The Heart of a Wolf (novel)

Chapter One

Sebastian had first seen Isadora on a day very like this one: warm, but with a high winds blowing clouds at speed across the sky, so that he rode in and out of cooler shadows.

He'd had three years of such trips, visiting those descended from his ancestors in the hopes that one of them might be the mate he sought: strong in the blood and the gift.

He had started when he was eighteen, full of confidence, visiting dukes and then marquises, and working his way down through the peerage. Not that he would refuse a remote connection of a noble house, but a daughter of rank would satisfy his daylight auditors as well as the needs of his secret world.

After three years of failure, his confidence had taken a beating, but today he was buoyant again. The Earl of Clemfordham had three daughters, and was descended from Bastian's six times great-grandfather in one line, and his three times great-grandfather in another.

Surely one of the girls had the qualities he sought? Two barons and a viscount who lived in the area also had families worth reviewing.

Bastian was new to his dual dignities this bright autumn day, a week past celebrating his twenty-first birthday. The death of his uncle six months earlier had made him Duke of Bliedrich. And just last month he had established his right to the older position that was his through his blood and his gift.

Bastian and the other candidates had been tested in body, mind, heart, and soul by combat, challenge, and trial. Bastian was the only one to leave the testing grounds on his own feet, though the others were recovering.

For the first time in generations, the Duke of Bliedrich was also King of Wolves.

As Duke of Bliedrich, he owed his allegiance to George III, the King of the United Kingdoms; these islands, bounded by the ocean, and the colonies spread around the world.

Beneath his rights and obligations as a peer of that realm, and his duties and powers on the lands of his duchy, his deeper loyalty was to his secret kingdom.

It was less easily defined, crossing county and even national borders. All those who carried the old blood were his to protect. All those who recognised Bastian as the Alpha were his to command.

Long ago, the Wolf folk and the daytime folk had shared the land, but their differences divided them. The daytime folk lived short lives, breeding easily and often, while the Wolf folk lived long but had few offspring. As their numbers dwindled, the Wolf folk found themselves harried and persecuted; blamed by the daytime folk for any ill at their door.

A thousand years of alliances with the daytime folk, often sealed by a marriage, had made them strong in the daytime world — wealthy and powerful.

A thousand years of misdirection and secrets had turned the stories of his people into werewolf tales, fit only to frighten children.

A thousand years of taking mates from among the daytime people had weakened the gift in the blood.

But, if his mother was right, the loss could be reversed. The mingling of races had gone both ways. Every now and again, an offspring of the daytime people showed strong signs of the old blood. The wolf people brought them into the pack when they came across them, but they did not institute the search his mother wanted.

Indeed, his cousin, who had been king before him, had refused to even look at the genealogies Bastian's mother had carefully traced, researching in dusty moulded documents and among elderly family history keepers who were nearly as musty. She had seen him again, not long before she died, and again he had turned her away. His job, he insisted, was to protect the people and keep them hidden, not to chase after rainbows and dreams.

But he did not forbid the marriage quest, though Bastian was his ducal heir presumptive. Bastian chose to take that as consent.

Now Bastian was both king and duke, and the search would continue, though his chief counsellor advised him to stay close to home and consolidate his rule.

Ah. This would be the carriage way to the principal and only seat of Baron Thuler.

Bastian's light pressure on the reins and his seat turned the horse. His name and a coin from his purse had the lodge-keeper opening the gate. He would beg a bed for the night with Lord Thuler, for he was seeking not just a bride but anyone with enough of the old blood to be called wolf-kin.

Lord Thuler was a wolf-descendant, but over so long distance he was almost pure daylight to the wolf senses of the pack. However, he had children: a daughter, too young to be of interest as a bride for Bastian, by his first wife. Bastian's mother had put a question-mark next to the wife's name where the Baron appeared in the genealogies. A possible; a woman whose remote ancestor might have birthed a half blood.

Not all crossings between the daylight people and the wolf-kin had been licit, and where no marriage had sanctified the union, the identity of the father was usually lost in time.

Lord Thuler also had three younger children, all sons, by his second wife. They were unlikely candidates, but Bastian would take a sniff. Literally. To his nose, the daylight people and the wolf-kin carried very different scents; the later a complex aroma like no other — rich, spicy, multi-layered, appealing.

And there it was, as if thinking of the aroma brought it into being. Bastian followed his nose up the carriage-way, then, just after it made a right-angle turn, off onto the meadow grass that fringed the side.

The source was higher than his head. There. In one of the oaks that marched beside the carriage way. A flutter of white. Bastian could smell wolf-kin, as strong as any he knew, but also anger, fear, and a little curiosity. Young. Very young. One of the baron's children, perhaps? Female? He thought so.

"I see you," he said. "You might as well come down. I will not hurt you."

"You might not," said the girl, shifting so that she could look at him. "My Mama certainly will. She said she would beat me bloody, but if I can stay hidden until Papa gets home, I expect she will only beat me a little bit."

At that moment, a shout came from the turn of the carriage-way. "Isadora! Get down out of that tree!"

A group of men on horseback, the foremost a burly fellow, red with anger, shaking his fist at the girl. Bastian's wolf-kin.
Before he could tell the baron, for it must be he, to leave Isadora alone, Bastian heard a shriek. He whipped his head around just in time to see the girl, who must have flinched back when her father shouted, slide too far across the branch, and scramble for a hold.

Thank God. She had caught a handful of twiglets in each hand. No! They came away and she continued slipping, her legs now dangling above some twenty feet of empty space.

Bastian signalled the horse forward as she slid again, this time left with one hand on the broken nub of a branch and the other waving desperately in the air.

Before he was close enough to catch her, her hand released its hold and she fell.