When that bottle was empty, he went back to Quentin’s room and found another, discarded on the floor with the rest. Sound and scent and touch had begun to merge in his mind, becoming a great blur of sensation. He made his way with exaggerated care down the corridor, down the stairs, to the front doors while startled servants scurried out of his way like mice.
The rain fell in torrents, hard enough to pierce his numbness. He walked into the drive and beyond, where the lawn was drenched and soft under his feet. Just like before. Fresh water ran into his upturned mouth, diluting the taste of alcohol.
Cassidy’s voice whispered between the raindrops. “I read about love in poems, but I didn’t understand what it really was. Now I know you don’t have it inside you.”
Braden reached out as if she were there before him, as if he could… what? Compel her to admit she was wrong? Punish her for leaving him?
With every breath he took she slipped farther and farther beyond his reach. He could not even create an image of her in his mind. He’d never seen Cassidy—his second wife, who had left him just like the first. The face that came to him was exquisitely beautiful and fair-haired and cruel.
The last face he’d ever seen, on a night exactly like this. The first thunder rumbled, and he went rigid, as if he’d been struck by lightning. Terror bled into him like rain scalded by fire. Quentin’s poison worked its way through his veins, penetrating his heart and mind, mingling with subtler poisons that Braden had buried and nearly forgotten. Time itself tangled until past and future had no meaning. His wet clothing clung to his body like bindings meant to strangle and suffocate.
“I don’t want what you’re willing to give.” Someone had said that to him. Someone who had claimed to love him. But it was a lie. She was a lie, a dream, a false hope of happiness.
He let go all control and let hatred take him. It possessed him utterly, red-eyed with the need to wreak vengeance, to punish, to destroy. It was the beast that had been waiting to escape all these years, kept chained by duty, by fear, by unbearable guilt.
Something, someone had broken its chains at last.
“You can’t hold me,” she said, laughing cruelly. “I’ll be free of you forever—”
Pain slammed into his chest. Her blow shattered what was left of his heart. He roared, ignoring the agony that clawed through him as he Changed.
The bottle rolled onto the grass, spilling liquid like lifeblood into the thirsty earth.
Twenty
The black wolf ran. She tested her new shape to its limits, oblivious of her destination. The rain blinded her, but she had little need of sight. Broad paws skidded in mud and rolled on loose stone, but her balance was uncannily perfect. Human needs, human concerns, human weaknesses were cast aside like the naked woman’s body she had worn hours or years ago. Time ceased to have meaning.
She had no enemies and no equals. She sensed smaller animals cowering around her, acknowledging her supremacy. Flocks of sheep, bunched up against the weather, scattered and fled. Her only foe was exhaustion, and she fought that as long as she could, until muscles and nerves and laboring heart and lungs rebelled.
She fell in an unknown place beside a muddy road. Her body shifted back to human without her consent, recognizing her weariness better than she did herself.
In human form she remembered all that had happened before the miracle. The protection of anger was gone, melted away during the headlong, reckless flight. In the wake other triumph was misery as black as the wolf’s pelt.
She’d proven her werewolf blood… too late. Fury and despair and sorrow had driven her across that final barrier as love and happiness could not. She had found her whole self at last.
But she couldn’t go back. Braden had married her because she lacked the werewolf ability to Change, and because he was sterile. He’d proven himself incapable of accepting or giving love. The Cause had taken the place of his soul.