Was that why she had come to him—for the answers her mother had not given her?
“Is that why you can’t Change?” he asked. “You had no one to teach you?”
“But I did. I taught myself.” Even in her awkward position she managed to square her shoulders and maintain her dignity. “I could do what you did, once. When I was younger. Before—” She made a brief, dismissive gesture toward her legs.
Pain. For a moment it was stark in her eyes, along with memories too agonizing to bear. His mind formed an image of himself crippled as she was, and flinched away from the horror. What had seemed an inconvenience for a human was worse than death to a werewolf.
“Your pity is quite unnecessary,” she said, lifting her chin. “I accepted it long ago.” Her eyes gave the lie to her words, but the deceptively tranquil cadence had returned to her voice. She might have been addressing her lady friends at tea.
If he’d been wise, he would have accepted her denial, told her whatever she wished to know, and sent her on her way. She believed she had come to terms with her affliction; who was he to suggest otherwise? If she had made a tolerable life for herself in the human world, that was her own affair.
But he remembered the small-minded conversation of the women she called “friends.” Human friends. They could not know what she was, and still they branded her an outsider, an object of the pity she rejected.
He had been drawn to her by senses more profound than mere intellect. Drawn to protect her. And now that she had given him the secret that made her even more an outsider than before…
In all his wanderings, he had never met another of the wolf blood—not in the saloons or on the dusty roads, in ramshackle towns or mining camps. Now he found his mirror in a woman of wealth, education, and the position humans so valued. But there was no wildness in Athena Munroe. Spirit, perhaps, and courage, but no desperate yearning for the freedom beyond human walls.
We are nothing alike. We cannot be.
“I have tried to devote my time and resources to the service of others,” she said quietly. “I am quite content. I have put that other life aside. But when I saw you… change… I realized that there was still a small part of me that was not yet laid to rest.”
With an unwelcome jolt of insight, Morgan recognized how great an admission she had made to him. Her physical disadvantages made her fight doubly hard to be competent and strong in every other part of her life. In one way they were alike; they both did everything possible to avoid needing. Athena helped others; they needed her, not the reverse.
There was little enough that he needed. But now Athena needed him, and he did not know the extent of that need. Did she expect him—him, of all people—to absolve her of her werewolf nature?
He jumped up from the chair and paced out a circle in the sawdust. “What do you want of me?”
Athena had managed to work her legs to the edge of the cot, as if she might put her weight on her feet and walk away. “If you would be so kind,” she said, “I would like to sit up. I am fully recovered.”
He was certainly not. But he went to her and lifted her again, carrying her to the chair. The contact was disturbing, and he was aware of her distinct female scent and the acceleration of her heartbeat. Once she was settled he released her quickly and stepped away.
“Please forgive me, Mr. Holt,” she said. “I realize that you did not seek my confidences. I shall try not to impose too much. If you can tell me—” She bit her lower lip. “Did you ever meet a woman named Gwenyth Desbois?”
“Your mother?”
She nodded. Her eyes shone—with hope, perhaps. He hated himself for having to shatter it.
“No. I knew only one other of wolf blood—my own mother.”
“I see.” She gazed down at her hands. “I had thought that you, having traveled so widely, might have known more like us.”