Page 24 of The Wolf's Appetite
And with that, she turned and walked away, her dress trailing behind her small body.
I stood frozen. The hearth crackled, the shadows stretching long and endless across the floor. I didn’t know what scared me more.
The idea of Lennox’s wolf returning...
Or the idea of what he’d become once it did—and once heknewI was the one thing that had the power to either tame or unravel him completely.
14
LENNOX
My father’s office was thick with tension, the kind that clung to your skin and soaked into your marrow.
A map of the property and its surrounding land was spread across the long table. Cian stood to my left, eyes sharp and calculating.
Caelan lounged in a leather chair with forced ease, one boot resting on the edge of the coffee table. But he was tense. I could tell by the way his fingers twitched near the hilt of a blade he always carried.
My father stood at the head of the map, arms crossed like a statue carved from old fury and hard-earned war.
I tried to focus. Gods, I did. But all I could think about was Aisling.
I listened to Cian and what had transpired while I was with Aisling at her cottage.
The Guard had recovered a body from the eastern perimeter—mangled… tortured. It was torn in a way that roared of dark intent and brute force. There was also the heavy air of magic that had clung to it, the kind only anOtherworldcould sense.
The body was a Lycan soldier, and he hadn’t just been killed. He’d been targeted because of what he was and who he served.
Us.
My father’s voice cut through the indistinct murmur. “It was the Therabus.”
The room stilled.
My father tossed a parchment down onto the table. The markings on the material were old style—ancient. It was roughly drawn and crude in design and reeked of blood.
The design, one I’d never seen before, chilled the air.
“Witchcraft,” Cian said, jaw tight.
“Possibly,” Dad replied. “But darker than any we’ve seen in generations.”
“They left more than just a sign,” Caelan added, standing now, no longer feigning disinterest. “There were claw marks up the trees—deep ones. A clear warning. They wanted tae beseen.”
“Okay, but why now?” I asked, tightening my jaw. “Why would the Therabus come out o’ their cursed hiding after all this time?”
Cian dragged a hand through his beard. “I donna think they’ve just come out. I think they’ve been out of hiding the whole time. Right under our noses.”
“The scholars have been digging through the old texts. Archives going back hundreds of years,” Father said, his focus on the map. “They think there may have been a fissure between the worlds.”
I glanced at Caelan, his expression tense.
“Said when there was the time rip and Kane was thrown from dimensions, things never healed or fused back together.”
“And they think the Therabus are using this instability as a power shift?” Caelan asked.
No one answered for long seconds.
“We donna kno’. It’s all speculation right now.”
