Her Wolf King

le recherche

Everett prowled back toward the castle as the first rays of dawn began peeking over the jagged edges of the mountains and dappling the gently rolling hills with morning. His mood was foul, but his spirit was determined.

Lenore was right. He would have to look for the treasure, if there was one, rather than spend the rest of his existence consigning himself to a miserable life of transformations that left him confused and disturbed. Until one day, he might never turn back to a man.

He could become a wolf at will, during the daytime. But never during the night could he become a man at will. What if one day, he could never transform back to himself–back to the remnants of civility he clung to?

So it was with a heavy heart but a resolute will that he trudged the steps up to his own castle.

"Did you enjoy your night in the doghouse?" Lenore asked him when he made his way through the foyer, past the open door leading to the dining room. She was primly eating a slice of toast covered in raspberry preserves.

He sat across from her, uncaring that he ought to change his attire or at least comb his hair, let alone take a bath. "I've decided to join you on your wild goose chase. At the very least, I can no longer allow myself to be constantly subject to the increasingly tyrannical parameters of my curse."

"Meaning?" She arched one blonde eyebrow, the picture of nonchalance, but the curiosity in her gaze gripped him.

He reached out to wipe a spot of jam away from the corner of her mouth. The sharp line of her clavicle jutted out as she took a sharp intake of breath, the only sign that she'd responded at all to his touch.

"Meaning, I don't want to live as a wolf anymore. If there is something that Marya left here, some treasure, then I want to find it, and use it against her." He licked the jam off his thumb.

Her lips curved into a grin. "I'm glad you've decided to see sense. Though, perhaps you should also see the inside of a washbasin."

He rolled his eyes. "Is this what I get for agreeing with you?"

"All I'm saying is, Butterscotch smells better than you do," she said with a teasing smirk as he walked out.

He felt her eyes trail him all the way down the hall.

As he sank into his bath, his tired muscles uncoiling at the hot steam and the scent of evergreen, he pondered how best to begin their search. Should they be looking for a real item? Seeing if something looked magical or not? It had been a long time since he'd done anything like this, and animals were a good deal easier to track than magical items that may or may not have existed.

As he took a razor to his scruffy beard, careful not to cut his throat, he pondered what the item could be. Marya had a taste for the macabre. She likely wouldn't hide some obvious book of spells, or leave a wolf's pelt as the magical item. No, that would be too easy for her. She wouldn't enjoy the game enough–and that was all life was to her. A game.

It would have to be something they didn't expect, which only made it all the harder. What could it be?

He would have to go back to the old cottage on the grounds and gather the rest of her old letters, the handful of notes she'd written to him that he'd never read or burned, not wanting to face the facts of who he had married and what she had done to him.

Those mocking words and the slanting slope of her penmanship had irritated him to no end, especially last night, seeing the letter in Lenore's grasp. He despised the association of the two of them together, even if only through a letter, though he knew well enough that without Marya's curse–he never would have met Lenore.