Her Wolf King
Chapter 4: The Bargain

A WOLF BURST INTO the church on all fours and howled at the ceiling. Immediately, panicked guests jumped from their seats and began making similar noises. Lenore should have screamed with them. She should have gathered her skirts in her hands and begun running for her life. Even Kirk looked frightened, seizing a cane from his father and brandishing it at the wolf as though it would help defend him at all. She stifled a giggle at the sight before realizing there was no point.

Instead, she threw back her head and laughed. Peals of laughter rang out of her, louder than any wedding bells.

The wolf growled. The guests might have looked at her hysteria with raised eyebrows if it weren’t for the terror clearly coursing through them as they made for the door. The priest began shouting and directing people to leave through the other exit, a pair of heavy double doors that had been barred. One of the men was attempting to pull a curtain rod off of the wall and use it as a javelin of sorts, with its pointed ends.

Her almost-husband seemed split between looking at her as if she were insane and leaping onto a church pew to avoid the growling mongrel. “What is wrong with you?” he shouted.

She noted, almost absently, that Kirk didn’t make any attempt to pull her behind him, to protect her, or even to protect his elderly mother, who was screaming, pale, and swooning against the pulpit of the church.

“This is rather amusing,” she said, just as the wolf leaped at her.

Kirk’s answer was lost in the cacophony of howls and frightened shrieking. The men were ushering the women out of the building via a back entrance. The wolf’s muzzle nudged at her knees, almost as if he were playing with her. Kirk made a rather undignified sound. She stopped laughing, even though his unmanly, cowardly response was more entertaining to Lenore than half a dozen circus troupes.

He fled out the back door with the women. She and the wolf were alone. Its large head tilted up to look at her, green eyes wide. Keen. Knowing. Cunning.

“Well, now, why did you come to disturb my wedding like this?” Reaching out a tentative hand, she patted him on his furry head, behind the ears.

Her white satin gown now trampled, she hiked up the hem to more easily clamber over an overturned pew. “A hand would be nice.”

He made a low, keening noise in the back of his throat, then a huff. As if he were laughing at her. Perhaps she was. She must have looked as insane as Kirk thought, essentially talking to herself in this empty church. Her voice echoed off of the stone walls as she made her way down the aisle, sans husband.

“Did you hear me?” she wondered aloud. “When I touched the ring... When I refused to be Kirk’s wife...”

In an instant, he was no longer a wolf, but a fully clothed man, in a flurry of black smoke that vanished before she could blink. He cleared his throat. “Yes. The necklace was a bond - it allowed me to get a sense of when you might be accepting the bargain. I came as soon as I could.”

“Like a dog,” she said. “Coming when called.”

He shot her a dark look. “Has anyone ever told you that you are far too impudent for your own good?”

“I’ve only been called a hoyden by my former fiance if that counts,” she said, unsure of why she would share it with him. She was even more uncertain of the relief, the jubilant sensation, that had flooded through her veins when she’d seen the wolf burst into the church. Why she’d felt this overwhelming sense of liberation upon seeing him there.

To be honest, she’d felt like a damsel seeing her knight in shining armour appear at the door, but she wasn’t about to tell him that.

Everett didn’t respond to her comment. Instead, he reached into his pack, a leather saddlebag that she hadn’t noticed until he opened it, and pulled out...

Now she really did let out a cry of terror. “Is that a butchered rabbit?”

“Scream a little louder, why don’t you? It’ll be good for the men to think that the wolf murdered you,” he said.

She shut up, just for that, and glared at him. “Why would you drag that disgusting... carcass into this place?”

“Did you not hear a word I just said?” Blood was dripping onto the stone floor. “The men need to think that I killed you. Otherwise, they’ll come after you.”

“Are you going to run out of here with me on your back?”

“No, in my jaws,” he said. “Don’t worry, I won’t bite down... much.”

Before she could protest, he was a wolf again, and she was encased in his powerful jaws, her hair streaming over her face and brushing the cold tiles. The pressure was tight enough around her waist, squeezing with more force than the tightest corset, that she had to keep herself from crying out in pain, before remembering that she probably ought to look like she was being attacked.

Lenore screamed, in what she hoped was a passable imitation of terror. “Help me! I’m being dragged off to the woods to be mauled!:”

Her voice echoed across the near-empty town square. She was essentially the boy - or, rather, girl - who cried wolf. The men must have alerted the townsfolk, causing them all to scatter like flies. There was no one to hear her.

No one to save her, but a wolf.

***

Worn out by the exhaustion of the day, Lenore was barely awake when her protector took on a human form once more and set her on a horse before taking the reins and clambering up behind her. They rode through the forest until the day blurred into the night, the sun sinking into the horizon. When she woke, the stars were out, and a magnificent white chateau rose ahead of them, spires reaching up toward the moon.

“You live here?” she asked before feeling rather dim. Of course, he did. He’d brought her to his place of residence, hadn’t he?”

“Welcome to your new home,” he said instead of answering.

“And here I thought wolves were fond of caves and dens and lairs, not palaces,” she said, perhaps to her detriment.

Everett shot her a sour look, but she was beginning to sense that it was his general surly demeanour, not her teasing, that contributed to such an expression. “I’ll show you to your rooms.”

“Rooms... plural?” she repeated as she slid off the horse, nearly falling to the ground. Her legs felt like jelly from a long day of riding, and she winced when she tried to walk. Her would-be saviour set a large hand on the small of her back, guiding her toward the gravel-strewn path that led toward the chateau.

An invisible groom must have led the horse away because when she turned her head to gaze at the black mare, it was going toward the stables. “Do you have servants here?”

Everett was the strong and silent type, then. She couldn’t say she particularly minded, but it was rather annoying when one did have questions that were unanswered.

“Yes, and no,” he said. “The castle is enchanted. The servants are ghosts, doomed to serve backbreaking labours for crimes committed in their past lives.”

“Enchanting,” she muttered under her breath. A chill wind swept the hair off of her nape, her elaborate coiffure long since undone from the wolf attack as well as the day’s ride. “Do you have much company?”

“Not for the past century, no,” he said. She thought she saw the corner of his mouth twitch up.

“Was that a jest?” she said.

He huffed a sigh as the gates to the castle opened and then the double doors closed behind them. Candles flickered in sconces almost immediately, as if sensing their presence. “If you have to ask, Lenore, I suppose it was a very poor one.”

“You don’t seem like the humorous type,” she noted, staring at the great foyer. Two spiral staircases made of ebony stone circled the edges of the round room, a skylight perfectly centred with a view of the moon in the vaulted ceiling. Two imposing suits of armour stood on guard at the foot of either staircase and two heavy brown armchairs made from leather and mahogany faced one another.

“No? What type do I seem like, then?” he asked, eyeing her. His green eyes darted over her face as if absorbing her features.

“The gruff and stoic type,” she said honestly. “Thank you... thank you for saving me.”

“It was part of a bargain, girl,” he said. “You’ve fulfilled your end of it. It’s your turn to ask me for a boon.”

“I must say, I feel rather like I’m wishing upon a star.” She folded her arms over her chest. “Let me see...”

He waited, leaning against the matching ebony banister. Moments passed, while she studied the foyer. It was grand, lavish, but utterly intimidating. Every part of it was so dark. Was there no light in here at all? Thick burgundy drapes blocked out any starlight from the floor-to-ceiling windowpanes, tied back with jet black tasselled cords.

“You saved me from a wedding,” she said. A tingle of fear trailed down her spine at the memory of it. What if Kirk Stone came back for her? “Why don’t you marry me instead?”

He stared at her the way Kirk had earlier: like she’d lost her head. Then a wolfish laugh tore through him. “You must be playing, girl.”

She lifted her chin. “I’m a woman, and perfectly capable of making my own marital choices, thank you very much.”

“You wish to marry a wolf,” Everett said. “That’s not a choice, that’s insanity.”

“Insanity is tying myself to a man who would abuse me,” she said. “A choice... that’s freedom Safety. You saved me from him. You freed me from his clutches. Why shouldn’t I ask you to marry me?”

“Because, Lenore, you are just a human girl, who does not deserve this sort of life,” he said. “What can I offer you, besides wealth? Fear, danger, and loneliness? You have a family., I assume Don’t you wish me to give you something to provide for them?”

“Generous of you,” she said. “But as your wife, everything you had would be mine.”

“You’re impossible to argue with, aren’t you?” he said, and something in his green eyes was almost amused, less exasperated.

“I’ll take that as consent.” She stepped toward him.

“And I assume you want to seal that with a kiss?” he said. His green eyes were dark, almost black in the dim light of the foyer.

Her arms wound around his neck as she reached onto the toes of her satin slippers and pressed a dainty, chaste kiss to his cheek. “Well, I’ll be off to bed now.”

If his jaw dropped, she didn’t have to see it. She sensed it, every sashaying step up the stairs, and had to fight back her laughter to keep it from echoing through the hollow, lonely castle.