Chambers - Gentleman wolf: Capital Wolves, #1

Gentleman Wolf

An elegant werewolf in Edinburgh...

1788 . When Lindsay Somerville, the most elegant werewolf in Paris, learns that the man who held him in abject captivity for decades is on his way to France, intent on recapturing him, he knows he must leave the Continent for his own safety. Lindsay cannot take the risk of being recapturedhe may have been free for a century but he can still feel the ghost of his old chains under his fine clothes.

... on a mission...

While hes in Edinburgh, Lindsay has been tasked with acquiring the Naismith Papers, the writings of a long-dead witchfinder. It should be a straightforward missionall Lindsay has to do is charm an elderly book collector, Hector Cruikshank. But Cruikshank may not be all he seems, and there are others who want the papers.

... meets his match

As if that were not enough, while tracking down the Naismith Papers, Lindsay meets stubborn architect Drew Nicol. Although the attraction between them is intense, Nicol seems frustratingly determined to resist Lindsays advances. Somehow though, Lindsay cant seem to accept Nicols rejection. Is he just moonstruck, or is Nicol bonded to him in ways he doesnt yet understand?

Note: this is the first book of a duology the story continues and will complete in the second book, Master Wolf.

Gentleman Wolf

Copyright 2019 Joanna Chambers

Cover art: Felix dEon

Edited by: P&M Editorial Services

Published by Joanna Chambers

ISBN: 978-1-9996720-0-3

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or business establishments or organisations is completely coincidental.

P LEASE DO NOT HARM the authors livelihood by using file-sharing sites.

Prologue

M acCormaics Keep, Achinvaig, Scotland

March 1682

A WARENESS RETURNED to Lindsay one sensation at a time.

First, the dank, rough stone beneath his cheek. Then the stale, chill air of the dungeon.

The pain came lastwhen he tried to move his thin and wasted body. The agony of movement forced an inhuman noise from him, like the whimper of a dog.

A cur .

Swallowing, he tasted blood, sharp and metallic on his tongue.

He tried to open his eyes but only managed the right one. The left stayed stubbornly closed. Not that there was anything to see down here.

The thick, soupy darkness of the dungeon was all too familiar to him. Hed lost track of how many yearsor decadeshed spent being thrown into and plucked out of this putrid hole, over and over. A plaything to be used for his masters entertainment.

For all that time, his life had been nothing but shadows and madness and pain. And the pain was very far from being the worst of those things. Sometimes he even welcomed it. At least pain anchored him in the here and now. When it faded, there was nothing. Endless, immeasurable nothing, and no way of counting the hours or days or weeks.

An ordinary man would have perished long ago from such treatment, but Lindsay was no longer an ordinary man. Though what he now was, he did not fully understand.

When first hed come to the Keep, hed been a handsome, vain young officer, so fine in his uniform. So proud of his looks. He could scarcely remember that laughing, beautiful boy anymore. Over the decades of incarceration, his uniform had turned to rags and fallen from his wasted form. Now he was a sorry, naked creature, pale from lack of sun, his once shining dark hair grown matted and filthy.

He was physically stronger though. Many times stronger than the innocent mortal hed once been. Now he was a two-natured creature, a man with a powerful beast inside him that the moon could draw out. A man who did not age, and whose physical wounds healed virtually overnight.

Lindsay sometimes fantasised about death. It was possible for his kind to diea blow powerful enough to sever the spine in two would do it. But even if such a blow could be self-inflicted, part of his curse was a burning and irrepressible desire for survival, an instinct that prevented him seeking out his own end, no matter how wretched his circumstances might be.

In the end, the physical strength his new nature gave him was for nothing. He was as weak as a babe in all the ways that counted. Slave to a master he had no power to disobey, and slave to his own fierce drive to live. Unable to choose death, he was bound to his fate as surely as Prometheus to his rock with no escaping the endless, repeated torment.

Groaning, Lindsay shifted his body and began to inventory his hurts. His ribs ached on both sides. His upper back and shoulders were raw and stinging. His left hand was agonyhe cradled it against his chest, the right one cupped around it. What else hurt? Oh yes, his closed left eye. And every muscle, without exception.

He slowly moved his aching body into a sitting position, his chains stirring sluggishly. Once up, he raised both hands to his face, the injured one and the good one together, tentatively probing the area around his closed left eye with shaking fingers. The surrounding flesh was puffy, his eyelashes gummed together with something sticky.

His fingers crept to his throat next, his gut twisting sickly when he felt the cold silver band there, sleek and smooth against his fingertips.

He remembered Duncans parting words of the night before, as Mercer had half-carried, half-dragged Lindsays exhausted body off to the dungeon.

Collar him. Thatll give the cur something to think about till we get back.

As much as Lindsay hated his beast nature, being unable to shift into that form was even worse. That was what the collar did, imprisoning the animal inside him. Until the silver collar was removed, he would be stuck in his human form. The realisation made him raise his head and howl with desperation and grief, his human voice a sad imitation of his beasts. Bad enough to be imprisoned in this dungeon. Being collared was a second, more horrible incarceration. One that deprived him of the full healing power of his shift, leaving him to mend his hurts in the slow human way.

Anguish overwhelmed him as he thought of the long misery-laden days and nights ahead of him. Dropping his head to his chest, he let the tears fall, not attempting to hold them back. He was glad of them, in truth. They would bathe his injured eye, and he needed all the help he could get to heal while his master was gone.

He wondered how long Duncan would be away. Had he mentioned that last night? Lindsay raked through the ashes of his memories, trying to recall some detail that might give him a clue. He hated probing his memory even more than he hated probing his injured bodycouldnt bear to recall the long hours of humiliation and agony. Duncan was never satisfied till he brought out the cur in Lindsay. The pathetic, cowardly, shrinking part of him that lurked deep inside. The part that would do anything to live, to be spared pain... to please his master.