Her Wolf King

{le marche}

THE BARGAIN

A WOLF BURST INTO the church on all fours and howled at the ceiling. Immediately, panicked guests jumped from their seats and began making similar noises. Lenore should have screamed with them. She should have gathered her skirts in her hands and begun running for her life. Even Kirk looked frightened, seizing a cane from his father and brandishing it at the wolf as though it would help defend him at all. She stifled a giggle at the sight before realizing there was no point. 

Instead, she threw back her head and laughed. Peals of laughter rang out of her, louder than any wedding bells. 

The wolf growled. The guests might have looked at her hysteria with raised eyebrows if it weren't for the terror clearly coursing through them as they made for the door. The priest began shouting and directing people to leave through the other exit, a pair of heavy double doors that had been barred. One of the men was attempting to pull a curtain rod off of the wall and use it as a javelin of sorts, with its pointed ends.

Her almost-husband seemed split between looking at her as if she were insane and leaping onto a church pew to avoid the growling mongrel. "What is wrong with you?" he shouted.

She noted, almost absently, that Kirk didn't make any attempt to pull her behind him, to protect her, or even to protect his elderly mother, who was screaming, pale, and swooning against the pulpit of the church.

"This is rather amusing," she said, just as the wolf leaped at her.

Kirk's answer was lost in the cacophony of howls and frightened shrieking. The men were ushering the women out of the building via a back entrance. The wolf's muzzle nudged at her knees, almost as if he were playing with her. Kirk made a rather undignified sound. She stopped laughing, even though his unmanly, cowardly response was more entertaining to Lenore than half a dozen circus troupes.

He fled out the back door with the women. She and the wolf were alone. Its large head tilted up to look at her, green eyes wide. Keen. Knowing. Cunning.

"Well, now, why did you come to disturb my wedding like this?" Reaching out a tentative hand, she patted him on his furry head, behind the ears.

Her white satin gown now trampled, she hiked up the hem to more easily clamber over an overturned pew. "A hand would be nice."

He made a low, keening noise in the back of his throat, then a huff. As if he were laughing at her. Perhaps she was. She must have looked as insane as Kirk thought, essentially talking to herself in this empty church. Her voice echoed off of the stone walls as she made her way down the aisle, sans husband.

"Did you hear me?" she wondered aloud. "When I touched the ring... When I refused to be Kirk's wife..."

In an instant, he was no longer a wolf, but a fully clothed man, in a flurry of black smoke that vanished before she could blink. He cleared his throat. "Yes. The necklace was a bond - it allowed me to get a sense of when you might be accepting the bargain. I came as soon as I could."

"Like a dog," she said. "Coming when called."

He shot her a dark look. "Has anyone ever told you that you are far too impudent for your own good?"

"I've only been called a hoyden by my former fiance if that counts," she said, unsure of why she would share it with him. She was even more uncertain of the relief, the jubilant sensation, that had flooded through her veins when she'd seen the wolf burst into the church. Why she'd felt this overwhelming sense of liberation upon seeing him there.

To be honest, she'd felt like a damsel seeing her knight in shining armour appear at the door, but she wasn't about to tell him that.

Everett didn't respond to her comment. Instead, he reached into his pack, a leather saddlebag that she hadn't noticed until he opened it, and pulled out...