by Zoë Archer
Nathan was ravenous. He hadn’t eaten anything since the night before at the trading post. Hell—had it been only a day since the world as he knew it had changed completely? Yesterday, he’d been an ordinary man. If not ordinary, then certainly less unusual. He had believed himself on a certain path. Retrieve Douglas Prescott’s belongings, take them back to Victoria, and then continue his pursuit of justice and equality for Natives.
Now he’d discovered something about himself, something that tested the strength of his will. A man who could transform into a wolf. Yet even this was a small piece within a larger wonder. He stood in the middle of an ongoing war. A war for the world’s magic. Heirs of Albion. Blades of the Rose. Even the names were fanciful. He’d wandered into an adventure story and found that it was not fiction, but truth, and he was part of this fantastical, yet real, world. It was a world that Astrid Bramfield knew well. He wondered what she had seen. Enough to have her accept his shape-changing ability immediately.
As Nathan watched her, the beast tried to push its way out, but he held it down. A dark smile curved his mouth. She might be able to accept him as a shape changer, but she didn’t have to wrestle with the damned thing every time he looked at her.
They ate without talking, but he heard everything: the pop of the fire, the horses and mule cropping grass, the nearby river flowing over rocks, and the profound loneliness surrounding Astrid Bramfield, revealing itself through her silence. He knew that loneliness. It marked him from the moment he awoke to when he lay down to sleep, and in his dreams, too. They both belonged to no one, and no one was theirs.
Night descended, enveloping them in darkness.
After trading sips of water from the canteen, she struggled yet again to keep herself from speaking. Maybe this was why she had become a Blade, her relentless curiosity that even she couldn’t contain. He thought about what she must have been like all those years ago, bursting with a need to know, a need that propelled her toward defending the world’s magic. It was the same demand for knowledge he’d felt as soon as he was aware of his own consciousness.
He wanted to see that part of her, unguarded, eager. He would find a way to bring it back.
So now he waited. Like a wolf stalking prey.
Finally, she asked, lowly, “Can you do it now? Change into the wolf?” In the darkness, he couldn’t tell whether she blushed, but he felt it, the subtle warming of her skin. His own flesh heated in response.
Nathan hadn’t tried to deliberately change, not yet. “I feel it. Just beneath the surface. It wants to come out.” Wants you, he added silently. He knew she’d flee at the first open mention of the pull between them.
“Then it shouldn’t be difficult,” she said.
He couldn’t resist. “I’d have to strip.”
He didn’t miss the way she swallowed hard. He wasn’t alone in this desire. Not much comfort, when the woman in question was more closed-off than a vault. Buried beneath ten feet of solid stone. Defended by man-eating dragons and poisonous, carnivorous vines.
“And if you did…undress,” she rasped, “could you then?”
Could he? Reach into himself and channel the beast inside of him? The thought both unnerved and thrilled him. Without telling her so, he let slip a little the bonds he’d lashed around the animal, but then, seeing her watching him carefully, he forced the beast back under control. It growled in frustration.
He toyed with an evasion. Or an outright lie. But the only way past her armor was to show her that he wasn’t without his own vulnerability. “Not now,” he said, “even though I’d be a ferocious animal, something about it, about changing, that’s exposed. Unguarded. Maybe that doesn’t make sense.”
“No,” she said slowly. She seemed to recognize what he had done, how he had opened himself to her as a show of faith. Her gaze fastened to his and he saw the shadows fall away, just a little. “It makes perfect sense.”
Man and beast were one at that moment. They both saw in Astrid Bramfield courage and need, strength and softness. And they both wanted her.
Her eyes widened slightly as she held his gaze. She read in his eyes his intent. Before she could push it away, a responding desire gleamed in her silver smoke eyes. Not just desire of the body, but of the mind and heart as well.
Then she stood and grabbed her bedroll. “Get some sleep,” she said gruffly as she unrolled the blanket. “All the days now will be long.” She didn’t take off her boots or coat, only her hat, which, after she laid down, she used to cover her face.
The drawbridge is up, Nathan thought. A siege it would be, then. But not one of outright force. No matter what the beast demanded. He was still a man and had his own needs. This woman would be his, but she would give him herself by her own desire.
He took the blanket that once belonged to the trapper, then lay on the grass bedding and looked up at the stars. There were legends and stories about the stars, tales he once thought were nothing more than fancies dreamed up to while away long nights. Now he knew differently.
And all around him, the mountains whispered. You are very close. Come, we await you.
Chapter 4
The First of Many
Renewal here, in the mountains and alpine meadows. She had felt it when first arriving in the Rocky Mountains, and she still felt it to this day.
As she and Lesperance rode along the base of one mountain spur, the sky gleamed in a chalcedony of blue and white, and the ground still wore its carpet of green velvet. Autumn would soon arrive, but its season was short, and winter beckoned in traces of frost upon the grass.
Home. This was home to her.
After Michael’s death, Astrid had lost her mooring, herself, swept into a tide of grief that saw no cessation. She’d taken the voyage from Africa back to England, alone, dressed in the widow’s weeds she purchased from an English tailor in Cairo. A black shade of herself, she stood upon the ship’s deck and felt nothing. Not the punishing sun, or the sway of the ship upon the waves. She spoke to no one and could not sleep because Michael was not there. They had been married for five years, and she needed his large, solid presence beside her to guide her into dreams.
In Southampton, her parents met her at the dock. Catullus Graves had been there, too, with Bennett Day, Jane Fleetwood, and nearly a half dozen other Blades. All full of condolences, their sorrow at Michael’s loss sincere. Tears marked Catullus’s and Jane’s faces. And yet Astrid remained numb, even when her mother, her dear, middle-aged, lilac-scented mother, embraced her, whispering, “My poor little Star,” Astrid remained entombed in ice.
She couldn’t go home with them, to their little Staffordshire house. It was in that ivy-covered house that she had met Michael. The walls were saturated with him, her father’s study where he’d gone for education, all the bridle paths and garden gates imbued with his gentle presence. So she remained in Southampton for a year, at the Blades’ headquarters, wandering back and forth along the docks late at night as if anticipating a ship carrying Michael—though she’d had to bury him quickly in Africa. Catullus scolded her for inviting peril. The docks were dangerous, full of rough sailors and unsavory types. She could protect herself, though. Hadn’t she been the one to survive, and not her husband?
One night, she could stand it no longer, and left with one of the ships in the harbor with a satchel bearing few belongings. She had no idea where the ship might be headed, only that it took her away. She wrote letters back, to Catullus and her parents, telling them of her latest whereabouts. NewYork. Chicago. Farther west. Where might she lose herself? To the mountains and wilderness of western Canada, still an embryonic land, where she had land and silence, and the towering, snowcapped mountains stripped her of everything but bare existence with their magnitude.
She never lost her healthy awe of the wild. Complacency killed. Though her heart she kept shuttered, she left herself open to the mountains and found, in their impassivity and beauty, sustenance.
Lesperance, riding beside her, wore an expression
of sharp-eyed fascination as he took in the land unfolding around him. He’d been mercifully silent since breakfast. She had been afraid he would pepper her with more questions about her life with the Blades, questions she had no desire to answer. That chapter was done. She would not go back, not even in remembrance.
Yet in his silence, Astrid still sensed him. She told herself it was because she was unused to traveling with another person, but something smaller, wicked and insidious, whispered other reasons why she watched him from the corner of her eye. She kept revisiting their conversation from the night before—the words, the gazes. He saw into her, no matter how much she tried to shield herself from him. But his interest did not feel exploitative, a means to take her apart to suit his own needs. He understood her grief, having experienced his own, but he had a will and strength that she had to admire. Few possessed enough spirit to gain her respect. Even Michael, much as she had loved him, wavered at times. Not Lesperance. He was her equal. In many ways. A frightening prospect.
She told her inner voice to be quiet and leave her in peace. But Astrid had always been a headstrong, rebellious woman. Now was no exception.
They reached the top of a rock ledge and stopped, looking down. Below them shone a small aquamarine lake, its golden sandy banks frilled by aspens. From the farthest bank rose steep-sided mountains, still crowned with snow despite the lateness of the summer season. No artist could do it justice, and to think of capturing the scene on canvas or paper seemed the height of hubris.
“This feels right,” he said. The corners of his eyes creased in pleasure, warming the striking planes of his face, and it was more arresting than the view.
“Don’t forget,” she said, forcing her gaze to the glinting surface of the lake, “this is a hard place. With respect, however, it gives back even more than it takes.” Why had she said so much? She hadn’t intended to.
Holding his horse’s reins, he dismounted smoothly and bent to grip a handful of earth and plants. She watched, curious, as he inhaled deeply, the soil cupped in his long-fingered hand.
“So much here,” he said. He gazed at the humble clump of earth intently.
“It’s the wolf in you. It can smell things a mere human cannot.”
He shook his head. “I can scent more—a rabbit passed this way early this morning, it was a damp summer, those Englishmen are still following us, they’re far, but out there—yet, even so, it isn’t just animal senses. There’s blood, living blood, in these mountains.” He looked up at her, holding her gaze with the intensity of his own. Her pulse quickened. “You can feel it, too.”
She could only nod, entranced by the onyx fire of his eyes. The sense of magic clung to him stronger now, its energy turning the air around him alive. Yet she knew, deep within, that her response came not just from his connection to magic, but his own inner brightness, his active power. She saw it in the way he took in the world, open and ready, but also consumed it. A conflagration of a man. Who was more than just a man. She’d said he had the finesse of a wildfire, and realized now the truth of her words. In his heat and passion, the dryness of her heart and body would catch like tinder and be reduced to ashes in moments. A danger she must avoid.
“This,” he said, pointing to a jagged-leaved plant. “What is it?”
“Field mint. Its blossoms are little purple flowers. But they are gone until next year. I love to see the wildflowers in spring, so hopeful after the long, cold winter.” Something about Lesperance’s presence, his energy and stillness, pulled words and thoughts from her.
“Edible?” At her nod, he plucked a leaf with surprising dexterity. Astrid flushed to see the small green leaf cling to his tongue, then disappear into his mouth. When he plucked another leaf and held it up to her, she felt herself lean down and take the mint into her own mouth, inadvertently brushing the sensitive skin of her lips against his rough, blunt-tipped fingers. She tasted the clean brightness of mint and the spice of his flesh.
Astrid almost fell off of her horse, she pulled back so quickly.
She nudged her horse forward, and Lesperance was on his own horse and at her side within moments. They wended down the slope to the lake. She wondered whether he could hear her heart sprinting in her chest.
“What has it given you?”
She blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You said that this place gives back more than it takes. Must have given you something.”
Astrid considered. “Purpose,” she said, then, casting a quick glance at him, “and solitude.”
“I always had purpose. Solitude is overvalued.”
This surprised her. “Have you never been alone, Lesperance?”
“All the time.” He said this without a trace of self-pity, only a straightforward relating of the truth. “More now than ever.”
“I don’t count?” she asked, gruff, and was shocked by her own hurt.
“I scratched your pride.” He raised a brow, the picture of arrogant masculinity.
“I’ve no desire to be your bosom companion,” she clipped, then grew heated at her use of the word “bosom.” Especially as her own had been growing increasingly more sensitive since meeting him. She craved his touch with a need that embarrassed and angered her.
Perhaps he took pity on her, because he said, “Alone, meaning I’d always been a rarity. Not white, not Native. Now I’m also a man who can change into an animal. There might be no one else like me.”
An outsider, like her. Without wanting to, she placed herself in his life. A Native, taken from his family and tribe, raised by strangers and taught that those familial, tribal ways held no value. But if he aspired to integrate himself into white society, he would never be accepted, not fully. From an early age, he must have been torn, a creature of uncertainty, neither of one world nor another. And that divide had only grown larger within the past few days.
Threads of empathy and connection threatened to bind her to him. No. She wouldn’t allow it. Not after so much time, not after the wounds she had suffered.
“But I’ll find the other shape changers,” he said, resolve strong in his voice. He wouldn’t mire himself in defeatism. Wouldn’t run from the obstacles in his path. She couldn’t stop her admiration for him. She’d never respected those who surrendered easily.
A cold, biting emotion stirred inside her, something she did not want to face. She immersed herself in the land rather than look inward.
At the lake, they both dismounted and let their horses and the mule drink, while they themselves knelt to gulp handfuls of cold water. The day was clear, but dry, and her thirst was strong. She took greedy swallows. In her work for the Blades, Astrid had experienced the privilege of the finest, rarest beverages—teas for maharajas, devastating liquors from the Italian hills, even the variety of whiskey said to be Admiral Nelson’s favorite. Yet, to her, nothing compared to cold, fresh water that had been, not long ago, snow atop a nearby mountain. Astrid felt droplets fall from her mouth and slide down the front of her throat, dampening the collar of her shirt.
She heard an animal’s rumble and was suffused with heat when she realized it was Lesperance making the sound as he stared at her. Stark desire chiseled his face into something altogether feral.
To her rage—and mortification—her body responded immediately. Liquid need turned her blood both sluggish and fast. Something clenched low in her belly.
She hauled to her feet and stalked to her horse. “Enough. The more time we waste, the closer the Heirs get. They could make a move at any moment, and we still don’t truly know where we are headed.” She checked the cinch on her saddle, even though she knew it was perfectly fine. Yet, when Lesperance rose up and strode over to stand next to her, she pretended deep involvement with the latigo connecting the cinch to the saddle’s rigging. His masculine presence threatened to overwhelm her.
“Astrid,” he said, putting his hand over hers. Damn, why hadn’t she put her gloves back on? It galled her that the feel of his large hand covering hers sent a jolt
of raw hunger to her core.
She still would not look at him. “You have no permission to use my given name.”
“Those rules don’t matter out here.”
She pulled her hand out from under his and quickly tugged on her gloves. “If we continue on north,” she persisted, “by tomorrow we should reach the late summer encampment of a band of Stoney Indians. They might know—”
“Backing down?” he challenged.
She turned so she faced him, knowing that anything less would be a capitulation. “I’m keeping us on track.” Her voice held more heat than she realized. “You must see me as your guide and ally, but nothing more.”
He narrowed his eyes. “That can’t happen.”
“It will,” she insisted. “Anything else is not possible.”
“Sounds like a dare.” He crossed his arms over his broad chest, confident as an undefeated pugilist. Under other circumstances, she would have admired his self-assurance and tenacity. But when the obstacle in his path was her own preservation, admiration turned to anger. Yet even anger was too hot. It masked another passion.
She retreated behind icy detachment. “I will only guide you and help you. That is all. If you seek anything further from me, you will find such a pursuit to be impossible.”
He smiled, predatory. “My favorite word.”
Dark was coming. Camp would have to be made. She was bone-tired, worn thin not so much from the day’s hard riding as blocking Lesperance from her mind. Not once over the hours or miles did she forget him, riding beside her. She tried to retreat into herself, but, even silent, he threaded into her awareness. His presence, the force of his will, glowed like a brand. The way he took in the world around him, with a ferocious intensity, stirred her.
He was like what she had been, before Michael’s death. A woman hell-bent on seeing and experiencing everything. She had loved the Blades, loved Michael, because they both accepted that hungry, determined part of her. To her parents, she was a beloved anomaly, the adventure-seeking daughter of a quiet scholar. She had never had a place in rural English life. She could not be part of higher society, could not be meek and fragile. A terrible candidate for domesticity. Yet she had found rare understanding with the man who would become her husband, and more in the circle of the Blades.