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“Honestly?” Shane’s eyes softened. “I don’t know mate, she keeps everything close to her chest, but whatever she asks, just, hear her out and give it some thought. This isn’t the world we grew up in anymore.”
Then, as if by magic, the veil of woodland suddenly parted, and he was the boy Danny remembered once again. “Ah well, here we are. Welcome home.
As vast as it was ancient, the Lacum Hall was a bastion of Victorian gothic architecture that had the look of Bella Lugosi’s weekend place.
Danny’s eyes went wide as he stepped up to the monogrammed gate beneath a pair of huge stone wolves, rearing up and locked in mortal combat to form an arch. It looked much the same as he envisioned it, like a page torn right out of his memories, a physical link between his past and the present. Yet time had played her hand against his ancestral home. With each passing winter, the gardens had become overgrown, creeper ivy had crawled its way up the missionary and there was a thick pelt of dust covering the inside of the windows. It was as if the spirit of the hall had abandoned it with him and his mother, and the building had been withering away day by day ever since. His childhood home was still there, but it seemed diminished, a hollow husk robbed of its former majesty.
“Well, I’m off. See you in the lamb later, when you're done here. First rounds on me.” Shane said, hanging back by the treeline.
Danny glanced back at him. “You’re not coming in?”
Shane’s eyes widened at the suggestion, and he looked up to the upper levels, as if expecting to discover Erza watching them. “You’re kidding, right? Erza will have my hide on her wall, and my balls for chew toys if I step in there uninvited.” He laughed, but the sound was half-hearted and not enough to convince anyone he was joking. He shook his head. “No. Thanks but no thanks, afraid you’re on your own in there. Good luck, and remember, just hear her out before you answer.”
“Yeah… sure, catch you later.” Danny nodded, lingering there to watch the other man turn back and vanish into the tree back the way they’d come. And for a long moment, he was sorely tempted to follow, to forget this fool’s errand and go back, but back where?
Home? Did he even have one really? Since his mother had died, it had been like he was simply going through the motions, never really settling, never marking his territory.
University? What was for him there, a life living a lie, pretending to be something he wasn’t, and a girl who probably hated him that he couldn’t go near for fear of just face fucking her on sight whenever she came too close.
What else was out there for him?
Where else could he be what he was?
What other pack would accept him?
The man in him balked at the idea of returning to the village, but his wolf longed to re-join its pack and carried his feet up the stone steps to the front door. With a deep breath, he raised a hand to knock, but a cool breath of wind whispered across the stone, gathering and scattering the leaves littering the porch as the heavy oak creaked inward.
Well, that’s not creepy at all…
“Erza?” Danny called out, pushing the door open all the way. “Hello?”
Only silence answered his call, so he stepped cautiously inside.
The entrance hall was much the same as he remembered. Huge and cavernous with walls both of unfinished stone and wood panelling with the same ancient oak furniture scattered around it. The same depictions of nature scenes decorating the walls. Even the same Persian style rug running up the length of the grand staircase to the levels above. All that was missing were the countless generations of his family’s portraits that had adorned the wall before. Now they were gone, leaving nothing but the dark outlines that marked where each had hung.
Danny had expected this, yet to see it with his own eyes. All those generations of his family, removed and shoved into the attic, like they had never been. Despite himself, Danny’s eyes instinctively moved to the nearest shadow. His parents’ portrait had hung there. A fresco in vivid colour of the pair of them sitting on a sofa, with his brother standing at their father’s side, and he sitting in his mother’s arms.
They had had so much fun that morning, and Danny had often paused to stare up at it and remember the day as the years moved on. His mother had kept a copy too, framed and sitting on her side table in a corner of her little council flat, but it was only a pale imitation. Yet the comfort it had brought her had helped her resist the bane’s inevitable end far longer than anyone would believe possible.
Now it was all he had left.
“So, low and behold, the Prodigal Son returns…”
A woman glared down at him from the top of the staircase. She was a striking beauty with a sharp chin and high cheekbones framed by a wild mane of tumbling raven hair that fell almost to her narrow waist. Garbed in a long dress of crimson that hugged her curves and enhanced the contrast of her ivory skin and ink black hair, she was just as tall and as fierce and beautiful as Danny remembered.
“Erza…” he breathed out. Danny then dropped down to one knee, head bowed. “Alpha of the Lupus Latr pack, I humbly beg your protection as I wander your lands. I swear by the celestial maiden that I shall do your pack no harm, nor seek to undermine your rule, lest my wolf be tamed, and the pelt ripped from me to adorn your hall.”
It was the traditional oath a wandering wolf would swear to the resident pack Alpha when travelling through their lands, to show they meant no mischief.
And with a coy, almost mocking smile pulling at the corner of her mouth, Erza recited back, “And I grant you leave to run through my woods, hunt my prey, eat from my table and lay by my fire. Rise with your tail high, in the protection and friendship of Lupus Latr.”
With each vow, she descended a step so that by the time she was done, and he could rise, they were almost eye to eye. Hers gave him a quick once over, taking his measure. Her smile twisted like barbed wire. “Though from the look of you, it might be too late. My guard dogs weren’t too rough with you, I hope?”
Her question had Danny’s eyes dropping down to take stock of his appearance. His shirt was a ruin of torn and gore-splashed ribbons, his jeans split at the seams, and the remnants of his boots were reduced to aged sandals. “Maybe a little…” he mused to himself, before gold flecked chocolate clashed against icy blue as his gaze locked with Erza’s for the first time. “But, not nearly as rough as I was on them.”
She arched a perfectly curved eyebrow, then threw her head back in a throaty chuckle that rolled over Danny like silk. “Well, it’s good to know that humans haven’t softened you up too much.” As she spoke, she descended down the last steps of the stairs and swept past him, passing just close enough for him to catch hints of her scent fragrant with pine and freshly cut grass, before throwing open the door of what had been his father’s study. “I hope you weren’t expecting a fatted calf. I can spare a robe for your shoulders, and shoes for your feet, but first, why don’t you tell me what the hell you’re doing here.”
“Shane said you wanted to see me. He said there was something you wanted to talk to me about,” Danny answered, following her through to the study.
