“Don’t worry, boy. I’ll—” The stroking stopped. Quentin opened his eyes to find Harper gazing down at him, the light from the lamp on the table picking out the gaunt features of his face. His breath came faster, and his hand clenched in the fur of Quentin’s mane.
“You,” he whispered. “What are you?” The empty, distant look in his eyes sloughed away like a snake’s skin, leaving them clear and almost sane.
Quentin could have sworn that those eyes saw him for what he was—saw past the fur and recognized the soul beneath.
He slipped free of Harper’s grip and backed away. Harper stared after him, hand poised in midair.
“Don’t,” he said.
Voices sounded from the hallway. Quentin scrambled out of the room and ran for the back door just ahead of them. He charged straight up the hill without stopping until he reached the place where he’d left his clothes.
Panting hard, he Changed. The air had grown cool, and his bare skin ran with goosebumps as he snatched up his drawers.
Harper knew. He wasn’t gifted with a werewolf’s powers, but there was something about him… something that made him different, an outsider among his own kind.
Perhaps they were kin, after all.
He started back down the hill, skidding on the matted pine needles.
“Are you running away?”
He spun around at the whispered words. The unexpected intruder resolved into a girl, slight as a doe, the usual book tucked under her arm. May.
“What are you doing out so late?” he demanded. “It isn’t safe—”
His words came out more harshly than he’d intended, and she recoiled. He recognized that look. She was expecting to be berated, punished, struck, all because he’d raised his voice to her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m a brute. Forgive me.”
Her tightly coiled muscles loosened. “Are you angry with me?”
Damnation. As little as he knew of the child, in spite of the very few insignificant words they’d exchanged, he felt an unaccountably fierce desire to protect her. What had Johanna said? “I have no objection to your speaking with her … if you are very careful. It might help her to realize that not all men are—”
She hadn’t finished the sentence, but he could fill in the rest. He’d seen his share of cruelty in his wanderings. God help anyone who raised a hand to her in his presence.
“Of course I’m not angry,” he said, crouching to her level. “I was only worried about you. Worried that you might be running away.”
“Not from this place. I like it here. I like—” She bit her lip. “You aren’t leaving, are you?”
A few moments past he couldn’t have answered that question. Johanna had said that May’s mother had left her at the Haven two years ago. Abandoned her, from the look of it. Had this girl known anything but maltreatment and neglect in her former life?
Even his cowardice had its limits. He’d be damned before he added to her pain.
“No, May,” he said, “I’m not leaving.” He offered his hand. “I seem to have forgotten my shoes. Will you help me find them?”
She smiled—a heartbreaking, elusive thing—and took his hand.
They returned to the house together. A woman stood in the back doorway, lantern held aloft, waiting to guide the errant strays back to safety.
Quentin stopped before her. “You can douse the lamp, my dear doctor,” he said, grinning past the lump in his throat. “I’m here to stay.”
Chapter 9
Johanna sat up in her bed, throwing off the covers with a jerk. She came to full wakefulness a moment later. Only a dream. Odd; she so seldom remembered her dreams, and nightmares like this were rarer still. Something about running… away from a threat without solid shape, a creature that panted after her, never more than a step or two behind.
A wolf had run at her side. She had felt no fear of the beast, only a sense of companionship and well-being. She remembered arguing with it, about whether to stand and fight, or run; the wolf had won the argument. So they fled, to no avail. At the very last instant, when the thing had almost caught up with them, the wolf whirled about and crouched, a shield between her and their pursuer. And from the mouth of the amorphous shadow came Quentin’s baritone, strangely altered: “I’m here to stay.”