Free The Forgotten by Marly Mathews Page B

he should have been expected to. She was almost being rude, she continued hesitating and found herself staring at him.
    It was if she couldn’t take her eye off him when he was near. He gave her another playful wink and blessed her again with one of his boyish smiles.
    “Come on then, I told you I don’t bite…well, I do, but now is not the time or place.” His laugher filled up the Tavern with light. 
    Lucan just might be what she needed—he might be her light in the darkness.

Chapter Seven
     
    Lord Ulwyn impatiently paced the great hall of Wythley Castle.
    “My lord, he dispatched Ramsey the way we would dispatch an annoying insect. He is a formidable threat. I do believe what the Royal Newspapers say about him is true—he and the rest of his Order have been touched by the Gods.”
    Ulwyn looked at the small man that stood near him. He was the runt of the Pack and spent his days and nights as Ulwyn’s dogsbody.
    “He is a man made of flesh and bone. He can shape shift like us. He is not immune to bodily harm, you fool. He will die just like all of the other men in his line. However, I do believe we’ve been remiss, Hadley.
    I should think we’ve neglected sending out our felicitations to the man. If he’s the by-blow of a long dead earl, he probably wants to see the inside of Wythley Castle. Maybe we should invite him up here. We’ll see if he will accept our invitation to join the Pack and if he doesn’t want to play nice—we’ll have to make sure he never leaves Wythley Castle alive.
    Now, then,” Ulwyn said, rubbing his hands briskly together. “Hadley, you can go and extend my invitation to him, we shall have a grand time together here, and serve him a feast fit for a King. Off you go, now man, you mustn’t tarry.”
    Ulwyn looked at all that he owned. He’d gone through a lot back when he’d been the last earl’s steward. He had rankled every time the earl told him to do something in his haughty overbearing way. The poison he’d spiked the earl’s wine with hadn’t acted fast enough to kill off that old piece of shit.
    He would have challenged him in a more upfront way but everyone in the Pack knew that Ulwyn didn’t have what it took to fight a Whittier Wolf. They were born with tenacious strength in their blood. Strength that he hoped the little bastard didn’t possess, because if he did, Ulwyn would be forced to kill the man in a similarly duplicitous way.
    He smiled. He hoped that Wylde would take the easy course and let him bring him into the Pack without any fuss or muss. If he didn’t—well, he’d get what he had coming to him, a shallow grave in Pauper’s Field.

Chapter Eight
     
    The beef stew that cooked on the range made the Tavern small heavenly. Bianca and Christi’s cooking couldn’t even compare to what Lucan had whipped up, and Neri knew her culinary skills lacked when compared to his, Elaine could only teach her so much. When she’d come to the Tavern she’d barely known how to boil water. Now she knew a whole lot more but she didn’t have Lucan’s innate talent for cooking that was for sure.
    “I don’t like how food is so scarce in this village. When I was a boy none wanted for food here. We were a land of plenty. This is another reason to have Ulwyn stopped. I won’t let him starve the villagers any longer!” He sighed, and gave the stew a quick stir. “Why don’t we go and sit down and chat while this cooks?” he asked.
    She wanted to happily agree but the more time she spent with him, the more she fell for him. He was admittedly a perfect man by all accounts. He could cook, fight, and he showed genuine warmth toward her.
    What more could she possibly ask for, or want?
    Bianca had her head resting on her arms over at the dining table that was in the eating area of the kitchen. She had fallen into such a deep slumber that her snores were keeping the both of them company.
    “She likes her drink, doesn’t she?” he mused, looking over at