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He came around the corner as the wolf gracefully leaped onto the back porch. Sliding glass doors reflected the swirling snow and the foggy sheen of the moon. Julian feared Ella would crash right through them.
Was Jorund sitting at his kitchen table, peacefully drinking tea? Did he have his aching feet propped up on an ottoman, glasses settled on his determined blade of a nose, a science-fiction novel—his favorite—open on his
quilt-covered lap?
When the werewolf burst through his window would the old man spring up, tangle his feet in the quilt, and fall down? Break a hip? An arm? Have a heart attack? Any of those would be preferable to the alternative—bloody, painful death by rogue werewolf.
Julian couldn’t let that happen. He lifted the rifle to his shoulder and sighted on Ella’s flank.
“Wait,” Alex whispered.
“No.”
“Look.”
Something in her voice stopped him. Perhaps that she’d tried to stop him. Alex would be the first person to let him shoot a werewolf—unless she had a very good reason not to.
The glass doors slid open. Jorund appeared in a wash of yellow light from his kitchen. He wore a black silk robe adorned with golden dragons and tied loosely with a matching sash. His hair flowed in a river of silver-threaded black past his shoulders, and he held a glass of red wine in one hand. Behind him, on the table, sat the bottle and a second, empty glass.
The old man stood to the side, and the wolf trotted in. Jorund let his free hand trail over her back, on his face an expression Julian had never seen there before.
“Maybe we’d better go,” Alex said.
“Put down the gun, Ataniq.” Jorund turned away, leaving the door open. “And come inside.”
By the time Julian and Alex got there, Jorund had pulled out two more glasses and poured them each some wine. Ella was nowhere to be found, though Julian heard someone moving about in one of the bedrooms.
Jorund sat at the table. From the way he carefully adjusted his knee-length robe to avoid flashing them, he wore nothing beneath the silk. Julian was becoming more uncomfortable by the second. He downed his wine in a single swallow.
“George told me what you had planned.”
Julian scowled. “He was supposed to tell no one.”
“I’m the leader of this village, not you.”
Annoyed, Julian snapped, “Yet you call me master.”
“Courtesy title,” the old man murmured.
“Then why did you send George to bring me here each time you found someone dead?”
“You promised to protect us from your wolves. You aren’t living up to your end of the agreement. Why wouldn’t I call you?”
“We haven’t established that one of my wolves is the wolf.”
The elder lifted his brows but didn’t comment.
“Who else did George tell?” Alex asked. She had yet to touch her wine; she merely kept toying with the stem of the glass.
Jorund’s gaze flicked to her, then back to Julian. “No one.”
“Who did you tell?” Julian demanded.
“Just me,” Ella said.
She’d donned a robe that matched Jorund’s, and her pale skin held a flush across the cheeks.
“What’s going on here?” Julian asked.
