The eldest son of Bran Cornick, the Marrok, and older brother of Charles Cornick, Samuel Llewellyn Cornick is the third most dominant werewolf in North America. He is a doctor and served as his father's third before leaving the Aspen Creek Pack to get a new medical license. He is a lone wolf and he is mated and married to the fae lady Ariana.
Appearance[]
Samuel is around 6' 2", not quite as tall as his brother Charles but much taller than their father Bran. He is built like a Chippendale's dancer. He has light brown hair, fair skin, and deeply set blue eyes, with long nose and a wide mouth.
WOLF: "Snowball" is larger than most wolves and completely snow white, with ice blue irises ringed by black.
Personality[]
Samuel is kind, caring, and charming which has served him well in his chosen profession as a doctor. He is also stubborn and protective - overprotective, according to Mercy.
He is one of the few werewolves who truly likes humans, which his father attributes to his medical calling. Like his father and brother, he loves music and is skilled with his voice and on many instruments.
History[]
Samuel was born to Bran when they were both still human. He worked as a village healer then. He had just lost his wife and the last of his children, when his father Bran, old and gray-haired, came to visit, saying "the crows told me that you needed me." Shortly afterward the Cornick Witch, his grandmother and the most dangerous witch in the British Isles, tracked down her son Bran and forced him and Samuel to Change in order to add them to her pack of direwolves, consisting of her former husband and other children. She used them to do her bidding and also borrowed their immortality so that she stayed young and beautiful.
"It could have been a decade or centuries, though I think it was closer to the latter than the former." -- Samuel in Silver
The story of how they broke free from the witch happens sometime after Christianity came to Wales in the 1st or 2nd century, so the "centuries" they spent enslaved to the witch were before that. The witch had to drop her hold on them to allow the Forest Lord to command them, and Bran and then Samuel take the opportunity to attack the Forest Lord instead of their proper target, Ariana. After saving Ariana, Haida helps them cut off the witch's call, but Bran is now pack leader and the call is stronger for him, so he must return while Samuel helps Ariana heal. After Ariana is well - and they have fallen in love, Samuel returns to the witch to help Bran break free as well, which he did when she ordered him to kill Samuel. Bran killed her instead, but Samuel had already run away, thinking his father was dead. He could not return to Ariana despite their love, as she was too frightened of his wolf and accidentally killed Haida in one of her panic attacks.
Many years later, Samuel found Bran living as a monster and stayed with him until he could coax him back to humanity. They came to the New World together and founded Aspen Creek as a trading post, their home, and a future safe place for werewolves. His brother Charles was born when Bran mated with Blue Jay Woman.
Aspen Creek was eventually joined by a coyote walker pup, Mercy Thompson. Samuel saw in her the answer to his yearning for a family and children. He had fathered many children, most of whom died in infancy, some of whom died of the Change, and only a few who lived to be adults. Samuel reasoned that Mercy, who did not have to shift with the moon and whose change was gentle, would be able to carry not only fully human babies, but coyote walker babies and possibly even werewolf babies. When she was 16 he began courting her and she fell in love. Bran - who wanted to protect Mercy - told her about Samuel's true intentions, which she had not previously understood, so she left Samuel and Aspen Creek.
Samuel left Aspen Creek as well and went to Texas to live as a student and get his medical license. His girlfriend, another medical student, got pregnant and decided to have an abortion without telling Samuel. This combined with losing Mercy sent him back to Aspen Creek in a tailspin of depression and, his father fears, suicidal tendencies, which Bran hopes Mercy can help him snap out of.
Powers & Abilities[]
"Samuel was the healer -- their da’s mother’s magic taking that path with him. Samuel wasn’t a miracle worker; he couldn’t raise the dead or cure old age or heart disease. But he used his magic to help people. Their da said it was the reason that Samuel spent so much time on his own out in the world with the humans -- because it was the humans who needed his touch. Their da wasn’t happy about it." -- Charles, Wild Sign
In addition to having the usual powers of a werewolf, Samuel is witchborn like his father and brother. He is not trained as a witch, though his grandmother noted that "the magic flows strongly in this one" when she came to Change him. Samuel's gifts tend toward healing: he was a village healer when he was human, he tries to help hurt wolves in the Cornick Witch's Pack, and he has become certified as a doctor and surgeon several times throughout his life.
"He knew of three werewolves who had been witchborn. They were the three most dangerous and powerful werewolves in the world, and he didn’t think it was an accident." -- Adam, Frost Burned
Trivia[]
- His grandmother not only tortured her wolves for power, she stole their memories. He cannot remember the names and faces of his human wife and children, though he remembers loving his family.
- She also regularly changed the names of her wolves, and most lately had named them from "the stories of the sacrificed god" that had lately reached the shores of Great Britain. Sawyl is Welsh for Samuel.
- Mercy calls his wolf "Sam" and his human half "Samuel."
- Samuel's wolf wears a collar with the name "Snowball" on it.
- Samuel first came to Tri-Cities while Adam was healing, so that a more dominant werewolf would be on hand to keep him under control. Soon thereafter he notifies Bran that he is going lone wolf and staying there.
- He works at the Stop and Rob where Warren used to work until his paperwork comes through approving him to practice as a doctor in Washington state.
- He blackmails Mercy into letting him be her roommate: “So how are you going to explain to your neighbors that there is a strange man sleeping on your front porch?" (Blood Bound)