Morgana stood silently in the forest, Marrok was sitting quietly beside her, his eyes fixed in the direction of the castle. When he suddenly gave a low, soft growl, she narrowed her eyes on the woman carefully picking her way in their direction.

When the woman made it close to them, she stopped, curtsied and fidgeted nervously. Her eyes were fixed on the large wolf sitting beside Morgana, its lip curled back as it growled softly. “You called for me.”

“Yes, I did. We have a problem. It would seem that the little Ranger children want to discover who has poisoned the princess. They’ve begun snooping about the castle for clues as to who is to blame.”

The woman seemed to become anxious, twisting her skirts about in her fingers. “What do you wish me to do Milady?”

Morgana tapped a finger on her chin as she stepped away a few paces, staring into the shadowy trees. Darkness was beginning to fall in earnest; she would need to get back to the castle very soon, before she was missed. “I cannot be discovered, my plans depend on my anonymity.”

“Yes, I understand of course, I’ve been very careful I promise you. Not a soul knows who I am.”

She turned to face the servant. The woman had served her purpose; she had done everything asked of her. Truth be told, she had been Morgan’s hireling, his informant, and while she’d done nothing to suggest she might now betray Morgana one could never be certain of the loyalty of those whose only fealty lay with the coins that were pressed into their greedy hands. Betrayal was always a possibility with those sorts of people.

A feral little smile spread across Morgana’s features. “I do believe I’ve figured out a way to fix this little debacle. Marrok, handle it will you please.”

A low snarl issued from the beast just before he leapt forward and tackled the woman to the ground. She never had a chance to issue even a small cry before he tore her throat out, silencing her forever.

Morgana stepped over the woman’s still twitching legs and headed for the castle, swishing her skirts away from the body as she went. “Do be certain you’re out of sight before anyone comes looking for the dear girl.” She paused and looked back at the wolf. “I want something left behind for them to find, Marrok.”

He issued a growl in response that told her that he understood. She nodded, turned and left, humming a merry tune as she did. Happy that the small problem of her accomplice had now been handled. There was no one for those silly little children to find.

Well no one living at least.

***

Halt rose from his crouched position and turned to Will. “Not much left, but I do believe she is one of the princess’ servants. I’ve seen her before.”

Will shook his head as he looked past Halt to the woman’s mutilated body. “What was she doing out here?”

Halt gave his head a shake. “I have no idea but it looks as if we have a wolf on the loose and a rather large one at that. Something must have spooked him before he could finish his meal.”

Will grimaced at Halt’s words. “Thanks for the imagery, Halt.”

His former mentor shrugged. “If something hadn’t driven him off there might not have been anything for us to find.”

“Bones,” Will told him with a grin.

Halt arched an eyebrow at him. “Will, bones would have told us little. At least we can identify the victim and the attacker.”

Will glanced at the woman again and sighed, all traces of his ill timed humor now gone. “Yes well you do have a point there.”

“Dad, what’s going on?”

Halt turned to Holly. “What are all of you doing here? Go on and get out of here, now, go shoo!”

Will chuckled when Halt made a shooing gesture at the teens. Not one of them moved, in fact Holly stepped around him and gasped when she spotted the body. “Eww, Gorlog’s beard what happened to her?”

Mitchell made a face as he moved closer. “Did an animal do that?”

Deva’s face became slightly pale and she turned away.

Logan stooped to get a closer look; he examined the wounds and then stood. “It appears as if a wolf did the attacking, but if it was then it was the damned biggest one I’ve ever come across.”

Halt nodded in agreement. “Same conclusion I came to. We need to let everyone know to be wary and keep out of the woods.”

Logan stood and stared down at the body. “Why would a wolf that big be spooked so easily?”

“Are you thinking he would be a might braver?”

Logan shrugged. “Size doesn’t necessarily equate to bravery, however if he’s an Alpha …”

Halt gave a small nod. “Yes he wouldn’t tend to back down, I see what you mean. If he hasn’t encountered many humans, however, he would be wary of them.”

“Look, there’s no sense in standing about trying figuring out the motives of some wild animal, they’re wild for a reason, let’s just get this taken care of and get back to the castle,” Holly muttered.

“She was a human being, Holly, she deserves our consideration.”

Her shoulders slumped slightly. “Yes Dad, sorry.”

Halt gave her a nod before turning away and glancing at Mitchell who stood silently nearby. “Mitchell, fetch your father for us will you, tell him what’s happened and let him know we’re going to need to have someone remove the body and such.”

Mitchell gave a nod, turned and sprinted away toward the castle.

Halt glanced at the others. “The rest of you are dismissed, not that you were invited in the first place. Go on now, back to the castle.”

Logan sent one last glance at the mutilated body with a frown before he followed Holly and Deva. They were halfway back to the castle before he pushed his way between them and spoke. “That was extremely far from a normal wolf attack, I’m finding it difficult to believe that wolf wasn’t encouraged to kill that woman.”

Holly stopped walking and stared at him. “Wait, what?”

“You didn’t see it?”

Deva groaned. “I was too busy trying not to puke up my breakfast, so no.”

“I wasn’t simply studying the body; I was looking at the ground around it as well. Everything was extremely trampled but there were several footprints in the dirt, they were slightly larger than those of the victim’s.”

Holly’s brows went up. “Someone else was there with her before she was killed?”

“Apparently, though I can’t be certain. For all I know the footprints could have been made well before the woman entered the area.”

Holly snorted. “You know what my father says about coincidences.”

“Right. Well, I don’t like them anymore than he does so let’s consider that someone set that wolf on the poor woman.”

Deva cocked her head to the side. “If that’s true then the question would be why did the person do it?”

“That is a question we can’t answer unless we find the person.”

Holly curled her lip. “As if we can’t guess who the person is.”

“We can’t assume it was Lady Monica, Holly.”

“Can and will!” she chirped as they passed into the castle courtyard.

Logan dragged his fingers through his hair causing it to stand on end. “Holly, come on we can’t blame everything and anything on the woman simply because you dislike her!”

Deva shrugged. “We’ve all agreed that she most likely had an accomplice, one we’ve been searching for …”

Holly took over for Deva without pause. “And Lady Monica probably heard that we’ve been snooping about trying to search out her ally …”

Deva took over again. “So who is to say that our dead body wasn’t Monica’s little helper, after all she was one of Cassandra’s lady’s maids.”

Logan looked between them, sighed and threw his hands in the air. “Fine whatever, how exactly did she find a whopping great wolf and train it to attack on command then?”

“Uh … well … fine so we’ll have to figure that bit out won’t we,” Holly admitted as she headed into the castle.

Deva jogged after her and Logan brought up the rear. They went in search of Mitchell and found him as he came out his mother’s room.

“How’s your mom doing?” Logan asked.

He gave them a smile. “She’s doing much better. Awake and talking thanks to Malcolm. So did they find out anything else about the body?”

Logan explained what he’d observed at the scene and Holly added what she thought about Lady Monica. Mitchell agreed with Holly that Monica might be a suspect, to which Logan scowled.

“You do know that you’re only encouraging them?”

Mitchell shrugged. “I happen to believe that they’re right.”

“No, what you believe is that she poisoned your mother and you want to blame her for anything else you can toss together while you’re at it!”

Mitchell’s body went rigid at Logan’s accusation. “I do not “toss” things together willy nilly, Logan. I think things through thoroughly, I thought as my friend you would support any effort to catch the killer who was after my family, I guess I was wrong.”

“I do support you, but we have no proof!”

“I never said we were going to run off to my father and accuse the woman straight out, but we all know she’s to blame!”

“That’s the problem with the three of you, we don’t know! You assume that it’s her!” Logan shouted.

“Then I suppose there’s nothing more for us to discuss, is there?” Mitchell turned on his heel and strode off down the corridor.

Deva groaned, hung her head, and let her arms hand loosely. “Great, now he’s gonna be all mopey and go terrorize the kitchen staff.”

Hollly blinked at her. “The kitchen staff?”

Deva stood straight and waved a hand in the air trying to explain as she did. “He eats, a lot normally, but when he’s upset …” She shrugged.

Holly giggled and covered her mouth with a hand when Deva shot her a look.

Logan grumbled and scowled at both of them. “Well, I don’t care because the three of you are acting like fools. Instead of looking for actual suspects, all we’ve been doing is following Lady Monica around and where has it gotten us? Nowhere!”

Holly folded her arms over her chest and glared back at him. “I thought you agreed that she was our most likely suspect!”

“I do or did, I don’t know anymore! We haven’t found a single thing to connect her to a damned thing! So, can we act like Rangers and search out actual clues that make sense now?”

Deva shook her head. “Do whatever you want, I’m going to go try and talk to Mitchell before he eats everything in the kitchen.”

Holly watched Deva until she disappeared from sight. “Look Logan, we’ve all agreed Monica is our best suspect, deal with it. You’re either going to help or not, decide.”

Logan was left standing in the center of the corridor alone, as he’d been for most of his life. Squeezing his eyes shut, he tipped his head back and let out a long breath. Just when he’d been starting to feel as if he’d finally found a place where he fit, where he was at home, he was losing it all.

He’d never known his mother and his grandfather, while loving, was a bit of a loon. And his father hadn’t been able to be there as much as they had both wished. Overall, his life had been quite empty and mostly lonely. Most of his growing up years had been isolated because of his grandfather; the old man lived far outside their village and was mostly a recluse. The villagers thought he was nuts and they were correct.

He gave his head a shake and headed for his room, no sense standing here rehashing his past, it was nothing but painful for the most part. They had bigger things to worry about than his childhood.