Chapter 14 #3
Lucien sank into the nearest chair, his legs no longer capable of supporting him.
The information she had provided crashed through his mind, leaving him reeling.
For four years, he had believed himself a monster without conscience or control.
For four years, he had lived in terror of the damage the beast might inflict upon innocent people.
And now Verity was telling him that the wolf had not only recognized her but had chosen to protect her rather than harm her.
Verity followed him, lowering herself into the chair beside his and keeping hold of his hand. The warmth of her touch anchored him, kept him from spiraling into the abyss of confusion and despair that threatened to swallow him whole.
“Do you not see?” she said, her voice gentle but insistent. “Your basic character is not altered even when you are a beast. You were still Lucien. Still a gentleman. Still incapable of hurting those under your protection.”
He wanted to believe her. Dear Lord, how he wanted to believe her.
The thought that the man he was might somehow endure within the wolf, that some essential remnant of his humanity survived even when the moon held sway, was more than he had ever permitted himself to hope.
It would explain why his father had brought down only game in the woods, never surrendering his stewardship of Blackfen’s people even in his bestial form.
But the truth he carried was too heavy to be lifted by wishes alone.
“There was a death,” he confessed quietly, the words dragging themselves from somewhere deep within his chest. “In the village. One of my tenants. An old man savaged by a wild animal.”
Verity’s expression shifted, concern replacing the gentle certainty that had been there moments before. “When?”
“Last night.” He pressed his free hand to his temple, where a headache was building with vicious intensity. The confusion of the past few days pressed upon him. “Ephraim told me this morning. The body was found at dawn, and he was killed some hours earlier because it was frozen.”
“But you said yourself you do not remember?—”
“I have been breaking free of my chains.” The words emerged harsh and jagged.
“During the quickening, I have been escaping. There are no other creatures in these parts that could have done this. No wolves in England save me.” He looked up at her, and the anguish in his voice was raw and undisguised.
“If a man was killed by a beast, then that beast must be me.”
The silence that fell between them was suffocating.
Lucien watched her process this information, watched the certainty in her eyes waver and shift.
She wanted to argue with him, he could see that.
She wanted to insist that the wolf who had saved her could not be capable of killing an innocent man.
But how could she reconcile those two truths?
How could the same beast be both savior and murderer?
“I must be maturing,” he continued, his voice hollow.
“Those who suffer from inherited lycanthropy, perhaps it worsens over time. The transformations become more violent. Perhaps the beast grows stronger while the man grows weaker.” He pulled his hand from hers and stood, unable to bear the weight of her gaze any longer.
“I had hoped I might have more time, but it seems the curse has progressed faster than I anticipated.”
He moved to the window, staring out at the winter-pale landscape without truly seeing it. Behind him, he could hear Verity’s breathing, measured and careful, as she struggled to find words that might bridge the chasm that had opened between them.
“Lucien,” she said finally, her voice barely above a whisper. “What if you are wrong?”
“How can I be wrong?” He did not turn to face her. “The evidence is clear. I am a werewolf who has been breaking his bonds. A man is dead, killed by an animal that does not exist in nature. What other explanation could there be?”
“I do not know,” she admitted. “But the wolf I saw last night, that creature was not mindless. It was not driven purely by appetite. It knew me, Lucien. It recognized me and chose to protect me. Does that not suggest that perhaps …” She paused, searching for words.
“Perhaps there is more to this curse than you understand. Perhaps the beast is not entirely separate from the man.”
He closed his eyes against the painful hope her words kindled in his chest. She was trying to give him absolution, trying to find a way to reconcile the monster and the man.
But he had spent four years learning to accept the truth of what he was.
Four years building walls against precisely this kind of hope, because hope was dangerous.
Hope made you careless. Hope made you believe you could have things.
A normal life, a wife, and children. But those comforts were forever beyond your reach.
“You give me too much credit,” he said quietly.
“You see nobility where there is only instinct. The wolf may have spared you, but that does not mean it spared that old man. Perhaps the beast simply was not hungry. Perhaps it had already fed. Perhaps your scent confused it, reminded it of something from my human life.” He turned to face her then, and the desolation in his heart was terrible to bear.
“But that does not change what I am, Verity. It does not change what I have done.”
Her face turned mutinous. “I do not believe it. I will not believe it.”