The Story of the Exile (The Belesone Pack #2)

Chapter 4

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

Katarina read the words, but didn't see them the way she usually did.

Pride and Prejudice was her favourite book, yet over the last half hour she hadn't gotten any further into it than there. She had read the same passage over and over again, to no avail. She wasn't going to get any peace to read tonight.

She sighed and closed the beautifully bound edition of the book. When she lifted her head to the window, she saw that spots of rain had started falling.

That was the last thing Milo needed on his hunt. He and Leo were tired. It had been a ridiculously long, gruelling day and they had all gone through some kind of unhappy experience that had drained them. Now it was raining when they were on a hunt and Milo was searching for the would-be attackers from her vision.

An hour later, after staring at the window the whole time, Katarina was jarred from her thoughts by the sound of shouting. She knew that a guard had been stationed inside Oswine's room, upstairs, so that she didn't go into the bedroom and get hurt. But other than that, there was no one else in the house.

Oswine's wife, Regina, had called Milo after dinner to say that the family she was visiting at the end of the street needed her to stay overnight. There was a shifter child with a fever and she was especially talented at simple herbal remedies, just like Katarina's father was. It seemed natural for her to stay with the sick child, rather than venture home and be called out again in the dead of night, when it wasn't safe.

Now, Katarina began to wonder if Oswine was kicking up a fuss, looking for his wife.

Curious, she stepped into the library doorway.

A burst of lightning lit up the library behind her and Katarina jumped. A minute later, a low rumble of thunder seemed to shake her very bones and drown out the shouting from the upstairs landing. That was it settled. There was no way she was staying on her own, in the middle of a thunder storm, while Milo was out there in the woods, searching for strangers who might one day attack her.

It was all too much for her nerves to take.

Katarina took off up the stairs at a run and headed straight for the room where the most noise was coming from. The door was closed, but another flash of lightning and rumble of thunder had her braving the handle.

She twisted it and the door opened.

The storm was getting worse. Her hesitation was helped along by a second flash, this time a cluster of lightning that had her running into the room and closing the door behind her.

She leaned back against it, breathing hard, absolutely terrified, as she tried to control the beating of her erratic heart.

Before her, Oswine was on the bed, contorting and twisting in the sheets, shouting obscenities.

The guard, Algar, and a second guard she hadn't known was in the house, Callum, tried to hold him down. They weren't doing a great job.

Callum turned and glanced at her, before shouting across. "Help us calm him down. He's not allowed to transform," he explained, trying to be heard over the storm.

Thankful for something useful to do, to take her mind off her fear, Katarina rushed across the room. She stood by the side of Oswine's bed, looking down at the man who should have been Alpha.

He was still relatively young, at forty, with fading black hair and the ghost of a shadow on his chin. He looked in pain as his body moved, almost of its own volition, fighting to make the transformation he wasn't permitted.