Page 49 of Wolf's Bane
Godwin scratched at the red skin around the eyepatch again. “I suspect not, but I don’t know for certain. Perhaps it would have happened in time. Perhaps he had yet to encounter the right trigger.”
“I went to the West Lands,” Alek said, remembering the arid heat of the wild plains and the gruesome snapping of breaking bones as his body reformed into something alien. Monstrous.
Inevitable.
The idea settled in his mind and felt right. “The bite—it happened almost instantly. The books say it takes a month, possibly even a season, but I shifted that night.”
Godwin nodded. “I know you have questions. I’m not sure I have answers.”
“Fair enough.” He suspected that no one could answer his questions about his family history. Did Grandfather Karl leave a diary? Journals? So much of the Hardwick home had been destroyed in the attack that killed his parents, and Alek had not been a good caretaker. He patched the roof but left most of the rooms untouched. Perhaps there was a trunk full of journals in some dusty corner, if the mice had not used the paper for nesting material.
“The beast was immune to silver. Not like you. You tolerated the arrow, but it hurt.”
“Were you hoping I would lose control and shift?”
“Yes.”
“With Solenne and Luis in the room,” Alek whispered, disbelieving the man’s callousness.
“Nothing went as planned,” Godwin said, almost sounding rueful. “I thought for sure that the beast would be drawn to you, to defend its territory against a challenger. Instead, it went to the house. Perhaps the instinct to protect its territory is not as strong as I thought.” Then, almost as an afterthought, he asked, “What happened to the beast who turned you?”
“I tore its throat out.”With my newly descended fangs. He kept that detail to himself.
“You were in the West Lands? Yet Solenne wrote to you at Hardwick House. Did you not stay in the West Lands? You killed the beast. It was your territory.”
The trees thinned, and Alek could see the road ahead.
The days and weeks immediately after his transformation were a haze. Survival instincts controlled him, prioritizing food and hunting. When he finally emerged from the shift, he found himself coated in sticky blood with feathers in his teeth. As far as he could determine, his victims had been mostly pheasants and other small animals. Every full moon that followed, Alek took pains to isolate himself so he only hunted game, not people.
He shivered, despite the humid heat, unable to say what he would do if he ever lost control and attacked a person.
“I stayed for a season, but home called to me,” he finally said, even though that was not the entire truth.
Solenne called to him, but he knew he could not return to the Marechals, so the abandoned Hardwick House served as his prison.
“The immunity worries me,” Godwin said, changing the direction of their conversation once again.
“As it should. The beast is old. I’d estimate he’s suffered the curse for a decade.”
“And he will not be alone.”
Unsaid between them was the knowledge that older beasts often formed packs. Those newly cursed had little control over themselves or the urge to destroy. Young beasts often fought each other to the death. That instinct to claim territory, to be a solitary creature, made a hunter’s job easier. Those that rose above their base instincts and craved a pack were extraordinarily dangerous.
“On my way here, I encountered a pack. I eliminated a younger beast, but the other escaped,” Alek said.
“It could be our trouble.”
Or not, which was worse. A region infested in with beasts actively making packs was potentially more trouble than he, Godwin, and Luis could handle.
They crested a slight hill. The road curved to the left, but a large house constructed of warm cream-colored stones sprawled on the far side of an expansive lawn. Glass gleamed in the morning sunlight, and the pastel green shutters gave the house a picturesque quality. Crushed white gravel stretched in an elegantly adorned wrought-iron gate. Everything about the house’s presentation announced the inhabitants’ wealth and their impeccable taste.
Godwin turned off the main road for the gate.
“Vervain Hall,” Alek said. When he attended the dance just two nights ago—it felt like so much longer—he had been too absorbed with finding Solenne. He barely noticed the grandeur of the house.
Wealthy enough, Solenne had said. Very wealthy, if he judged by the house’s appearance.
“Let’s see if Chambers and his nephew made it home last night,” Godwin said, opening the gate to the gravel drive.
