The Passion (47 page)

I went into the bedchamber, I closed the door. The smel of pain and suffering was as thick as wax; it almost smothered me. Elise was there as I had left her in the tangled satin covers. Her fur showed the ravages of childbirth and her sides heaved with short rapid breaths. Her eyes, when she looked at me, were dul with confusion and pain. A low constant keening came from her throat. I had never loved her more than I did at that moment. Nor hated myself.

The infant squirmed and writhed in the curve of her bel y, clawing at her fur. I could smel its pain, hear its little heart strain to bursting, hear the silent cries that emanated from its gasping, open mouth. Elise bent her head and tried to lick away its pain, then fel back, exhausted. She looked at me. Such helplessness in her eyes, such stark, hopeless agony. I felt it al in every pore of my being; I felt it al and more.

I bent over her, reaching for the child. She showed her teeth to me, warning me away with a soft low growl. But there was more defeat than threat in the sound. I caressed her head, I dropped my face to the soft fur of her neck and let my tears fal there.

And then I quietly, gently, took the cub from her.

I left the room without looking back. I carried my son through the corridors and onto the balcony that overlooked the courtyard. I waited until the pack had gathered, silent and unsure, and al eyes were upon me. I lifted the child high into the air, an offering to the heaven from whence he had come. And then I snapped his neck.

It is true that no leader ever rules alone, and that as mates we are more one than two. Yet there must be a final authority, a single leader, if for the sake of ritual and nothing else. Until that night the role of pack leader had been Elise's inherited right. But by stepping in to do what she could not, I assumed her authority. The transition was effortless. I had the strength, I had the power. I kil ed my son, and I became leader of the pack.

I rent my clothes and sank into the agony from which the Passion was not an escape, but an expression. I ran into the night, across the hil s, deep into the woods, and I howled and I howled until I had no voice left.

TESSA

AND DENIS

Chapter Twenty-eight

The sound brought a chil to Tessa's soul that even the Arctic cold could not match. A single wolf crying to the night air, over and over again, with no one to answer him.

She knew his voice, for it was like no other. And she knew if she went to the mouth of the cave and searched the sky on a clear moonlit night she might see him profiled there, his head back, howling.
Is
anyone there
? the sound seemed to say. And the echo of silence was his only reply.

Often she would hear the wolf pack cal ing to each other and she had learned to know the sounds—

triumph, play, excitement, question, and simple song. Never did a cal go unanswered… except Denis's. She had come to believe that the sound of a lone wolf howling was the loneliest, emptiest sound in the world.

He returned to the cave in human form, wrapping himself in the skin of a bear he had kil ed when he had found it, winter-sluggish, in a cave he wished to occupy. He bore the scar of that fight on his left thigh, from knee to hip, but they had feasted for weeks on the meat, and so had the wolf pack. And the thick fur provided an insulating layer between themselves and the ground when they lay down at night.

A fur skin upon which to lie, cold rock wal s that were shared with burrowing creatures, a stick fire that didn't make too much smoke… Once, Tessa could not have envisioned the day when she would be grateful for such things. Now she could not imagine wanting more.

Denis set a slab of frozen, snow-rimmed meat to thaw upon the circle of rocks that guarded the fire.

"That's the last of the cache," he said. "The game is gone here. Tomorrow we move on, ahead of the big snow."

Tessa swal owed hard, but nodded. They had moved three times since the subarctic winter had come, always just ahead of a snow that would have trapped them into starvation. Each time the journey grew more difficult. Each time she became less and less sure she would survive to reach the next shelter.

She was silent for a long time, feeding the fire, turning the meat to thaw more evenly. Words stil came hard to her, the energy that was required to form them often too demanding. Denis always talked to her as though he expected her to answer and never upbraided her when she didn't, and she grew to like the sound of his voice. But to actual y engage in conversation with him cal ed for an effort that came from a place so deeply buried inside her she had almost forgotten its existence. Sometimes, though, something needed to be said, and the saying was worth the struggle. She worried about the wolves.

"We should leave meat for the pack," she said.

"No," he said sharply, and Tessa flinched a little at his tone.

"I'm not feeding them any more," he said. "It makes them too dependent on me. They would have moved on long ago if I hadn't shared my kil s with them."

Tessa was silent for a time. Then she said hesitantly, "You're… angry with them. Because they won't answer your cal ."

The ferocity of his frown startled her. He looked more wild than tame himself, squatting before the fire, naked except for the bearskin, with his dark red hair tangled with the fur and the narrow angles of his face sharpened by the leaping shadows of the fire. When he spoke, his voice was harsh.

"How can I be angry with a dumb beast?" he demanded.

"It would be as pointless as being angry with you."

Then he added, in a slightly less abrupt tone, "They don't answer my cal because, unlike humans, who are too stupid to know the difference, they realize I am a superior creature and they're afraid of me. I can't blame them for that."

He stretched out his hands before the fire and stared into the flames for a long time. Tessa thought about how desperately she had struggled to keep this smal fire going al the time they had been here, digging beneath the snow for fal en twigs and branches, drying them for days before they would burn, tearing off green limbs from scraggly trees with her hands, carrying rocks one by one to the mouth of the cave to protect the flame from wind.

The supply of matches was growing dangerously low. What would happen when it was gone? What if, in the next place they stopped, there was no tinder for a fire? The region was becoming more and more mountainous and trees were sparser. What if they came to a place where there was no wood at al ?

Denis said softly, almost to himself, "It makes no sense that others of my kind should not have found this place. There
must
be others. Sometimes I almost think I can smel them…" He paused and shook his head in the way of one coming out of a reverie. "But then I realize I am only smel ing my memory."

Tessa said in a smal uncertain voice, "If you could… you would go back. Wouldn't you?"

He looked at her in surprise, and answered gruffly,

"You foolish human. To live alone is no life at al for a werewolf. Did you imagine for one moment that my brother was being kind when he sent me into exile? That was the crudest death he could impose.

To live forever without the sound of another voice, without the warmth of another body, without a mate

—"

He broke off, fixing his gaze intensely on the fire.

Then he finished with a low harsh huskiness to his voice he could not control, "It is the cruelest kind of death."

He took the hard-charred branch that she used to hold the meat for roasting and stabbed it through the thick, stil frozen slab. "Of course I would go back," he said roughly. "Wouldn't you?"

"No!" It was little more than a smothered breath, and she recoiled somewhat, as though the thought itself could threaten her. "No, I'll never go back where humans are. No. Not ever." She was breathing fast by the time those last words were spoken, her fists clenching the cloak high on her throat.

He could see the muscles of her injured arm tremble as they always did when she tried to maintain a closed fist, and eventual y one corner of the robe fel open again. Denis regarded her curiously for a moment, then said, "You are a peculiar little human." He thrust the branch with its heavy meat into her hands. "Hold this." He went to the mouth of the cave.

He returned in a few moments with more wood for the fire, from which he separated several sticks of careful y measured length. Tessa watched him fashion them into a spit that spanned the fire, and upon which he placed the meat so that she did not have to hold it on the branch.

"Thus have we been making life easier for humans since the beginning of time," he remarked, and sat back from his work.

They watched the flames for a time, listening to the moisture that sizzled from the meat. And then Tessa said in a smal tight voice, "Wil it be very far, do you think, to the next shelter?"

He cocked an eyebrow and murmured, "My, you are practical y garrulous tonight." Then he said, "Yes, it's far. But I caught the scent of big game today, maybe part of a herd trapped in a val ey."

She said nothing.

His tone sharpened. "You'll die if you stay here."

Denis was surprised at the tension that crept into his shoulders and tightened his chest as her silence lengthened. And then she looked up. Her expression was weary and the hol ows under her eyes looked more pronounced than they had been even a moment ago. Regretful y, she touched the hol owed-out stone she used as a cooking bowl, remnant of a long-gone band of humans, and Denis remembered how pleased she had been when he had brought it to her.

He al owed himself a smal smile. Sometimes the foibles of humans were quite endearing. "I wil make you a pack. You can take your bowl and your cooking stick with you, your little symbols of civilization, for of such smal things were great nations formed. In a century or so, when the humans come to this wild place with their trains and their axes and their great belching stacks of smoke, we wil al have Tessa LeGuerre to thank for it."

She shivered and inched closer to the fire, but the anxiety eased a little from her shoulders.

He extended an arm to her. "Come here, human, and keep me warm. The wind is bitter tonight and my back is to it."

She looked up, but didn't move. There was fear in her eyes, and that intrigued him enough to make him insistent. "You wil lie with me at night but not sit with me by the fire? What a foolish girl you are.

Don't you know the only reason I keep you alive is for your warmth? And your conversation, of course.

Come."

He closed his hand over her wrist and tugged her toward him. In a moment she moved forward reluctantly, eyes downcast, shivering. He pul ed her into the circle of his arms and knees, enclosing her in his nakedness with her back against his chest and the bearskin drawn close over them both.

"Curse the need to stay in this body," he said. "I am never warm enough."

He took her stiff cold fingers between his hands, massaging them absently. A shudder went through her.

"Unfortunately," he continued, "human form uses less energy than wolf form, and the less energy I use the less food I need. Of course, I can only hunt for food in wolf form. The everlasting conundrum, without which my kind should have long ago taken over the planet."

His body temperature was measurably higher than hers, and in moments their combined heat radiated within the enclosed tent of the bearskin to produce a pleasant warmth. Yet stil she trembled, muscles tight and straining, her heartbeat fluttering, her breaths shaky. The smel of fear on her skin was acrid.

Denis said impatiently, "What are you afraid of, you sil y girl? Do you think I wil hurt you?"

And then he realized that it was not his nearness that frightened her, but his nakedness. This amused him until it came to him that she was, after al , only an ignorant human, and she might have interpreted his embrace as a sexual thing. This interested him.

"Ah," he said, remembering the humans at the stick lodge. "You think I wil use you as they did. A peculiar notion to develop at this stage. I should have thought Alexander would have taught you better."

He turned her in his arms so that she was in profile to him, and though her muscles were stiff she did not resist. She turned her head and refused to look at him.

"Come. See." Impatiently, he took her hand and pushed it between his legs, against his organ, which was flaccid and unresponsive against his thigh. "I have no desire for you. I am not a human male and I have no weapon between my legs."

An involuntary little moan was torn from her and she tried to pul her hand away, but he held it there. "Do you see? Touch me al you want. I won't grow hard for you unless I wil myself to do so. I am not a mad beast out of control. I am no threat to you or any other creature on earth unless I choose to be."

She began to weep with smal , choked trembling sounds. He released her hand and was about to thrust her from him impatiently when she turned her face to his shoulder and her hands to his chest. Her tears wet his skin, and the smel of salt and pain drew a surprising tenderness from him.

In a moment he touched her hair, and her hot, wet cheek. He let her lie against his shoulder and he wrapped her in his arms, stroking her head. "Poor ruined little human," he murmured. "I wonder whether I shal ever be able to make you tame again."