But his concern was real. She felt a rush of warmth for him, and got to her feet.
“You don’t have to worry about me. I can Change now, Telford. I’m loup-garou.”
He nodded without surprise. “You have always had a great power, Cassidy Holt. I didn’t perceive it at first, but only the blind could fail to see it in you now.” He bowed. “I will not say good-bye. I believe that we shall meet again.”
She swallowed and impulsively took his hand. First Quentin and Rowena, and now Telford, walking out of her life. She would not think of Braden.
Telford clasped her hand in a firm grip. “I once read a poem that I have never forgotten.” He began to recite:
“Say not the struggle naught availeth,
The labor and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain…
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!
But westward, look, the land is bright!”
He squeezed her hand again and released it, turning toward the wagon.
Cassidy stayed at the side of the road until the wagon had vanished around the nearest bend. Long after the last vibrations of the horse’s footfalls were gone from the earth, she remained where she was, a prisoner other heart.
She willed some certainty to return, the confidence that had come to her as a wolf, the freedom from want or care. But those things had abandoned her as surely as the people she’d come to love.
No, not abandoned. They had made their choices, and she had made hers. With a strange clarity, she could look back and see each decision as it happened. She hadn’t regretted a single one, or questioned that it was right.
Because she hadn’t known better. The world had seemed simple, when it wasn’t simple at all. Isabelle had tried to teach her that, but it was the sort of thing you had to learn for yourself.
As Cassidy had learned.
She had chosen to come to England, hoping to find herself and a purpose and a place to belong. She’d chosen to give herself to Braden, loving him. Ignorant as she was then, her motives had been worthy.
But not for the third choice, to defy him and help Rowena. She’d felt so noble, and told herself that she could face Braden’s displeasure.
Now she saw, with painful understanding, that it hadn’t been just for Rowena. She’d believed enough of Isabelle’s letter and Rowena’s tales to feel justified in defying her husband. Braden had left her alone at Greyburn after their marriage, and she’d wanted… wanted to hurt him. Wanted him to feel as lost as she did, even though she hadn’t let herself see how she really felt inside.
She’d wanted him to feel as… forsaken and alone as she did, because what she’d found with Braden wasn’t the poetic dream she expected.
She’d succeeded too well. She did have power over him; she had become like Milena. No better than Milena. She made the past come alive for him again, to drown whatever trust and affection he might have felt for the girl he’d married.
But she wasn’t a girl any longer. She was a woman. She would have children other own. And that meant she had to live with her choices, the way Isabelle did. Accept the consequences of what she’d done instead of running away from them.
If Braden had caused Milena’s death, he lived with that guilt every day. Or perhaps—perhaps he kept himself from feeling anything, to protect himself from an emotion too horrible to bear.
He held himself bound in chains of his own making, as if, with a single lapse, he might fly to pieces like the glass he’d broken in the library. His blindness was another way to keep people, and the threat of love, always beyond reach.
The consequences of love were hard to bear. She couldn’t stop loving Braden, whatever he said or did. But had she the power to make him face himself? Could she live with a man who might have…