Chapter 17 #3
Braccus settled himself at the foot of the cellar stairs with the deliberate care of a hound favoring an injury, his torn ear crusted with dried blood.
He could not lick at it. He simply lowered his great head onto his paws and fixed his solemn gaze upon the chained wolf with an expression that Verity could only describe as betrayal.
Eirin positioned herself between the chained wolf and Verity, her body a living barrier, her green-gray eyes tracking the prisoner’s every labored breath.
She had not relaxed since the confrontation outside.
Her hackles remained half-raised, her muscles taut, as though she fully expected the gray wolf to lunge despite the chains and the silver and the blood loss.
Of the three, Eirin alone seemed to regard mercy as a strategic error.
The gray wolf whimpered in its sleep, and Ronan pressed closer against Verity’s leg. Without thinking, Verity reached down and stroked the hound’s soft ears, his tail thumping weakly against the stone floor.
“His lordship cares for ye,” Ephraim said suddenly.
Simple. Direct. The weight comes from the timing, not the wording.
Verity looked up, startled. “I?—”
“I’ve known him since he were a lad,” Ephraim said. “Watched him grow. Watched him bear what was laid on him and none of it his doin’.”
He held her gaze, steady as stone.
“I’ve never seen him look on anyone the way he looks on ye.”
A breath.
“Whatever comes this night, and whatever follows, don’t ye turn from him. He’s need of one soul as sees him plain. Not the earl. Not the beast.” A quieter note entered his voice. “Just … Lucien.”
Verity’s throat tightened. “I will not,” she whispered. “I promise.”
They fell into silence after that, each lost in their own thoughts.
The cellar held a steady, even warmth, the earth around them tempering the bitter cold outside into something almost bearable, but Verity still shivered.
She pulled the borrowed coat tighter around her shoulders and stared at the gray wolf chained on the floor.
How long had Max known what he was? Had the curse manifested suddenly, or had it crept up on him gradually, transforming him night by night until he could no longer deny what he had become? Had he chosen to kill, or had the wolf within him made that choice for him?
And why … why had he decided to frame Lucien for his crimes?
The questions circled in Verity’s mind with no answers to arrest them. Perhaps she would never have them. Perhaps some betrayals defied comprehension.
The hours crawled by. Verity dozed fitfully, jerking awake at every sound.
The gray wolf’s labored breathing, the wolfhounds’ occasional whimpers, the distant howl of what might have been Lucien or might have been the wind.
Ephraim kept watch with the patience of a man accustomed to long nights in the dark, his eyes never leaving the chained creature on the floor with the rifle reloaded and resting on his knees.
At some point, Ronan climbed into Verity’s lap, curling into a large ball of warmth and soft fur.
The hound sighed and pressed his head against Verity’s chest. Slowly, carefully, Verity wrapped her arms around the dog and held on.
She was not entirely certain which one of them was bigger, but she was happy for the comfort.
The gray wolf’s breathing grew more labored as the night wore on. Twice, Ephraim had to change the bandages, and each time the blood that soaked through was darker, thicker. Verity tried not to think about what that meant.
She worried about Lucien.
She worried that the black wolf was running through the moors with no sense of direction, no memory of who he was or whom he loved.
The villagers were afraid. Word of the killings had spread, and frightened men did desperate things.
What if the tenants had organized a hunting party, armed with muskets and torches and the grim determination of men defending their families?
What if they came upon a great black wolf in the darkness and saw not their lord but the beast responsible for the blood upon their land?
They would shoot first. They would not hesitate.
And Lucien, trapped in his wolf form with no voice to cry out and no human face to show them, would have no defense against their vengeance.
Stop it! she told herself fiercely. He survived four years of this. He will survive tonight.
But the fear remained, wound tight in her chest, refusing to loosen its grip.
Finally, the darkness beyond the cellar door began to lighten.
The gray wolf stirred, whimpering, and Verity watched in horrified fascination as the transformation began to reverse itself.
Bones cracked and reformed. Fur receded into the skin.
The muzzled snout shortened into a human face, twisted with pain.
When it was over, Max Dray lay naked and bleeding on the cellar floor, his wrists and ankles still bound by silver chains. His skin was gray with blood loss, and his breathing was shallow and ragged.
But he was alive.