“Kieran, you’re not a killer. Listen to me! You’re not what he taught you. You never were.”
Kieran shuddered under her hand. She couldn’t let go of him, not even long enough to wipe the blinding tears from her eyes.
“You’re the best of what it is to be human and wolf, Kieran. You’re a miracle. Don’t throw that away.”
His eyes turned to her, lambent and filled with pain.
“I love you, Kieran.” She repeated the words she had never quite dared to say. “I love you.”
She knew she had won when he closed his eyes, his ears dropping down in a gesture of surrender. She knew she had won, and gloried in that fragile victory.
But there was to be no moment of peace. From the woods wolves came, three of them, behaving with a boldness no ordinary wolf would dare in the presence of humans. Two men followed, lean and pale-eyed, supporting between them a limping comrade, his denim-clad thigh bound with blood-soaked cloth. Luke Gévaudan, last seen in Merritt.
Confused, she turned to Kieran. He had shifted back in the space of seconds, but he was not looking at Luke and the strangers. She followed his gaze to Arnoux’s face.
It was no longer human.
“My God.” she choked. “My God.”
Kieran pulled her against him and dragged her free of Arnoux. They knelt together in the snow, staring at the man who had caused so much misery and pain.
Arnoux’s eyes were the same shape and color as they had been before. They gazed back at Alexandra in wordless appeal, begging pity and absolution when once they had only condemned. But the face—the face was grotesque.
It was neither wolf nor man. A blunt muzzle pushed out from a high human forehead, covered in patches of hair. Ears grew halfway between the side and the top of the head. And below—below lay a twisted torso, misshapen, pelted in gray, the chest laboring with each fall and rise. His malformed mouth twisted in a parody of a smile, baring rows of pointed teeth.
“What… do you see?” he croaked. His hand flailed toward her, and she saw it was like the rest of him, a shape caught between one form and another, tipped with claws. “What am I?”
Alexandra couldn’t answer, but Kieran never looked away from Arnoux’s agonized gaze. “You know what you are,” he said softly.
* * *
Arnoux arched up, breath rattling. The horror in the woman’s eyes left him no path of escape. The truth in Kieran’s words was torment beyond anything he had imagined could exist short of hell itself.
He had fought the harrowing revelation at first. Such a perversion could not be. Providence would not so mock him. But when the instincts had awakened, all the denials had done no good. From the moment his mind had met Kieran’s in battle, he had known. And when the boy had shifted, Arnoux had been pulled into the shadows and emerged the abomination he was now.
Remembering everything. Everything.
“Yes,” he whispered. He met Kieran’s unblinking, oddly quiet gaze. “Kill me, boy.”
Kieran glanced once at Alexandra. “No.” His voice shook. “I’m not your executioner.”
Arnoux laughed, the sound tearing up from his lungs like broken glass. “I would have been yours.”
But he understood then. There would be no mercy. This was the beginning of atonement. For he was to be punished for his terrible sins, punished with the realization of what he was, this grotesque shape to which he had been condemned.
Only she was human.
He flexed his fingers, reaching out to her, needing to touch, to explain. But there was something wrong with his tongue. He could not make it form the words of confession. The horror was too great. His vision began to blur strangely, and he blinked, disoriented and lost.
The woman bent over him, touching his face. Her brown hair was as he remembered it, pulled back from her plain, lined face. So gentle, her hands.
“Joseph,” she said.
“Maman?”
“We are here, Joseph.”
The second voice was grim and heavy. Papa had ever been a hard man. He stared down at Arnoux without pity.