The Blacksmith's Daughter Ch. 01

"Some deep sleep would be nice."

She chuckled softly. "Is the sound keeping you up?"

He scoffed. "I can't see how anyone at all would be able to sleep." He followed her to the counter, and sat on one of the stools as she reached for a brown bottle on the shelves. "Honestly though, Sally, is it always like that?"

"No," she said. She shook her head as she poured the golden liquor into two glasses. "It gets worse as we get closer to the full moon, but they're quieter the rest of the time." She walked around the counter and sat next to him, absentmindedly pushing one of the drinks towards him.

He took it, but looked up at her before he drank. "Joseph," he said.

"Hmm?" She had been deep in her thoughts, apparently, but she blinked her pale eyes and looked at him. "What?"

"Joseph. It's my name," he repeated, and held out his open hand to her with a smirk.

"Oh," she chuckled, and reached out to take it, giving it a little shake before she dropped it. "I like it."

"Thank you." He laughed softly and looked around the room. "Are you up all night here? Is this all yours?"

"It's my father's. He takes care of it and cooks during the day. I give drinks and clean up at night."

"Your father." He took a careful sip. "It is Salem?" he asked tentatively. He hoped to God it wasn't.

Thankfully, she laughed. "Would you still be so nice to me if you learned he was my father?"

"Oh God yes. I would be even nicer. Whowouldn'tbe nice to that guy's daughter?"

She chuckled, though her features seemed to sadden as she looked down at her glass. "Some men would rather run away from his type of father-in-law."

"So would I," he agreed with a solemn nod. "But he'snotyour father, is he? Or are you simply trying to confuse me into jamming my foot in my mouth?"

She laughed again. "No. My father's name is George. He's quite smaller than Salem. And you don't have anything to be afraid of with him," she added, a bit softer. She looked up at him again, then, and he felt his insides squeeze and warm all at once.

Then the wolves howled again.

He mentally uttered a very bad word as he rolled his eyes and set his glass on the counter. He crossed his arms over the surface and leaned forward, and kept his gaze locked onto what was left of brandy in his glass. "How many are they?" he asked in an effort to change the subject. The wolves apparently had it in mind to hinder any wooing attempt on the young lady. "It sounds like there are a dozen of them."

"They've been seen to be as much as twenty at a time at the same place," she said, and paused for a moment. "It's hard to know really. We don't delve into their territory much."

"No, I wouldn't think so." He glanced at the window and listened as they heard them again. "Do they give you trouble? Besides keeping you from sleeping on a monthly basis?"

She smiled weakly. "Not much, no. In the summer they find enough to feed in the forest. It's harder in the winter, and they attack our stock sometimes."

That surprised him. While they offered a frightening sight and could attack humans if they were famished, hurt, or scared, wolves usually steered clear of humans. It was not rare to hear them howl as they did that night – itwasrare to find them right in the middle of farms killing cows, only a few yards away from angry farmers and their muskets. Then again, never in his travels had he ever heard of a pack as big as twenty heads, either. "They sound dangerous," he pointed out with a frown. "Someone should hunt them, at least to drive them away. Have they attacked anyone?"

"Only those who went out to hunt them," she answered, quite dryly. "No one else dares go out in the woods, and they've never attacked anyone in town or on the farms. But no one who went into the forest ever came out of it."

He stared at her in surprise for a moment. "You mean they specifically prey on hunters?"How ironic,he thought.

"Some would rather say they defend their territory," she said with a shrug. Her pale eyebrows were drawn into a light frown, her lips pinched and pale. "I say they avenge their own. Their alpha does."

"The alpha?" He frowned as well. "The leader of the pack. Would that be the big one we heard in the end?" She nodded.

"He's not just big. He's abnormally huge. Some who saw him said he was almost twice as big as the others." She smirked then, the frown easing from her brow. "Rumor has it it's a dire wolf."

"Those are gone," he pointed out with a smirk of his own. He reached for his glass again, and tilted it to his lips. "They've only found the old rotten bones of these things, buried under centuries of dirt."

"He's not a dire wolf," she agreed. "He's a werewolf."

It was the wrong timing for a gulp of brandy. It went through the wrong passage at the sound of her words and he choked on the burning alcohol. He coughed and slammed his fist against his chest a few times, and turned watery eyes to her. "What?" he only managed to get out in a squeak. He coughed again and, fighting a sudden bubbling urge to laugh, tried it again. "What did you just say?"

Surprisingly enough for someone who had just told such a bad joke, she looked annoyed. "A werewolf."

He could not help it. It came out as a small chortle at first, and he managed to stifle the rest of the laugh and hide it into a persistent cough. Her frown deepened – she was not convinced.Damn. "Are you serious?" he asked, and could not help his lips from turning into a grin.

It did not last, and faded in a second as she glared at him and suddenly stood up. "It's not funny," she spat.

There was a choked sound to her words that wiped all the humor away from the situation, and he hastily reached for her arm before she turned away. "Hey, no, I'm sorry. Sally..."

"Sarah," she corrected with a hiss, and he winced.

"Sarah." He winced, but gave her arm a gentle squeeze. "Alright, I'm sorry I laughed," he said, gently urging her into sitting down again. "I'm listening. Tell me."