Page 25 of The Howling (Monsters of the Yeavering #2)

I stare at the dress. It should be slumped over the ornately carved chair in the bedroom, but somehow it’s contriving to look fresh and pressed as if ready to wear by a blushing bride on her wedding day.

It’s not that I don’t want to get married. I’d just rather I had a choice. I’d rather things stopped happening to me and were created by me.

Certainly I allowed my stepfather to push me into the whole setting up a business thing.

I knew he was a slimy git, but my mum loved him, and she was the happiest I’d ever seen her after my dad died in the plague.

I didn’t want her happiness to end, even if I would never forget the kind, gentle man who brought me up, my real father and her first husband, as easily as she seemed to do.

So, things happening to me, scratch that. I’m going to take control of my new destiny. First things first, I’m not going to let what Lord Guyzance did define me.

Second thing…I need something else to wear. Because I’m not wandering around this place like a cut price Miss Haversham until the Barghest somehow proposes marriage properly.

And I get the opportunity to tell him where to shove it.

Even if he did decide to parade his friend (is Fenrother a friend? I can’t quite get the image of Reavely gnawing on the dragon tail out of my mind) and Alice as if that might be a way of convincing me this is all entirely natural and not weird at all.

To end up in a soul eater’s castle, with only a wedding dress to wear.

The door to the bedroom slams open. Reavely pauses mid step.

I pull the fringed, red brocade throw over myself and glare at him. “Haven’t you ever heard of knocking?”

“I did not intend disturbing you, my mate.”

“You keep using that word like you know what it means,” I grumble at him.

“Barghests have packs. I know what a mate is,” he says grumpily.

“You mean there were more packs than yours?” I ask.

“No, mine was the last. Even before the Reaper took me, we had a reputation ,” he says, glaring past me over my shoulder. “Some parts of the Yeavering were jealous of us because we didn’t bow down to the Faerie. It resulted in extermination.”

I put my hand to my mouth.

“Extermination?”

“If they thought the Barghest were harbingers before me, I made sure they knew what I became after I lost my pack,” Reavely growls.

I feel like my problems pale into insignificance in the face of a creature who has lost every living relative and every one of his species.

“So, you are the only one left?”

Reavely lifts up his chin. “Yes, and I am the most feared.”

“Okay…” I watch as he draws himself up to his full height. He’s reverted to being shirtless again, so it makes his very prominent abs ripple impressively under their light coating of fur. “I suppose a creature who takes souls for a living should be.”

Reavely growls under his breath. “This was not my choice. Serving the Reaper is my curse.”

“You’re cursed?” I see him in a new light. “You don’t want to take souls?”

Reavely shakes his head, and for a brief instant, I see something other than the huge, dangerous, feral creature who haunts this empty castle and stalks the Yeavering, putting everything else in fear.

I see a lonely, cursed monster, who has nothing left to live for.

It makes my heart ache like it hasn’t in years. I have to be coming up to my period or something as tears prick at my eyelids and I dash them away.

“I don’t want to take your soul, Wynter,” Reavely says, closing the gap between us, taking hold of my elbows and drawing me to him. “The Reaper cannot have you.”

“I know, I know.” I sigh. “I belong to you.”

Even as I say the words, attempting to infuse them with some sarcasm, I hate myself a little bit for dismissing him.

I don’t even know him.

“You do,” he rasps.

“What I would really like is for some clothing other than that damned dress to belong to me.” I stare at the centre of his chest and then realise I rather like the abs a bit too much, so I drag my gaze up to his face instead.

A face framed with wild hair which looks like he has wolf ears. I find myself wondering if running my hands through it would feel as soft as the fur in his Barghest form.

“I can…take you to the seamstress in the village.”

“You can?” I don’t even try to hide my excitement.

I’ve seen nothing of the Yeavering save for the inside of Lord Guyzance’s fortress. I knew there was a thriving town attached to it as I could hear the market some days, but the chances of me being let loose outside were zero to none.

And now I have these four walls, although admittedly the view is better…

“Wait, there’s a village? I didn’t see it.”

“It’s in the valley behind the castle,” Reavely says. “I have a tunnel.”

I feel my skin prickling. “A tunnel.”

“To get to the village. It’s how I got the healer.”

“Why do you have a tunnel to the village? Doesn’t that scare them?” I ask.

“It was made before I became…what I am,” Reavely rasps. “And it was used to supply my family with what they needed, while they could provide protection in return.”

Which seems like a sensible solution to a castle high on a hill and a village tucked into the valley. It seems, once, Reavely had something good. Rather than having to dance to the Reaper’s tune.

“Come,” he says, lifting me into his arms.

“Hey, I can walk!” I exclaim as I’m hoisted from my feet, my covering flapping.

“Parts of the tunnel are flooded, little deer. I do not wish for you to get wet.”

And just like that, the Barghest, the feared black dog of death, turns into a gentleman once again.