Nine
Cassidy would have walked across the Jornada del Muerto without food or water if Braden asked, or slept on a bed of needle-spined cacti, or swum the Atlantic Ocean.
But no such simple trial was demanded other. She had to learn how to Change within the week. And the only journey she made was on horseback, across the Greyburn lands, Quentin at her side. Quentin was to be her teacher, and she tried very hard not to wish Braden had chosen that task for himself.
The late morning was bright and sunny, with white clouds scudding across the sky and a scent of hay in the warm air. A skylark sang on the nearby moor, and rabbits darted along the path.
Quentin had obtained a pretty bay mare, Cleopatra, for her, and rode his own handsome gelding. He’d responded to her dismay at the sidesaddle by ordering the groom to replace it with a man’s; it was still unlike the saddles Cassidy was accustomed to, but she could ride any horse bareback, if need be. And she was glad Quentin had suggested she wear her “fetching calico dress” rather than the tight riding habit Rowena had helped her buy in London.
Quentin was relaxed, looking for all the world as if they were out for a pleasure ride. A pack slung behind his saddle held food and a blanket—and, he’d promised with a wink, a deck of cards. Everything needed to make the day perfect.
And it would have been, under any other circumstances. Cassidy was eager to explore the countryside, to make this new land her home. She could come to love the windswept openness of rolling hills and wooded streams, moist earth and green pastures. Like the desert, this place was bursting with life, overflowing with mysteries just waiting to be revealed.
But she couldn’t put her worries aside so easily. From the moment last night’s ceremony had begun, the evening had been a disaster. She’d seen it coming when Quentin and Rowena Changed behind the screen. And then they’d all stared at her, waiting, and she’d felt more naked than Braden before he became a wolf.
She had tried. With all her will she tried to make herself Change like the others. If wanting were enough, she’d have done it in an instant.
She’d failed. Even Isabelle saw, and the strangely dressed man with her. Cassidy had wanted to hide in her room and pretend it had never happened. She’d wanted to return to the woods and run until she wasn’t able to think about Braden’s disappointment and her own disgrace.
But she couldn’t run away. Not from herself, or from Braden.
So she’d gone to him, and it was much worse than she’d guessed.
Once, in New Mexico, she’d been with a vaquero when he was told his little girl had died of fever. The vaquero stood very still, as if he didn’t believe, and then he’d dropped to his knees in the dirt and raged—at the world, at God, at everyone and everything within reach. Life itself had betrayed him.
Braden didn’t rage or weep, but she knew he felt betrayed to the very depths of his soul.
She had failed him. Without understanding how or why, she’d failed him completely.
“Your father was human,” he’d said, the words condemning her. Binding his wounds couldn’t make up for her failures. But being so near to him had an unexpected effect. He seemed almost vulnerable, yet it didn’t diminish his strength or his beauty. As a wolf, he’d fascinated her. When she helped him remove his shirt, she’d seen more of the man he was: the elegant contour of muscle under skin, the slope of his shoulder, the dusting of hair on his chest, the flex of tendon in his forearm, the hard flatness of his stomach. The ache of sorrow in her belly turned into feelings very different and only half-familiar, moving lower in her body.
She remembered the times at the ranch when she was driven by something alien and powerful inside herself—something the Holts didn’t share. Touching Braden’s hand was enough to make that energy sing in her veins. She must be close to grasping what was just out of reach, the one ability that made all the difference between being loup-garou and human, between being accepted or found forever wanting…