Her pretty mouth twisted. "The less I know, the better, right? It's hard not asking questions when there's so much I want to know." Her eyes moved over his face as if studying his scarring. "You intrigue me," she said quietly.
He turned away, feeling like he'd just been shoved under a microscope. "Finish eating," he said gruffly.
When she had, he took her tray, then motioned for her to stand. She was tall for a woman, probably close to six feet, though he still towered over her by over a foot. She might be slender, but she was no stick-thin model. The woman had curves. His man's eye noticed, but his body paid little attention. His mate, Beatrice, the Ferals' previous Radiant, had been dead only a few months. And while their mating had never been what he'd hoped for, he'd loved her. And the severing of their mating bond had ruined him in ways he was still trying to figure out.
Even if he were whole and normal, it wouldn't matter. The woman standing in front of him wore another man's ring. Another's mark.
"Let's try this again."
Calm gray eyes met his. "To clear my memories?"
"Yes." He reached for her jaw, but she touched his hand.
"Wait. In case this works, I just wanted to say thank you. To you and your friends. I know you had as much reason to want those things dead as we did, but I overheard you talking out there. I know we saw things we shouldn't have and that our lives hung in the balance for a while. Thank you for saving us."
He nodded, meeting her gaze, yet oddly reluctant to continue. Once he captured her memories, he'd have to knock her out and take her back, and he'd finally just gotten a chance to talk to her again. Whatever her reason for not being put off by his looks, it was a novel experience he wasn't quite ready to end.
His gaze fell to that jagged cut on her cheek, his thumb lifting to trace it lightly.
Natalie flinched.
Wulfe jerked his thumb back. "It still hurts."
"Not too much."
Which was a blatant lie.
Her brows drew down. "How bad does it look?"
"Not as bad as mine."
A genuine laugh escaped her throat, utterly delighting him. She caught herself with a groan, though wry humor continued to light her eyes and tug at her mouth. "I'm sorry, but that wasn't quite the reassurance I was looking for."
He grinned at her, amazed at how easy she was to be with.
To his surprise, she lifted her hand, almost touching his face, before lowering it again. As she did, her smile died, her expression sobering. "I'm sorry for all you must have suffered."
He grunted. "It was a long time ago." And the suffering hadn't been his. Not until later. Much later.
Without thinking too much about what he was doing, he made a decision. "Hold still. This may be uncomfortable for a moment, but I won't hurt you." When her eyes gave him the go-ahead, he said, "Close your eyes."
She hesitated only a moment before doing as he asked. He opened his hand, covering her wound, and half her face, with his palm.
"What are you doing?" she asked quietly.
Beneath his palm, her heart beat, throbbing beneath the surface of her skin. Once more, her scent wrapped around him like a warm summer breeze.
"I'm something of a healer." Sometimes. His own cheek began to burn and throb with surprising misery. How did humans stand the pain that took so long to go away? "How do you feel?"
"The pain's gone." Her voice held a note of wonder.
Lifting his hand, he peered at her cheekbone with keen satisfaction. The wound was gone completely now, her cheek unblemished.
She opened her eyes, blinking. "How did you . . . ?" Her gaze locked onto his cheek, to the throbbing, aching wound he knew to be there, now. Her hand flew to her own cheek, then rubbed, as if seeking . . . anything.
"What have you done?
"
Wulfe shrugged. "What's one more?"
But he saw no gratitude in her eyes, only a keen dismay. "No, no, no." Her brows knit. She grabbed his face between her hands without fear, staring at him, at the cut that would mark him as all the others had. To his amazement, her fingers slid gently over his scarred cheeks. "You took it."
Her voice was breathless, stunned. She stared up at him, pain in her eyes. "
Why?
"
He frowned, confused by her reaction. The last thing he'd meant to do was upset her. But the truth was, he didn't have an answer. He wasn't sure why he'd done it. Maybe he just didn't like seeing her suffer when he could help. Or maybe he hadn't liked the sight of that ugly scar on her pretty face.
What difference did it make? Women were so damn hard to please.
He turned away, breaking her soft hold on him and ending the discussion. "Lie down." The words came out harsher than he'd meant them to.
But when he turned back to her, she was still standing where he'd left her, still staring at him. Although her brows were still drawn, her eyes no longer flashed with pain but something infinitely softer.
"Will you heal?"
"Of course."
"But it'll scar you."
"Like I said, what's one more?"
"Plenty." The softness in her eyes deepened, a fine film of moisture making them shine like diamonds. "That may have been the most unselfish thing anyone's ever done for me. And I don't even know your name."
"I'm called Wulfe."
Understanding lit her gaze, the memory of watching him shift, he was certain. "I suppose that makes sense. Thank you, Wulfe."
He nodded, his jaw tight. Then he slid his hand to her neck and pressed beneath her ear, feeling a need to close those eyes that saw too much. As she fell unconscious, he caught her, then laid her down carefully on one of the pallets someone had brought down for the prisoners.
Straightening, he stared down at her, clenching his jaw at her now-unblemished beauty.
With a burst of self-disgust, he turned away.
Ariana woke suddenly, her body tensing at the feel of warm flesh beneath her cheek until she caught the wonderful, familiar scent.
Kougar's.
Her head was on his shoulder, one of his arms gripped tight around her waist, his bare chest rising and falling in a deep, even rhythm, telling her he was fast asleep.
For an achingly sweet moment, her world felt as if it had righted itself. As if the nightmare of the past millennium was nothing more than a dream, and life was as it had always been meant to be. With her waking in Kougar's arms.
Ariana jerked. Sweet goddess, what was she doing in his arms? It was the last place she needed to be. He was supposed to be hating her, not holding her!
Her heart at once melted and squeezed with fear as she slipped free of his hold and sat up. With an unintelligible murmur, Kougar rolled onto his side away from her.
Raking her hair back from her face with both hands, she turned inward and examined the mating bond.
Dammit, dammit.
As she feared, it had begun to unkink. It still looked mangled and sunken in on itself, but the poison was beginning to trickle through steadily.
Not good, not good, not good.
Yet what could she do about it? She'd known this would happen if he found out the truth--that she'd severed the mating bond to save him. Sooner or later, he'd forgive her the rest. And once he did, the poison would begin to flow freely.
Pulling her knees up, she curled her arms around them. It was too late to try to arrest the opening of the mating bond. Their only chance now, as far as she could see, was for the Ferals and their Mage allies to figure out who Hookeye was and locate him. Maybe they really could. Maybe it would work. But she'd long, long ago quit believing in miracles. And this situation would take a big one.
Despair filled the room as she dipped her head and rested her chin on her updrawn knees. She hated being forced to let others take the lead in her battles; but, unable to turn to mist, she'd long ago been relegated to the sidelines. Then again, she was the one with her finger in the dike. If she allowed the floodwaters, or in this case the poison, to flow, all would die. Not the sidelines, perhaps, but the center, with all those around trying to help her hold on, trying to find a way to destroy the poison before she could no longer hold back the killing tide.
Her life hadn't been her own to control in a very, very long time. Even now . . .
She needed to call the hospital and let them know she wouldn't be in for a few days. There was a good chance she wouldn't be back at all. If the Ferals' attempt to locate Hookeye failed, if Kougar died, there would no longer be a reason for her to remain close to Feral House. Once the mating bond was truly, permanently severed, she could go anywhere--except home to the Crystal Realm.
For centuries, her existence had been a stasis of hiding and survival, searching for an answer that never came, waiting for Melisande to find the Mage at the heart of it all. In the few short days since Kougar had charged back into her life, he'd turned every single aspect of her existence end over end until she didn't know what to think, what to feel.
She wanted to be furious with him for endangering her people all over again, but she was beginning to believe the Ferals genuinely meant to help her, even if only to save their own. For the first time in forever, a flicker of hope had sparked, a rare, precious feeling that she was almost afraid to acknowledge, knowing it could be snuffed out again between one breath and the next.
If the Ferals really did succeed in finding the Mage behind the attacks, if by some miracle, she found herself free of the poison? The thought tantalized. The first thing she'd do was return home and take up the mantle of queen-in-residence once more. It was all she'd wanted for a thousand years.
She turned to Kougar, to his strong, beloved back, rising and falling in sleep. No, being queen wasn't all she wanted. But she'd been a fool to think she could be both queen and wife. Her maidens should have been her top priority all those years ago . . . her only priority. If they had been, they'd still be alive.
That was a mistake she couldn't make a second time, no matter how much her heart ached for the man at her side.
On a sigh, she turned away from him, her gaze sliding over his room. He'd closed the drapes after she'd fallen asleep, and sunlight now fanned out from the edges of the window, thin rays escaping the darkening curtains. It was the kind of room she would expect of Kougar, she realized. Clean, neat, controlled. If she ignored the splintered chair.
The bed on which she sat was a large, mahogany four-poster, beautifully carved, probably by hand. The bedside lamp, a heavy jewel-encrusted brass. Kougar had always enjoyed fine things. Even a thousand years ago when there was so much less to choose from, he'd carried intricately carved knives and worn cloaks with silk linings.
And he'd been incredibly generous to her--plying her with gifts of beauty that he'd known would please her Ilina's heart. Jewelry from exotic traders, gowns of the finest velvet. And flowers. Where he'd found them, she'd never been certain, but he'd rarely come to her without flowers of some kind, even if all he'd been able to find was a sprig of honeysuckle.
She'd always loved flowers, especially in those days, when she'd spent so much time in the Crystal Realm, where nothing grew. And he'd known it.
On the walls of his room hung more paintings, mostly centuries-old landscapes. Though three of his walls were tan, the one before her was a vibrant blue. The color of the summer sky, neon bright. Almost the exact shade of her eyes.
Beside her, Kougar made a sound deep in his throat, a low growl as he rolled onto his back. His body had turned rigid with tension, his arm muscles flexing, his hand fisting against his hip.
He was dreaming, and it wasn't a happy dream.
She lifted her hand, intending to stroke his shoulder and soothe him, only to pull up. What demons did he wrestle in his sleep? Perhaps she should find out. A soft smile tugged at her mouth. It had been so long since she'd joined him in one of his dreams.
Ariana closed her eyes, calmed her mind, and stepped into his dream, an ability all Ilinas possessed. She expected to find herself a spectator of some Feral battle. Instead, she blinked with confusion as she realized she was standing inside her own cabin hundreds of years ago, the night three human trappers stumbled upon it . . . and her. The coarse men had thought to slake their physical urges on an unwilling woman, and she watched as her younger self fought off two of the men at once with well-aimed kicks.
She frowned at the nonsensical sight. This was supposed to be Kougar's dream. Instead, she and Kougar both stood in the middle of one of her own memories. Dressed in the dark sleep pants he wore in the bed beside her, he passed through the center of the action like a ghost trying to fight off her attackers. They, of course, didn't even know he was there.
"Kougar."
His gaze jerked to her, then to her dream self and back again, the tension leaching from his body as understanding lit his eyes.
"It's a dream," he muttered, his voice barely audible over the grunts of the men and the snap of bone as her dream self broke one of her attacker's kneecaps.
The man yelled, crashing into the sole chair in the tiny cabin, splintering it. Goddess, she'd been furious about losing that chair. It had taken her weeks to make it.
Her gaze took in the small windowless space, the rough-hewn logs infilled with mud, the down pallet that had been her bed, now destroyed, the feathers floating in the glow from the fire. The scent of smoke and sweat and unwashed bodies choked the air.
Kougar crossed to her, pulling her tight against him with a shudder of relief. "My fists kept going right through them. I was beginning to think I'd died." His gaze skimmed her nakedness. "Walking in my dreams?"
"I could tell you were having a bad one. I thought I'd take a look." Her brow furrowed. "But this isn't your dream."
"This isn't real."
"No, but it happened. It's my memory."
His frown deepened as together they watched her fight off her assailants with sweeping kicks and elbows to the throats and noses. She might have been a woman alone, but she'd been as strong as any human male, thanks to her immortal blood, with nearly seven centuries of hand-to-hand combat experience by that point.
"When did this happen?"
"Late 1600s, in the woods about forty miles west of Feral House."
"You lived nearby even then?"
She met his gaze. "I've always lived near you. I discovered early on that even though our mating bond was severed, there was still a connection. Being near you strengthened me. I've had to be careful to stay out of the paths of the Mage and Therians, but I've never been far away."
The frown didn't leave his face. "How is it possible I'm seeing your memory?"
"I don't know."
Her dream self pulled a knife out of her boot and slid it through the neck of one of her assailants. The trapper collapsed onto the floor.
"Good gir . . ."
Kougar disappeared from beside her, leaving her alone to watch and remember a night that had repeated itself too many times. She'd killed all three men, as she had numerous others over the centuries--men who'd thought any unprotected woman fair game. A few times, early on, she'd been overpowered and knocked too senseless to stop the attacks. But she'd killed her attackers afterward and learned to fight them off.
Watching her younger self, the excruciating loneliness of those days came rushing back. How many nights had she lain on that pallet wishing for Kougar's strong arms around her?
Too many to count.
She closed her eyes, clearing her mind even as the ancient battle raged around her, and followed her mate, landing in a room filled with screams and the scent of blood.
Like before, she found Kougar standing in the midst of another of her memories, watching her assist the Countess de Frottier as she attempted to birth her second son. They'd traveled back in time several hundred years, to the 1300s. The Ferals had been living in France at the time.
The countess's bedchamber within the castle was large but cold despite the fire burning brightly in the hearth. The velvet bed curtains had been flung wide as two aging handmaids tended her, one mopping her mistress's sweat- and tear-drenched face while the other held her hand, tethered by the countess's punishing grip.
Kougar saw her and came to stand beside her as another of the woman's screams rent the air, sharp and agonized. Ariana felt the poison inside her leap with pleasure at the woman's misery even as her dream self closed her eyes, feeling the same.
"You're feeding on her pain," Kougar said, his voice cool as he stared at her other self.
"I was then, and I am now. Midwifery always brings pain, but usually joy as well. This time there was little of the latter." She glanced at him, raising her voice over the woman's rising screams. "The poison possesses a dark hunger, Kougar. When it gets too hungry, it threatens to overpower me. So I serve its needs without hurting others. Midwifery has been the perfect solution--joy and pain. And the knowledge I was doing good in the world. I'm not a monster, whatever you want to believe. I've done the best I could with the hand I was dealt."
His gaze thawed, but he said nothing as he turned back to the scene on the bed.
The smell of blood grew stronger, the dark stain spreading on the sheets. "She's hemorrhaging. She won't last much longer."
"And the babe?"
"Both died. There was nothing I could do." But she felt again the helplessness she'd felt that night. Needing to shut out the sight of the countess's agony, she turned fully to Kougar. "Why are you dreaming my memories?"
He glanced at her with a shake of his head. "I don't know. Every time I've closed my eyes the past few days, I've dreamed like this, watching you. Even before I saw you again. I figured it was that damned mating bond."
"I'm sure it's tied to the mating bond, but I still don't understand why . . ."
He was gone.
With a sigh, she turned toward the young countess, who was in her last hours of life. "I'm sorry," Ariana murmured, then followed Kougar into a glade she remembered with soft joy--a sunlit glade painted with a profusion of wildflowers.
Kougar was waiting for her, his expression at once pensive and wry. "This is one weird-ass dream."
"Are you ready for it to end? I can wake you at any time."
Soft laughter, her laughter, carried from behind them, and they turned as one.
"It's us," he murmured. "A thousand years ago."
Dressed in one of the simple belted gowns of the day, she stood holding an armful of wildflowers. With a grin, the Kougar of old picked more and more, pressing them into her arms as her laughter grew. Soft love on his face, he crushed her and the flowers to him, kissing her with a fierce and tender passion.
Ariana's chest ached as she watched them as they'd once been, so in love.
She tore her gaze away to find Kougar watching her, not their younger selves. With a lift of his hand, he stroked her face, his eyes warm as the sun, yet shadowed by a deep sadness.
If only things had been different.