TOUCH OF THE WOLF By Susan Krinard

“It was never over for you,” she said. Her hand slid up to his shoulder, a gesture of comfort that might have come from a sister. “You couldn’t completely admit your hatred for Milena, the same way you couldn’t admit your guilt. And you did love her, so much that you couldn’t see what she was until it was too late. Love for you was a curse.

“So you tried to make yourself stop feeling anything. You carried those scars every day, with your blindness. And when I left… it was like Milena’s betrayal all over again. Everything you tried to hide came out when you found me.”

The rage, the shame, the madness. All over again.

“And was I justified, Cassidy?” he said harshly. “Do you pardon all my sins, including murder?”

Her hand tightened, fingers digging into his wet skin. “You didn’t mean to. I was there, with you. I saw through your eyes. The things you remember are all tangled up, but I saw it the way it really happened.

“It was storming. You found her with her lover, near a great wall on a cliff. You could have killed him easily, but you didn’t. He ran off, and Milena pretended to surrender. You didn’t hurt her, Braden, even though you were very angry. She attacked your mind when you believed she’d given up. You struggled with her, and while you were fighting to survive, you used the last of your strength to push her away. But you were both at the edge of a cliff, and she fell.”

“I pushed her,” he said.

“But you didn’t know. It was instinct, Braden. Afterward you tried to save her. You gave her the best care possible.”

Why did she make excuses for him? She’d claimed to love him, and he refused to believe. He dared not believe.

“I was responsible,” he said. “I refused to see. At the end, I did hate her.”

“Because you loved her so much. You made mistakes, but you were only part of it, Braden. Only a small part.”

She could forgive. Yet he had been incapable of forgiving her for caring more about people than his Cause.

“I understand why you came after me, and why you thought I was Milena. It seemed like another betrayal. I didn’t think about how much it would hurt you.” She let her hand fall. “I hope you can forgive me. And I hope you can learn to forgive yourself.”

He stared at her, blind but able to see her as she truly was. She could feel the pain of others and take it upon herself, no matter what the consequences. It was her greatest gift and most terrible liability. She had changed: naïiveté had given way to enlightenment, innocence to experience, hesitance to certainty. He had thought those changes a threat to him, to his frozen heart and his carefully constructed life. He had fought to keep her out.

He might as well have tried to dam the English Channel. It was no longer possible to hide from himself. He forced the confession out of hiding, giving it shape in his mind.

Love.

He… loved… Cassidy Holt.

Somewhere in the region of his heart a wall crumbled, like the ancient fortifications this land knew so well. He opened his mouth to give the thought voice. To tell her. To beg her to return to him.

But he did not deserve her. He could still hurt her without even realizing it. That bright core of inner strength was not invulnerable. With time and enough neglect it could be worn down, lose its luster, become a cold shard of dull metal at the center of that lovely body. He’d proven himself unstable and fatally flawed. He could still destroy what he had finally learned to love.

The words slipped out of his reach. He shuddered if he had just stepped back from the edge of a precipice. Cassidy must never know his true feelings. She’d broken away; let her find her own path. She had the nerve and the will and the heart.

“You were right, Cassidy,” he said tonelessly. “About Rowena, and Isabelle, the servants. And about me.” He turned his face toward Greyburn. “I will not interfere with your freedom again. You are my wife; that will be difficult to change in England. But I will provide you with whatever you require to live wherever you choose, even in America. I can find you decent rooms in Ulfington, while my lawyer draws up papers—”

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