She was ready when he spoke again. “Did Allan tell you—did he explain—” With uncharacteristic hesitation Luke drew in a deep breath and let it out very slowly. Again he held her in place so that she could not see his face. “Did he tell you how we—”
He got no further in his stammered question; without warning Bertrande appeared in the doorway, a wooden tray of food in her hands. She set it down without ceremony on a nearby stool, put her hands on her hips and regarded them both with gleeful satisfaction.
“He bien, Luc, je vois qu’ça s’est arrange ent’vous deux!” The old woman’s voice held the same tone of gloating satisfaction, she leered at Joey unabashedly. “About time. No excuse not to do your duty, boy—as soon as she is up to it, bien sûr!” Bertrande chuckled and rolled her eyes “I have a feeling it will not take long with you two.” She spoke to Luke in French, too rapidly for Joey to follow.
Luke growled something incomprehensible, he had gone rigid under her, and she was able to push free of his restraining arm to watch the exchange. Bertrande’s words were a puzzle, and there was something under their surface, something that brought that strange tension into Luke’s body.
“Bon, bien, I will leave you now.” Bertrande’s eyes had not lost their twinkle in spite of Luke’s obvious discomfort. For a moment she focused on Luke intently, spoke to him in soft French that Joey only half understood. Don’t worry, the old woman told him. And something else, about leaving.
Bertrande turned suddenly to Joey, and there was an incongruous touch of gravity in her voice “Take care of him, Joelle. Let him take care of you. You cannot refuse what you are.” Then, with a final flashing grin, she left the room with a cheerful “Bonjour.”
Luke was up and headed for the tray before Joey could demand an explanation. He busied himself with it far longer than necessary, and at last Joey sat up against the stacked pillows and cleared her throat. “I’m rather hungry, Luke—do you suppose you could bring that over here?”
His back stiffened, and he turned at once with the tray in hand, the lines of his face were tense and angry, smoothing before her eyes into the familiar, distant neutrality that meant he was hard at work pushing emotion far below the surface. Joey understood that process all too well. She contented herself with the fresh bread and cheese, sipping the broth and cold water until her hunger had been appeased. The hunger that remained could not be satisfied so easily. Luke hardly touched the food, he gulped down the water in one long pull and ignored the rest.
“I guess you prefer meat?” Joey offered cautiously after she finished her last bite of cheese.
She’d meant it as a joke, but Luke turned to her and answered gravely, “Sometimes we do—but we’re as much human as wolf.” There was a strange sharp tenor to the words, as if Luke were trying to remind her—or himself—of his double nature. That he was still very much a man.
Joey set the tray down carefully. “What was she saying to you, Luke—what did she say that made you so angry? And what did she mean about not refusing what I am?” She watched his face as it flexed in a series of emotions too rapid to follow. His eyes were hard as chips of amber-green stone as they met her gaze.
“Do you want to know, Joey?” The words flew like splinters of that same cold stone. “Do you really want to understand what I am—what we both are?” Before she could answer, he shifted and grasped her upper arms in his hands, tight enough to hold without hurting. The tray clattered to the floor. “I’ll tell you. My grandmother was congratulating me. Congratulating us.” Joey opened her mouth, and his grip tightened fractionally. “Not for any simple or obvious reason. Not for any human circumstance.”
Joey sat on her knees, held more surely frozen in place by the savage look in his eyes than by his hands. “She said,” Luke continued with harsh deliberation, “what all the village knows. What even Collier understands. You and I—we are joined, Joey. From that moment in the cave. By the blood of my people, we have become mates.”