutching the trunk with one arm as he scanned the horizon.
The mist had broken with the dawn, and the woods below were a white expanse pierced by the spines of pine and oak.
To the north, he saw the blur of the main road winding through the valley, and the towering black square of Blackfen Castle smudged against the pale sky.
Between him and the castle was the gamekeeper’s cottage, smoke just beginning to curl from its chimney, and nearer still a winding ribbon of frozen river.
He calculated his route, planning to visit the gamekeeper’s cottage first. He would avoid the main path and anyone likely to be on it. If he were lucky, he could get to the cottage, borrow a coat and boots, and be at the castle before Mrs. Harrow or anybody else was any the wiser.
The climb down was easier, his body remembering each handhold even as his mind scattered in a dozen directions.
He reached the ground and took off at a fast jog, one of the benefits of his curse being that he did not easily tire.
Running downhill most of the way, he read the broken branches and fresh boot prints in the snow to know that Ephraim had already returned from his early duties in the woods.
The cold stabbed at him, but he picked up his pace and ran faster, warmth blooming in his chest and throat as he built up more speed. His feet struck the snow in perfect cadence, and for a moment he almost believed he could outrun the thing inside him.
At the edge of the gamekeeper’s yard, he slowed, pausing behind a stand of yew to catch his breath.
The cottage was awake and alive, smoke curling up in a tight column.
Even from afar, he smelled the sharpness of bacon grease, the yeasty tang of rising bread, and beneath it all, the oily reek of gun oil and spent powder.
Ephraim would be inside, cleaning his traps and eating his breakfast.
Lucien crept to the side window and peered through the smudged glass. The gamekeeper sat at his table, gnawing a hunk of bread. Lucien watched for a moment, then ran and rapped sharply on the front door.
He heard the scrape of a chair and Ephraim’s heavy steps, then the man’s face appeared at the door, eyes narrowed with suspicion. “That ye, m’lord?” he called, accent rough as gravel.
Lucien stepped into view, raising both hands in a gesture of surrender. “It is,” he called back, voice ragged from the run and the cold.
Ephraim’s expression shifted to one of disbelief. “Christ on the cross, it’s the Earl o’ Blackfen hisself, prancin’ home bare-arsed like a twopenny whore who’s lost her last shift.” He stepped aside, holding the door open as Lucien darted in.
The gamekeeper’s face was set in lines of skepticism. “Have ye no shame left at all, man? What have ye done to yerself?”
Lucien shook his head. “I broke free,” he managed, voice barely above a whisper.
Ephraim grunted, looking him over from head to toe. “Broke free? Never thought ye had it in ye. Where are yer clothes?”
“Root cellar. I need a coat. And boots. I must get back to the castle before—” He faltered, blood pounding behind his temples.
“Sit,” Ephraim said, grabbing a mug from the shelf and slopping it full of black coffee. “Drink.”
Lucien took the coffee. He drank, letting the heat burn down into his chest and settle there. He then set the mug aside and leaned his palms on the table. The worn planks felt steady beneath him, and for a minute he could almost pretend he was just a man nursing a hangover.
Ephraim quickly returned with a greatcoat, smelling of pine. He dropped the coat into Lucien’s lap. “I only have my Sunday shoes and I ain’t lending those, I’m feared.”
Lucien stood and shrugged the coat over his shoulders and turned up the collar. “Thank you,” he said, voice steadier now.
The gamekeeper only shrugged. “Yer lucky ye don’t have a round of shot from myself. Next time ye run wild, give a man warnin’.”
Lucien scrubbed a hand through his hair, now dry but tangled with dirt and tiny bits of splintered wood. “I do not know what happened,” he said, dropping to a whisper. “Four years the chains have held. Four years, Ephraim. I do not understand.”
“Nothing holds forever, m’lord.” The older man looked at him steadily for a few seconds, then went on.
“Well, then, ye better shift yerself, m’lord.
Soon the household’ll stir. I’d rather not explain to her ladyship why her son’s struttin’ about the yard like the devil just made him and forgot to finish the job. ”
Lucien’s jaw clenched. He pulled the coat tight and turned for the door. “Thank you,” he said again.
He stepped into the open air and set off at a determined jog for Blackfen Castle.
Each step brought him closer, but also further into his own unease.
He had no memory of the night, no certainty he had done no harm, and only the traces of blood in his mouth and around his fingernails to keep him company.
But here was the proof, cold and undeniable. This was why the bloodline must end with him. He remade his vow then, fierce as the winter wind. There would be no heir to the wolves of Blackfen. If it killed him, he would be the last of his line.
Verity awoke to cold light pouring through the high windows.
For a long moment she lay still, breathing deeply, unsure if the world outside had changed or if something inside her had.
The bed was vast and luxurious, the linen under her hands finer than any she had known.
The velvet curtains were as blue as bruises in the morning glare.
Then, she remembered, in a slow unfurling, where she was.
Blackfen Castle. The first safe place since everything fell to ruin.
She had slept in later than her usual hours, but she easily blamed it on her long, bumpy, sleepless drive north.
Her body still ached from the journey, each limb heavy and sullen as if her bones had been replaced with iron.
She marveled at the unfamiliar absence of sound. Not the clatter of horses, nor the rattle of coach windows. Instead, the only sound was, from far below, a single wolfhound barking once, twice, then lapsing into silence.
Pressing a hand to her chest, she realized she had slept in her shift, the trunk containing all her worldly goods still missing.
She forced herself up, and the cold bit instantly, turning the air to glass around her.
She yanked the blue coverlet off her legs and swung over the edge of the bed, feet landing on an indigo rug.