Prince of Shadows by Susan Krinard

As if he’d heard her stifled snort, the man looked straight at her. His brows met over narrowed eyes.

“Alexandra,” he repeated solemnly. “Funny?”

His vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds. “Not very,” she mumbled, and then louder, “Can you understand what I’m saying?”

He seemed to weigh her question with great care and then nodded. The movement was rough and unsure, but it was recognizable. Dark hair, streaked with white, tumbled over one eye. “I… understand,” he said. His voice still held a certain roughness, as if he hadn’t used it in a very long time.

Maybe he hadn’t, wherever he’d come from. She imagined a fantastic new scenario: he was a trapper from way up in the taiga across the Canadian border who’d spent so long alone that he’d forgotten how to talk; he’d wandered south and found a comfy cabin and a convenient woman…

Alex backed closer to the front door. Crazy. This was the twentieth century, and he wasn’t much older than she was.

“Are you thirsty? Hungry?” she said. Simple questions first, since he seemed cooperative.

His reaction was immediate. He licked his lips, making her stomach tighten with the memory of his tongue against her skin. Raking the room with his gaze, he fixed on the metal bowl she’d left for Shadow and went directly for it. Before she could stop him, he picked it up and drank the remaining water in one long swallow.

“Not finicky, are you?” Alex said. She reached behind her to touch the front door, testing the knob. It was still locked, just as it had appeared to be. Solving that mystery was not a high priority. She could be out the door in a second.

The wild man made a sharp noise eerily like a growl. Alex snapped her attention back to him. He was looking at her hand on the doorknob, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking.

In a few long strides he was before her, holding her gaze with his. “How long?”

“I don’t understand you,” she said, keeping her voice very low. “How long… what?”

He flung back his head in a gesture of eloquent frustration. Long, dark lashes shielded his eyes. “How… long… wolf?” he said deliberately.

Wolf. Alex thought immediately of Shadow. The man must have seen the wolf after all. But what was he asking?

“Did you… see the wolf when you came here?” she asked. “Where did he go?”

He gave her a very strange look, as if she were the crazy one. And then he groaned. His shoulders tensed and began to shake, and the rough noise he made hovered between a sob and a snarl.

She realized after a moment of frozen fascination that he was laughing. Laughing with a peculiar helplessness, with more than a touch of madness.

Alex thought about the door again, and the rifle in her hand. She’d been bluffing about the rifle anyway; she’d pulled it out of the closet while he was unconscious, but the thought of shooting him made her feel the way she had when she tried to dart Shadow.

“Listen,” she said. At once his laughter stopped; he focused on her again, and she almost wished she’d let him stay in whatever shadowy inner world he’d been visiting. “You need clothes. Where did you put yours?”

Again that strange look, and a flash of pain. “Don’t… know,” he muttered.

It was worse than she’d thought. “Where did you come from?”

His dark brows drew together, and he looked away. “How did you get to the cabin?” “Walked. Ran.”

“Why did you come here?”

He seemed to gather himself, staring at her with that unnerving directness.

“To… remember,” he said. “To find you, Alexandra.”

The way he said her name was like a caress, as if it were something he could taste and savor. Familiar. Intimate. He might as well have licked her again.

But he said he’d come to find her.

“You know me,” she said. “Where have we met?”

An inward struggle passed visibly over the man’s face. “Shadow,” he said slowly. “Me. This—” He touched his chest, made a gesture that encompassed his entire body. “Don’t remember… who.”

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