She could call Julie; they’d made arrangements for Alex to call Julie’s mother’s house and leave a number at which Alex could be reached during their journey. Maybe Kieran had returned to Minnesota.
But Alex didn’t really believe any of those possibilities. Her heart knew the truth.
Kieran wasn’t coming because he’d chosen not to return to her.
Alex clenched her jaw and strode away from the truck for the thousandth time. It was prairie here: flat, open country dotted by farms and scattered clumps of trees planted as windbreaks. It was also a land almost empty of people, especially an hour before sunrise.
She walked to the edge of a frozen creek edged by a fringe of dried grasses. Her flashlight beam danced along the ice, the sole point of illumination for a quarter mile in any direction. For a while there had been a kind of muffling in the darkness, a dreamlike unreality that kept her mental turmoil at bay.
That vague comfort was gone. Alex hugged herself, turning her face into the biting wind. Strange, how much she had taken for granted. For a time she had been the sole focus of Kieran’s world. But she had failed him once too often—failed to accept him for all that he was. She had given him too little. Too late.
Now something was pulling him to the northwest. His own people, he’d said. British Columbia was the place they’d chosen. A good place for wolves, or remarkable beings that could take their shape.
Once it would have seemed another miracle to learn that others of Kieran’s ability existed somewhere. She’d guessed it of his parents, but she had never truly thought beyond that. And Kieran had never spoken of it before the morning after the murder.
But if he found them, he wouldn’t need her anymore, mere human that she was. Perhaps he had already realized that.
She remembered Julie’s whispered words: “Tell him, Alex. Tell him how you feel, or you’ll lose him.”
Julie had recognized Alex’s most terrible vulnerability without a word being said.
If he’d been Shadow in truth, and only a wolf, she could have spoken her heart as Julie had urged, as she’d done the first morning he awakened by her fireside.
But he was not a wolf. God help her, he was not.
She went back to the truck, turning to the one sure source of comfort she could always count on. Almost frantically she pulled her notebook from the backpack and opened the journal to the next blank page.
And realized that only one page remained.
With shaking fingers she stroked the lined white sheet. One more page and the notebook was full. Suddenly she was afraid. Somehow she knew if she filled this page, it would be over. The story would be finished. There would be no more chances.
Her father was gone forever. Peter had reentered her life and had paid a greater price for his duplicity than she’d ever wish on anyone.
And she had loved him once. She had loved them both.
Oh, Peter. I’m sorry. So sorry that it ended this way, that none of us had a chance to make it right. Not you, not my father, not even myself. It will never be resolved. How much of this was my fault? I handled it all wrong, and I lost both of you. Just like—
But she cut off that line of thought. The only thing she had left of Father was the money she didn’t want, didn’t need in the simple life she’d chosen. She’d have to find something to do with it. The last connections to her old, privileged life had died with Peter.
She wrote a single line in the journal, closed it carefully and laid her cheek against the textured cover. “Kieran,” she whispered. “They’re all gone. I need you. Don’t leave me…”
She didn’t finish the plea. Stiff grasses rustled behind her. She turned as if in slow motion.
Kieran kept his distance, staring up at her with slitted yellow eyes that reddened in the beam of her flashlight. His black pelt was rimed with ice, and his ears lay at a low angle. Alex hardly noticed. He was safe. He’d come back, and she felt like shouting for joy.