She closed her eyes, sensing the child they’d made together. It was as much Braden’s as hers. To let him go on believing that he would never have children… If she wanted to punish him, there could be no better way.
Perhaps Braden deserved punishment, but not from her. She had no right.
Slowly she let the blanket fall in a heap at her feet. She flung back her head, drinking in the moist scents of twilight and fading summer. The land was on its way to the season of sleep and stillness, of death awaiting rebirth. Her child would be born when the world was just awakening again. To hope.
She’d come to England with little more than hope and innocence; it was as if part of her had been asleep. Now she was awake to the pain of wisdom, and anger, and fear. She was afraid as she’d never been in her life. Afraid of Braden. Afraid for her child. Afraid of herself and what she was becoming.
Of what she might never become, might never have if she went back.
It was the most important choice she’d ever make.
As she’d done once upon a time in the desert of New Mexico, she let her turbulent emotions find their voice.
She howled, drawing on the wolf within her, and summoned up the Change.
From the north, and Greyburn, another voice harsh with rage and sorrow answered her cry.
Twenty-One
The wolf’s howl came out of the mist like a trumpet of war, and he answered the unspoken challenge, crouched atop a high fell as the rain renewed its assault upon the earth.
His humanity had been left far behind. He couldn’t remember when he’d Changed or what had driven him to it. He knew only that he hunted and that what he sought must not be allowed to escape him.
Not what he hunted, but who. The faint howl sounded but once, and it filled him with fury.
She, who had betrayed him, was running. She thought herself his equal. She thought she could defy him with impunity.
She was wrong.
He burst into a run, scraping wet soil with his claws and shaking the rain from his pelt with every bounding stride. Breath sawed in his throat and whistled between his teeth. He knew how to find her now, after hours of searching. He would outrun her, because his fury made a machine of his body, a burning coal of his heart.
Images chased through his mind like stoats after rabbits. His futile trust in her. His repeated efforts to make her happy. The last time he’d lain with her—the hope, the tentative happiness, her whispered promises—all empty, all lies. They all laughed at him, at his failures. Only one thing would make them respect him again.
The sacrifice must be made, for the sake of the Cause.
The heavy rain had no power to distract him, nor the slick ground to slow him. Her scent was a beacon growing ever nearer. It was almost as if she were standing still. Waiting.
He called her name, and it emerged as a roar. He smelled the dampness of her fur. He plunged through a screen of bracken and felt her presence like the memory of sunlight seen in a prism of water.
Beautiful. Beautiful, and deceitful, and his enemy.
With a great leap he closed the distance between them and knocked her from her feet. At the last moment he held back, using only a small fraction of his strength.
He pinned her down, jaws wide about her neck. Her fur brushed his face, soft and fragrant. She didn’t struggle. She lay beneath him, throat bared, utterly still.
A voice, a human voice, shouted in his head. He tried to shut it out. Enemy. She was his enemy…
“Do you know what you are, Braden Forster? A fool. A weakling and a fool. And you though I ever had any love for you?”
Each word drove like a stake through his heart. She’d beaten him. She reveled in his defeat and humiliation. He must have revenge. He readied himself to snap his jaws and crush flesh and bone.