WolfeBlade: de Wolfe Pack Generations by Kathryn Veque (reading an ebook txt) 📕

“My cousins said this would be a place of feasting and fun, but… I find it vile. I just want to go home.”

She sounded so forlorn. Andreas could see that perhaps the young woman had gotten more than she’d bargained for when her cousins had forced her to come to this unusual and decadent place. The woman’s cousins had told her of feasting and fun, and she’d found debauchery and excess. Being a chivalrous man, he knew he had to do something to help her.

He held up a hand, to beg patience.

“Do not fret,” he said. “I will return shortly. Will you stay?”

She wasn’t going anywhere, curled up against the wall with a silk coverlet over her. But she didn’t respond, perhaps too frightened to, and Andreas ducked out of the alcove, looking for the servant with the drinks. He caught sight of her over near one of the copper braziers and he took two cups off her tray.

He returned to the alcove.

“Here,” he said. “Drink this. It will make you feel better.”

He was extending one of the cups to her, but she stared at it like she had no idea what to do with it. “What… what is it?”

“Ale,” Andreas said. “It has fruit in it. It’s quite good. It will help calm you.”

She stared at the cup a moment longer before lowering the silk coverlet and hesitantly claiming the drink. Andreas watched as she gulped it, thirstily, draining nearly half the cup.

She licked her lips.

“It is good,” she agreed quietly. Then, her gaze moved to Andreas, perhaps looking him over a little. “You are very kind to bring this to me.”

He smiled faintly. “It was no trouble,” he said. “Frankly, I am grateful for the diversion. I don’t think I like this place very much, either.”

She licked her lips again and took another drink. “Then why are you here?”

He threw a thumb over his shoulder. “Because my friend brought us.”

“Us?”

He nodded. “My cousins and me,” he said. “The four of us are in London on business and my friend, who has been here before, thought it would be a great adventure for us.”

He saw her take a deep, fortifying breath before taking another drink of the ale. “I would agree that it is an adventure,” she said after a moment. “But not a great one. It is one I could have done without.”

A smile flickered across his lips. “I am coming to think that as well,” he said. “I would never begrudge a man for living out his fantasies, but a place like this… my grandmother will murder me and bury the body if I tell her I visited such a place.”

She lifted her eyebrow as if in full agreement and Andreas found himself studying her face. She was blonde, with delicately arched brows and the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. They tilted up at the ends, like the eyes of a cat. She had a pert nose and lips that seemed rather lush. Aye, she was more than pretty.

She was beautiful.

“If you truly feel as hostile towards this place as I do, then you shall leave here and forget you ever visited,” she said, gulping more ale. “I intend to leave and never look back no matter what my cousins say. And I shall never let them bring me here again.”

Andreas was watching her closely, seeing that she had calmed with quiet conversation and the ale. At least she was no longer panicking.

“They like this place, do they?” he asked.

“They do,” she said. Then, she snorted ironically. “They woke me from a dead sleep for this. I should have stayed in bed.”

She said it with great regret and he grinned. “And I wish I was in mine,” he said. “This was interesting for the first few minutes, but no longer. Will you accompany me, my lady?”

She looked at him suspiciously, appraising him again with those glittering eyes. “Forgive me, my lord, but given the nature of this place, I must ask where I am to accompany you.”

“Out,” he said flatly. “I shall take you home.”

“Mine or yours?”

He chuckled. “Yours, of course,” he said. “My lady, I realize that in a place like this, you should probably suspect the worst from everyone you meet, but I assure you that my intentions are purely chivalrous. You seem distressed and I am offering my services to take you home safely.”

He could see that she was considering it. But after a moment, she shook her head. “I am afraid that I cannot,” she said. “You are a stranger. I do not know you. And I am not in the habit of entrusting my safety to strangers.”

He nodded. “Fair enough,” he said. “I do not blame you, of course, but I am going to leave nonetheless. If you would like to follow me out, you are welcome to do so. I will not trouble you further.”

Her focus lingered on him a moment before lowering her eyes and draining the rest of her ale. The alcohol was settling in her veins, taking away the sheer terror she had been feeling so that she was able to think more clearly.

She eyed the enormous man crouched a few feet away.

“I do not mean to sound ungrateful,” she said. “And I do not mean to impugn your honor, but it would be foolish of me to trust someone I do not know.”

“Very true.”

“And we are not supposed to know anything about one another, so I cannot even ask you who you are.”

“I am a knight.”

She looked at his mail, his tunic. He was wearing a green tunic with a black dog’s head. She pointed at it.

“I can see that,” she said. “It looks familiar but, then again, there are probably fifty such standards around England with a dog’s head on it.”

“Not like this one,” he assured her quietly. “This one is unique. And it is not a dog.”

“What is it?”

“A wolf.”

“Is it your family crest? Or your liege’s standard?”

“My family crest.”

She pondered that for