Wolf Omega: The Lykanos Chronicles 2

Chapter Forty-Eight

Paris. October 1814.

"There's nothing to fear here anymore," I promised him in vain.

Maximo stood on the sidewalk in front of our townhouse on the Rue Las Cases. He stared in every direction, tuning his senses to locate any lycan who might be in the district.

My assurances meant little to him after so many years of violence between us and the Château de Rousselot, the home of the Marquis de Archambault and his pack of over eighty werewolves.

The revolution changed many things in Paris, particularly the face of the monarchy. Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Those nobles who had escaped with their heads remained mostly in hiding or gone. Their grandest possessions were seized by one of the myriad forms of government that ensued. Others broke apart and sold off their lands to survive the transition.

Maximo, once Phillipe, and now in his third generation as Maximillian Phillipe, had readily seen the future coming. He successfully changed our status, abandoning our noble titles, and publicly altering the source of our perceived income. Unshackled by the people's intolerant attitudes, he successfully sought more egalitarian roles for us in the new France.

To my private delight, I was a farmer again. Of course, I was now a farmer with an old aristocratic name who hadn't picked grapes in a century. Nevertheless, we sold dozens of farms to humans to prove our new role in society, though we remained privately invested in each. Through our stewardship, the finest vintages in the region were created. Creating this enterprise felt like the first accomplishment of my own making, though written here, I see how it resulted from the benefit of a stolen legacy. Nevertheless, I grew to love wine-making in ways that only my long-lost Dionisio might have genuinely appreciated.

Inspired by the nation's social changes, Maximo took the Roussade name with him to the capitol when the Bourbon Restoration attracted royalist exiles to return home. In Paris, he devoted his fourth iteration to seeking roles within any government that would lead to greater liberty for the people, even if it ironically meant relying upon his nobleman's name.

Upon our first visit to the capital a decade ago, we discovered the great city was almost devoid of lycan. We could only guess the reason for their mysterious absence.

Maximo suspected they found the modern world too overtly distasteful, as the over-crowded capital had grown a dozen miles in every direction. I wondered if it wasn't rather the modern world that changed them. Might not the growing secular society have emancipated them, offering a new culture devoid of the old religious ways? Had they any need for packs to hunt humans without those rituals?

Whatever the reason, the once abundant lycan of Paris were almost all gone. Those who remained kept their distance even when they didn't know who we were.

Still, a decade of undisturbed peace couldn't change the expectations Maximo had painfully developed over a lifetime.

"Of course, there's nothing to fear," he smiled. "But I heard something."

He shot me a mischievous look before taking off down the road on foot toward the National Assembly building.

I set my sights upon preparing for my day and returned to my room upstairs. I was expected at a parish soup kitchen within the hour. After, I planned to meet with the monsignor to discuss a patronage. I had backed many schemes in Burgundy to see that the region's mortals never truly went without. But after so much war and upheaval in Paris, la misere were everywhere, and they commanded much of my time.

My lady's maid had not yet returned from her shopping trip, and I started to lay out the clothes I meant to change into, expecting her arrival soon.