He waited for her response, feeling the helplessness of knowing she was, now and in this, beyond his influence. “You mean,” she said in a very small voice, “that I’ve been this all along. What you are. A werewolf.” The flatness of the words almost chilled him. “And that can’t be. Nothing ever happened—nothing—my parents were normal, and I was normal. ” She trailed off, dropping her head. He cradled her face in his hands and pulled her back against him, stroking her high cheekbones with his thumbs.
“You couldn’t know, Joelle,” he murmured. “It must have been hidden in you, in your family.” He stopped himself quickly, fearing to summon up the demands of her past. “The blood and the gift are rare. Occasionally we hear of others, loups-garous outside of Val Cache. My father…” With an effort he continued. “My father didn’t know what he was when my mother chose him.”
He stopped again, shutting off memory of the man who had sired him. Who had refused the call of his blood, had been unable to accept what Joey was learning now. “It’s a rare thing, Joelle, but not unknown, even in your country. And it is nothing to fear.”
Her breathing was quick, but for the first time he sensed something other than trepidation.
“I should be afraid,” she said hoarsely. “I should be screaming, if I had any sense. And I can’t quite figure out why I’m not.” She chuckled, a lost little sound. Wrapping his arms around her, Luke pulled her into himself as if that alone could give her the peace and courage to accept what she was. “I know it’s true. I don’t know why I know, but I do.” She burrowed against him, hard. Her body trembled in his hold. “I suppose the only way I’m ever going to understand this is to prove to myself—to see it with my own eyes. Feel it.
“You can do it if you wish to, Joelle,” he said, willing her strength. “You have the power within you. ” Her silver-blond hair was soft where his lips brushed it. “You would be as beautiful a wolf as you are a woman.”
A long tremor shook her, as if the picture he had conjured up in his mind had communicated itself directly into hers. It was not beyond the realm of what was possible between them. He kept her tightly against him as he closed his eyes and thought of what it would be like to have her running beside him, a pale and graceful she-wolf almost the color of snow.
“In the winter nights,” he mused, his cheek to her hair, “you don’t feel the cold. Your fur is made to turn it away, and the snow shatters out from under your feet as you run. Your sense of smell is so intense that it’s as if the whole world has crossed your path, the scents like thousands of colors without names splashed over the landscape like paint on canvas.” He heard her breathing catch again and knew she felt the things he described.
“Your ears pick up every sound, and it’s as if every melody ever composed by man is some poor imitation, some distant memory of what you hear around you. Your packmates speak to you without words, without any need of them. The moon is so bright that even a night-blind human could find his way; when the hunt begins, it is you the pack follows, because you are strongest, but there is no resentment or jealousy or pride. There is a pattern—a weave to existence of which you are only a part—that sets the course of things as they should be, and even the beasts you hunt give up their lives to that pattern when their time comes.”
He fell silent, listening to the rapid beat of her heart. “Often,” he said at last, “the pattern lets the prey escape, and you have run for many kilometers with only an empty belly at the end of it. Your breath clouds the still air as you rest, accepting the defeat because it is not the first and won’t be the last, and because the wolf-spirit gives you understanding. There is no rage or bitterness to shadow the sweetness of the night. The pack draws in around you, enfolding you, one with you, and when you cry out it is for joy and for the binding of the pack. In that moment, when the pack raises its voice, there is such perfection that your heart aches with the beauty of it, and with sadness because, like human contentment, it cannot last.”