Note: Next week is my favourite chapter :)

That night, Noel listened to the wolf’s howls with a complicated feeling in his heart. They sounded different to him now than they had before. He couldn’t help but imagine that the wolf was calling to him directly, trying to talk to him. He silently counted the reasons he needed to settle things: he had his pride as a hunter; he wanted to know the nature of the monster; he wanted to know where the wolf had come from; he wanted to protect his community from danger; and he needed to know if the wolf had anything to do with Gaetan, or with Madelaine.

That woman vexed Noel to no end. She was constantly underfoot and interrupting him. He’d been raised to treat ladies with courtesy, and he was doing his best, but now it seemed that basic courtesy had somehow become flirtatious in the eyes of his older brother. Perhaps Madelaine was under the same misapprehension, but it seemed awfully soon after Gaetan’s death to be entertaining such thoughts. Noel was sure, at least, that if he had been married to someone as charming and genial as Gaetan was, he would have no desire for anyone else.

Noel spent the next day primarily avoiding Madelaine, and secondarily collecting supplies. In the morning, he went around the mansion gathering up as many paperweights as he could find. In the afternoon, he asked for a sheaf of paper and then hid away in his room, refusing to answer any knocks on the door. He drew out the alphabet in large letters, each letter on one page. He also found a notebook and pencil for himself.

Noel was prepared to leave the next morning, but much to his disappointment, it rained all day. The sky was dark and the wind blew cold, wet air against the windows such that the curtains had to be drawn to avoid a draft. Noel tried to spend the day next to Alcide and Manon, but Madelaine followed them everywhere like a burr on his sleeve, peppering him with questions and compliments. Noel could do no right under Alcide’s watchful eye, so he eventually feigned ill and retreated to his room. As night advanced, he lay in the dark listening to the sharp sound of cold rain against the window and hoped that the wolf had found shelter.

The morning after the rain, nothing could stop Noel from setting out. He got up, ate breakfast early, and told Alcide he was going back into the forest, lest he think he was running off with Madelaine again. He put all the paper and paperweights into a saddlebag along with his notebook and pencil and set off.

The leftover rain from the day before had all frozen overnight, and the ice cracked and shattered beneath Apollo’s hooves. Noel’s fingers were stiff from cold in his gloves as he held the reigns. In the forest, most of the remaining leaves had been knocked off the trees and now carpeted the forest floor in a semi-frozen mat. Snow and winter felt imminent. But Noel had other things on his mind.

Following the marks he’d left himself, Noel made his way back to the two X’s he’d left behind last time. He found the wolf curled up under the tree. Its light coat looked cold and lonely, a solitary stranger to the forest around it. Its size no longer frightened Noel, and its unusual colouration no longer looked like a prize waiting to be won.

Gaetan stood up when he saw Noel arrive. He shook out his coat and paced around to warm up his paws as he watched Noel dismount and rummage around in a sack. He approached with cautious curiosity as the man filled up his arms with papers and knickknacks. With some surprise, he recognized one of the paperweights from his office among them. Noel proceeded to lay out the papers on the ground in a semi-circle, two paperweights pinning each sheet in place. Gaetan barked with joy when he realized that the papers spelled out letters he could use to communicate.

As Noel stepped back to get his notebook and pencil, the wolf moved to the centre of the semi-circle. When he turned back around, he saw the wolf looking at him in excitement, its tail wagging slightly behind it. For a moment he wondered if the wolf could really be a man; dogs and horses were one thing, but he was certain that no person had ever been so happy with something he’d done before.

Without delay, the wolf started nosing at the letters. Noel stood above it and dutifully noted what it indicated both out loud and in his notebook.

“I-A-M-G-A-E-T-A-N”

As the message formed, Noel felt himself go numb from his feet to the top of his head. His hands went stiff and he failed to capture in writing anything past the E the Gaetan’s name. By the time the wolf had finished spelling out its—or his—name, Noel’s head had gone white and hazy. He only regained cognizance when the wolf came over and bumped his thigh with its nose. Noel startled and dropped his book, which the wolf helpfully picked up and handed back to him.

“Th-thank you,” Noel said, inexplicably blushing. Once the numbness passed, he felt looser, somehow, as if an invisible string that had been coiled around him for weeks had finally been cut off. He had no trouble believing that the wolf was Gaetan; in fact, it resolved a great deal of uneasiness he had felt around the man’s disappearance.

Once Gaetan had Noel’s attention again, he eagerly went back to spelling out messages on the letters.

“I-N-E-E-D-M-Y-C-L-O-T-H-E-S-B-A-C-K”

“Why?” Noel asked. He tried to ignore the fact that he was blushing again. Giving the wolf the letters had been a good idea; never in a million years would it have occurred to him to ask about its clothes.

The wolf paused, clearly thinking about how to phrase something, then returned to the letters.

“B-E-H-U-M-A-N”

“Can you turn back into a human if you have your clothes back?” Noel asked. He tried to keep hold of his excitement, but it felt impossible not to hope.

Gaetan nodded his head.

Noel broke out into an oblivious smile as he started planning ahead to what he had to do next. Since he was staying in the St Germain estate, getting Gaetan’s clothes wouldn’t be difficult. Unless, it occurred to him, there was a catch. “Wait—” Noel asked “can it be any of your clothes?”

Gaetan shook his head.

Noel’s smile dimmed, “So it has to be a specific set?”

Gaetan nodded again.

Noel scratched his cheek with the blunt end of his pencil. Of course magic would be tricky. However, before he had time to think, the wolf was already spelling out more letters.

“E-L-A-I – that’s not a word, hold on a sec, I think I missed something,” Noel said.

Gaetan looked back at him and huffed in frustration. Being stuck in the forest had made his temper worse and worse. All his patience had fallen away from him like the leaves had fallen away from the trees around him. Aside from tedious survival tasks, all he did every minute of every day was ruminate on his situation. He’d rehearsed what he wanted to say a million times already. Now that Noel was back and willing to help him despite whatever he’d done previously, Gaetan thought he was doing his best to be patient, but he was still not going slowly enough.

He took a deep breath and restarted his message.

“M-A-D-E-L-A-I-N-E-S-T-O-L-E-T-H-E-M”

Noel went numb for a second time as he processed the words. Madelaine was someone that he’d never considered, or rather, she was someone that he’d convinced himself to ignore. She was a naïve and beautiful ingenue who’d just moved away from her family and was overwhelmed by her difficult circumstances. But she had never seemed sincere, not after Gaetan had disappeared, and not before, either.

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” Noel admitted to the wolf.

Gaetan nodded slowly. Naturally, he hadn’t seen it coming. At the time, he had known she was using him, but had naively assumed that she wanted the best for both of them. During his ruminations, however, he had realized that she was an opportunist of the worst sort, happy to dig pits for him to fall into so she could benefit at his expense.

“In fact,” Noel went on, “she keeps asking me to bring back your pelt for her.”

Gaetan whined slightly at the thought. It sounded like Madelaine was cheerfully seizing her chance to be a rich widow instead of a rich wife.

Without thinking, Noel reached out and stroked him between his ears. He added, “don’t worry, I definitely won’t now that I know the truth,” and began considering in earnest what to do next. He didn’t want to think about what would happen if Gaetan’s clothes couldn’t be found. Instead, it was better to assume that they were probably in the mansion. He was already eager to go back and look for them.

Gaetan on the other hand still had things he wanted to say. He ought to take the opportunity to apologize to Noel for the strange things he’d done. He also needed to make sure that he knew he’d never meant to harm him, that he appreciated his help immensely, and that he’d be happy to offer any reward within his means if he could be returned to human form. Gaetan knew that Noel was going quite out of his way to help him, and desperately needed to do something to return the other’s sincerity. He returned to the letters once again.

The wolf’s actions took Noel by surprise, and he scrambled to write down what Gaetan was saying. "T-H-A-N-K-Y-O-U-F-O-R-E-V-E-R-Y-T—” Noel cut off partway through the message. It took a long time to spell anything out on the letters, and he was getting impatient. Rather than wait for the finished message, he jumped to the conclusion instead. “You can thank me if I’m actually able to help you; there’s not much of a point right now, and I’d rather go back and look for your clothes,” Noel said.

Gaetan huffed and shook his head. He had more things he wanted to say. He couldn’t pass up this chance, so he started on another message.