“I’m not dreaming?” she whispered.
“No.” He smiled—that faint, almost imperceptible smile she had finally learned to recognize. “And neither am I.”
She reached out, touching any part of him that she could reach. It was not her imagination. The wounds that had bled so freely were gone as if they had never existed. At first she thought even the blood-stained snow had vanished, but then she saw the dark blotch several feet away and realized that Morgan had moved both of them to clean ground.
It was daylight now, and the storm had passed, but the temperature remained below freezing. Athena felt as warm as if she and Morgan lay wrapped in blankets before a crackling fire.
“You healed yourself,” she said in wonder. “How?”
“It is a dangerous thing,” he said. “A great risk to take when there is no other choice. One of us who is injured badly—if we Change, we either die or heal ourselves.”
“I thought you were dead.” Her eyes welled with belated tears. “You weren’t breathing.”
“But I heard you.” He caught a tendril of her hair and tucked it behind her ear. “You called me a coward.”
Her fist bunched with the savage desire to strike the gentle mockery from his face. “Did you find that amusing? Did you enjoy making me think you were dead?”
“No. I had to convince Niall that I was.”
Niall. Athena closed her eyes, and the tears spilled over. “He thought he’d killed you,” she said. “When he said he was returning to Long Park, I knew something was wrong. I left Denver as soon as I guessed what he intended.”
“You risked everything,” he said. “You Changed, Athena. You brought me back.”
Somehow that victory seemed hollow. Whatever Morgan said, she had not saved him. The admiration in his eyes, the pride in his voice made the coming trial that much more unbearable.
“Yes,” she said. “I Changed.”
“Because you feared for me. But you must have known it was Niall who was in danger.”
She met his gaze, and she knew. She knew that Morgan understood the reason Niall had come back to kill him. Cecily’s accusations hung between them, unspoken but impossible to ignore. Even now, after his miraculous reprieve from death.
Especially now.
“I will believe you, Morgan,” she said. “Whatever you tell me, I will believe.”
He looked away. “My great secret,” he said. “It would not have mattered if I had remained among the wolves. But Harry and his people drew me back to men, where the past is never forgotten. Not even by the ones who lived it.”
Then it was true. The horrible things she had refused to accept… some part of them must be true. But the question she knew she must ask froze on her tongue.
“I was in prison,” he said, his voice without expression. “Niall discovered it. That was why he came back. To protect you.”
Athena sat very still, afraid that if she moved her entire body might shatter like a figure sculpted of ice. “Cecily told me,” she said. “She was the one who told Niall.”
“About me. About what I am.” He made a harsh sound under his breath. “It is true.” At last he looked at her. “You didn’t believe it until now. You had faith in me.”
How bitterly he mocked himself. She recognized the contempt, the unrelenting self-judgment. Whatever he had done, his punishment had never stopped. He carried it with him always.
He would tell her everything if she asked. Every ugly detail of his crime and imprisonment, anything she might possibly wish to know. And he would hope, as he told her, that she would turn from him in disgust and horror.
“You should not have come back, Athena,” he said. “Your brother would have been safe.”
He spoke with such reluctance, as if he were revealing a great weakness—as if sparing a life were more shameful than taking one. In spite of what he had said earlier, he assumed she’d escaped Denver to protect Niall. And hadn’t she? Hadn’t she been equally afraid for both men, knowing that Niall didn’t have a chance against a werewolf?