Chapter 11 #3
Robert’s hand clamped over her mouth, cutting off her cries. “Shut up!” he hissed, his breath hot against her ear. “No one is coming to save you. Your precious earl is nowhere to be found, and his servants know better than to interfere in the affairs of their betters.”
This cannot be happening. Not again.
She bit down hard on his palm, tasting blood, and he released her mouth with a curse. In that moment, she heard it. Something large and fast, racing toward them through the darkness.
Robert heard it too. His grip on her loosened as he turned toward the sound, and Verity wrenched herself free, stumbling away from him and nearly falling in the snow. The wolfhounds had come at last. They would save her.
The lantern still burned where it had fallen, casting a circle of golden light across the courtyard. And into that light came?—
Not a wolfhound.
Verity’s mind refused to process what her eyes were seeing. The creature that emerged from the darkness was enormous, far larger than any dog she had ever encountered. Its fur was black as midnight, shot through with silver threads that caught the moonlight and seemed to glow. Its eyes …
Its eyes were gold, with strange black flecks that seemed to shift and dance in the lantern’s flame.
A wolf. A massive, impossible, utterly magnificent wolf.
Robert stumbled backward, releasing Verity entirely as the color drained from his face. “What the devil?—”
The wolf lifted its great head toward the moon and bayed, a sound that echoed across the forest and seemed to vibrate in Verity’s very bones.
It was not the howl of a hunting dog or the cry of any animal she had ever heard.
It was something older, wilder, more primal than anything she had words to describe.
“Caesar!” Robert shouted, his voice cracking with fear. “Attack! Attack, damn you!”
The mastiff, which had been watching the proceedings from several yards distant, lowered its massive head. Its tail tucked between its legs. Its ears flattened against its skull. And then, with a whine of pure submission, it crouched down in the snow, averting its gaze from the wolf’s steady stare.
“What are you doing? Attack!”
But the mastiff would not obey. Whatever dominance Robert held over the animal, it was nothing compared to the authority radiating from the wolf. The great black beast regarded the cringing mastiff for a long moment, then released a single sharp bark.
Caesar scrambled to its feet and ran into the darkness, its tail still tucked, its whines fading into the distance. Robert watched it go, his face a mask of disbelief and growing terror.
“Wolves do not exist in England,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “They were hunted to extinction centuries ago. This is impossible.”
The wolf growled, a low, rumbling sound that seemed to come from the very earth itself. It began to advance, each step deliberate, each movement radiating barely contained violence. Its lips drew back to reveal fangs as long as Verity’s fingers, gleaming white in the moonlight.
Robert’s hand shot out and grabbed Verity’s arm, yanking her in front of him like a shield. “Stay back!” he shouted at the wolf, as if the creature could understand him. “Stay back or I’ll … I’ll?—”
Whatever threat he meant to make died on his lips. The wolf’s eyes fixed upon Robert with an intensity that seemed to promise death itself.
And then Robert did the only thing his cowardly nature would allow.
He shoved Verity forward, directly into the wolf’s path, and ran.
She heard his footsteps pounding away into the darkness, heard his terrified screams fading into the distance. But she could not turn to watch him flee, because the wolf was right there, mere feet away, and it was looking at her with those gold eyes that stirred something deep in her memory.
Verity fell into the snow, too terrified to scream, too frozen to run.
This was how she would die then. Torn apart by a wolf that should not exist, in the grounds of a castle she had only just begun to call home.
It seemed almost fitting, in a horrible sort of way.
She had fled one monster only to be consumed by another.
The wolf approached slowly, its great head lowered, its breath misting in the frigid air. It stopped mere inches from where she lay, close enough that she could see the individual hairs of its magnificent black coat, close enough that she could smell the wild musk of its fur.
And then, instead of attacking, it simply … sniffed her.
Its nose pressed against her hair, her neck, her shoulder. It inhaled deeply, as if memorizing her scent. Verity lay perfectly still, afraid that any movement might trigger the violence she knew this creature was capable of. Her heart pounded so loudly she was certain the wolf must hear it.
I am going to die. I am going to die. I am going to?—
The wolf’s eyes met hers, so close she could make out the individual motes of black in those golden depths, and the thought dissolved into something else entirely.
Those eyes. She knew those eyes.