What Gaston really wanted right now was a beer. What he would have preferred was a keg of beer, enough to give him a good night's sleep on the off chance that he could awake and find this was all a dream. He thought of LeFou. That idiot was certainly pliant enough that Gaston could find a way to get through to him about his real identity, and maybe get back into his tavern. He climbed the embankment to see how the fight was going. The Enchantress implied that the Beast... what did she call him, Adam?... had lived, but maybe one of Gaston's men had since finished him off.
Gaston hauled himself up over the ledge on the forest side of the drawbridge and saw absolutely no one. He heard nothing except more wretched birds. He looked at the chateau and wondered if it was a trick of the light that it looked a lot less dingy now.
The path was littered with tracks so obvious that an apprentice shepherd could follow them. Gaston had always been an excellent tracker, and now with a wolf's sense of hearing and smell it was so easy it was almost unfair. He wondered if they had looted the chateau and left, but the disarray and the running gaits concerned him. He sprinted down the path, finding he could sprint for quite a long time, until the path went past the edge of a cliff.
Gaston climbed out to the cliff and peered down. There was town in the distance, and there at the foot of the mountain, just at the entrance to the forest, were Gaston's men, sure enough running for home like a bear was pursuing them. "Cowards," snarled Gaston. "I was the one who faced the Beast. Maybe I should go after them like this; it would serve them right." But his stomach started to growl and he considered that he had eaten nothing since dinner the previous evening. "Time for a hunt!" The idea of hunting as a wolf at once seemed appealing. "Let's see what this creature can do!"
There was an odd lack of animals around. Gaston had hoped to find a deer, but after an hour when he picked up the scent of rabbit, he was willing to settle. It took another half hour to find the rabbit, who was obviously better rested and better fed than he, and another quarter hour to finally run it down and break its neck. But he was prouder of this catch than any trophy hanging on the wall in his tavern.
As the sun set and the forest once again cloaked itself in darkness, Gaston lay down before the carcass to enjoy the meal. His pride distracted him from the scent of wolf rapidly growing nearer, until the scent barged into his mouth as he prepared to take his first bite. He coughed and looked up to see a dozen yellow eyes in the darkness, fixed on him.
"Well well well," growled a pair of eyes. "Looky here. New guy."
