Warwolfe (de Wolfe Pack Book 0)

Warwolfe (de Wolfe Pack Book 0)

Kathryn le Veque





Author’s Note




Finally… it’s here!

There’s so much to say about this novel that it’s hard to know where to begin. So let’s start from the beginning.

The details of the Battle of Hastings are accurate but for the fact that I added a group of knights that helped the Duke of Normandy win the battle. Everything else – from the location of the Norman landing to the details of Harold’s death are fact. But because there is so little documentation about the details of the battle (surprisingly), that’s where I begin to weave my fabric of fiction. A few things of note for the sharp-eyed reader:

Warwolfe is mentioned in Swords and Shields. Edward I built massive trebuchets for his battles in Scotland and named the machines Warwolfs (Lupus Guerre), after the de Wolfe ancestor (that is mostly true – Edward I really did build machines named Warwolf, but it’s the Le Veque imagination that put the backstory behind it). Yes, a Warwolf really is a thing!

William de Wolfe (THE WOLFE) comes from the House of de Wolfe – and it was Gaetan who was given the title 1st Earl of Wolverhampton, as explained in The Lion of the North. William de Wolfe was the third son of his father, however, and his eldest brother, Robert, inherited the title and passed it down through his children. William was given the title Baron Kilham and eventually Earl of Warenton by Henry III.

King Wulfhere founded the city of Wolverhampton in 659 AD – the Duke of Normandy thought it would be perfect for de Wolfe to subdue and rule because of the name, so that’s the how and why of the de Wolfes ending up in Wolverhampton. There is lots of coal in the area of Wolverhampton (called the Black Country), which is how the de Wolfes end up making their money.

Gaetan’s name was shorted by his men to “Gate” at times, which is how Gates de Wolfe in Dark Destroyer got his name – he was named for Gaetan.

The House of de Shera is born in this book. The Roman origins of de Shera (Shericus) were mentioned in The Thunder Lord, but in this novel we actually get to see how the House of de Shera came about. They are around Worcester in this novel and it is Gaetan who gives them lands around Chester, which is referred to in the Lords of Thunder series.

Fun fact: William the Conqueror and Harold Godwinson were cousins. They had met each other several times before the Battle of Hastings and, at one point, Harold even endorsed William as the next king of England when the current king at the time (about 10 years before Hastings) died. William went to England to take it from Harold because the man had catfished on him, among other reasons.

So, let’s talk pronunciation of certain names – because there are some odd ones in this book, genuine “old English” or even older names. Here are a few to note:

Gaetan: GAY-tahn

Ghislaine: GIZZ-lane

Téo: TAY-o

Aramis: Some say Ara-MEE, I say “ARA-miss”. Like the cologne.

Alary: Just like it looks – Al-uh-ree

Mercia: MER-sha (Not Mer-cee-uh)

Oh, and the lion images that denote breaks in the chapters? That is the lion of the Duke of Normandy.

With that, I truly hope you enjoy this epic tale of adventure, brotherhood, and, ultimately, a romance like none other. Enjoy the original de Wolfe Pack – they were a joy to write!

Happy Reading!

Kathryn





Table of Contents




Title Page

Copyright Page

Kathryn Le Veque Novels

Author’s Note

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Epilogue

De Wolfe Pack Series

About Kathryn Le Veque





PROLOGUE




?

The Legend of WARWOLFE


Battle, East Sussex

Two years ago, Present Day

“Queenie? Are you home?”

A gray-haired man with a hand-hewn wooden cane opened the old door even as he pounded on it, raining rust from the old hinges onto the floor. The house in which the door was lodged was ancient by any standard, a squat farmhouse built from the pale gray stone that was so prevalent to the area. There were big warped beams running up the exterior walls, however, which suggested late-Medieval architecture, but the shape and design of the house was purely Georgian. Everything was symmetrical from the alignment of the old cracked windows to the roofline, pitched in shape and covered with dried thatching that matched the color of the stone.

It was every historian’s dream.

Which was why the young woman behind the gray-haired man was so wide-eyed at what she was seeing, following the man into the cool foyer as her eyes so greedily soaked up all of the ancientness around her. This was pure awesomeness as far as she was concerned and she tried not to be distracted by the time-capsule quality of the old house.

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