“Is that why you ran away?”
She jerked up her chin and glared at him. “Maybe you shouldn’t talk about running away, Kieran.”
She wondered why she brought it up. She’d known at the time why he left her in Saskatchewan. It had made perfect sense then, and not one iota of difference now.
“I had to, Alexandra. I thought I could be a danger to you, after Lori was killed. I thought—”
“I know what you thought. You thought I wasn’t strong enough to cope with what you thought you might be. My faith in you wasn’t enough. And you didn’t really need me anymore. Your instincts gave you an alternative, and you followed them. To this place.” She heard the rising emotion in her own voice and caught her breath. “And I followed you, still believing you might—”
“Need you?” he finished softly.
She kept her words cool and level. “I only made things worse.”
“No, Alexandra.”
“There was a time when you needed me. But I can’t do anything more for you now. Not when you have a place to belong, your own people to give you what you’ve been missing all your life.”
“Such as love?”
She tensed her muscles so the shaking wouldn’t show. “I believe you can have whatever you want, Kieran. You were always worthy of love.”
His eyes gave her no quarter. “You’re very sure of my future. What about the past? Our past?” He seemed to loom over her without moving at all. “Can you tell me the reason for everything that’s happened? Why we were brought together so many years ago and found each other again?”
“I don’t—”
“What about the night we made love?”
With that single sentence he made her remember and relive every moment she had been in his arms, every kiss and caress and murmured endearment. All the ache of wanting returned, undimmed by time or tragedy or the vast gulf she felt between them.
“We both wanted that, Kieran,” she said hoarsely. “It was wonderful. It was… grabbing at life in the midst of so much uncertainty. It was a way to heal. A step in the journey we both were making.”
“And you believe the journey is at an end.”
She wanted to shake him. “Don’t you see? You talk about purpose. Fate. You were brought here for a reason. I still remember what you said that night: ‘I don’t belong in the human world.’ You have to have a chance to heal. This is that chance—to be what you are for once in your life without having to hide.”
“I never had to hide from you, Alexandra.”
His words were soft and utterly devastating. “It’s not the same,” she whispered. “I know how I would feel in your shoes. I’m selfish, Kieran. If I could have found a place where everyone accepted what I was, I would have given anything to go there.”
Kieran closed his eyes. “It never occurred to you that it might be something other than this place I was looking for.”
“You were looking for yourself, just as I was. But the call you felt didn’t summon me here, Kieran—”
“Then what did?” He opened his eyes and focused on her with his predator’s stare.
“I told you.”
“What did it mean when you said you loved me?”
She closed her mouth, stunned into silence. He had heard her when she flung that desperate admission at him, and he had not forgotten.
“I… I knew I had to get through to you somehow, make you listen before you killed Arnoux.”
“And you succeeded.” He gazed up at the tops of the lodgepole pines that brushed the winter sky. “I did need you after all. You seem to know what I need better than I do myself.” He smiled, a sad lifting of his mouth. “You’d sacrifice anything to give me what I need.”
“Sacrifice? After all you’ve given me?” She flattened her hand across her mouth, as if that gesture alone could hold back the tears. “Once I wanted desperately to be a wolf. I thought they were better than people. I got my wish, in a way. I came closer than any human being could. I realized that miracles still exist, that I’m worth something after all. You gave me that, Kieran.”