“I can’t go back home?”
Adam hesitated. “I’m not sure. It depends on what the duke says. He may want you to stay while he gets information.”
I nodded again, keeping my thoughts in my head. All I wanted was to be snuggled into my bed. I didn’t want to stay at Wolf’s Peak. I watched as we passed Adam’s house and my own. As we drew closer to Wolf’s Peak, Annabelle sat up and readjusted Daniel in her arms. Her jaw was tense. This was a meeting none of us were looking forward to.
The carriage slowed to a stop outside the doors of Wolf’s Peak. The doors flew open and Jasper came bounding out. This was the happiest I would see him for a long time.
He pulled open the door to our carriage and his face twisted in confusion.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “Where’s Christine?”
“Jasper—” Adam began.
The color drained from Jasper’s face as he stumbled back. “No,” he breathed.
“Jasper,” Annabelle said.
He swallowed. “What happened?”
“She was taken,” Adam said softly.
“Taken? What do you mean she was taken?”
“We were ambushed—”
“Ambushed? That’s what you and Conor were there for!” Jasper shouted. “That’s why I sent you! So nothing like this could happen!”
“We were outnumbered. We did everything we could.”
“Where are Conor and Bridget?”
“They followed after the wolves that took her,” Adam said.
Jasper turned around and aimed his fist at one of the gargoyles that flanked the sides of the front door. The gargoyle shattered in pieces across the snow. Annabelle rubbed her temples.
“All right,” Jasper said, turning back to us. “Let’s get everyone together.”
“Jasper,” Annabelle said gently, “we need medical attention.” She gestured toward me.
Jasper shook his head. “I’m so sorry. Of course. Let’s get Dr. Brighton over here.”
Adam climbed down from the carriage, still wincing at the pain in his abdomen. He helped down Annabelle, who passed Daniel to her husband as she limped inside the house. I did a one-legged hop across the carriage and Adam picked me up, carrying me into the house. We sat down in the chairs of the parlor. I still didn’t have the courage to look at how badly my ankle was injured.
“You can’t walk?” Jasper asked, watching as Adam set me down.
“Not easily,” I said.
“What happened?”
“Like Adam said, we were attacked,” I told Jasper.
“Yes, but what happened?”
While we waited for the doctor, the three of us regaled the story to Jasper. He knew about some of the attacks since he had received the letter, but we had to explain to him how we were shot at in the village, how a wolf had been strung up outside the house, how Seth continued to attack us, how the Henstridges had been killed. Finally, we got to the part about the ambush. We each had different things to add; Adam was able to tell Jasper that there had been six men who had taken us down, not including the driver.
“At least one of them was only human,” he said. “It was hard to tell for sure because things were so chaotic.”
“You were attacked by six?” Jasper asked.
“We fought as well as we could, but we were outnumbered, even with Bridget.”
“I always wondered,” Jasper murmured.
“We tried our best to keep Christine in the carriage,” I said. “It was my fault. I was holding onto her, but one of the wolves bit at my ankles and I lost her.” A tear slipped down my face as I glanced at my hands.
“It bit you?” Jasper asked. Somehow his face had paled further.
“Conor says he thinks she’ll be all right,” Adam said. “She was bit through her clothes. Caused some damage, but she shouldn’t have gotten much saliva in her bloodstream.”
In the haze of pain, I had almost forgotten that I could be a wolf by the next moon. “We’ll have to wait and see,” I said. I shed another tear. I hated that I was crying, but I was so overwhelmed and in such pain I couldn’t help it.
There was a knock on the front door and the butler led Dr. Brighton inside.
“All right, who am I here for?” he asked.
“All of us,” Annabelle sighed.
“Hazel first,” Adam said, and Annabelle agreed.
I looked away as Adam and the doctor sat down by my foot. They pulled off my shoe, and I briefly wondered if I would have been safe had I worn boots instead. The doctor’s eyes got wide as he saw the amount of blood soaked into my stocking, and Jasper gasped.
I swallowed the vomit back down. The doctor pulled off my stocking, and I cried out in pain, clutching at the arms of my chair.
“This is bad,” Dr. Brighton said quietly. “Her tendon is completely ruptured.”
“Can it be fixed?” Adam asked.
It took Dr. Brighton a long time to answer as he examined my wound. “I don’t think it’s bad enough that she needs surgery. I’ll have to put a cast on it. If it doesn’t repair on its own, though, surgery will be our only option.”
I nodded, unable to stop the tears.
Dr. Brighton examined the others, then went back to his carriage to get the supplies he needed to make a cast for me. He cleaned the wound with alcohol, and I winced as the liquid burned my skin. Adam held my hand, letting me squeeze it as the pain became overwhelming.
Dr. Brighton wrapped several layers of cotton around my ankle and the surrounding leg and foot before mixing the plaster and applying the layers on top.
“Just let it dry,” he said. “Should just be a few minutes.”
After the cast had dried, Annabelle and I went upstairs. I soaked in the bathtub, my foot outside and resting on the edge of the tub as Adam helped clean the blood and dirt from my skin. Once I was out, I pulled on a gown from my trunk.
“You ready?” Adam asked me.
“For what?”
“We’ve got a meeting with the council.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Jasper, sit down, please,” Annabelle said, but Jasper only waved her off.
He’d been pacing for the last several minutes as we all filed, or in my case, hobbled, into the library. I’d only been in here once before, when we’d each interviewed for the duke’s hand. The room was just as marvelous as I had remembered, but this time, the light filtering through the arched windows was gray and somehow the room held even more fear and malevolence than before.
Jasper had pushed all the tables together to create one long table in the center of the library, just as he had the weekend we’d all interviewed. Unlike the last time, where all the chairs were placed on one side of the table save the one for the interviewee, the chairs were set all around the table, and Adam helped me into the seat next to Annabelle. My back was to the loft and nook behind me. I faced a tall wall stacked full of books, and it was this wall that Jasper was pacing in front of.
All the councilmen, except of course for Conor, had joined us. Some, like Stephen, knew the gravity of the situation. Others could sense the tension, but didn’t have answers. A wide-eyed Daisy brought tea in for everyone, but I didn’t partake. My stomach hurt.
“Thank you all for coming,” Jasper said once Peter had taken his seat.
“What’s going on?” Lester asked cautiously.
Jasper stopped pacing for a moment and swallowed. “Christine has been taken.”
The three men that hadn’t been here when we arrived began talking over each other, and Jasper put up a hand to silence them.
“Seth?” asked Lester.
Jasper’s eyes flickered over to Adam, Annabelle, and me. Adam shifted forward in his seat.
“We didn’t see him,” Adam said, “but I think it’s fair to assume that he was behind this.”
“The good news, if there is any, is that she’s probably still alive,” Stephen said.
“How do you figure?” Jasper asked.
�
��If they wanted her dead, they could have easily killed here right there,” said Stephen. “But they took her, which means that Seth wants her for a very specific reason.”
Jasper’s nodded. “A trap?”
“I think that’s what we have to assume.”
Jasper sank down into the chair at the head of the table. “So we need to go in assuming that we’re going to be ambushed.”
“Stealth may be our best option.”
“So long as he doesn’t kill her beforehand.”
I blinked away tears.
“Do you think he would?” Adam asked. “What would that accomplish?”
“He would hurt me,” Jasper said. “That’s all he’s ever cared about.”
“But then why kidnap her?” asked Merrill.
“You said he wasn’t there when she was taken?”
“We didn’t see him,” Adam said.
“What does he look like?” I asked. “I’ve never seen him in wolf form.”
“Black, like soot,” Jasper said.
I shook my head. That didn’t sound familiar. “The only black wolf I saw was Bridget,” I said, and Annabelle confirmed. Some of the men must not have known about Bridget, however, because they began murmuring amongst themselves.
“Yes, Bridget is a werewolf,” Jasper said. “And yes, Conor knows, and yes, he’s still probably going to court her. Can we stay on topic, please?”
“Do we know where they took her?” asked Peter.
Adam shook his head. “They started off north, but we don’t know if they stayed that way.”
“How did they find her?”
Jasper shook his head. “We have no idea.”
“What happened?” Peter asked.
“We were ambushed on the way home. We hadn’t even been on the road for very long—a few hours, maybe. They were waiting. They killed the driver and the horse. We tried to fight them off, but we were outnumbered,” Adam said, glancing down at his hands.
“They injured us and grabbed Christine,” Annabelle said, picking up where Adam left off. “Bridget and Conor followed after them while Adam went to get us some help.”
“But Conor and Bridget are tracking them?” Lester asked.
“Last time we saw them, yes.”
“Have we heard from them?”
“Not yet,” Jasper said.
Peter shook his head. “They could be anywhere by now. What are we supposed to do?”
“We could go to the town near where we were ambushed and start there,” Adam suggested.
“They’re long gone by now. There’s no way they stuck around.”
“What do you suggest, Peter?” Jasper asked. “That we do nothing?”
Peter rolled his eyes. “Not nothing, but what can we do until we know where they are?”
“We can’t just sit here!” Jasper pushed back from the table and stood up. He began pacing again in front of the wall of books.
“We can’t just run off, either,” said Lester. “If we leave, there will be no one to get the information from Conor and Bridget if they do return or send you a letter.”
“I need to find her,” Jasper said, his jaw squared.
“Of course, Jasper, but we have to think about this,” said Merrill.
“No, we need to act! Every moment we wait is another moment Seth has to hurt her or kill her.”
For the first time, I saw tears in Jasper’s eyes. His hands were clenched, swinging at his sides as he paced. He looked like he wanted to hit something again, but there was nothing nearby he could use as a target. He had run his fingers through his hair so many times that it had become a mess, a mop of dark hair flopping over his eyes as he stalked back and forth. He smoothed out his hands on his pants before balling them up again. He was like a caged animal needing release from his prison. My heart broke for him.
Adam reached over and took my hand from under the table. He squeezed it as he looked at me with a small smile. I rested my head on his shoulder, and he tilted his head to kiss me on the forehead. I needed him here right now.
“Jasper,” Annabelle said, breaking through the chaos of men’s voices.
He stopped and turned to her.
“They’re right,” she said.
His shoulders slumped. “Not you too.”
“Let’s talk about this logically,” she said, motioning for him to sit. Astonishingly, he obeyed. “Lester is correct. If you run off, guns blazing, and Conor needs to get ahold of you, he has no way about that. I know you can’t stand the idea of sitting still, but we don’t have a choice. We can’t make a move until we know where Seth is. Conor and Bridget are dedicated to finding her. They’ll let us know as soon as they find her. You need to trust them.”
He collapsed into the chair, burying his head in his hands. “I can’t just do nothing.”
“I’m not asking you to,” Annabelle said. “Plan. Create strategies. And be ready, so as soon as Conor and Bridget reach out to us, you can leave.”
He threw up his hands. “Fine. I know you’re right.”
Jasper adjourned the meeting and cleared Annabelle and I to head home. I wasn’t looking forward to my mother’s questions and prodding and hysterics about my injury, but I was desperate to sleep in my own bed and be surrounded by my own things. I needed a small sense of normalcy.
Adam and Stephen helped Annabelle and me into the carriage and loaded our things back up. We were quiet in the carriage; exhaustion and stress were all that filled me, and I could scarcely keep my eyes open. I just wanted to take a nap. I stifled a yawn and rested my head against Adam’s shoulder. He brushed the hair away from my face and kissed the top of my head.
“I suppose I’ll have to explain to your parents what happened,” Adam said.
“I can handle them,” I said.
“I’m not letting you walk in there alone,” he said with a chuckle, and I smiled.
We dropped Annabelle and Stephen off first, and Adam helped Stephen unload Annabelle’s luggage, since Stephen was carrying Daniel and helping Annabelle hobble into the house. When he returned, we curled up together on the seat again. Normally, I’d savor the alone time we had. We may have spent the last few weeks together, but I was going back home to my parents’ house, where I wouldn’t have the same freedom to spend time alone with Adam. As much as I wanted to run my hands all over him in our last few moments alone, all my energy was gone. It felt like days since I had slept.
We pulled up outside my house, and Adam wrapped an arm around my waist and helped me inside. We pushed the door open. For the briefest of moments we were still alone, then my mother came rushing down the stairs.
“Oh my God, Hazel, what happened to you?” she asked. “Adam, what happened to her?”
“It’s a long story—” I started.
“Oh, God, are you going to be able to walk normally?”
I squared my jaw. “Yes, Mum, after it heals.”
She turned to Adam. “What happened to her? You were supposed to protect her!”
“Mum, he did everything he could,” I said.
She crossed her arms. “What happened?”
I glanced at Adam. “I tripped,” I said. “I was going down the stairs and slipped and the back of my foot hit the edge of the stair. Dr. Brighton said it would heal just fine.”
She didn’t need to know I was lying. I didn’t want to deal with her dramatics.
My mom pinched her lips together. “Perhaps we should postpone our trip,” she said.
“Trip?”
“Your father was going to take me to Irvine for a few days,” she sighed. “He just signed another big contract, so we were going on holiday to celebrate.”
“No, please go,” I said, and not just because it would let me savor peace and quiet while also being in my own space. It would also allow me more time to spend with Adam.
“If you’re sure,” she said.
“Positive.”
Adam helped me up to my room, returning a few minutes later with my
luggage.
“Are you going to be all right?” he asked me.
“I’m going to sleep for three days,” I sighed.
A smile tugged at his lips. “If you need anything, send Harry for me, all right?”
“All right,” I promised.
He leaned down and kissed me, pulling me close to him, our tongues entwining. When we broke apart I was gasping for air and was sure my lips were swollen.
“I’d better go downstairs before you mother comes to investigate,” he sighed.
“I suppose.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
I kept my hand in his until he had moved too far across the room to keep our hands latched. He gave me a small smile as he shut the door behind him.
I crossed my arms, staring across my bedroom at my dressing table. After the constant action of the last few days, I had no idea what to do with myself. I was tired but my mind was spinning, and I suspected that sleep would be out of reach for a while, at least until I had a chance to take my next dose of tonic.
I peeled off my clothes, tossing them in the hamper, and replaced my dress with a nightgown. At the very least, I needed to curl up in my bed. I hobbled over and climbed up on the mattress, a sketchbook in my hand. I was about to begin when there was a knock on my door.
“Come in,” I said through a yawn.
The door opened and Harry peeked inside. “Can I come in?”
“Of course,” I said, setting the sketchbook down.
Harry sat down in the chair of my dressing table. “So...what the bloody hell happened?”
I swallowed. “I tripped.”
He rolled his eyes at me. “Be honest.”
I paused. “You can’t tell Mum.”
“Promise.”
I sighed. “All right. We were on our way home from the castle when we were ambushed. They injured Annabelle and me and took Christine.”
Harry’s jaw dropped. “The duchess is missing?”
I nodded. “Jasper is a wreck.”
“That’s terrible.”
I rubbed my temple. “It’s been a rough day.”
My mother pushed her way into my room. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you go with Adam.”
“What are you talking about?” I sighed.
The Wolf's Betrothed (The Wolf's Peak Saga Book 5) Page 10