Luke muttered something savage in French under his breath “I shouldn’t have forced you to—”
Joey stopped him with her outstretched hand, fingers on his lips. He engulfed her hand in his own and held it against his mouth, the warm breath caressing her skin until it tingled. “I’m glad you did, Luke. And there’s still a lot more I want to know. For instance, why… ” Her words were lost in a yawn. This time it was his fingers that stroked her lips to silence her.
“I’ll tell you everything, Joey. There will never be any more secrets between us.”
“I’m glad,” Joey murmured. Luke’s hands caressed her, but in a way that subtly relaxed rather than aroused. She surrendered to it gratefully.
“Luke.” She heard the familiar, urgent voice from a great distance, but it jarred the peaceful lassitude just enough that her eyes edged open, the room blurred between her lashes. “For God’s sake, Luke, what’s been going on here? I’ve been hearing…”
“She’s sleeping” Luke’s voice was a nearby rumble, she felt rather than saw him move away. “Whatever you have to say can be said outside, Allan.”
“What are you trying to do to her, Luke?” Collier’s voice was a harsh whisper. “Instead of letting her recover, you show her things she can’t be ready to deal with. Have you already told her the rest, Luke—about the position you’ve put her in? What you plan to demand from her, because you couldn’t control—”
The words cut off suddenly. “Out.” The barely suppressed ferocity in the single syllable cracked like lightning. Then there were no more voices, no more words, and Joey was left with the fading sense of something not quite right. Something that had yet to be resolved.
That was the last troubling thought that carried Joey into healing sleep.
Bounding over broken ice left by the night’s freezing rain, the wolves hunted. It had been a long time since Luke had run at the head of the village pack, and there was an exhilaration beyond human comprehension in being once again among his own kind.
The communication that passed between them needed no inadequate human words. It pulsed on a far deeper level. Among real wolves, the language was simple and straightforward, among the loups-garous there were layers of meaning that surpassed the tongue of animals, or of ordinary men.
Luke knew the hidden thoughts of his brethren, understood the subtle change of his position among them. Because of Joey. He had always held himself apart because he could not fulfill his rightful place as alpha, with a mate at his side, fathering children to keep the traditions and blood of his people strong. That task had gone to the others—but their blood was not as potent and pure as his. The weight of that responsibility, and the torment of their unfulfilled expectations, had kept him from the most essential part of what he was.
Now, as he gloried in the primitive joy of sheer movement, of muscles bunching and stretching, of air so cold that it trailed in ragged plumes behind them, he exulted, too, in the knowledge of the woman who had changed everything. Joey could not know—not yet—what she meant to him, or to the village. To the people, the loups-garous, of Val Cache, she was hope for the future. A chance to keep the bloodlines whole. To him—Luke spun on one of his hind paws abruptly, and the others followed without once breaking stride—to him she was far more than even they could understand.
It was easy to let himself imagine that she was there with the pack, running beside him, her pale fur would catch the sun like new-fallen snow, the delicately sculpted muzzle raised to taste the icy air. Her eyes—her eyes would be dark gold, overwhelming in the change, all deeper hues. She would be incredibly graceful, laughing in the way of his people, nipping at him and bounding ahead with her elegant white plume of tail trailing behind.
Luke almost stumbled, and Philippe, a black shadow against the snow, brushed his shoulder. For a moment they ran in tandem, the tension of the previous day’s confrontation was long gone, for it was not in their nature to hold grudges among themselves. It was not the way of the wolf-spirit, and there were far too few of them.