Prince of Shadows by Susan Krinard

North and west, it said. Come. North and west.

Kieran pushed out from under the log, stretching cramped muscles. He’d kicked his boots off sometime last night, shed his clothes and left them in a heap outside the hollow. They crackled when he shook them out.

North and west. It was so clear, so simple now that he let go. Into his mind came knowledge of a place, undefined by such mundane considerations as latitude and longitude.

A place. A destination. A sanctuary. A sense of safety and belonging that could neither be defined nor questioned.

Home. Kieran closed his eyes. The word hung in his mind. Home. North and west. If there were answers to what he was, if he had a past beyond the wandering he remembered, he would find them there.

Not with the woman he could never have.

Already he felt the drive to run again, put this place far behind him. Put her far behind him, where he couldn’t touch her again.

A twig snapped. Kieran froze.

“Kieran!”

She walked into the clearing and stopped a safe distance away. He could still abandon his clothes and escape, before he could look into her eyes and hear her speak and remember every moment she had been in his arms.

“Kieran,” she repeated. Her eyes were shadowed, her face pale and strained.

Too late. He breathed in her scent and was lost.

She took another step. “I was afraid I wouldn’t find you. I’ve been… looking for hours.”

Hours. For a moment his heart sped, and he wondered if there was hope after all. If he could be wrong. She had searched for him…

“What happened last night?” she asked.

He closed his eyes. He could never explain, never find the words to make sense of it. Not like Peter with his smooth, cultured tongue. He could not tell her that he wanted her. Wanted her desperately, with all the primitive instincts of the beast within his nightmare.

“You don’t remember, Alexandra?”

She was silent for several heartbeats. “After,” she said “After you left the cabin.”

It wasn’t what he expected. He opened his eyes. She was crouched a few feet away, her arms wrapped around her knees. “Did you come here, Kieran?” she asked, her tone as expressionless as her face. “Were you here all night?”

He balled his jeans in his fists. “No.”

She closed her eyes, as if she couldn’t bear to look at him a moment longer. “Did you do it, Kieran?”

The jeans dropped to the snow as he rose. “Do what?”

Her face lost what little color it had. She shuddered uncontrollably. “Peter is dead, Kieran.”

It took a moment for him to realize he had heard her right. “What?”

“They found him last night… torn—” Alex swallowed. “He was… mangled. As if—”

As if an animal had killed him. Kieran heard the words in his head, though she didn’t finish the sentence.

“The police came to the cabin this morning to question me.” She made a visible effort to continue. “People heard you… threaten Peter, Kieran. Yesterday at the bar.” She met his gaze at last. “They think you killed him.”

Nausea fisted in Kieran’s belly. The nightmare. It had felt so real. The stalking, the hunting. Peter, running from him. And then the blood…

He had awakened this morning to the taste of blood. Blinding pain filled the space behind his eyes. Peter. Alexandra’s former lover. A man he’d come close to hating, whom he’d attacked in a drunken passion.

A man he would never have killed. Consciously. His legs buckled. He began to fall, and suddenly Alexandra was in his way. He twisted and rolled in the opposite direction just as she reached for him. “Stay back,” he rasped.

She stopped with her hands outstretched. “No, Kieran.”

“Stay where you are,” he warned again. And when she kept coming, he snarled the words he had repeated a thousand times: “I don’t remember.”

That got through. She bit down on her lip until he could feel her pain.

“You came… you found me to ask if I killed Peter,” he said. “You believe I could have done it.”

The indifference slipped from her face like a discarded mask. “I don’t believe it,” she said hoarsely.

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