Rereading "Monstrous"... Loving it! Don't want to bother you but I've got some werewolf🐺 related questions: who is supposed to be the second werewolf, why didn't it attack after Eist is on the ground and where is it gone after they left the village? Have a nice day😊
First: sorry, it's been ages and I'm just now getting around to asks 🙃
Second: YESSSSSS I will gladly answer Monstrous questions!!!!!
Originally, there wasn't a second werewolf, and the original werewolf was going to be Belo Gethe, who owns the apothecary. But I ended up loving him too much and didn't want to hurt him. So the first werewolf is most likely someone who lived in the mountains, whose family was attacked in the winter prior.
I added a second werewolf because at that point, I actually wanted the attacks to keep happening and the villagers to accuse Cal and Eist of making the attacks themselves to get more money out of the villagers--originally, the night Eist transforms would have happened while they were still in Kovir, but then I realized the plot needed to move faster, and our intrepid little idiots in love needed to be farther along, both emotionally and geographically.
The second werewolf was Stelen, most likely. Maybe I'm cruel, but I like the irony of people punishing Cal for doing what they would have gladly paid her to do, had they known the truth about Stelen prior to his murder. After we leave them, the villagers will notice there are no more attacks. But they'll always assume it was because there was only one werewolf, not two--and certainly not Stelen. I think Belo Gethe will know, on some level. After all, he knew Stelen's history and was rather relieved to know he was gone. But I don't think Belo will say anything to anyone other than his wife. It's a small village and emotions run high.
I think the second werewolf didn't attack because it was aware of potentially being outnumbered and chose a wiser path. We see when Eist is in werewolf form that he is still capable of connecting things to his human life, even if only briefly, so it stands to reason that Stelen might have also recognized the hunters and been briefly confused as to why he knew them. It also explains why he was so adamant that Cal didn't kill the werewolf--because from what he saw, before he ran off, was Eist pushing Cal out of the way and taking on the werewolf himself. So from Stelen's POV, Eist did actually kill the werewolf and Cal is taking credit.
