Wolf in Waiting

by Rebecca Flanders

  “I don’t want to mate with a human,” I told him angrily. “That’s not why I came here. I know my duty and I have no intention of neglecting it.”

  “But if it weren’t for your duty, you would have your little anthromorph, wouldn’t you? You would have her in any way possible and at whatever cost, isn’t that right? Shall I tell you why you came here?” He turned on me, fists clenched in his jacket pockets, his face dark and tight. “You came to punish me, didn’t you?”

  “Yes!” I heard myself shouting at him. “Yes, damn your dark soul, I did!” The wind caught my voice and seemed to magnify it and I was horrified by the sound, by the fury that propelled me, by the carelessness of the words. “I never asked for this, not any of it! I had a good life, a fine life, the life I chose! You turn your back on the responsibility that was yours, you shame us all—and you are rewarded with all you ever wanted and I’m left to clean up your mess! I hate you for what you’ve done, Michael! I hate you for what you’ve taken from me. And yes, I would punish you if I could.”

  He looked at me soberly for a long moment. “You won’t say it to me, will you?”

  I was disoriented, my pulse quick and hot, my breathing fast. The last thing I had expected from him was this calm quiet tone, and a question that made no sense.

  I demanded irritably, “What? I’ve said everything to you I came to say. I’d best go.”

  I turned to push past him on the trail, but his voice stopped me.

  “That you love her.” His tone was thoughtful. “I wonder if you have said it to her.”

  I couldn’t go farther. It swept over me, this simple truth: Love, yes. That was what I felt. That was what bound me to her, whether or not we were physically mated, and it would continue to do so for the rest of my life.

  How could I join with another when the best part of me already belonged to her? All my foolish fantasies of human kings with their multiple wives and even greater numbers of mistresses faded into a bleak and empty future. It was not possible. Where love was involved…it was not possible.

  I turned back to Michael, and he must have read it in my eyes because his own eyes grew sad, and touched with compassion. “We pride ourselves on our intellect,” he said gently, “but in the end it’s emotion that rules our lives, isn’t it? I think perhaps your Victoria is not the only one who guards hers too closely.”

  There was a fallen tree a few yards away. He went over and sat down upon it, resting his elbows on his knees and, in a moment, dropping his head to his hands and pushing back his hair with a long, slow motion. Then he said, “Tell me, Noel, would I be wrong in thinking I still have some small influence over you?”

  I answered tiredly, “Of course you do. I wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.”

  He dropped his hands between his knees and stared off into the distance. “Then,” he said, “you have your revenge.” The smile that softened his mouth was wistful and vague. “Now I will spend the rest of my life wondering whether what I’ve said to you today has caused you to destroy the pack…or destroy yourself.”

  I came over and sat beside him on the log, yet still several feet away. “Perhaps you don’t have as much influence over me as all that.”

  We sat on the tree trunk for a time, watching the shadows lengthen in the woods and listening to the myriad sounds, far and near, that signaled the ending of the day, tasting the scents that came to us with increasing clarity as the air grew colder. It was good to sit with another werewolf in silence like that. Calming.

  After a time, I said, “I couldn’t do it, Michael. I couldn’t live in exile as you do, apart from others of my own kind.” I thought of Victoria and her loneliness, but even she had the company of werewolves, if not the affection of them.

  Michael said, “I know that. That’s why you’re the chosen heir, and I’m building houses for humans.”

  I looked at him suspiciously, wondering if he was patronizing me. “What are you talking about? I’m the heir because you chose not to be.”

  He corrected, with every appearance of sincerity, “No, because you are the better man.”

  I stared at him, murmuring before I could stop myself, “That’s what Victoria says.”

  “You should listen to her.”

  But I shook my head impatiently. “You’ve always been the stronger werewolf, everyone knows that. You’re the rightful heir and for good reason, I don’t pretend otherwise. I’ll never be more than a pale imitation of the leader you would have been.”

  Incredulity slowly filled Michael’s eyes. “Is that what you believe? God, you are a bigger fool than I thought!”

  But I had no energy for arguing with him further that day, especially on such a hurtful topic. My future was as cold and empty as the dying day and he could have had the entire empire for the asking at that moment. I would have shrugged out of my cloak of responsibility as effortlessly as I shed my human form, and gone off to hide myself in a burrow somewhere until somehow, some day, spring came again.

  Michael said, with an odd tight twist to his voice, “Is that what they’re saying about me? Is that what you really think? That I would betray the pack, sell out its future for my own selfish gain?”

  He got to his feet in sudden agitation and paced a few steps away. Abruptly he swung back to me. “I came prepared to kill for the pack, that day—or die for it. It wasn’t just Aggie, don’t you know that? I had resigned myself to losing her. What I fought for was the future of those who depended on me. If you had killed me, I wouldn’t have blamed you, surely you know that! I was willing to die if that was what it took because you were the better

  man. You were the one who could lead our people into the next century, not me. I was too much a part of the human world and always have been. I’ve never had your passion for what we are, I’ve never really understood, the way you do, what it means to be a werewolf. If it had been anyone but you who had challenged me,” he said, and his eyes were dark and hard with the truth, “I would be leader today. Believe that.”

  Well. I hardly knew what to say, to think. One thing only rang in my mind: Victoria knew that. She had seen what I couldn’t, believed what I dared not. Michael’s words changed everything, and yet…Victoria knew the truth all along.

  God, how I needed her. I’m not sure I fully comprehended how much until that moment.

  “I’m glad I didn’t kill you.”

  In a moment he smiled at our private joke, and he said, “So am I.”

  But the amusement faded from his eyes as he continued to look at me, because it was impossible to deny what had finally become so bleakly, desperately clear to me. I had come here expecting to learn something entirely different from Michael—how to cheat, how, perhaps to change the rules to my benefit; how, simply, to love a woman I could never have. What I had discovered was that, for me, there were no compromises. I was not Michael, and the price he had paid for his happiness was far too great.

  I said simply, gazing into the dark woods, “I cannot rule alone. But for me there will never be another queen but Victoria.”

  And that was the essence of it, the summation of all my despair. For the love of a woman an empire was lost? Not quite. Only the heart of its ruler. And I was sure this was not the first time in history, human or werewolf, that has happened.

  “Your case is very bad, my friend,” Michael agreed quietly. “I wish I knew what to tell you.”

  It was a moment before I could gather the energy to speak. Then I squared my shoulders, lifted my head and got to my feet. I said, “You’ve already told me what I needed to know.”

  And then I hesitated. So much lay between us: bad blood, hard words, kinship and rivalry and respect and resentment. Yet in spite of all that, or perhaps because of it, we were bound in brotherhood to each other.

  “Michael,” I said, “I don’t know if it needs to be said…”

  “It doesn’t,” he assured me.

  He lifted his arm to me, and we embraced, sure and hard. I felt better for it.<
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  “Stay the night,” he said, clapping his hand on my shoulder as we walked back down the path. “Have a meal with us, and we’ll run together, or talk, or you can be alone and rest if you like. You can have the little house where Aggie’s office is all to yourself.”

  I wanted to, and the fact that I did surprised me. But already I was shaking my head. “And what will your wife think of that?”

  “She’s already set a place for you at the table.”

  I gave a small humorless sniff of laughter. “Unlikely. She doesn’t like me, you know.”

  “But she likes me,” Michael assured me. “And that’s the most peculiar thing about being mated. These things are simply…understood.”

  And that kind of empathy, I realized with a slow and distant sorrow, was something I would never know, not in all my life.

  I couldn’t go back to Montreal, not yet. I couldn’t face the pain that waited for me there.

  “I’d like to run with you again, Michael. Who knows when we’ll get the chance to do so again. And there are some other things I’d like to talk to you about, it’s true. If you’re sure your wife won’t mind.”

  In response, he grinned and looped his arm playfully around my neck, as we had done when we were pups. We walked back to the house together, where Aggie had, indeed, set a place for me at her supper table.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Victoria

  How to explain what his coming to me meant? How it made me feel, what it made me think, what it did to my poor, battered heart? The heights of ecstasy, yes, born on the hope that he cared enough to say the things he had said and do the things he had done…and the depths of despair that can only be known by a woman who is desperately, hopelessly in love with the only man in the world she can never have.

  Love? It is a pale word, so carelessly bandied about by humans, that has little to do with what I felt for Noel, with what any werewolf feels for the one to whom she or he is destined. I would have given my life for him, yes, but I would have done that before I had ever come to know him, even when he was no more to me than a nebulous ideal of masculine perfection. Now he owned my soul.

  This was a difficult thing for me to even acknowledge, much less admit. What had I to do with love? What right did I have to love any werewolf, much less the heir designé of all our people? To fantasize was one thing, to worship from afar quite acceptable, even to share the pleasures he offered…but love? This was a grand and powerful thing, this was beyond anything I had ever prepared for. I was terrified.

  There was no hope for it, I knew that. I could never meet Noel on his own terms, never give him the natural and loving relationship that is the due of any werewolf, the offspring that would be the inevitable, joyous result of such a union. I couldn’t even share with him the full understanding of what it meant to be a werewolf.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t want these things. God, how I wanted them. But could I change the way the world turned, the moon, the stars, the coming of the seasons? No more than I could change what I was. I would give him all I had, but all I had would never be enough.

  In three weeks he would belong to another, and I would not try to hold on to what I had never had.

  In the meantime, there was one thing I could do for him, the only thing really, I had ever known how to do. I could give him my mind, my labor, my dedication. Work. It was my refuge, my salvation. And this time, perhaps, it was the most important gift I would ever give.

  I beckoned Sara to follow me as soon as I got off the elevator that morning, and led the way to Noel’s office—the only place in the building from which I was certain I could not be overheard. I closed the door on Noel’s secretary’s outraged look and said to Sara, “I need a log of the e-mail that’s been sent out of this office since September of last year. Can I get that?”

  Her eyes grew round. “All of it?”

  “No, just what Greg Stillman sent. Is it possible?”

  Sara, bless her, knew I was asking her to do something underhanded, an invasion of privacy at best and illegal at worst. But she never questioned me. She must have known I wouldn’t have asked if it wasn’t terribly important, and she was right.

  She said, still a little skeptical, “Well, that would shorten the list a little. But it would take days—”

  “Not every message he sent—just the ones under his personal code.”

  Her expression cleared. “Ah,” she said. “Now that I can do.”

  “Good.” I gave a short nod of my head. “I need a list, sorted by destination, as soon as you can get it to me. Get whatever help you need but, Sara, this is top secret.”

  She nodded, her eyes sparkling. “I gathered that. I hope you fry his butt.”

  “What?”

  “Fire him,” she clarified. “He’s a pompous bastard and no one likes him.”

  “Well,” I speculated, “I don’t know about firing him. But we might just get him transferred to the jungles of East Africa.”

  She thought about that for a moment. “Fair enough. Anything else?”

  “Yes. Is there any way I can read the contents of those messages?”

  Now she looked worried. “Oh, gee, Victoria, I don’t think so. I mean, that’s the point of having network security, isn’t it? There may be a way, but it’s nothing I would know about, nor would anyone in this building, I would think.”

  I had been afraid of that.

  I crossed my arms over my chest, biting down on my thumbnail. “It’s got to be on his computer somewhere,” I mused out loud. “If only I had his password.”

  Sara looked surprised. “You have Stillman’s computer?”

  I nodded.

  Her eyes widened in incredulity and amusement. “Then you have his password, dope! Push F4 on the keyboard. It’s a kind of shorthand all the executives use because they don’t want to go to the trouble of typing out their password every time they enter a program. I can’t believe you didn’t know that!”

  I stared at her. Could it be that simple? “How would I know what executives do?” I demanded, but already I was flying out the door, back to my own office, and Sara was at my heels.

  It was that simple. He hadn’t disabled the electronic shortcut; he hadn’t changed his code. Why should he? No one but humans—secretaries, at that—knew about the shortcut, and no one but I had access to his computer. Why should he be afraid of us?

  And that was how I, the lowliest member of the pack, ignored, passed over, laughed at and disdained, a woman acting only for the sake of love, came to discover not only the identity of the Clare de Lune traitor, but the real secret of Moonsong.

  At three o’clock the next afternoon I was pacing tensely in the small airport waiting room that was reserved for arrivals and departures via private plane. Lest you ever think security for our heir designé is lax, I should point out that it took far more effort to get this far than I ever should have thought, and even now the bodyguards did not take their eyes off me, this despite the fact that they knew perfectly well who I was and that my business with him was legitimate. If they hadn’t known that, I doubt very much they would have even let me in the car.

  I was calm. I kept telling myself that over and over like a mantra, and it eventually became more true than not. As I’ve said, I tend to retreat in the face of strong emotion, to grow quieter and more in control, but never had I required more self-discipline to put the technique into practice than now.

  But then again, I wasn’t sure I had ever felt quite so strongly about anything before.

  I knew when Noel’s plane was landing because one of the bodyguards spoke into his radio and the two of them moved into position flanking the waiting-room door. But I knew when Noel himself was approaching because I felt him, like a storm on the wind or the rising of the sun; I felt it in my pulse, in my skin, in the deep aching core of me. Noel. His scent, his footsteps, the rustle of his clothing, the sound of his lungs filling with air, the power of his heartbeat—all of it called to me, twisted inside
me, caught my breath and snatched it away.

  But I was calm. I still had a job to do, and to be otherwise would be counterproductive.

  He came through the door with a gust of cold air and a few dry snowflakes. He was wearing an artfully scarred leather bomber jacket and a white silk shirt, pleated dark slacks. His hair was combed by the wind and dotted with melting snow. He carried nothing in his hand but a cellular phone, on which he was just finishing a conversation as he came in. He was not surprised to see me—they would have radioed him I was waiting, of course—but the pleasure that leaped in his eyes when he saw me was almost my undoing.

  He folded the phone and handed it to his driver without glancing at him, coming straight to me. He was smiling. “Ms. St. Clare. You didn’t have to trouble yourself.”

  He reached for my hands but I stepped away. He thought it was because I was shy in front of the guards.

  “Everything went well in Seattle?”

  “Yes, actually. I don’t think we have any cause for concern from that quarter.”

  “Michael is prospering?”

  “More or less. It was good to see him.”

  And so it went, neutral conversation passed back and forth between us for the sake of the guards until we reached the car. It was, fortunately, a short walk.

  I settled in the seat opposite Noel in the back of the big limo and the bodyguards took the second car as they always did. Noel activated the privacy screen and the white noise and then before I knew what he was doing, he took both my cold hands in his, holding them still, and leaned forward as though to kiss me. Naturally, I couldn’t stop him. But I stiffened, and he didn’t kiss me. Instead, he put his face close to my neck and inhaled my scent. Anxiety, distress, excitement, anger, hurt, fear, sorrow, need…it was all there. And when he sat back, his expression was grave.

  “What is it?” he demanded quietly.