Page 21 of Wolf’s Return (The Wolves of Langeais #4)

D’Artagnon sped through the gloom of the forest, his mind racing and the thud of his heart keeping time with the beat of his paws on the ground.

He ran as though he could outrun what had happened, as if outrunning himself was truly possible.

He had had another uncontrolled shift. Pulled the little healer into his arms, tore at her chemise and almost…

Merde, what is wrong with me?

Not once in all the years since his fellow wolf had cut him down had he shifted.

From the moment he had crawled from the battleground and taken wolf form, he had remained so.

Even when his body had healed and he had traveled so far northeast that he had run into them, he had not shifted.

When they had accepted his presence and allowed him to stay on the fringes of their pack, still he had remained a wolf, though returning to human form would have been the honorable thing to do.

As a wolf encroaching on their territory, it was the expected thing to do.

To reveal himself and announce his intentions.

They could have demanded it, and forced him out when he did not.

As an interloper, they could have killed him, but they had seemed to understand why he did not, perhaps more so than he did, and let him be.

If he were honest, shifting had never tempted him. Not in all those years. Now, in the last few days, he had shifted three times. Involuntarily. In his sleep .

She must think her mixture with the deadly nightshade was the reason, and it would be easy to lay the blame there. He knew differently. Oh, he had caught Anne’s wink, and Constance’s little catch of breath, but his food had been untainted.

D’Artagnon slowed to a halt in a clearing, his chest heaving.

No. He had not shifted because of her potion, but because of her .

Constance. The woman with the golden braids and unusual eyes.

The way she looked at him with such… empathy.

It echoed in every word she spoke, even if those words were about him. For him.

And, merde, she had felt good beneath him.

Better than good. She had felt…right. As though his mouth on hers and his hand wedged between her thighs, sliding his fingers through her juices was exactly where he was meant to be.

Her heady fragrance and her naked body flushed as she balanced on the edge of a climax etched forever in his memory.

Shame twisted in his chest like a solid entity.

He had taken advantage of her. Again. Yet even then, when he had collected his wits and pulled himself off her, she had not been angry at him.

Or cursed him for taking from her, nor failing to give her what her body desired, the release she needed.

No. She had reached out to him. She had thought only of him and his pack.

Not her own denied pleasure, nor her right to be angry at him for forcing himself on her while she slept.

He sat on his haunches, the familiar hint of pine, oak and the damp earth of the forest surrounding him, hoping for the calm it usually brought with it.

But the forest held other spoors. Crisscrossing trails of his brother, Ulrik, Aimon and their mates.

It served only to remind him of Constance, standing in the kitchen doorway, her chemise hanging at her sides and her beautiful body bathed in moonlight.

He lifted his muzzle to the sky and howled. It echoed through the forest, a mournful sound carrying all his frustration, his confusion and his longing.

An answering howl, close and familiar, echoed back. That voice did not belong here in this forest, but D’Artagnon made no move to rise. Instead, he waited, until a big wolf, larger than D’Artagnon, larger even than Gaharet, with gray peppering his muzzle and brow, padded into the clearing.

With a crack and pop of bone and muscle, the wolf’s body distorted and changed.

His spine elongated, his hips straightened and his paws became hands and feet.

The gray wolf’s snout shortened and his large canines disappeared, revealing a face D’Artagnon knew well.

This was not his enemy, but his friend. His—dare he think it?

—mentor. What was he doing here, so far from his home range?

Vladimir. A man in his seventh decade, yet still strong in a lean, wiry way. Perhaps stronger than any wolf he knew, despite the hard years of experience marked in the lines of his face.

Vladimir raised his bushy gray eyebrows. “You think I would not follow you? That I would leave you to hunt the one who cut you down alone?” The old wolf sighed. “Bratishka.” The word a gentle chastisement.

Little brother . At a time when his body had healed but his heart and mind were broken, the old wolf had taken him in. Had spoken for him to the Rus pack when he could not, had chosen not to speak for himself.

D’Artagnon shook his head. The old wolf should not have come. This was not his fight.

“Your fight is our fight, Bratishka.”

D’Artagnon huffed. He had not wanted to involve the Rus pack. They had done enough for him. For a wolf whose name and origins they may have suspected but for whom they had no confirmation.

“Another wolf has cut you down, with a blade, no less. Such a wolf is a danger to us all.” Vladimir settled beside him on the forest floor, his back against the smooth bark of a beech tree.

“You may not talk, Bratishka, but it was not difficult to determine what befell you. Why you had to leave your pack when you were injured so.”

D’Artagnon stared out into the forest. It had seemed so simple when he had set out from Rus, his thirst for vengeance, for retribution, to acquit himself of his failures, a driving force.

His anger at his betrayal, a thing of purity.

Too long had he skulked around the border of the Rus wolves’ territory, hiding himself away.

He had thought himself restored. Ready to face his past. His uncontrolled shifting, and his panic when he had stood as a man, suggested otherwise.

With a single-minded focus he had tracked his nemesis, but the moment he had stepped into the d’Louncrais keep, surrounded by the walls of his childhood home steeped in memories, and stood before his newly mated brother who pleaded with him to stay, his determination had wavered.

With Constance’s arrival, things had become complicated, his path no longer clear cut, the edges of his control fraying, and the simplicity of his purpose compromised.

“You were ready, Bratishka. But coming home, facing the man who had done this to you, and being around your pack again was always going to test you.” Vladimir raised his head and sniffed the air.

“And there is something more.” He sniffed again.

“Female.” Knowing eyes stared at him. “Her scent is all over you.”

D’Artagnon tracked the flight path of a tawny owl before it disappeared in the gloom of the forest.

“You shifted?”

D’Artagnon hung his head.

“Good.”

D’Artagnon bared his teeth. He understood why Vladimir would think so, but it was not good.

“Ah, you did not call upon the change.”

Perhaps it was the way of wolves. Perhaps it was a consequence of Vladimir’s long life, and a knowing that only came with age and experience, but Vladimir had never had any trouble understanding him.

“Then what made you shift, Bratishka? Is she your mate?”

D’Artagnon jerked his head up. His mate ?

The old wolf smiled. “Even one as wounded as you has a mate. Perhaps fate has sent her to you when you need her most.”

D’Artagnon flattened his ears against his skull.

When he needed her most? Then why was Constance here now, and not when blood had poured from his shoulder and the slash across his face that had taken his eye?

When, grievously injured as he was, he had had to keep his wits about him to evade his attacker.

As he had slunk through the forest, barely able to stand, looking for a safe place to hide and heal, the skills of a healer would have helped him beyond measure.

Instead, here he was now, out in the forest, hiding from her, when he should be hunting his enemy.

And his mate? Fate was a cruel mistress if she thought to saddle some poor woman, Constance or any other, with him. He had not, for one moment in nigh on a decade, thought beyond his nemesis and his mission. To what he would do, where he would live. If he would live at all.

He stared out into the forest, the gloom beckoning, trying to envisage himself once again taking his place beside his brother, living in the keep as a man. As D’Artagnon. His stomach sank, heavier than the armor he had long since abandoned.

The life he had once lived was a thing of the past. The old D’Artagnon was gone.

He did not belong here anymore. He did not belong in a keep, or around people.

The only thing he knew, the one place he felt at home, was in the forest. A life Constance had lived her whole life through no choice of her own.

No, Constance could not, would not, be his mate. He had nothing to offer her.

But he would track down the man who had betrayed him, and he would avenge his parents. Beyond that, D’Artagnon had no plans.

D’Artagnon had promised his brother a few days. He had fulfilled his promise. It was time to return to his hunt for the traitor. Alone. He would rid the world of this traitor, or he would die trying. Nothing would prevent him from that. Not even the call to mate.