Enchanting the King (The Beauty's Beast Fantasy Series) (27 page)

The crashing of hooves through the underbrush filled her ears, along with the bloodthirsty cries of the hunting dogs and the triumphant shouts of men.

She stood at the edge of a small clearing. A hoyden in her youth, Kathryn was out of practice now and had a little difficulty maneuvering with her hampering skirts. Nevertheless, she swung herself up quickly enough onto the first branch of the nearest tree.

Just in time too. The king and his entourage, having trapped their quarry at last, thundered into the clearing, their giant horses trampling over the place where she had been standing.

The wolf smelled the dogs before he heard the sounds of the hunt echoing in his forest. The hounds scented him before they gave chase, howling and baying while they tracked his progress through the woods. His werewolf’s scent, and the stench of magic about him, always drove poor beasts like hunting dogs mad.

Ah, well.
The wolf believed himself rather smarter than even the wiliest hunting dog and had tricks enough to bring himself safely home. He stretched his muscles and broke into a run, shoulders flexing, muscles singing at the exercise.

He caught a hint of smell then—the merest breath to fill his nostrils. But it was enough. A spasm of grief choked him, and a whine broke from his throat. The wolf stopped. He could not have moved if he’d wanted to—and he did not want to.

My king,
he thought, just before the hounds caught up to him. He ran then, cursing himself as he darted between the trees and slogged through the tangles of underbrush.
Idiot. You let one smell on the air distract you long enough for the dogs to get your scent. Now what are you going to do?

Befuddled and at war with himself, he fumbled through his escape, stumbling, taking wrong turns. His baser instincts pulled with every fiber of muscle for him to slip away and lose himself in the forest, foiling this hunt as he had so many others. Yet his human heart, and what parts of his head it still had sway over, urged him in the other direction—back to the humans. Back to the king.

His hesitation, his dreadful indecision, gave the hunting dogs the edge. The wolf wore himself out running from them
and
from himself. If he didn’t focus—and soon—the dogs would get him.

The swift hounds chased him for hours, wearing the wolf down, tiring him out so he would be too weak to give more than a token fight at the end. He remembered this tactic well from when
he
had been the hunter on the horse. He winced remembering all the poor beasts his prized hounds had chased down for him and the terrified, fatigued animals he had put to death as a man and ceremoniously carved up to feed to his hunting dogs.

At least I know what happens next.

The largest of the hounds caught up with the werewolf, pacing along beside him. The hound’s rasping breaths rang loud in the wolf’s ears. Dog and wolf were of similar height, though the wolf’s body had more weight to it, larger muscles.

The hound, a whipcord of wiry strength with jaws of iron, pounced on the wolf. The werewolf dodged, and the deathblow meant for his neck fell instead to his shoulder. Searing heat erupted along the wolf’s side, and he snarled. The hound thrashed and bit down again with bruising strength.

With true remorse as the wolf remembered how fond he had been of his own hounds, he savagely locked onto the dog’s neck. With a bone-shattering crunch, the wolf snapped the dog’s neck and ripped its throat open.

Gurgling, eyes rolling back, the dog fell dead to the soft turf of the forest. Even as the wolf mourned the beast, he reveled in the metallic stench of the dog’s blood and savored the hot broth. Yet he did not linger long over his kill as the other dogs caught up to their dead leader. The thunder of hooves and the jeering calls of men echoing among the trees meant their masters weren’t far behind.

With a whimper, he leapt into motion again, his long strides making his injured shoulder flare with pain. The wolf’s stomach rumbled from hunger. He could still taste the hound’s blood in his mouth, mingling with some of his own. His body ached from fatigue.

His wounded shoulder betrayed him, and he stumbled. Falling, he rolled across the spongy earth, kicking up the rich scent of mud and the sharp tang of broken greenery.

Wet and sticky with blood, the wolf rolled to his feet with a snarl. He blinked bleary eyes to focus on his surroundings. The dogs closed in around him, pressing him back to a tight knot of trees. He faced the pack of snarling hounds as their masters rode into sight just through the trees. He tried to stagger out of the clearing, to shelter, to safety, but a hound snapped at him and, growling low, forced the wolf back.

The hunt thundered into the clearing, and the ground vibrated beneath his paws from the force of so many horses. Riders stalked the wolf on all sides, cornering him. Slowly the dogs crept nearer to tear him limb from limb for the delectation of their keepers.

Let them come.
He snapped at the nearest hound, growling loud enough that his whole body seemed to vibrate with the sound.
I am not a knight anymore, but I can still fight. This I will do to the end. To the death.

Through his haze of fatigue, he wondered idly why the dogs had not finished him yet. His human memory cheerfully supplied the answer to the wolf’s addled wits: in a hunt like this, the actual kill was saved for the highest-ranking member. In this case: King Thomas.

The king was going to kill him. Then the nobles and other worthies would hack him to bits. Very ceremoniously and reverently, of course, but all the same, there would not be much left of the wolf at the end. Then, last, in reward for a job well done, the dogs might get to eat some of his mangled carcass. As far as an ugly death went, it was hard to top that.

But oh, his body ached and his heart hurt, and if he got to see his king again…
Fool that I am, that might almost be worth it.

Thanks for reading
Enchanting the King
. I hope you enjoyed it.

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  The Beauty’s Beast Fantasy Series
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E.D. Walker, a native of Los Angeles, is the author of The Beauty’s Beast Fantasy Series that begins with
Enchanting the King
. As a child, she grew up knowing all the words to the songs in Disney’s fairy tale retellings. (
Sleeping Beauty
was always her favorite.) Lo and behold, she eventually grew up to write fairy tale retellings of her own.

By day, E.D. helps corral engineers for NASA (without doing any of the tech stuff herself, of course). By night, she loves to write her clever heroes and heroines bantering their way to true love. E.D. is a total geek, a movie buff, and a mediocre swing dancer. E.D. and her husband live in sunny Southern California with two of the neediest housecats on the planet.

For more information about E.D., please visit her
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