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Left with the choice of watching Genevieve die or turning her, Alexandre bit her. He became known as The Black Wolf, the first in a long line of black wolves who ruled the Langeais wolves.

Whoa. The Langeais wolves. Alain had introduced Maxime as the alpha of the Langeais wolves. The village Alexandre came from was Louncrais. As in d’Louncrais? Was this their history? Their origin story? If it was, if there were any truth to it, she was in the company, in the den of shifters capable of turning humans.

Alain and Maxime were somewhere out there colluding. Nathalie was in one of the gazillion rooms in this palatial house. And there’d be others. Any one of them could be capable of turning a human into a werewolf. Could Alain?

At the bottom of the page, separate from the text of the story, was another paragraph. This one wasn’t written in the same brownish ink as the rest. It was in red. A warning. Grace tapped her pen against the pad.

In for a dime, in for a dollar.

She translated it, and when she’d finished, she sat back in the chair contemplating what she’d learned. There’d be no little mixed species half-human, half-werewolves running around. A Langeais wolf couldn’t procreate with a human. If they were mated to one, and they wanted offspring, they had to turn them. From the portraits on the wall in the corridor, unless they were all inbred, there’d been a whole lot of turnings over the centuries. And from her newfound knowledge of her High Priestess’ recent mating to Gabriel, a man she now knew to be a Langeais wolf, turnings weren’t a thing of the past.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Alain looked up from the journal entry. It was all there. His theory. Written in the bold hand of Maxime’s long dead ancestor, Gaharet d’Louncrais. Isobella, the twenty-first-century witch, stepsister to Annabelle, who’d gone back in time to be the mate of the tenth-century Montagne twins, had figured it out centuries before. Why Cordelia hunted them.

Maxime drummed his fingers on the desk. “Is Isobella right? Is it possible Cordelia didn’t know when she cast the spell something like this would happen?”

Alain shrugged. “It’s a curse. She might not have anticipated it would suck her power, but curses are unpredictable at best and likely to rebound on you threefold.” It wasn’t just a cautionary tale to keep novice witches in line. Curses had consequences. “And there’s the involvement of the other witch to consider, too.”

“But do we…?” Maxime grimaced.

“You want to know if we have Cordelia’s power flowing through our veins.” Alain wasn’t going to back away from the truth. “I don’t like it any more than you, but oui, I believe so.”

He’d read between the lines in his family’s grimoire. He’d studied their history, their clashes with Cordelia, all outlined within its pages. Their near extinction that had led to the creation of the sacred amulets, the splitting of the pack. All moments in their past, like the events surrounding Alexandre becoming the first ever Langeais wolf. Genevieve’s turning, which had required the assistance of Constance’s coven. But it was a relief—and of grave concern—to have his theories substantiated by another witch. One who’d been witness to Cordelia’s power.

Cordelia’s curse wasn’t a lineage one, but it did flow through every Langeais wolves’ veins. And thanks to the intervention by another witch, with every bite, every turning, the mixing of blood and saliva transferred the curse. It’s what had created them, and what continued to create them. Every Langeais wolf had a piece of Cordelia’s energy, of her power.

That was the greatest gift and the worst thing possible. Cordelia wasn’t a woman scorned. She was a powerful, evil witch who, with every new Langeais wolf born or made, as the Langeais wolves had thrived, lost a little more of her power. And she wanted it back. Though she was now a woman in her eighties, she wasn’t about to stop trying.

“And what do you make of Isobella’s and Gaharet’s conclusion of their battle with Cordelia?”

The mud creatures. That Cordelia had the power to call the elements to do her bidding, to attack the Langeais wolves with creatures made of mud, was alarming. But back in the tenth century, the Langeais wolves had been few, the pack staring down their own extinction. The two packs splintered from the original, the Rus wolves and the Ludenwic wolves, hadn’t been faring much better. Cordelia’s power would’ve been at its greatest.

Then Isobella had banished her, confined her to the twenty-first century, and the Langeais wolves had thrived. Their pack today was proof of that. But it was what had happened after that, that Maxime spoke of. With Cordelia banished, her mud creatures had ceased to exist. “I agree with them. If Cordelia dies, we die with her.”

Putain. It was a weight off his shoulders to have this knowledge shared. To have more than him working on finding a solution.

Maxime thumped the desk, stood up, and leaned heavily on it. “I was hoping not to hear you say that.” Maxime waved away his protest. “I know you alluded to it this morning, but… Do you think your curator will find a solution?”

“We can hope, but I don’t think we can count on that happening.” She might be as much of a dead end as every other avenue he’d tried. “We don’t know how much time we have left.”

Maxime paced back and forth. There were a few more lines around his eyes, and a stiffness in his shoulders, as though he braced himself against the weight he carried there. Maxime had aged faster than he should have. It was the burden of leadership.

Like Alain, he’d known about the threat to their pack’s existence, and while both had been searching for a solution, Alain had done so out in the world, drinking fine wine, enjoying a multitude of women and their submission in his playroom. Maxime had spent the better part of his adult life here, in this house, in this office. He’d had to face their pack members, young and old, day in and day out, aware they hovered unknowingly on the verge of death. He’d looked them in the eye, greeted them, asked about their children, their troubles, their dreams, and never once burdened them with his secret. And Maxime’s responsibility to their pack was what was keeping him from leaving and hunting down his mate.

The resentment Alain had harbored toward his cousin for so long melted away, and he had a sudden desire not to be here with Maxime, but with Grace. “The grimoire is the key. There’s something in it Cordelia needs. Maybe Grace, having met Cordelia in the flesh, might be able to ascertain what it is.”

“Do you trust her?”

Putain. He wanted to. He wanted her to trust him, too.

“Finding her mother and freeing her from Cordelia will certainly help,” said Maxime, “but that could take a while. You know how much trouble Pierre and Louis had locating Cordelia once. They’ve found no trace of her since. She’s not going to make it easy for us.”

“We could show her Cordelia’s grimoire.”

Maxime nodded. “Oui. We let her see for herself what that witch is capable of. She’ll not want to hand it over to her after she’s had a read of a few of those spells.”

“And she’s my mate. That has to count for something.”