WolfeBlade: de Wolfe Pack Generations Kathryn Veque (interesting books to read .TXT) 📖

“It cannot be helped,” he said. “He has unfinished business – I understand that – but the angst and fury he is displaying in battle is going to get him killed.”

“He’s not been reckless that I’ve seen,” Blayth said.

Troy shook his head. “Not reckless,” he said. “But not exactly cautious, either. I cannot lose him, Blayth. If I did, everything of Helene would be gone and I am not sure I could bear that. I know that sounds strange, given that I love Rhoswyn and we have many children together. We are quite happy. But I was happy with Helene, too, and Andreas is the last vestige of that happiness. It is a part of me that I cannot lose.”

Scott understood. He put his hand on Troy’s shoulder. “I see the same thing in Will and Tor,” he said. “The last remnants of my life with Athena. I see them now and see the men they have become, and I know she would have been so proud. I have a wife I adore and nine children, and I would not trade my life for anything, but I understand when you say that you look at your eldest and see the remnants from a past life. It becomes part of your very aura, part of the air you breathe, and that is why I think sending Dray to Falstone is for the best. It will take him out of the action.”

Troy nodded, but his heart was heavy. “And he knows it, as Blayth said,” he mumbled. “But he’s obeying his orders, like a good knight.”

Before Scott or Blayth could reply, Corey and Reed came flying into the solar, heading for their father.

“Papa!” Corey said breathlessly. “Dray is going to defend a castle and he said we could come! May we, Papa? May we?”

Troy looked at his excitable boys and he started to chuckle. He looked at Scott. “Well?” he said. “Should we send the wild animals with him?”

As Blayth stood back and smirked, Scott was on the spot. Corey and Reed turned their attention to their uncle and nearly bowled the man over in their excitement.

“Uncle Scott,” Corey said, his hands on Scott’s shoulders, grabbing at him. “May we please go and help defend the castle? It would be very good experience for us!”

“Very good!” Reed echoed.

“Please, Uncle Scott!”

Scott was being buffeted between the two of them and he finally put him his hands, pushing them away.

“Very well,” he said, simply to shut them up. “But you listen to Dray. Do everything he tells you. If I hear you have disobeyed the slightest command, I will send you back to Kenilworth and you’ll stay there until you can learn to obey. Is that clear?”

The threat of the master knights of Kenilworth Castle, the premier training castle in England for knights, was a serious threat, indeed. Both Corey and Reed nodded eagerly and Troy grabbed Corey by the arm.

“Tell Dray you may go,” he said. “Ask him what help he needs to prepare and do everything he tells you. If he has nothing for you, then you will take his armor, my armor, and your uncles’ armor and clean it until it shines. You will do this before dawn or you do not go. Is that clear?”

The boys continued to nod, grabbing him and kissing him as he fought them off. Like their uncles, Scott and Blayth, they were kissers. They kissed everyone, something their mother loved but something their father thought was annoying. After sufficiently smooching on their father’s head, they fled the solar, hooting and yelling like barbarians in their excitement. Blayth burst into quiet laughter and even Scott grinned as Troy covered his face.

“My God, what have I done to Dray?” he moaned. “And Rhos – my wife is not going to like that I have sent them away.”

“Rhos is a warrior,” Scott said. “She understands.”

Troy’s hands came away from his face. “Aye, she does, but that doesn’t mean she’ll like it,” he said. Then, he sighed heavily. “But their presence may very well distract Dray from his angst. If he must be responsible for that pair, it may be the help he needs in cooling whatever burns in his blood.”

Scott turned back to his table as some of the other knights began to filter out of the room. “Everybody’s blood is burning these days,” he said, looking back to his map. “The Scots are burning, Dray is burning. Unfortunately, we have to be concerned with both.”

That was quite true. As the room cleared except for Tor and Markus, snoring in front of the fire, Scott and Troy and Blayth took a seat at the table, drinking the watered wine and eating food that had been brought to them, speaking of something other than battle.

Family… friends… they were much more pleasant subjects than the rampaging Scots.

But something told them that this respite would be quite brief.

Tomorrow might bring them more hell than they could handle.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Falstone Castle

“There’s trouble.”

Gavriella paused, looking up from the tally of stores in the vault. A fungus had moved through the turnips they’d had stored for winter and, by the time they caught it, they’d lost half of their supply. She and a pair of servants were in the vaults underneath the keep of Falstone, separating the unsalvageable from the salvageable, when her father’s only knight, the commander of his eight hundred man army, found her.

She found herself looking into Sir Lukas de Dere’s serious face.

“What trouble?” she asked, pushing a stray lock of hair from her face. “More trouble than what we already have here? I am afraid this rot has gotten into other vegetables I simply do not yet see.”

Lukas shook his head. He was a young knight, handsome with intense blue eyes and cropped brown hair, and he was deeply dedicated to his duty. So dedicated, in fact, that when his wife became sickly last year, he’d sent her home to live with