Prince of Shadows by Susan Krinard

Alex braced her legs to keep from swaying. “You were waiting here for us.”

“I was waiting for Kieran.”

“Then you sent Kieran to look for me.”

“I did everything I could to keep him from going to you. He’d already made the decision to come with me to Val Cache. I thought it was for the best, that he had to be among his own people to learn the truth.”

Among his own people. For the first time Alex felt a strange, dull shock run through her body, a brutal new understanding she had been pushing into the back of her mind.

“You didn’t think I’d be able to help him,” she said, her tone devoid of emotion. “Because I’m not… one of you.”

Luke was silent for a long time. “It was here we learned the truth,” he said at last. “You did help him, Alexandra.”

“I put him in danger, believing I could—” She looked away. Believing I could help. That I could somehow stop Arnoux and warn Kieran. If I hadn’t followed him when he ran from me in Saskatchewan, he wouldn’t have had me to worry about. He left me for a reason.

He left me because he knew I couldn’t help him anymore. But I made myself believe that one night together could solve everything…

Alex passed her hand over her eyes. “I have a… lot to think about,” she whispered. “And Kieran has even more.”

“There’s time for that now,” Luke said. “The hunt is over. Arnoux is finished. Kieran has found what he was looking for.” He held Alex’s gaze with grave intensity. “And we have found him. There are so few of us in the world. Now he’s come home.”

Home. Alex swallowed again. A home among his own. A home to make up for the travesty of it he’d shared with Arnoux. A future to replace the past he had lost. A chance to start over.

As if to echo her thoughts, a howl rose on the wind. Men and women drifted into the clearing, moving like graceful shadows. Even from a distance she could see their eyes: wolves’ eyes, yellow-green and yellow-gray and amber and emerald and every shade in between. They made unerringly for Kieran.

Alex caught a glimpse of his expression as he saw them: it was as if the light shone full on his face and through him, a mingling of hope and slow amazement. The three wolves that had come with Luke blurred into mist and became men almost as beautiful as he was. They and the newcomers surrounded Kieran—touching his arm, smiling, speaking in soft voices of welcome, accepting him among them until she could no longer see Kieran at all.

Even Luke had left her to join the others, limping between his kinfolk. Alex felt the terrible pain of joy for Kieran, knowing what he must feel. No longer rejected, no longer bound to hide his nature. Belonging as he had never belonged before. Oh, she knew how wonderful that felt, and how precious a gift it was.

She could not be a part of it.

She hardly knew when she turned to go, blindly, floundering in the deep snow with no direction in mind but away. The cold reached deep inside her, numbing her heart as it chilled her skin. Still she blundered on, past trees that all looked identical, over creeks as ice-bound as her thoughts.

And right into a solid, warm wall of flesh and bone and muscle.

“Alexandra,” Kieran said.

She stumbled back. “Kieran. I thought—”

“That I’d abandoned you?”

She backed against the nearest tree trunk and wrapped her arms around herself. He was dressed now, in snug cords and a loose shirt. Not the same torn clothing he’d worn before the fight; perhaps Luke had given these to him. But there was more change in him than that. It was in the way he stood—a kind of unconscious pride, a self-acceptance, a charisma that she’d always seen in the wolves she loved.

Arnoux had not destroyed him. Everything he’d endured had made him stronger. He had become so much more than human.

This is what he was meant to be, she thought. Pride and love tightened her chest. She remembered when he’d first come to her—so vulnerable, so confused. He had needed her so much then. Now he resembled in every way the true miracle he was, free at last of the chains of his past.

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