by Parker Foye
Ward & Weft
By Parker Foye
In this male/male paranormal historical romance, warden and wolf must reignite the magic that first bonded them together.
Wales, 1912
For generations, the magic wardens and the fierce werewolves combined forces to keep their enemies at bay. But when his family breaks longstanding ties to the pack that’s been a part of his life since birth, warden Griffith Jones sets out on a journey to learn all he can of the magic that will reunite them. And reunite Griffith with the first—and only—man he’s ever loved.
Llywelyn ap Hywel, son of the alpha, can’t let painful—or passionate—memories of Griffith distract him. His dwindling pack is in trouble, reeling from loss and locked in a grim battle with a dangerous rival—a pack with a warden who hasn’t abandoned them. A warden whose dark magic could destroy them all.
Up against enemies determined to steal their land and end life as they know it, Griffith and Llywelyn must fight as one to protect all they hold dear—their territory, their people and the fiery love they can no longer deny.
This book is approximately 33,000 words
One-click with confidence. This title is part of the Carina Press Romance Promise: all the romance you’re looking for with an HEA/HFN. It’s a promise!
Carina Press acknowledges the editorial services of Anne Scott
Dedication
For those trying to find their way home.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Excerpt from Wolf in King’s Clothing by Parker Foye
Acknowledgments
Also by Parker Foye
About the Author
Chapter One
Near Aberarth, Wales
November, 1912
Trains didn’t run to Aberarth. Roads barely did. Griffith had to travel to Lampeter to get anywhere close, with nothing between London and Lampeter to divert his attention. All Griffith had seen since crossing the border was sheep. He didn’t remember Wales having so many sheep, when he was a boy.
He snickered into his book. Perhaps wolves are to blame.
The warden in his book illustration—purportedly showing the best way to create loci for fire castings—had a stern expression. Lighthearted at the thought of his long journey’s end, Griffith stuck his tongue out at the dour so-and-so. Belatedly, he darted a look to check his carriage remained empty and no one saw his foolishness. In doing so, he spotted the conductor approaching and set his book down.
“For Lampeter, sir?” the conductor asked. Griffith nodded. “We’re coming along now. Please get ready.”
They both eyed the books taking several empty seats, the conductor with amusement, and Griffith with despair.
“I’ll just—Thank you,” Griffith said, calling after the conductor’s back. He grimaced at the illustration. “And don’t you start. You’ll burn your fingers off, doing that, and then who’ll be laughing?” Griffith tried not to see the scars on his own hands, or the tip missing from his left little finger. Someone had been laughing then, and their joy had scarred deeper than any wound.
They arrived at Lampeter with the afternoon, and Griffith disembarked with heavy steps. As the few other passengers met their companions with smiles, only absence greeted Griffith. Four years since he’d set foot on Welsh soil. Since he’d breathed Welsh air. Since he’d heard howling and knew himself home.
He fancied his shivering was due to the November chill and knew himself a liar.
Welcome home, Griffith Jones.
With a sigh, Griffith heaved up his bag and started on the miles to Aberarth and his grandmother’s cottage, where memories hid in fields overgrown and fallow in turn. The sea guided him, growing ever larger as he drew closer, while the hills loomed like omens. Like promises left unfulfilled. The November sky greyed with drizzle as Griffith walked, a fine mist turning the land mythical.
Griffith had been warming himself under the Italian sun when he’d learned of his grandmother’s death. He’d spent the summer—his third since leaving Wales—selling wardings for handfuls of lira; silly things, to give dreamless sleep or cure wine-thick heads. Big workings had turned his stomach since fleeing his former master, but a warden without wardings was a pointless creature.
When the letter arrived at his pensione, it ended Griffith’s Florentine summer. Shored by the stone of the Ponte Vecchio, he’d read constellations reflected in the waters of the Arno and known he’d never see the sky the same way. Known, by the King’s head on the travel-stained envelope, its postmarked date some six months past, that he’d never go home again. Home had gone before him, scattered on a Welsh hillside where wolves still howled.
After Italy, shame had pushed Griffith east with dogged determination, as he immersed himself again in the search for old magic that had first chased him from Wales—and Llywelyn ap Hywel, son of the alpha. Whenever the moon grew fat he looked away from it.
Griffith had spent a lot of nights looking away from the moon in the year between Florence and his return to Aberarth.
He grunted, switching his bag to his other shoulder. I should have packed fewer books. But Llywelyn had always loved mysteries, and one couldn’t return from travelling without souvenirs.
Griffith scanned the horizon. Had the cottage always been so far?
And then, abruptly, there he was. He recognised that tree, that gathering of standing stones, the beginning of the Hywel forest and the hill rising behind it. The faintly discoloured grass where warding stones were buried, once forming a defensive barrier around Jones-Hywel territory. Magic had faded over the centuries, some scholars said due to industrialisation; as a child, Griffith had fancied he could feel magic skim over him when he crossed the boundaries, though his grandmother had said no.
When he stepped over them as an adult, he found land the same as any other.
Letting out the breath he’d been holding, Griffith headed deeper into the territory. Past the tangle of trees, and over the stream running west to eventually meet the sea, he let his feet guide him to the cottage where his grandmother raised him. The Warden’s Cottage. One room, with a well, and no plumbing to speak of, but it had been home for nineteen years. When light filtered through the west window on an evening, their humble cottage had turned gold.
Griffith wanted to weep when he saw what had become of it.
“It’s so small,” he said to the pigeons nesting on the windowsill, in the gaping wound of the broken window. They ruffled their feathers at him as he let his bag drop with a thump. He eased open the door hanging from its hinge, taking a step inside.
Winter had arrived in Griffith’s soul with his grandmother’s passing. From the looks of the cottage, their weather had been similar. Someone had removed every personal possession from the house, leaving a cold shell of a place. Even the cobwebs were abandoned. One of the wolves would know where the things had gone. Daffyd, perhaps. He got his paws in everyone’s business.
All that remained was the kitchen table, scored with failed experiments in cooking and wardings, and the wobbly stool. Griffith dragged the stool to the empty hearth and sat, fishing a warding from his pocket and striking it with the flint hanging from his belt. He tossed the warding in the grate and flames licked up instantly. It’d taken months to craft the charm, after he’d nearly blown his hands off trying to ape his grandmother’s wo
rk, before she’d shown him how. Llywelyn had tormented him all the while. “Have you heard of a match?” he’d ask, watching Griffith. Him and Daffyd competing with each other in sarcasm.
Heat stung Griffith’s eyes and he rubbed them. Glancing at the etchings around the hearth, he traced his grandmother’s work, and that of her parents before her, and theirs, until his fingertips tingled. Catching sight of his scars, he made a fist and shoved to his feet.
Impossible to look forward without knowing where he came from. He had to show his respects.
* * *
A wolf waited for Griffith at the wardens’ memorial, like a dream Griffith had too many times to count, and more pleasant than most. Grief weighted Griffith’s heart, doubly strong, for those interred beneath little white stones—no graves for wardens—and for the years between his last meeting with the wolf and this.
“Hello, Llywelyn.”
Llywelyn flicked his tail and turned away, advancing ahead of Griffith along the edge of the memorial garden, where yellow gorse grew unchecked. Griffith wrinkled his nose, transported to childhood and flowers drying in the cottage. With one foot in the past, he let both follow the familiar path along the white stones, one for each Jones warden gone before him: some small, some large, some crusted with lichen as if they’d been pulled from the bed of Cardigan Bay. Each with a rune carved beneath, save the newest. Because Griffith hadn’t been home to carve when his grandmother passed away. The last Jones warden. Or the last deserving the name.
He folded to his knees and closed his eyes, letting drizzle disguise his tears. Air shifted as Llywelyn moved beside him, and Griffith opened his eyes, settling on his heels. He rested his scarred hand next to a large paw. Not touching. Four years since he’d brushed shoulders with brown fur, and it might as well have been a lifetime. He didn’t have the right to touch.
“How about you? Did you miss me at all?” he asked his companion, receiving a flicker of ears in reply. Griffith huffed. “That’s what I thought.”
Griffith pressed his fingers more firmly to the soil, riming his nails with dirt. The mutilated little finger of his left hand seemed more obscene than usual. Gorse-scented breeze stirred his hair, grown long about his ears.
“I miss her.”
The little white stones, the pale accusers of his legacy, said nothing. Griffith bowed before them, waiting to feel better. Waiting to feel like he could finally set his burden down. Llywelyn snuffled and ducked his head, coarse fur brushing Griffith’s face. The first time they’d touched since—since the last time. Griffith’s heart twisted in his chest and his grief rose like the tide.
He expected to hear howling. Silence rang instead.
Griffith wiped his face with his dirty hand and pressed his fingers to the earth, burying his hand to the wrist in rain—and tear-soft soil. Closing his eyes, he searched for a spark until he thought he might strain something. Until he imagined his grandmother standing beside him and asking what in God’s name he thought he was doing. Like gods had any business in magic.
As with every other time he’d tried, the soil refused to share any of its secrets. Griffith withdrew his hand and wiped it on his trousers, curling on his side to rest his head against the white stones. They were cool, like his grandmother’s hands had been. Like the touch of her wardings, even-tempered where Griffith’s were chaotic. His master had called him undisciplined. Screamed it, spitting his disappointment in Griffith’s face.
Griffith sighed and pushed the memory away.
More important was Llywelyn opposite him. Brown fur and amber eyes. The bite taken from his ear was new, as was his size, near equal to Griffith, but the way they lay by one another and breathed was the same as always. Llywelyn ap Hywel, son of the Hywel werewolf alpha, and Griffith’s brother by all but blood. Griffith would have to travel farther than Bohemia to forget Llywelyn.
When Llywelyn breathed in, Griffith breathed out. Fur and hair ruffled like for like.
“Are you going to speak to me?” Griffith dared to ask. Drizzle seeped through his jacket, and dew through his trousers. His shoulders and back still ached from heaving his luggage. Fever seemed a fair trade for answers.
He should have kept his fat mouth shut. With a flick of his tail, Llywelyn bounded to four feet and snapped his teeth at Griffith. More playful than not, but those teeth could take a man’s hand if Llywelyn pleased. Griffith was out of practice with the way wolves played, and his hand darted to the arrowhead charm at his waist. It remained cool and Griffith ordered his heart to calmness, as Llywelyn danced from side to side like coals burned under his paws.
Griffith closed his eyes and rested his head on his hands, turning the damaged one beneath. “If that’s a no, you can bugger off. It’s been a damn long day.”
Counting to ten, he opened his eyes. Llywelyn was gone.
Griffith rolled over on the grass and splayed his fingers. Seeking out magic again. Again finding nothing. And he’d been so sure he’d find something.
What use had a warden in a land without magic?
He’d asked himself the same question five years ago, with his grandmother content in her friendship with the pack and the silence of wardings older than the first white stone. All the things he’d seen since, and he still had no answers. As foolish a boy as he’d always been.
Griffith lay with ghosts until the sun set and returned to the cottage under darkness. He considered unpacking, to establish himself and make the empty space more bearable, but instead reached for the brandy tucked into the corner of his bag.
He offered a toast to the pigeons. “To foolish endeavours.”
He drank enough for all of them, and the ghosts besides.
* * *
Griffith flailed awake from his brandy-induced doze and the nightmare that had followed and decided he’d enough of sleep. He’d returned for magic, not a holiday. No time for idleness.
If he’d spent the last year idle, no one in Aberarth knew to say.
Stumbling outside, tying his boots as he went, Griffith squinted into the night. He’d forgotten how consuming the dark could become with only stars for company. And he’d forgotten how many stars there were, beautiful regiments studding the sky. Griffith stood slack-jawed for a long moment, staring, before shaking his head and returning to the cottage to gather a warding for light, dropping the activated warding card into an empty jar from the pantry. Light glowed within.
Griffith walked close to the warding lines, alert for the stirring of magic he would feel in his chest. The legacy of Jones wardens reached back to Domesday, long before Hywel wolves claimed the territory, and they’d buried stone wardings in the earth like veins. Meant to last, compared to the cardstock favoured by modern wardens. Generations had pressed their blood into the soil to refresh the wardings, calling on magic intrinsic in the earth to protect their family. And, later, to protect those claimed as family: Hywel’s wolves.
The magic of the lines had once been physical, his grandmother had said, and crossing the boundary the air pushed back; warmly for friends, but with fire for those with malice in their heart. Yet magic had declined in Britain and the lines had gone with it—or at least, that’s what scholarship believed. With cause to think otherwise, Griffith had returned to Wales hoping to wake the lines.
Griffith wore a particular ring on the middle finger of his left hand, crafted during his apprenticeship. Made of roughened steel, the ring had a hinged catch on the inside, sharp enough to draw blood. Dragging the calloused edge of his thumb along the ring and squeezing, he dropped blood along the warding lines as he walked. The light-jar at his belt clinked against his charms, keeping him company. Howls sounded in the hills, and Griffith thought about Llywelyn but couldn’t recognise his voice.
He cut his hand a dozen times before stopping where the buried wardings curved through the forest surrounding the Hywel hill. Blood pai
nted his wrist and dripped from his fingers but none of the wards had woken, for all he’d strained his senses to catch the barest whisper of a spark.
Maybe he’d been wrong about magic returning. Griffith rubbed his palm against his trousers, like he could rub away his failure. He closed his eyes briefly, starting when a low howl called, much closer than others had been. Grin already on his lips, Griffith was wrong-footed to see a woman appear in the treeline, where he’d expected Llywelyn. Tall and broad-shouldered, hair wild to her waist, her eyes glinted in the light from Griffith’s jar. Her teeth, when she bared them, were pointed. Griffith’s heart hammered, and he swallowed, trying to keep fear from his face. The wolves in Aberarth were all Hywel pack. All friends. His fingers remembered the touch of fur.
“Griffith Jones,” the woman said, her growl not much like a friend’s.
Yet he knew her then. Ifanwy ferch Hywel. Heir to the alpha. Llywelyn’s elder sister.
Griffith’s grin returned. He stepped forward. “Ifanwy! How do—”
“Stay where you are. You’re not welcome here.”
Rocks formed in Griffith’s stomach. “I’ve—I’ve always been welcome. Llywelyn—”
“Things change, they do.” Ifanwy curled her lip.
Did you tell Llywelyn that?
Griffith hunched his shoulders. He touched the arrowhead, finding it cool; Ifanwy didn’t mean him harm, though his feelings stung the same. Jaw clenching, Griffith chewed back his retort. Heir to the alpha was the same as the alpha themselves.
Movement in the treeline made him turn his head. Llywelyn sat a few feet from Ifanwy, watching. When Griffith stumbled forward, as if compelled, Llywelyn darted into the trees like his tail was on fire.
“What—Wait!”
Ifanwy stepped in Griffith’s way, teeth bared. She’d always been closer to the wild than her brother. “Leave him be. Take your bag of tricks and leave. You are not welcome here.”
He wanted to protest. Wanted to run after Llywelyn. Wanted to pull a warding from his pocket and show Ifanwy what he could do, to prove he’d learned something while he’d been away, but none of those things would fix what he’d broken. Llywelyn sitting with him in grief wasn’t forgiveness.
