by A. W. Cross
I collapsed on the step and heard a thump I didn’t expect.
Exploring the deep pockets of my coat, I found a crumpled rose and the count’s journal. Flipping the pages, I laughed as I cried. Oh, Howl. It had been his first book, my poor wolf’s first attempt at reading, and the words inside were truly incomprehensible. Tallies and shorthand notes. Meaningless except to the count who had written them. But Howl knew I wanted to see the book, so he stashed it in the coat for me to find along with the rose. When he knew I would be leaving.
Now I couldn’t look at them, burying my head in my hands.
Besides, after speaking to the mother wolf, the sketches of twisted wolfmen only confirmed the horrors I already learned. The count had most certainly been running experiments and created the original monster. He also created Howl and then abandoned him to the flames and the ire of a growing mob. He might have even known silver was a weakness. He just hadn’t cared.
I shouldn’t have left the castle. I shouldn’t have left Howl all alone again. If it really was just Howl’s word against Jean’s, there should have been no question who was more honest, more reliable. The one who was far too awkward and wonderful to tell a convincing lie and never hung up antlers to boast of in front of a crowd with a dozen girls in his lap. One who only wanted me alone.
And now Jean would slaughter him with silver, and it was all my fault.
Tears dampened my hands and face, and this time, none of the wolves could come and comfort me.
But then, the door cracked open and someone else did.
“Isabelle?” a woman called. “Are you all right?”
I wiped my eyes. It was Jean’s mother. I really didn’t know whose side she was on and how much I could explain. “He wasn’t listening to me.”
Madame Dupuis wrung her hands like she couldn’t process what she just saw either.
Then she shook her head. “He’s keeping us safe. Trust me, darling, he’s only doing all of this because he loves you so much.”
But I didn’t love him. And I needed to get back to Howl. If the door was open even a crack, I had to take it. “Will you let me out?”
“Of course.” She held out her hand and helped me stand. She gestured back to Jean’s sisters and the rest of the kitchen staff. “We’re just trying to keep you safe. The whole village. Come up here, and we can make you some tea. That’ll help your nerves. These hunts always make me a bit jumpy too.” She turned back to a fire already going on the stove.
I blinked at the light. I supposed I seemed subdued enough now not to fight her. Even if I did want to fight, there was a full kitchen, a full inn that still thought Jean was the town’s savior. I might not be able to slip past all of them even freed from the cellar, but did she really expect me to dither around with her while everything else was going on?
I was a terrible housekeeper anyway. The last time I had tried to use an oven . . .
I glanced down at the count’s journal and rose in my hand, then sprang into action, eager to help. I still might not know much about a grand kitchen like this, but I had learned enough to close the flue and get that chimney clogged in no time flat.
The smoke formed, but not fast enough. The fire was small and I was afraid of calling attention to myself too early if I went hunting through the inn for lumber and coal.
I only hesitated another moment before throwing in the count’s journal into the flames.
The book wasn’t important. The boy was. And I was keeping his rose as a token until I knew he was safe or the hunters pried it from my fingers.
Long trails of smoke trickled through the room, and I backed away, waiting for someone else to discover the blaze and yell. And when someone did, they panicked and stumbled over themselves more than anything else—not really fighting the fire or unclogging the chimney at all.
More than enough of a distraction for me to slip past a whole village of so-called saviors.
Once I was past the smoke in the kitchen, I found Bullet in the barn by the inn. The stable hand even helped me take him, assuming we were just fleeing the fire like everyone else. But I saw no way around the village barrier. The only solution I found was to use Bullet as a stepping stool, climbing over the top and rolling to the other side without him.
My leg smarted as I landed. I might never fully recover from any of my injuries at this rate. But I checked for the rose in my pocket and then ran into the trees anyway. “Howl? Howl?”
I whipped back my head and tried for an actual wolf howl.
Something answered. A silver wolf looked down on me from the top of the hill.
“Mother?” She wasn’t my mother, but that had been the only name I had been given.
She stared back at me. “You need to practice howling. You’re not projecting enough, and the boy would never hear you way out here. You’re lucky I was already so close.”
She must have been the wolf I heard from the village. She might not have approached the hunters, but she would have every reason to be just as upset as Howl.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “Spin was your son.”
She sighed. Her voice seemed more resigned than sad. Maybe wolves didn’t actually do sadness or sympathy. At least not this one. “He wasn’t a good hunter. The runt would never have lived so long if the boy hadn’t coddled him so much.”
I nodded. I had already defended Spin to the whole village because I knew what he was. “Spin wasn’t a hunter. He was a scavenger. He came to the body after Philippe was already dead.”
“Now the hunters come to the castle.”
“You know?” That was a relief. My warning might not be needed at all. “So, you left? You moved all the pups?”
“Of course. They are my pups, and I moved them the moment I learned that the boy acted against my wishes and let you go. I knew you would bring the hunters.”
Bile rose to my throat. I hated so much that her words had become so true.
“The boy told us to go, the whole pack, but he wouldn’t leave himself. He said if he left, you wouldn’t have a way to find him again.”
My heart flew. Howl had believed in me. He still wanted me.
No, wait, that was bad. So bad! Howl believed me, and I betrayed him.
Now Jean was on his way to kill him. “The hunters have blessed silver. Jean . . . he took it from me. I wasn’t going to use it, not like that, but I thought maybe I could break the curse.”
“Silver?” Her nostrils flared. “It might kill him, but it won’t cure him.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I cast the curse.” The wolf snapped the words. “I am the first wolf. A guardian of the forest. The count tortured and mutilated my children. All to fulfill his own dark lusts and create some super soldier to find more favor with his Alpha—his king. I bit and cursed him to be the beast he sought to create.”
“The Beast of Gevaudan.” It had been the count himself. So of course he hadn’t been there when the castle was burned. He had already been shot like the monster he was. With everything else I had heard, this last bit made so much sense that I believed it instantly.
But before Jean Chastel’s bullet . . .
“He killed hundreds of women and children,” I said. “For over three years.”
“Yes. And hundreds of my pups for years before then. He was already a monster, and the curse just made it so the humans would recognize him as such. I don’t regret it. But I did not know he would deliberately try to impregnate a woman and pass down the curse I gave him. Only one survived his advances, but he still wanted to experiment, even with his own cub.”
“Howl.” He was cursed for a crime he never committed. “Does he know? Did you ever tell him?”
“I raised him,” she growled. “I did more for that boy than anyone. More than the mother who abandoned him. Far more than the father. I did it all because I knew, with him, my children had a new protector. But now he won’t leave this place because of you.”
“I’ll go. I’ll stop Jean
.” I planned to anyway. Whatever this animal enchantress said only made me more determined.
The wolf narrowed her eyes at me. “Project more when you howl. Bare your teeth and claws if you have to. Howl should have a proper Alpha as his mate. A huntress. No pack will follow the weak.”
26
Beauty
The castle was burning. I was still several yards away, but I could already see the flames and smell the smoke funneling around the trees. I had called for Howl every so often, but I should have known with all the time I spent in the village, I would already be too late. The hunters had horses, and I had left Bullet behind.
I just wanted to get to Howl, and now it seemed I never would. Before I moved another step, the sound of hooves came through the trees, and I was surrounded by hunters.
Jean cursed. “Izzy, I could have shot you. Why couldn’t you stay home where it’s safe?”
I glared back at him. “You know why.”
He rolled his eyes and turned back to the other men.
“You want us to keep searching the woods?” one of the hunters asked. They were all giving Jean looks of sympathy for having such a high-spirited woman to look after.
But that didn’t matter to me as their words spun in my head.
Keep searching the woods? They were still searching for Howl. Of course, they were. Howl might have wanted to wait, but he could tell the difference between me and a whole pack of hunters bearing down on his gates. With his pack already gone, he had no reason to stay.
He ran and let the hunters burn an already-burned castle.
They would never catch him, and there was no reason to. A true monster would have already come after them instead of running. Howl was strong enough to have killed them all if he wanted. “You don’t have to do this. None of you do.”
Jean sighed and waved to the other hunters. “Keep going. I’ll take Izzy home and catch up.” As the other men left through the trees, he reached down his hand to pull me onto his horse.
“No. I won’t go.” I stepped away. “Why won’t you listen? I know Howl. You don’t. You’ve never even met him.”
“Everyone in the village knows there is a murderer in these woods, Izzy. We’ve gone too far not to give them some sense of justice.”
“Yes, but why does it have to be Howl? He’s kind and gentle, and if you only knew him . . .” I frowned at that. Jean would never like Howl. Jean hated Philippe just for sitting near me, and if he knew any part of what passed between Howl and me . . . Jean would be so angry. He wouldn’t listen. I always knew that. I never wanted to make Jean angry, I let him treat me as an Omega, because Jean wasn’t an Alpha who would allow me or anything else he wanted to just slip away from him.
And if he had heard that Philippe had offered me a job away from the village, if my father told Jean he couldn’t have me . . . Was it possible?
“You need Howl to be a murderer, don’t you? That’s why you won’t listen. You need a beast. You shot Spin because you were just looking for any wolf to kill. Someone to blame. Because you killed Philippe. You killed my father, all of them.”
Jean sighed and got off his horse. I had expected some anger, some sort of denial, but it seemed we had already gone past that. “Not all. Just . . . a few. That was all it took for the rumors to start building their own life.”
A few? He killed my father! And he didn’t even sound . . . sorry. I didn’t care if he was sorry, that wouldn’t fix anything, but how could he be so cold?
“Why? You weren’t like this before.” Or at least I really hoped he wasn’t.
I couldn’t have been best friends with a murderer.
“It wasn’t on purpose,” he said. “Not the first one, anyway. We were on patrol together. When the royal family slipped past us, he was going to spin it like it was all my fault. I killed dozens of nobles, but our leaders still would have put me on the block if they thought I was a traitor.”
“So . . . you just killed him?” Was that self-defense or something else?
Either way, Philippe was right. The capital was a mess, and it was nothing Jean should have wanted to bring home with him.
“I had to!” he cried. “But even with him dead, even when the royals were caught, they still were on me. One mistake, and they wanted to strip me of everything. I had to clear out, and I just thought—I knew people would hear the rumors eventually. I did see a russet wolf from my camp one night, and some old drunk passed out on the road so . . .” He shrugged. “My dog lost enough of its senses that I could get her to chew on the body enough to make it passable. Old enough that I could even have her put down or shoot a real wolf after without it being any real loss. Cement myself as a village hero before any other rumors caught up to me from the capital.”
“So . . . you killed another man on the road just so you could kill a wolf later? To make yourself look better?” I didn’t know what I imagined or feared, but this was worse than anything I could have come up with. “You came after my father—”
“He came after me! Asked too many questions about the wolf. He just kept following me, even when I tried to slip away and get ready to lead everyone back to the first corpse. Never heard that old gimp talk so much.”
That old gimp was my father! And like Jean had said, with murder or any human behavior, there was always a pattern. “Philippe was asking questions too.”
“They were trying to keep us apart!” He shouted the words back. “I made a better life for us, Izzy. I would have stopped after the first hunt, just staging things with my own dog like I said, but then you disappeared, and people were still talking about wolves even without me. The rumors just kind of built on themselves, but I still thought I could fix it. You came back, and we had a wolf. Smaller than I would have liked, but still a wolf. Then you had to mess up that one too, screaming about another, greater beast. That will be an even better trophy for the village to celebrate. Peasants are on the rise and we could have been there at the top together.”
I balled my fists. “I’ll never be with you!”
He barely blinked. And he had stopped trying to drag me to the village long before.
“Yeah, I figured. But it wasn’t so bad for me when you were dead. I got so much sympathy. I’ll get more with an actual corpse. But your beast is still hiding, so there is one more thing you can do for me.” He pointed his rifle back at me. “Cry for your wolf.”
27
Beauty
I never had a chance to say a word, even if I had been inclined. Something growled, and the horse bolted. The gun went off. I ducked to the ground, but when the dust settled, Jean was on his back, a massive wolfdog tearing into his shoulder.
I could scarcely believe it. “Howl?”
The wolfdog looked up. His feral, narrowed eyes glared, but then he quickly started blinking, focusing on me. And then he whined and took a step off Jean. The sound was an echo of the noise he made whenever I had cried before.
Howl’s wolf could be terrifying, but it had always submitted to me.
Panting down his rage, Howl slowly shifted into a form between man and wolf. “I’m sorry.” Howl wasn’t talking to Jean. He was talking to me. Head down, like he thought I would lecture him for it. “I got mad. I’ve been trying so hard not to. I knew you wouldn’t like it.”
He let his castle be burned and never tried to come after any of the village hunters because he thought I wouldn’t like it? We might have to have another serious talk about what I liked and what I didn’t. Men showing muscle for sport and bragging rights was one thing. This was another.
If Howl just let himself be killed, I would be so cross with him.
Jean was still cursing on the ground. “So, this is the kind and gentle beast?”
“You shot Spin,” Howl said, growling again. “You were going to shoot Belle.”
The blood pouring down Jean’s arm just made him look more monstrous. He stood, holding his gun with both hands. “Killing women . . . that was more the Beast of Gevaudan’s game
. I’d much rather bag something with a little more teeth.” He cocked back the bullet.
Howl shook his head, like he pitied the man for being so stupid. He didn’t even seem angry anymore, slipping into the dominant, deadpan voice he used with his pack. “Try it. I’ve been shot before. It only hurts when I’m human; I heal when I change.” He pointed in the direction of the village. “Just go and leave Belle alone.”
“Howl, he has silver. He—”
The sound of a gunshot drowned out the rest of my words.
Howl dropped.
Jean laughed. “Oops.” He grabbed me before I could move, my feet frozen in place. His voice sounded underwater. But as I looked between the monster and the man, I knew at once who was the beast. “Your turn now. It’s a waste, but . . .” He shrugged.
The click of the gun brought me back. How could I stop this in enough time to get to Howl? He needed me. And I needed . . . wolves. “Okay. Okay. I’ll do what you want.”
“And what was that?” He leaned in close so I felt his breath at my neck.
I threw back my shoulders and howled.
I really went for it this time, calling so loud that it might leave me voiceless for weeks. I couldn’t even get Spin to sit before, but this time, they had to listen.
Jean stared at me like I was crazy, but we only had to wait another moment.
A long howl answered my call.
I smiled. “You told me to call them. What, did you think Howl was the only one? Wolves travel in packs. You might shoot me, but you’ll never make it out of these woods alive.”
Jean hesitated. “You’re bluffing.”
“Do I sound like I’m bluffing?” I hoped not, because I totally was bluffing.
Jean might have more bullets, but I doubted they were silver. If he at least thought the wolves were cursed like Howl, we might have a chance.
He started as another howl sounded, even closer. The moment his eyes moved, I pulled the gun from him. A dark wolf appeared at my side. Ghost.