The Heart of a Wolf (novel)

Preface

Sebastian drove the horse hard. The best the posting inn had to offer, it was still a poor specimen compared to those in his own stables, but even his best stallion could not have outrun the temper that burned within.

Nathaniel dead. That Woman's husband with him. And Sebastian left with a letter from his brother, hand delivered by a solicitor so that Sebastian could not consign it to the fire as he had all its predecessors. And with it came a charge he wanted to repudiate with all his considerable power. Responsibility for the protection of That Woman and her brats? How could Nathan demand that of him, given what she had done?

But the letter claimed she had been innocent all those years ago. He stiffened in denial, and the horse responded to the sudden pressure on its flanks with a burst of desperate speed, struggling up the hill that lay between him and his goal.

No. He knew what he had seen: his betrothed, barely out of the schoolroom, her virginal white dress crumpled and pulled down from one shoulder, her hair disordered and her face white with the shock and strain at being discovered. Jeremy Harris, Nathan's tutor, in worse disarray, hastily rebuttoning his fall. And Nathan, the greatest betrayal of all. His beloved brother interposing his body between the guilty couple and Sebastian, stammering something Sebastian could not hear because of the roaring of the beast.

The beast stirred within him now, restive at the thought of at last having power over the woman it had claimed long ago. She had been ten years old, and he a young man of twenty, but the beast within had recognised something that only those of the old blood could detect; like calling to like. She carried the magic. He had, then and there, negotiated with the baron her father, and carried her off as his affianced bride to be raised with his own brother.

Seven years of patiently waiting for her to grow, lost in one evening. Had it not been for Nathan, he would have killed them both: Isadora and her lover.

He took a deep breath, fighting to reassert his iron control; the horse was near to outright panic, and he had no wish to destroy an innocent animal.

"Easy, fellow. Easy," he crooned. To himself or to the horse, he hardly knew. He would need to calm himself before he could exert his will in the other gift bestowed by the old blood. Though, in truth, the ability to control the minds of others was a characteristic of his beast rather than a separate ability.

Taking deep breaths in through his nose and letting the air trickle from his mouth, he imposed his iron will over his own emotions, and as the horse settled, he looked around at the landscape: rolling hills, mostly pasture or crops with copses of trees, and here and there a farmhouse or a barn or occasionally a manor.

He had ridden through such a landscape before, long ago, following the trail in the genealogies of those who had married outside of the clan, seeking for those who carried a even a trace of gift that marked his people.

Isadora had come back to the county of her birth, though not to her father's home, now her half brother's. She would not have been welcome there. She had not been welcome as a ten year old, let alone as a disgraced adult.

He thought he had found a treasure, until it turned in his hand and buried itself in his heart.