“My grandfather,” he went on, “rebuilt this hall when he redesigned the house upon my great-grandfather’s death. He increased the size of Greyburn by half again, but the Great Hall was his proudest achievement. This Gothic style was not fashionable in his day, but he wished to re-create an older time. A different way of life.”
Cassidy looked up at the banners, the shields, the old weapons rusting high on the walls. ” The sun came dazzling through the leaves,’ ” she quoted, ” ‘and flamed upon the brazen greaves of bold Sir Lancelot.’ ”
“Lancelot, if he ever existed, was human.” He turned to face her, and he looked just as grim as he had in Ulfington, when he’d frightened Emily Roddam. “My grandfather built this for the loups-garou. For our kind alone, and those unquestioningly loyal to us.”
Instinctively Cassidy glanced at the ominous carvings over the fireplace. As if he sensed her movement, Braden reached up to touch them again.
“All the carvings in this room but these were commissioned when my grandfather was young,” he said. “This final panel was added when I was a boy. What do you see when you look at it, Cassidy?”
She shivered a little and said the first thing that came into her mind. “The wolves have conquered the people.”
“Yes.” He let his hand fall and moved to the table. “When he was young, my grandfather came to recognize that our race was dying, because too many of us over the generations had interbred with humans. We were losing the gifts which made us what we are—the very abilities that make us superior to ordinary men. For we are superior, Cassidy—that is something you must always remember.”
This was the opportunity Cassidy had been waiting for—explanations to fill all the gaps in her knowledge, a chance to learn what Braden cared about, what he wanted. But his words chilled her, and all at once she saw the awesome vastness of Greyburn as something other than a fairy-tale castle or the stuff of romantic dreams.
“My grandfather had this final carving made when he realized how treacherous humans can be,” Braden said, “when he knew that we can no longer afford to live among them as if we were equals. They outnumber us—they always have. But that is their only advantage.”
Cassidy walked slowly to the table and pulled out a chair. It felt as heavy as a blacksmith’s anvil. “I don’t understand.”
Passion blazed in his face then, a fierce conviction. “You will,” he said. “You must. You will learn to think of Greyburn as your only home, we your only family. The rest of the world no longer matters.”
The rest of the world. But he didn’t mean only London or New Mexico or even all the places Cassidy had never seen. He meant people, too. People who weren’t were-wolves like he was—or like Rowena, and Quentin, and Edith Holt.
Cassidy remembered Emily Roddam and her bubbling offer of friendship. It had felt so good to talk to someone who liked her just as she was, who wanted to know her better without judgment or expectations.
But Emily Roddam was not a Forster. She was not loup-garou. She’d been afraid of Braden, and he had wanted her to be afraid.
“At the train station,” she said, “you didn’t want me to talk to Emily Roddam.”
“The Roddams are human. They have no part in our destiny.”
Cassidy fisted her hands on the table. “She wanted to be my friend—”
“It was such friendships that nearly destroyed our kind, made us lose the very essence of what we are.” He loomed over her, deadly serious. “Forget your past. Forget everything that made you less than what you were meant to be.”
What she was meant to be. Most other life she’d struggled with that question, bereft of the knowledge her mother would have passed on if she’d lived.
But this wasn’t what she reckoned on. She’d thought that finding her family would be an adding, not a taking away.
“You hate humans,” she said with sudden understanding.
“Hate them? No. But I acknowledge them for what they are.” His mouth tightened into a bitter half smile. “What was your life like among them?”
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