SECRET OF THE WOLF By Susan Krinard

She went to her desk, sat down, and attempted to take notes. Her hand only managed to make uneven ink blots on the paper.

Notes were unnecessary. She was all too sensible of her current predicament: two equally urgent cases, May’s and Quentin’s, strangely—and dangerously—interconnected. Fenris had attacked Ingram. He might reappear at any time if provoked—if May should be threatened again. And there was no telling how far he might go.

Why did Fenris, and Quentin, react so strongly to May’s situation? Quentin had said that Ingram was “forcing his attentions” upon a young maid at the hotel. Fenris knew all that Quentin experienced. He had acted upon Quentin’s desires. In his mind, May and the maid were one and the same.

Quentin would have understood the difference, but Fenris didn’t care. He was a force immune to reason and negotiation, to all the civilizing elements that made Quentin who he was.

As long as Fenris continued to exist, Quentin must be watched, and kept close to the Haven. There were times she could not be with him—at night, and when she saw the other patients. That meant she had to believe that Fenris would remain dormant as long as Quentin was not provoked.

Restraining him by physical means was out of the question. And so, now, was sending him to another doctor. The responsibility was entirely hers. And if she could no longer call him her patient…

He remained her friend. She would lay down her life for him. She would save him, if it was the last thing she accomplished as a doctor.

Or a woman.

Resolutely she set aside her pen, gathered her notes, and hid them in a new place behind several heavy medical volumes on her bookshelf. She resumed her routine until dinnertime, visiting her father and the other patients and joining them at the table in the usual manner. Quentin remained in his room.

She tossed and turned that night. When she slept at last, vivid dreams swept her away on a tide of ever-changing images, both nightmarish and sublime. She found herself in Quentin’s arms, turning her face up to his tender kisses, feeling his hands on her body. Between one moment and the next, in the manner of dreams, she was naked in his bed.

He stretched his length over her, murmuring endearments as he stroked her belly, her most intimate places. Her own voice emerged as a low moan of anticipation and need. She was about to be initiated into the mystery she knew only as theory: the supreme pleasure of sexual ecstasy, the joining of a man and woman in the act of love…

He kissed her. She cried out in pain, tasting blood on her lips.

Fenris held her; Fenris pushed her thighs apart and laughed in his victory. She fought him, raking his face and his chest with her nails, but he was immune to hurt. He pressed down, overpowering her, smothering her, possessing her.

“Quentin!”

The cry yanked her from the dream and halfway out of the bed. For a terrifying instant she couldn’t move. Her nightgown was twisted around her body and wedged between her legs; the sheets lay spilled on the floor.

Hunched up against the pillows, she concentrated on catching her breath. Her skin was clammy to the touch, her heart leaping from beat to beat like a panicked doe.

Still halfway caught in the snares of her own mind, she crawled from the bed and felt her way to the door.

Quentin. She must see him, make sure of… what? That he wasn’t the cruel and ruthless creature who laughed as he subjugated all her strength and confidence, and stripped her of herself? Or was it to prove she wasn’t afraid?

She bumped into the walls of the hallway and flailed for the knob of Quentin’s door.

Her clumsy movements would surely have awakened the heaviest sleeper. But as she reached Quentin’s bedside she found him insensible, locked in a fathomless sleep.

In sleep, he was at peace. Fenris had no part of that face, those lips softly curved in some pleasant dream. She knelt beside the bed and gazed at him until the last remnants of her nightmare shredded and drifted away into the summer night.

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