Page 8 of Wolf’s Return (The Wolves of Langeais #4)

Constance stood awkwardly in the room. She had never slept in a bed so grand. She had never slept in any man’s bed, and certainly not one belonging to a member of the nobility. Monsieur D’Artagnon, no less. A black wolf. Another black wolf. The thought had her heart fluttering.

The bed looked soft and the covers warm, but she would not be sleeping here alone.

Her childhood vision poked at her mind, and a swirl of heat rushed across her skin.

She placed her palm on her forehead. Was she coming down with some sort of fever?

She dropped her hand. No. As a healer, she knew better.

The reminder of her vision, and the intensity of his regard, had more to do with the tingling in her body than any possible malaise.

Awareness flickered in the black wolf’s eye.

Not only the knowing of a wolf, but the intelligence of a man.

A battle-hardened chevalier, and a man who, she presumed, had spent years as a wolf surviving alone in the woods.

Constance had firsthand experience of how hard it was to eke out a living from the forest. It was only through the charity of the Langeais villagers she could manage it.

As a wolf, he would have advantages she did not.

His ability to hunt, for one. But Monsieur D’Artagnon had lived his whole life on a wealthy estate with far more comforts than all but a few would ever experience, surrounded by people—his brother, the servants, the villagers.

There were hardships beyond the physical with a life lived in the forest, as Constance knew well.

A manservant arrived with a scoop of glowing coals and placed them into the brazier, before departing without a word.

A young maid followed, with a pitcher of water and a fresh linen. “Shall I assist you with your clothes, Mademoiselle?”

Constance shook her head. “Thank you, no. I can manage.” She had managed for almost her entire life.

The servant girl curtsied before Constance could stop her.

“Please. There is no need for that.” L’enfer , she was but a peasant.

The girl curtsied again. “Of course, Mademoiselle.”

Constance sighed. What would the servants think of her when they discovered she was no more entitled to such treatment than they were?

“If that is all, Mademoiselle…”

“Thank you.”

The girl beat a hasty retreat, leaving her alone with Monsieur D’Artagnon once more.

The black wolf had not taken his eyes off her for one moment.

He did not trust her. That much was clear.

Not since she had outlined the choices for a cure to Seigneur Gaharet.

His resistance would make her task harder, and she did not want to fail.

Could not afford to fail. Her life was precarious enough.

She needed the protection the Langeais wolves could give her.

“Your brother is very concerned about you, Monsieur D’Artagnon. About your inability to shift.”

The black wolf cocked his head, ears pricked.

“About what has happened to you, and where you have been all these years.” Constance unpinned her head veil, set it aside, and unfurled her braids from around her head.

She untied the bands around the ends and raked her fingers through the braids, teasing them apart.

“Do you not feel safe surrounded by your pack? Seigneur Gaharet is a strong wolf. Together, and with Seigneur Ulrik and Monsieur Aimon, surely one traitorous wolf could not prevail.”

Constance turned her back on him, though the skin on her neck prickled, and poured water from the pitcher into the bowl.

There was something teetering on the edge of her vision, a sense that there was more, but it would not reveal itself for her to see.

Sometimes that was the way of her visions.

Nothing more than a vague sense—something beyond the reach of her understanding. A foreboding.

“Whatever you may believe, Monsieur D’Artagnon, I am trying to help you.”

The wolf gave an indignant huff.

Constance pulled at the stays of her dress. “My ancestors knew much about your kind. My grimoire is full of records of our dealings with the Langeais wolves. Something in there is bound to assist us. Something far kinder than silver.”

Constance was not so sure of that. As a young girl, enamored with the Black Wolf, she had devoured those pages.

Nothing she had read—in the records, the spells, the potions, or in the legend of the first Black Wolf—would aid her now.

She would search through them all the same. Maybe she had missed something.

She slipped her soft wool overdress off and laid it across a chest. “Do you not want to tell your brother of the man who gave you those scars?” If only she could command a vision forth of the traitor’s face, or the knowledge of a name.

“It would be of great help to your pack. They have suffered much at his hand.”

Was he watching her still? Her fingers trembled.

Did she want him to be watching as she prepared for bed?

It was not like she would be naked. She was wearing her chemise.

It should be no different than if she bedded down with the servants, sharing a room and a sleeping pallet.

But her body was convinced this was different.

With her mouth suddenly drier than the bark of an old river birch, she removed her underdress and set it aside, too. Goosebumps prickled across skin laid bare.

Pull yourself together, Constance.

She dipped her hands into the water and splashed it onto her heated face, neck, arms and legs. She dried her damp skin with the fresh linen, having regained some measure of calm, and turned to face him. He had not moved.

“Why have you returned, if not to speak of these things?”

His gaze held firm, but within his eye, shadows shifted. Again, that sense of foreboding.

What am I not seeing?

Curse her second sight. She let the feeling go. Forcing a vision never worked. All she could hope was it would become clearer in time. She gathered up her book and slipped beneath the covers of the bed.

Constance sank into its softness with a sigh.

A mattress stuffed with feathers, not straw.

She pressed her hand into it, awed by the downy lightness.

“It is so soft.” She plumped a pillow, marveling at the smooth suppleness of it before propping it against the headboard.

It was as heavenly as the mattress. She closed her eyes and leaned into it.

Do not get used to this, Constance. It is but temporary.

Soon enough she would be back in her humble cottage, sleeping on her hard cot with her straw mattress and her patched blanket, and this would all seem like nothing more than a beautiful dream.

Constance opened her eyes and reached for her grimoire. She flicked through it, past recipes for potions and pages of herbal lore, until she was near the back of the book. At the section devoted entirely to the wolves of Langeais, where the curling secret script of her ancestors replaced Latin.

She ran her hands over the page, written long before she was born.

Curls and shapes danced across it. It was childlike in quality—letters with tails, repeated patterns.

Indecipherable to anyone who did not know it.

The perfect way to hide secrets. Twins, her mother had told her, had created this language.

A secret language between the two of them.

For years, it had remained little more than that.

As time went on, and the knowledge entrusted to the coven became too important to be forgotten, and too dangerous to be scribed in the language of the church, it became the secret script of the wolves. Of the Black Wolf.

Each generation had one. Indeed, it had all begun with a single black wolf.

Constance turned the pages, skimming over the legend until she came to the description.

Dark hair, dark eyes and a strong nose. Like Seigneur Gaharet.

It seemed they bred true in the d’Louncrais family.

She glanced over her book at Monsieur D’Artagnon.

At least, one of them had. Monsieur D’Artagnon had his mother’s eyes.

Dame Elise d’Louncrais was not one easily forgotten.

With her bright copper hair, unblemished skin, blue eyes and regal demeanor, to a young Constance, she had seemed like a queen.

She ran her calloused fingers through her own hair, the color of straw.

That she was entertaining a d’Louncrais finding her appealing seemed ridiculous.

With her different colored eyes, her peasant’s hands and sun-browned skin, she was the furthermost thing from an ideal mate for a d’Louncrais.

She had only to look at the others—copper-haired Kathryn, cultured Erin with her astounding knowledge of the past and the future, or Rebekah, with her green-streaked hair and colorful skin markings, so exotic and bold—to know she was but pale in comparison.

She rubbed a hand over the woolen bed covers. But here she was. In Monsieur D’Artagnon’s room. In his bed . And there he was, sitting by the brazier, watching her.

The wolf snarled. A divide as wide as the county gaped between them, placing them at odds.

She had a task to complete. One, from the stiffness of his shoulders and the determined set of his brow, he would do everything he could to thwart.

Constance dropped her gaze to her grimoire.

Something in here had to give her the answer.

D’Artagnon watched and waited. Constance’s eyelids drooped.

Her book dipped once, then again, before slipping from her fingers as she drifted off to sleep.

When her breathing deepened, he slunk over and leaped up beside her.

Perhaps now he could uncover what it was about this woman that fascinated him so.

Or forestall any plans she might have for him.

He sniffed at the book and contemplated destroying it.

No, the book held purpose for the healer, was precious to her.

Leather-bound, with pages of vellum. How had peasants afforded such a luxury?

A gift, perhaps? From one of his ancestors?

It was clear her family had a connection with his own.

That his father had died before passing on this knowledge was but another strike against his nemesis.

The book had fallen open, and he eyed the familiar script scrawled across the pages.

The same script as on the pack’s sacred amulets.

This, however, was far more complex than the simple lines his father had forced D’Artagnon to memorize when he had presented him with his amulet.

A simple spell to recite when in mortal danger, to bring them back to their alpha.

He had not needed to read it, nor have knowledge of the language, merely recite its verse as he smeared his blood into the amulet’s grooves.

D’Artagnon still missed the weight of his amulet around his neck, though he had lost his long ago.

In battle. Cut from around his neck before he could utter a word.

His nemesis had seen to that. Before he could recite the spell, fall at his brother’s feet and reveal who had killed their father and mother. The man who had cut him down.

Whether fate or luck had intervened that day, D’Artagnon neither knew nor cared.

But it had. In the form of a chevalier from the opposing army.

Attacked from behind, his father’s murderer had turned to block a killing blow and D’Artagnon had crawled into the forest, shedding his armor and shifting form, determined to survive.

Vowing he would one day have his vengeance.

It had burned within him, warming him through the icy clutches of winter during the long years of his self-imposed exile. It had kept him alive.

Constance shifted in her sleep, curling on her side, her face softening in repose. The cares and worries, the wariness, the aching loneliness that tainted her scent slipped away. She sighed and smiled. Whatever she dreamed, it was pleasing to her.

She sighed again. This time, a slight frown creased her forehead. “That which you think you want was never meant to be yours.”

He stilled. Was she talking to him? Her eyes remained closed. Part of her dream, perhaps?

“What is meant for you is far greater reward”—her voice firmed, and she grimaced, as though the words pained her—“if you have but the courage and the room in your heart—”

His hackles rose. It was eerie listening to her talk as though she were conscious.

“—to make the right choice.” Her face smoothed out, her last words fading to a whisper, and she rolled away from him.

He shook his fur. The woman spoke in riddles.

Mayhap her words were nothing more than a product of a strange dream.

Not meant for him, despite the chill that had gripped his bones.

He turned his attention back to the book and, with his nose, he flipped through page after page of the curling script.

He had no hope of reading whatever secrets it held.

Not without the key to a language his pack had long forgotten.

He nudged the book shut and pushed it away, stepping toward the edge of the bed.

Constance shivered beneath the covers. Was she cold?

The coals in the brazier glowed, giving off ample heat.

Was it something in her dream? The beginnings of a nightmare?

D’Artagnon had had more than enough experience with those.

He eyed the floor beside the brazier. The spot where he had intended to sleep.

Constance moaned. Indecision burned through him. She called to him, to his wolf. Never had he felt a pull so strong.

D’Artagnon turned away from the brazier and curled up on the bed beside her, laying his head across the leather-bound book and his body snug against hers, giving what little comfort he could offer.

Perhaps he would gain comfort from her presence, too.

Some relief from his own nightmares. As he closed his eye and drifted into a light sleep, it was not the usual visions of his enemy’s vicious and twisted face, his sword arm raised, that flitted into his mind.

Rather, the outline of Constance’s body visible beneath a thin chemise as she washed.

The curve of her hip, her tapered waist and her glorious golden tresses falling over her shoulder.

The little healer, Constance, calling to him even in his sleep.