Chapter 41 - Final Outcome

Chapter 41

Mantilo returned from the horse ranch feeling decidedly heavy with possibilities and a fledgling plan of action for the coming morning.

This time when he neared the house, his Mate was nowhere to be seen, until he had climbed the winding steps of their home, up past the second floor where the scent of the intruder lingers slightly on the air. A new scent and so its presence seemed like a blaring sigh to the beast inside that he needed to go and investigate, but Mantilo ignored it, he was far too tired to do anything more but climb to the third floor.

The leopard embossed wooden doors that stood like wooden gates before him, the beautifully carved twin leopards in the wood laying down and mirrored in a back to back pose always managed to make him feel a pinch of pride. Not only because it was Mantilo's great grandfather who had carved the beautiful door, but because it was Mantilo himself that had restored it after a fire nearly took its magnificence from the world.

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