For a split second everything froze. Kieran smelled blood mingled with Gévaudan’s scent and knew that the other werewolf had been shot trying to intervene. The harsh sound of Luke’s breathing in the silence proved he was still alive. Alexandra lay dazed on the ground, struggling to lever her arms under her body, hurt but conscious.
A wolf’s howl shattered the moment—a deep, wild baying that seemed to carry within it all the chaotic emotion in Kieran’s own heart. And then Arnoux was charging, slamming into Kieran with the full force of his greater weight. Kieran had just enough time to brace for Arnoux’s attack. The two of them rolled in the snow. Arnoux pounded Kieran in the jaw with his bunched fist. Kieran bent his legs, shoved Arnoux in the belly and kicked. As Arnoux went flying, Kieran launched himself after his enemy.
Before Arnoux could scramble to his feet, Kieran was on top of him. He pushed Arnoux down, hard, and stared into the unrelenting green eyes.
Something happened then, inexplicable and terrible beyond words. Kieran had no reference for it in memory or experience, and yet he knew it was real. Between one instant and the next it was as if his body had dissolved, his and Arnoux’s both—and with it all barriers between them, leaving them battling with only mind and will. He felt himself slipping into the black pit that he knew was Arnoux’s consciousness, Arnoux’s vengeful soul.
It was as if a monster were devouring him alive.
He struggled against it, summoned up his own will, lashed out, until their very minds seemed to meet, to meld, to become one.
One.
Kieran reeled with shock. Arnoux’s body had gone rigid, unresisting. They were inextricably bound, but not only by hatred. Not only by the revelation of Kieran’s wretched past.
A howl burst in Kieran’s mind, a greater rage than he had ever known. Arnoux’s rage. Arnoux’s denial. Arnoux dragged him down into madness, another seething cauldron of memory.
Five years ago. A body, and blood. The victim, a once-pretty girl from the reservation, face contorted in death. A figure rose from her mangled form. Clawed hands, coated in blood, reached for Kieran in supplication.
Arnoux’s hands. Not Kieran’s. Arnoux’s.
Another victim. And there had been still more. Petet Schaeffer, dying in terror beneath tearing claws and fangs. Lori Carstens…
Kieran saw them through eyes not his own, through a mind twisted with violent fury and rapture.
Arnoux’s eyes.
“Lies!” Arnoux screamed. He heaved under Kieran, throwing him off.
But Kieran knew. “You killed those people,” he snarled. “I see it. You killed them.”
Kieran was innocent. Innocent.
“You killed Schaeffer,” he snarled. “And Lori.”
Arnoux laughed. “Evil. You lie—”
Lies. Kieran sobbed for air. Truth itself had been twisted into something almost obscene. But there was yet another truth that leaped between them like a fatal current.
He and his enemy were the same. One breed, one kind.
Arnoux was not human.
“You’re like me,” Kieran said, staggering to his feet. “You are a—”
Arnoux screamed. He leaped straight up, twisting in midair and falling heavily to the ground. He began to claw at his clothing.
No— no—no—no—The crazed savagery of Arnoux’s denial severed the bizarre mental link between them, setting Kieran free.
He searched desperately for Alexandra. She had worked her way to her knees and was trying to rise, but she was too weak. God, how he wanted to go to her.
Kieran backed away, putting more space between himself and Alexandra, watching Arnoux as he ripped off the last of his clothes and scrambled to his feet.
Kieran knew how this must end. It was clear in his mind, so recently joined with that of his pursuer and tormentor; what must be, the resolution of so many years lost to Arnoux’s madness. There was only one way to stop the man who had never accepted his true nature and used it to kill.
Kieran began to strip. He gathered his hatred, his rage, his grief for all he had lost and spun it into unshakable purpose. Arnoux had murdered his parents. Arnoux had warped his life. Arnoux had killed innocents, and left their blood on Kieran’s hands. Arnoux might have killed Alexandra.