Blood Moon (13 page)

“He had his back to you to begin
with.”

Aslyn lost interest in the subject.
“How came you here?”

“Upon a horse.”

She shook him, weakly. “Do not
jest.”

“It’s truth.”

“I know you came upon a horse! How came
you here, now?”

“Ah. We had been tracking the wolf pack
for nigh a week when it occurred to me that they appeared to be
moving in a broad circle. I left the men to follow them and
returned to Krackensled in case they were doubling back as I
suspected.”

Aslyn shuddered, felt tears well in her
eyes. “They did. They killed a child. Poor little John Halard. His
father had taken him into the woods to help him gather
firewood.”

Kale’s arms tightened around her. “I’m
sorry, sweeting.”

The words seemed to rupture a dam of
grief inside her. Aslyn wept until finally, completely exhausted,
she drifted off to sleep.

She swam upwards toward awareness
sometime later to the sensation of warmth generated by Kale’s hand
as he stroked her back soothingly. The effect upon her, however,
was anything but soothing. Her breasts, pressed tightly against his
chest ached with need, as did her woman’s place between her thighs.
She moved restlessly against him, uncertain of exactly what it was
that she needed to quell the ache, but certain that Kale could
assuage the need.

He stilled her movements. “Sleep,
Aslyn.”

She was too hot and achy to sleep. She
nuzzled her face against his bare chest, pressed her lips there. He
jerked at the touch of her mouth as if branded. Reaching down, he
cupped her chin and urged her to look up at him. “Don’t tempt me.
I’m a man, Aslyn. I’ve only so much resistance. You’re hurt.
Rest.”

Aslyn sighed, feeling a sense of defeat
wash over her. Finally, she snuggled against him and drifted away
once more.

Kale was gone when she
awoke.

Chapter Nine

Aslyn woke to a sense of well-being,
although she wasn’t certain what had evoked the sensation. When she
stretched, however, an involuntary groan of agony tore from her,
bringing her wide awake. She sat up slowly, painfully, and looked
around as memory flooded back.

The sense of well-being, she finally
realized, had come from curling next to Kale during the night. It
had given her the sense of being protected and cared for …
something she’d lost so long ago she had ceased even to realize how
much she missed it.

That sense vanished the moment she
realized she was alone.

Rising with an effort, she made her way
to the door and around the side of the house to the necessary, not
really surprised when she saw no sign of Kale, but vastly
disappointed.

When she returned, she stoked the fire
and pushed the cook pot, filled with snow, over it to warm while
she searched the cottage for food. She hadn’t eaten in so long, she
felt dizzy and weak, although she supposed a part of the dizziness
and weakness was from the battle the night before. The cheese and
meat she’d sliced for her journey had fallen on the floor when Kale
had crushed the table, and thereafter been stomped into the dirt.
Opening her bundle, she took the pieces she’d carefully wrapped and
looked around for her knife before she recalled that she’d lost it
in the scuffle. Finally, she had to settle for gnawing bites from
the edges of the food. When she’d eaten her fill, she carefully
wrapped the food again, bundled it into her pack and removed her
spare gown and shift.

The water, when she tested it, was
tepid on the surface, and the next thing to scalding nearer the
bottom. Stirring it with a stick, she lifted the pot from the
fireplace, sat on the mattress and bathed. Not surprisingly, she
was filthy from the scuffle. She blushed when she thought about
offering herself to Kale when she must have looked completely
unappealing--battered, bruised and filthy, her hair a tangled
mat.

She was glad he’d left while she was
still sleeping. At least he’d spared her the humiliation of waking
up and facing him after that little episode.

He’d also been kind enough to tell her
he didn’t want to hurt her when she was already hurt. She
remembered that. It was one of the things that had made her feel so
protected and secure. Fortunately, she’d been too groggy with
sleep, and suffused with animal lust to figure out that what he’d
really meant was that he couldn’t bring himself to give her a roll
when she’d already been wallowing in mud. “I will die of
embarrassment if I ever have to see the man again,” she muttered to
herself.

And that wasn’t even the worst of it.
When she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the water she gasped
in horror. One whole side of her face--the side where Algar had
clobbered her--the side that still throbbed almost as badly as it
had the night before--was horribly bruised and swollen.

She looked like a monster.

The thought made her cringe
inside.

She was a monster.

Damn Algar to hell!

She covered her face with her hands.
All these years she had wandered, searching for a cure that didn’t
exist! And Algar, damn him, had taken her life away from her,
killed her betrothed—made her unfit for any decent man.

The image of John’s battered little
body popped into her mind and she shuddered. Shying away from it,
she got up abruptly.

Kale, she knew, had gone after Algar.
His men had not yet returned. Now was the time to leave if ever
there was one. She simply could not face Kale again, not after what
had almost happened between them the night before—not when she knew
now without a shadow of doubt what she was.

Nothing good could come of
staying.

Moving purposefully now, ignoring the
multitude of aches and pains, she gathered her belongings and left
the cottage. It was still early, the streets deserted.

She frowned, wondering why no one else
was about, but then remembered that most of the villagers had gone
out to search for the wolf pack. God alone knew how many had
returned, or in what condition, but she could not allow that to
concern her. She had her own survival to consider.

She glanced around. New snow had fallen
during the night, making it difficult to discern the tracks from
the night before, but it appeared that Algar had headed north. She
was tempted to head south, but thought that might be too
predictable. Kale had told her the soldiers had tracked the wolf
pack in a wide circle that seemed to be heading back toward
Krackensled … which meant going west was out, since there was too
much danger of running into the soldiers.

She decided to head east, but just in
case Kale got it into his head to follow her, she turned south when
she left the cottage, following the main road until she found a
cross road that was almost as well traveled.

It took her almost an hour to reach the
forest east of town. To her relief, she encountered no one, but she
was still a mass of nerves before she reached the tree line. There
she waged another, brief, inner debate. She could make better
progress if she followed the road. The snow was almost as high, and
worse, it had been churned up by the passing of several carts, but
there were no deep drifts to worry about, no possibility of
stepping inadvertently into a trough.

If anyone came to look for her,
however, she would be all too easy to spot and have no hope of
escape. She left the road and entered the forest, struggling
through soft snow that came almost to her knees. She was sweating
with effort and breathless even before she had traveled far enough
that she could no longer see the village. She glanced up at the
weak sun, trying to gauge the amount of time that had passed and
saw that the sun was already high in the trees.

Cursing, she forced herself to move
faster, refusing to stop to rest, but only slowing when she was so
winded she could hardly catch her breath. She began scanning the
forest ahead of her, choosing a landmark that looked to be a
quarter of a mile, or a half a mile away, and then counting her
miles as she reached them. By the time the sun was overhead she
thought she had gone at least five miles, but it was a rather
dismal projection. A man on a horse could travel that distance,
even in the snow, in less than a quarter of the time it had taken
her.

She stopped, briefly, to eat a few
bites of cheese, bread and meat, washing them down with the remains
of the bottle of wine she and Kale had shared the night before.
There was hardly enough to make it worth the effort of having
carried the bottle, but it helped to chase the chill from her
bones.

When she’d finished, she dug a hole in
the snow, buried the bottle and carefully smoothed the snow over it
again. She glanced back over the trail she’d left behind her when
she’d finished, realizing that she might as well have saved her
strength. She’d left a trail behind her that a blind man could
follow. Kale was a huntsman. Were he so inclined, he would have no
difficulty whatsoever in tracking her down.

Tired as she was, she looked around
until she found a fallen branch and began to work her way
backwards, smoothing over her footsteps as she went. It took her
twice as long to manage half the distance she had traveled earlier.
Her back began to feel as if it was going to crack and break in
two, but she persevered until she thought she had traveled at least
two miles, then changed directions and began to move in a south
easterly direction.

By late afternoon Aslyn felt she had
put sufficient distance between herself and Krackensled to consider
stopping for the night. In truth, she was afraid she had little
choice in the matter. It was the time of the dark of the moon. If
she had been traveling by road, the stars might have shed enough
light that she could have kept going, but she had elected to take
to the forest. Granted, many of the trees were bare, but it was an
old forest and the trees were huge, growing closely together with
branches intertwining overhead.

She would have to build a fire. It was
far too cold even to consider doing without one, regardless of the
dangers inherent in doing so. While she trudged through the snow,
she’d had no difficulty staying warm, but once she stopped she
would begin to freeze without one ... unless she was fortunate
enough to discover an unoccupied burrow or den she could squeeze
into.

Hopefulness surged through her when she
came upon a steep slope above a frozen stream. Like any natural
stream, it meandered, but it ran in a general north/south
direction. Cautiously, she made her way down to the surface of the
stream and began to follow the bank south, studying the banks for
any sign of a cave or even a crevice deep enough to offer some
shelter. She was so intent upon her search that it was some moments
before the rhythmic sound she heard fully registered as being one
not of her own making.

Horse hooves.

Aslyn froze, turned her head to
determine the direction and discovered that there was a rider
bearing down on her. Despite the dimness of approaching dusk,
despite the distance, she knew the moment she spotted him that it
was Kale … and he had spotted her.

Her heart lurched in her chest. For
several moments, she couldn’t seem to force her panicked mind to
react. Finally, however, the rhythmic pounding formed in her brain
as the word ‘run, run, run.’ Looking wildly around, she realized
the only possibility she had of escaping was to climb the bank. As
steep and as slippery as it was, she felt certain the horse would
not be able to climb it and, if Kale had to find another place to
climb the bank she would have time to hide.

The moment the idea formed in her mind,
she tossed her burdens aside and climbed for all she was worth.
When she finally managed to reach the top, she paused long enough
to catch her breath and to spare a glance to see if Kale had
spotted her escape.

To her horror, she saw that Kale,
instead of following the stream until he reached the point where
she’d climbed up, had urged the horse off the stream the moment she
left it … and the horse was climbing the bank like a mountain goat.
Spurred by the certainty of instant capture, Aslyn took off through
the trees at her best speed.

It took Kale all of five minutes to run
her down. She felt the heat from the horse a split second before
Kale leaned from its back and snatched her off her feet, plunking
her across his lap.

She kicked her feet, trying to wiggle
off, whereupon Kale dealt her half frozen rump a ringing
spank.

Aghast, she went perfectly still for
about two seconds before it fully sank into her mind that he’d had
the unmitigated gall to spank her. She struggled to lift her head
and gave him her best ‘I’ll kill you’ look.

Unfortunately, the evil look he was
giving her frightened her considerably more than hers, apparently,
did him.

“Going somewhere?” he asked in a cold,
tight voice.

He grasped her then, lifting her until
she was sitting before him on the saddle, instead of lying face
down over it. She scowled at him. “I am.”

They glared at each other for a full
minute in a silent battle of wills. “Indeed you are, but not where
you think,” Kale said finally.