“Here. Let me help you.”
Her hand stopped him, settling over his so lightly that he felt her warmth more than her touch. Averting her face from his nakedness, she held the pants until he found his way into them. She located the shirt and showed him how to put it on; when her fingers brushed his skin, he felt like flinging back his head and howling.
But humans didn’t howl.
Alexandra stepped back. “Good,” she said softly. “All right, then.” She folded her arms. “You asked me before how long you’d been a wolf.”
Kieran rolled his shoulders, adapting to the sensation of cloth stretched taut against his skin. “I don’t remember.”
“Damn.” She looked around the room, her gaze fixing on the far wall. “Come over here, Kieran.”
He followed her to the wall. A picture was hung there—a silver-white wolf against a background of snow. Beneath it were rows of lines and markings.
Kieran touched the paper. Numbers. Dates.
“Do you remember calendars?” Alexandra asked.
“Yes.” It was a victory. He stared at the calendar until it resolved into sense. “1996,” he said slowly.
“You can read.”
They were very close now, and he looked into her eyes. “I’m not stupid, Alexandra.”
Her jaw tensed. “I never thought you were.”
He glanced back at the wolf on the calendar and saw another image in its place: a woman, naked, against a bright red background. And below a different set of numbers.
“Five years,” he said.
“What?”
“Five years ago. When I last saw a calendar.” He closed his eyes to hold the memory. Nothing more would come.
“Have you been a wolf all the time since then?” she asked.
He looked down at his clenched fists. If he could, he would run—far and fast, beating out the anger in his blood, hunting the memories like prey. He turned to the wall and struck it with his fist. “I don’t know.”
Alexandra was very quiet. Kieran spread his fingers flat and listened to her walk away.
“It’s a start,” she said. “Maybe we should focus on what you do remember.”
He put his back to the wall. His breathing steadied. She held the answers; they were in her eyes, in the shape of her mouth and the sweet huskiness of her voice.
“I remember coming to you,” he said.
“When?”
“Yesterday. In the forest.”
Her tongue touched her lips. “You were very sick.”
Yes. He remembered the sickness, and knowing what he must do.
“Do you know how you came to be sick?” she asked.
“No.”
She shook her head and rubbed her arms up and down. “You almost died, Kieran. You must remember something.”
She tried to hide it, but he heard the tightness in her words, the frustration in her voice. Yesterday she had spoken to the wolf he’d been with gentleness, touched him without fear. Now he was human, and she pulled away, angry and afraid.
But this morning she hadn’t been angry, when he had lain beside her. Her skin had been warm, and she had made sounds of pleasure that stirred him in ways he hadn’t the words to name.
“I remember you, Alexandra,” he said, pushing away from the wall. “Yesterday and before.”
She avoided his eyes. “You were alone when we met in the woods yesterday. But when you were a boy—” She broke off and exhaled slowly.
“Tell me,” he said.
“You said you remembered me—”
“Your face. Your voice. Being with you. But not who I was.” He moved close enough to her that she was forced to look up. “You know.”
“I only know what you were,” she said. “When I was a child I knew you as a wolf I called Shadow. A young wolf. We spent the summer together. And I met you as a boy, just before—”
“Something happened,” he said. He dosed the space between them and caught her hand before she could pull it back. “Blood. Everything changing.” He shut his eyes, buffeted by emotion. Loss too terrible to be borne. The smells of violence and hatred; the horror and denial.
And the Voice. The Voice had been there, like Alexandra. Promising as she had promised. Commanding, pulling him away from death.