We can always count on Terry Spear to bring a fantastic, wolf related short story for our flash fiction event every year! This is a sneak peek from a 2027 release!!

The Countess and the Wolf
by Terry Spear

Heading west, Lady Olivia soon entered the Forest of Grovely, orange and golden leaves dancing in the fall breeze before they fell.

Taking a deep breath, she filled her lungs with a crisp, earthy scent. Fallen beech leaves blanketed the chalky forest floor, releasing a rich, musky, and faintly tea-like tannin aroma as they began to break down in the morning dew. She smiled, a little sadly, remembering all the times she’d spent hunting with her father.

It had been the only time she’d really been able to spend time with him, when he wasn’t stressed about world affairs and running the estates, or fighting for the king. Or, in the last instance, fighting against the king.

Off in the distance, bells rang at the castle—their telltale warning signal that she was going to get caught.

Her heart racing, she kicked her horse to a gallop.

Dodging tree branches that threatened to pull her from her mount, she headed toward the area everyone from the Colon’s estates was forbidden to hunt in, since it was so close to the king’s lands.

Most of all, she wanted to see the wolf again. He hadn’t run away when she had seen him two days ago, when the sun began to sink below the trees, washing a yellow and pink blanket across the sky. The wolf had been striking, gray with black-and-white fur masking his face, and his most beautiful golden eyes had stared back at her, willing her to come to him. And what? Eat her?

But she hadn’t feared him. He seemed so dog-like, in a big-wolf kind of way. That’s truly what she came to hunt. Not to kill, but to see him again. To befriend him, if she could. She should have grabbed some venison from the kitchen before she left to offer to him, to make friends.

He looked…lonely. She smiled to think she could have him eating right out of her hand. Though she told herself how dangerous that could be. That he was a wild wolf, not a dog. He was a full-grown male, not a little wolf pup in need of her care.

Among the trees, she looked north and spied a buck drinking from the stream, crowned with the largest antlers she’d ever seen. If she took it down, maybe the wolf would see it as an offering.

Sitting very still, she pulled the string of her bow taut, held her breath and let the arrow fly, but the deer suddenly lifted its head, hearing or seeing something. He darted across the willow-lined stream, sending a spray of water in every direction. The arrow hit the trunk of a willow. The buck dashed for the cover of the forest on the opposite bank.

Olivia hesitated for a moment, then kicked her horse to take chase and, after riding for some distance, spotted the deer. Again, she raised her arrow to her bow and, drawing the arrow back, closed one eye, but before she could release it, a man shouted from the woods, “Grab her!”

Nearly giving her a heart attack, she saw three men on horseback, wearing brown clothes to blend in with the forest as she had, but they must have been watching her, waiting for the deer to cross into the king’s forest. They waited for her to chase the deer onto their lands so they could arrest her.

Olivia jerked her horse’s reins to the side and attempted to cross the stream before they caught her. Midway across, one of the men rode up beside her, intercepted her, and grabbed her reins. The king’s royal gamekeepers, she thought with trepidation, while another man seized her quiver of arrows.

Her heart nearly gave out. She’d never seen them before. Never been in trouble with anyone before.

“Well, well, what have we here? What do you think the king will want done with her?” the man holding her reins asked.

Her heart sped up. What would the king do to her? She didn’t have a clue.

Worse, what would her stepfather say? He’d want her married off at once and sent far away from his castle and the king’s lands. Away from her mother and everyone she knew. From the only home she’d ever known.

One of the other men reached over and grabbed Olivia’s wrist. “I do not believe he will cut off a hand as lovely as this.”

Her lips parted in horror.

“If she cannot pay his fine, perhaps she can work it off in services performed for our king.”

She choked back a gasp. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

The men all laughed. One said, “You are coming with me. You are lucky that our king is having court this very moment so you will not have to be locked up with the rest of the vermin in the tower before he sees to you.”

Still holding onto Olivia’s reins, the man rode beside her, leading her to Donnington Castle in Newbury, Berkshire. Every passing moment filled her with terror. She couldn’t let the king know who she was. What if William confined her to the castle forever?

She saw movement in the forest to her right and looked. And saw him. The gray wolf with the beautiful golden eyes. Her heart skipped a beat. She loved the wolf.

She wanted to shoo it away, to make sure the king’s men didn’t see the wolf and hunt it down. The wolf wouldn’t have permission to hunt in his forest reserves any more than she did.

She didn’t want to look away from him, and she couldn’t, as much as she knew she should for his own safety.

But then he slipped away into the forest, and the man riding beside her said, “If you are looking for deer, do not. Your hunting in the king’s preserve ends now. I will be most interested to learn how he will deal with you. We have never had a woman poaching in his woods before.”

He smiled at her and she wished she could have been like the wolf, vanishing in the forest this cool fall day.

***

Ian Montgomery could not believe it when he saw Olivia racing across the stream between her stepfather’s land and the king’s. She was impetuous, exasperating, stubborn-headed, and the most beautiful woman he’d ever chanced to meet. And he couldn’t get enough of seeing her.

She was strictly beyond his reach. Not only had her Norman stepfather married her Saxon mother, but Gregory and Ethan had been adopted by Colon. He was not their true father. Gregory, his brother, and Ian had—a side to them that would make any woman, not of their kind, flee if they knew what they were capable of.

Yet she didn’t run away the first time she saw him in the woods as a wolf on the Colons’ lands. She had looked like she wanted to…pet him. Was she mad?

Not that he would have done anything but licked her hand and her face, if she had let him. But if he had been a real wolf…

Today, when she had seen him, he had witnessed the panic in her expression, not because she was worried about the big, bad wolf, he didn’t think. More that she feared for him, when he was the one more than concerned about her safety. What had she been thinking? Riding alone in the forest, chasing a deer as it crossed into the king’s lands?

The woman would be the death of him, and of herself.

As soon as Gregory’s father learned of this, he would marry her straight away to the first acceptable lord who would want her. His father had wanted to give her time to adjust to his marriage to her mother. But the duke couldn’t allow Olivia to cause difficulty between the king and himself.

Ian growled low, racing across the stream and back to where he’d hidden his clothes. The lady was a free spirit, loved the woods as much as he did, and the hunt. And he thought she cared for him—as a wolf, certainly not as a man. As a good friend of her stepbrothers, she had scorned him. If she knew what he truly was, she would probably hunt him down herself. He didn’t think she would take flight.

He shifted out of his wolf form, the painless transformation warming his body as bones and muscles stretched until he was human again, standing naked in the chilly breeze where he’d hidden his clothes in a pile of leaves. He hurried to dress.

He had to return to the castle at once, let Gregory know what had transpired, and, if he could, intervene on the lady’s behalf. And wish she would see him as the wolf with such adoring eyes, instead of as a friend of the Colons, whom she truly despised.

***

Ian had barely reached the stables when he saw Gregory headed his way. “What in the devil are you doing here?”

Ian smiled broadly and greeted him warmly. “Aye, ‘tis good to see you, too, Gregory.” Lowering his voice, Ian said, “Your brother sent me a missive stating your lovely, free-spirited stepsister is in desperate need of a husband. And I am just the man to take her off your, well, your father’s hands. But I must warn you, I have just seen the king’s foresters take her prisoner for hunting a deer in the king’s forest.”

“God’s knees.” Gregory headed to the stables. “Alfred, saddle my horse at once.”

“Aye, my lord.”

“You are headed to see the king?” Ian asked, wanting to do so on his behalf, but he knew Gregory had a better chance of swaying the king than a Highlander would. “The matter would be simple enough if you would convince your father to allow me to marry her.”

“My stepsister is not…” Gregory glanced at the stable hand, then seized Ian’s arm and led him out of the stable so they could speak privately. “She is not one of us.” He glanced down at his plaid and bare legs. “Where are your trewes? This is England, not the Highlands.”

Ian frowned. “I was given to believe the lass needed a husband, and that any respectable laird would do. As you can see, she is in real trouble. I would take her off your hands.” Ian folded his arms across his chest. “You are not claiming her for yourself, are you?”

“Are you daft? Nay. She is my stepsister to protect from the likes of you, or me, for that matter. She cannot be yours, Ian. We’ve had this discussion before.”

Alfred brought out Gregory’s saddled horse, and Gregory quickly mounted it. “My brother will see to your needs. I will return in a bit.”

But then Ethan ran out to join Gregory. “Good to see you, Ian. Gregory, are you on your way to Trent to see your fiancé? I’ll go after Olivia.”

“God’s wounds!” Gregory rubbed his whiskery chin. “I don’t know how the woman can make me forget everything, when so much else is at stake. You must attend to a matter at once. Olivia has been taken into custody by the king’s foresters. Ensure the king knows she’s our sister, and pay her fine, if he’ll accept that.”

“Aye, at once.”

“I will go with you,” Ian said to Ethan.

Gregory gave him a look that said Ian was not marrying the woman, said his farewells, and galloped off.

Ian hoped he and Ethan would arrive before they threw Olivia into the tower. Gregory’s father would be furious with him. And with her. It only made Ian more determined to have the vivacious lass all to himself, the wolf that he was.

The end

To be continued in a full-length novel coming in 2027.