Page 3 of Wolfehound (De Wolfe Pack Generations #11)

Nanhysglain, Wales

Twenty Years Earlier

“W hat do you intend to do with the children?”

The question came from Paris de Norville, captain of the army from Northwood Castle in Northumberland.

He had directed it to the Earl of Warenton, William de Wolfe, his best friend in the entire world but also a man who had been fueled by rage and hatred for the past six months.

Ever since losing one of his sons, James, in an ambush in Llandeilo, Wales, William had been inconsolable.

The man was bent on revenge.

Unfortunately, that revenge was now focused on several small children, all offspring of the Welsh princes who had taken his son from him.

The final battle had ended today, in the wilds of Wales, after chasing the scattered Welsh princes.

It had no longer been a battle, but a hunt.

One prince had been killed and now… now, they had the last one, cornered in a bog and brought to his knees.

This was it, the moment they’d been waiting for.

The end.

But it was not without complications.

Complications that included the next generation of Welsh royalty, children of the princes.

One infant, two small girls, and two small boys, all of them under the guardianship of Dafydd ap Gruffudd, brother of Llywelyn the Last, a man who had been betrayed and then executed by a gang of enraged Englishmen.

Though William hadn’t been part of the betrayal, he hadn’t done anything to stop it.

War was vicious by nature. But he had been responsible for the capture of the brother of the man responsible for his son’s death.

Dafydd, and the children, were all his prisoners now.

God help them.

And it was something that concerned Paris greatly.

He’d known William since they had been children, closer than brothers, and he’d never seen the man so…

bitter. That was the best way to describe it.

And William’s sons—Scott, Troy, and Patrick, his eldest boys—spoke in hushed whispers about their father these days.

They’d never seen him like this, not ever.

William de Wolfe was, if nothing else, a man who was consummately in control, always fair, always rational, and always with a heart of compassion.

But James’ death had done something to him.

It had changed him.

Perhaps the man in the most distress about it was Sir Kieran Hage, William’s second-in-command and, next to Paris, his closest friend.

He was a man of great wisdom, of reason, and even he couldn’t seem to snap William out of his darkness.

There had been so much fighting going on with the Welsh this year, something that had only been a duty to the men sworn to King Edward of England, until James’ demise at Llandeilo in the summer.

Now, the battle had become personal.

“William,” Kieran said, reining his horse alongside William’s steed as the man overlooked the English encampment where they had the prisoners gathered. “Did you hear the question? I am rather curious, too. What are your intentions with the children of Dafydd and Llywelyn?”

William’s gaze was hard as he watched the activity in the encampment.

It was sunset at the end of a very long day and the colors brought on by the clouds looked like blood.

It was ominous. It had been a productive day, perhaps even a satisfying one, but William gave no indication that he was either pleased or satisfied by it.

There was no indication of anything he was feeling.

He was stone-faced, as usual.

“I heard the question,” he finally said. Then he looked over his shoulder where his sons were positioned, exhausted knights on horseback after a long day. “Scott? You will bring Dafydd to me when I settle in my tent. I want to talk to the man.”

Scott de Wolfe, William’s eldest, glanced at his two brothers before answering. “It has been a very long day, Papa,” he said. “Dafydd is badly injured and being tended to. Whatever you have to say to him can wait until the morrow.”

William’s piercing gaze lingered on his son. “Are you disobeying my order?”

“Nay, my lord,” Scott said, being formal with his father because the man was so volatile these days.

“I am simply stating a fact. The prisoner is injured and needs tending or he will not survive. If your questions cannot wait until the morrow, then I will bring you to him. But he should not be moved.”

William didn’t argue with him, but it was clear that he wasn’t pleased.

When there was no retort to his statement, Scott silently motioned to his brothers and to Paris and Kieran’s sons to vacate the area and go about their duties.

In fact, that would be preferable to waiting on pins and needles for William to make more demands that no one wanted to carry out.

Scott, Troy, and Patrick headed off along with Hector and Apollo de Norville, all of them returning to the army to settle the men and complete their assigned tasks.

Only Kevin Hage remained. Kieran’s middle son was very much like his father, a man of great emotion and counsel.

He had spent a good amount of time with his father and Paris and William, mostly supporting his father’s efforts to supply William with advice and comfort.

Kieran wasn’t well these days and hadn’t been for a while, yet he’d come to Wales with William because he would never let William fight without him, so Kevin’s presence was more to support his father than anything else.

He’d promised his mother he would.

Kieran knew this, and he could see Kevin out of the corner of his eye.

He eventually turned to his son, silently ordering him away, but Kevin wouldn’t move.

Not when William was in a mood like this.

This moment wasn’t merely a culmination of almost a year in battle for William, but also for Kevin because James had been his best friend.

He, too, had watched him die in a horrific ambush, so Kevin was as invested in this moment as much as William was.

Invested in the end of something that had brought them such grief.

“Uncle William?” Kevin said, directing his horse in front of William’s. “May I bring you some wine? Anything at all? It has been a long day. Surely you are weary.”

William turned to look at the young knight.

He looked a good deal like his father, but William saw beyond that.

He saw Kevin and James together, friends since birth.

They were essentially the same age. He saw two young boys stealing sweets, or stealing the potent wine that their fathers drank.

They had been around six years of age at the time and Kieran had caught them, forcing them to drink the entire bottle, which had made them ragingly drunk.

As a result, Kevin had tried to fist-fight his father while James had run out into the bailey, challenged every soldier to a sword battle, and then vomited all over the dirt before passing out in his own filth.

They never stole wine again.

The memory had always made William smile.

In fact, that was why he had a faint smile on his lips at the moment. He could still see those two little hooligans, running around making mischief.

It was such a grand memory.

“I do not know who was worse,” he finally said. “You or James.”

Kevin cocked his head curiously. “Who was the worst at what?”

“At troublemaking,” William said, his voice sounding dull.

“Out of all of my sons, James was the most… lively. Scott was mature before his time, Troy was the brooder, Patrick was simply big and frightening, and Eddie and Tommy were young and foolish. But then there was James. He was the naughty one. Paired with you, it was like taking a spark to kindling. You were both positively incandescent when you came together.”

That statement had Kieran and Paris smiling, too. They well remembered the duo of James and Kevin and their tomfoolery.

Kevin smiled broadly.

“It was all his fault,” he said. “I was a perfect angel, but James forced me to do his bidding.”

That actually brought a chuckle from William. “Untrue,” he said. “I seem to remember that you were responsible for the wine adventure, when the two of you stole wine and your father forced you to drink it all. That was you , Kevin.”

Kevin laughed softly. “I will admit that I had a hand in it,” he said. “But it was James who put straw or kindling in the boots of unsuspecting soldiers and lit it on fire. He did it to old Ranulf once and nearly burned the man’s foot off.”

The memory had Paris and Kieran snorting because Ranulf Kluge was an old knight they’d all served with years ago.

He had been rough and gruff, but for some reason, the young de Wolfe, Hage, and de Norville sons targeted him for many of their antics.

It had been great fun to see who could make the old knight roar with anger.

“Ranulf caught him and tied him to a post in the stable overnight,” William said. “You have no idea how difficult it was for me to keep his mother from not only freeing her son, but from unleashing on Ranulf.”

“You had to lock her in the chamber,” Paris muttered, a twinkle in his eye. “I know this because you tossed the key out of the window to me.”

“And she tried to climb out of that window,” William reminded him, and they both laughed. “I had to sit on her most of the night. She was livid.”

“’Tis never good to rile the Scots,” Paris said, referring to the fact that William’s wife, Jordan, was Scottish. “Their blood boils over faster than most.”

“True,” William said. “We would all know that, considering we all married women with Scots blood. But Kieran has it the worst—I might have been able to keep Jordan contained, but Jemma was the one who released James around midnight and then went on the hunt for Ranulf.”