Julian stayed in the wild for six months. His guilt haunted him. Alex haunted him.
He didn’t like the man he’d been, so he remained a wolf. He had plenty of residual anger at both Cade and himself to stay in his preferred form. But all that fury was exhausting.
He started sleeping each day, running each night. Eventually he started running to her.
They were mates for life, and thanks to him that life would be long. The least he could do was let her live without him. But he missed his home. It was the only one he’d ever had.
So he hung around the outskirts of civilization, and he caught a distant glimpse of Alex now and again, a flicker of her scent—ice, trees, and the faint drift of citrus—sometimes the sound of her voice, and that was enough.
Until it wasn’t.
There came a night when he couldn’t stand the separation any longer. He told himself he’d only watch her as she lay sleeping; then he’d leave. She’d never even know he was there.
Fool.
She’d been a Jäger-Sucher. There wasn’t a werewolf in the world she wouldn’t know was there.
She didn’t run with the others most nights. She stayed alone at Ella’s, and the lights went out very early. Not long after they did, he went in.
She wasn’t in her bed; she wasn’t in her room. He found her standing at the front window, staring at the moon.
“I wondered how long you’d stay away.”
He tried to work up enough anger to turn invisible. He should have done it before, but he discovered that being near her made him so damn happy, he had no anger left.
“I’ll go soon,” she said.
“What? Where?”
She continued to stare at the sheen of the half-moon that coated the village in liquid silver ice.
“This is your place not mine.” She lifted a hand, but she didn’t turn around. “Don’t worry. If you can hold on for a few days, I’m sure Edward—make that Elise—will concoct something to make this…connection go away.”
“You won’t go near him,” Julian said, and the house shook just a little. “Not ever again.”
“I won’t tell him where you are. I know you didn’t believe me, but now—” She took a breath, and it shook. “I’d never let him hurt—” Her voice broke.
Was she crying? No. Alexandra Trevalyn would never cry.
So why could he smell her tears?
“I’ll stay here until it comes. I’ll let you keep it. You know that I’d never bring the Jäger-Suchers down on—”
What was she talking about?
She turned, and it was as if all the air had been sucked out of the room, his lungs, the universe.
“Our child,” she finished, placing her palm on the full swell of her belly.
Julian did the only thing a man could do at a revelation like that.
He fainted.
Julian went down so fast and so hard, Alex would have thought he’d been shot if the night hadn’t remained completely silent.
She went onto her knees. He was already coming around.
“Impossible,” he said as he opened his eyes.
She took his hand and placed it on her stomach. The child, no doubt irritated at being awoken by the thunderous thumping of Alex’s heart, took the opportunity to give her its usual vicious kick.
Julian gasped and lifted his gaze to hers. He didn’t appear capable of further speech.
“That’s kind of how I felt when I heard.”
Ella had figured it out. Alex refused to believe her until her stomach began to expand, and the baby began to do the mambo.
“Impossible might be a good name,” Alex murmured, keeping her hand on top of Julian’s on top of her stomach. “It’s your child, after all.”
“But I can’t—We can’t—”
“You obviously can, and we did.”
“How?”
His face was gaunt. He broke her heart. She wanted to kiss him, to touch him and pull him close. But that would only make what she had to do so much harder.
“You healed a silver bullet, Julian. Is there anything you can’t do if you put your mind to it?”
His forehead creased. “A boy with my gold hair. A girl with your green eyes.”
She stared at him for several seconds. “Did you hit your head?”
“I thought that once, when we were…” He sat up, but he didn’t remove his hand from her stomach.
“Oh!” Suddenly everything became clear. Julian was magic, and when he thought of things, they happened. “We were having sex and you thought of kids?”
“I didn’t mean to. I was thinking about—” He looked away.
“Alana.” That he’d been thinking of his wife while he was doing Alex was kind of…yuck. Then again, had she really believed he’d been thinking of her?
“You were angry?” she asked.
“Back then, every time I looked at you I was angry.” Julian twitched his shoulders, more of a wince than a shrug. “Green eyes. That was you. So I guess I wasn’t really thinking of her at all.”
But he always would be. Alex knew that now.
Julian sighed. “She died because I couldn’t give her a child, but it seems that I could. I never considered—”
Alex squeezed his fingers, and he looked into her face. “I don’t think you could have given her one. This mate bond seems to be the cause of a whole lot of—” She floundered for a word.
“Weirdness,” Julian supplied.
“Yeah. Besides, would you ever have been able to work up enough fury at her to change the course of lycanthropy?”
His lips quirked. “Probably not.”
Alex didn’t say what else she was thinking. That Alana had taken the easy way out; that if Alana had truly loved Julian, she’d have chosen the hard way. As Alex had.
She lifted her hand from his and got up. He scrambled to follow, and she stepped away. She couldn’t be near him and not want him.
“A life for a life,” she said. “It’s only fair.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I took Alana, but I can give you this.” Her palm skated over the fullness. “Once I have the baby, I’ll leave him or her with you. I’ll go to Edward. He’ll have to do something to make this connection between us go away. If he wants me to be able to work for him without puking all day.”
“Work for him,” Julian repeated.
“There are still werewolves out there that need to be killed. But now I know that there are some who don’t. I won’t make the same mistake twice.”
“That’s—” Julian appeared to be searching for his words. Maybe he had hit his head. “The stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in all of my lifetimes.”
Alex blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“You should be.” He reached out and drew her to him—too fast, they bumped bellies. “You’re my mate, Alex.”
“You didn’t choose me; you didn’t choose this.”
“I did.” He touched her stomach again as if he had to just to make sure it was real. She did that several times a day herself. “I chose to make you like me. For all the wrong reasons, true, and I hope you’ll forgive me. I was wrong. If you want to go back to the other world and be cured, I’ll understand.”
She laid her hand on top of his. “Why would anyone want to go back once they’ve found this?”
“It’s a miracle,” he said.
“No.” Alex lifted her lips and kissed him; then she knew without a doubt that she was home. “It’s magic.”
Epilogue
Their son was born three months later. As soon as Alex held him in her arms, she understood why Julian had said her idea of leaving the child behind had been the stupidest thing he’d ever heard.
“I couldn’t have done it,” she said.
“I know,” Julian murmured. Sound asleep, the baby still clutched at his finger.
“I don’t think he should be able to do that yet.” Alex leaned down and nuzzled the child’s head. He smelled like the
first snowfall of the season.
“I think there’s going to be a lot of things he does that he isn’t supposed to be able to.”
They were treading new ground. As far as they knew, there’d never been a werewolf pregnancy, let alone a child born of two lycanthropes. Alex would have been lying if she said she hadn’t spent a lot of sleepless nights worrying if the child would be all right. If it would actually be a child at all.
But now that he was here and he was “perfect,” she whispered, all her fears seemed kind of foolish.
Julian had worried about who would take care of the child on that single night when every inhabitant of Barlowsville ran beneath the moon. Alex had pointed out it wasn’t as if the moon snuck up on them. They knew when it was coming. A few hours before it did, they would drop the baby off with an entire village of Inuit babysitters.
Julian also worried that Alex would someday feel the need to go out hunting for her father’s killer. But the closer she got to her due date, the less she thought about anything but her child.
“Edward will find him,” she said with a shrug.
For a while she’d been concerned that Edward would find her. She hadn’t reported back. But neither had any of Edward’s other toadies. He’d believe she was as dead as they were, and she’d let him. That part of her life, that other Alex, was dead.
Ella and Jorund appeared in the doorway. Ella had proved a huge help with all things baby, and Jorund…he went wherever she was.
The two had recently married, and Jorund now lived in Barlowsville. He’d left George in charge.
The day after he’d come home, Julian had given in to Ella’s request to make Jorund a werewolf. Julian could no longer deny the power of true love. It crossed boundaries of age, of race, of species. True love made all things possible. Their child proved that.
“What are you going to name him?” Ella asked.
“Charlie,” Julian said, and tugged his finger from his son’s grasp.
In his sleep Charlie frowned; then he opened his tiny, perfect mouth and he—
“Was that a growl?” Alex asked.
Read on for an excerpt from Lori Handeland’s next book
MOON CURSED
Coming in 2011 from St. Martin’s Paperbacks
The first recorded sighting of the Loch Ness Monster was by Saint Columba in AD 565. The most recent occurred just last year.
“There’ll be a sighting every year,” Kristin Daniels muttered as she peered at her laptop. “Wouldn’t want to screw with a multi-million-dollar tourist industry.”
Unless, of course, you were the host of the public television show Hoax Hunters. Kris planned to screw with it a lot.
In fact she planned to end it.
Kris scribbled more notes on her already scribbled-upon yellow legal pad. This was going to be her biggest and best project to date. The debunking of the Loch Ness Monster would not only put Hoax Hunters on the national radar—hell, she’d probably get picked up for syndication—but would make her a star.
“Kris?”
She glanced up. Her boss, Theo Murdoch, stood in the doorway of her office. He didn’t look happy. Theo rarely did.
Public television was a crapshoot. Sometimes you won; sometimes you lost. But you were always, always on the verge of disaster.
“Hey, Theo,” she said brightly. “I was just planning our premiere show for next year. You’re gonna love it and so—”
“Hoax Hunters is done.”
Kris realized her mouth was still half open, and shut it. Then she opened it again and began to babble. She did that when she panicked. “For the season, sure. But next year is going to be great. It’ll be our year, Theo. You’ll see.”
“There is no next year, Kris. You’re cancelled.”
“Why?”
“Ratings, kid. You don’t have ’em.”
Fury, with a tinge of dread, made Kris snap: “It’s not like we were ever going to compete with Friday Night Smack-down.”
“And we don’t want to.” Theo’s thin chest barely moved despite the deep breath he drew. The man was cadaverous, yet he ate like a teenaged truck driver. Were there teenaged truck drivers? “Cable’s killing me.”
Or maybe it was just his high stress and two packs a day diet.
In Theo’s youth, back when he still had hair, PBS had been the place for the intelligent, discriminating viewer. Now those viewers had eight hundred channels to choose from, and some of those even produced a show or two worth watching.
In the glory days Planet Earth would have been a PBS hit. Instead it had played on The Discovery Channel. Once The Tudors—sans nudity of course—would have been a Masterpiece Theatre staple. Now it was Showtime’s version of MTV history.
“Who would have thought that public radio would do better than us?” Theo mumbled.
To everyone’s amazement, NPR was rocking, even as PBS sank like a stone.
“Not me,” Kris agreed. And too bad, too. Not that she could ever have done Hoax Hunters for the radio even if she had possessed a crystal ball. The show’s strength lay in the visual revelation that what so many believed the truth was in fact a lie.
Hoax Hunters, which Kris had originally called Hoax Haters, had come about after a tipsy night with her best friend and roommate Lola Kablonsky. Kris had always loathed liars—she had her reasons—and she’d been very good at spotting them. One could say she had a sixth sense, if a sixth sense weren’t as much of a lie as all the rest.
Why not make your obsession with truth and lies into a show? Lola had asked.
And full of margaritas and a haunting ambition, Kris had thought: Why not?
She’d used her savings to fund a pilot, and she’d gotten that pilot onto the screen through sheer guts and brutal determination. She wasn’t going to let something as erratic as ratings get her down.
“I’ll make the show anyway,” she said.
Theo’s smile was sad. “It won’t help. The powers that be were never very enthusiastic. I doubt they’d put you back on the air no matter what hoax you hunted.”
Kris powered down her laptop and began to pack her things. “Who said I’d let them?”
“Scotland,” Lola said. “Does anyone really go to Scotland on purpose?”
Kris tossed a few more sweaters into her suitcase. “Just me.”
September was cold in the Highlands, or so she’d heard. Not that she wasn’t used to the cold. She was from Chicago. Cold moved in about October and hung around until June. There’d even been a few July days when the breeze off the lake was reminiscent of the chill that drifted out of her freezer when she went searching for double chocolate brownie yogurt in the middle of the night.
“Are you sure, Kris?” Worry tightened Lola’s voice. “You’ll be all alone over there.”
Alone. Kris gave a mental eye roll. Horrors! Like that would be anything new.
Her mother had died, still promising she wouldn’t, when Kris was fifteen. Her brother had left for college when she was seventeen, swearing he’d visit often. If “often” was once the following year and then never again, he hadn’t been lying. Her father hung around until she turned eighteen. Then he’d taken a job in China—no lie. He hadn’t been back either.
So Kris was used to alone, and she could take care of herself. “I’ll be fine.” She zipped her suitcase.
“I’d go with you—”
Kris snorted. Lola in Scotland? That would be like taking Paris Hilton to…well, Scotland. Kris could probably shoot a documentary about it. The film would no doubt receive better ratings that Hoax Hunters.
And wasn’t that depressing?
“Aren’t you getting ready for the season?” Kris asked.
Lola was a ballet dancer, and she looked like one. Tall and slim, with graceful arms and never-ending legs, her long, black, straight hair would fall to the middle of her well-defined back if she ever wore it down. However, Lola believed that that style made her already oval face appear too oval. As if that could happe
n.
Kris wasn’t bland and average, unless she stood next to Lola. She also wasn’t a washed-out, freckle-nosed, frizzy-headed blond unless compared with Lola’s porcelain complexion and smooth ebony locks. The only thing they had in common were their brown eyes. However, Lola’s were pale, with flecks of gold and green, while Kris’s were just brown, the shade of mud she’d been told by a man who’d said he was a poet.
The two of them were still friends because Lola was as beautiful inside as out, as honest as a politician was not, and she loved Kris nearly as much as Kris loved her. In all her life, Kris had never trusted anyone the way she trusted Lola Kablonsky.
Lola set her long-fingered, smooth, graceful hand on Kris’s arm. “If you needed me, I’d go. Screw the season.”
Kris blinked back the sudden sting in her eyes. “Thanks.”
The two had met while living in the same cheap apartment building—Kris attending Loyola University and Lola attending ballet classes on the way to her present stint with the Joffrey Ballet. On the basis of a few good conversations, and a shared desire to get the hell out of their crappy abode, the two had found a better one and become roommates.
Casual observers might think that Kris and Lola would fight like cats in a bag when shoved into a residence the size of Lady Gaga’s walk-in closet. Instead they’d remained roomies ever since, earning the nickname the Spinal Sisters—because they were together so much they had to be attached at the spine.
Kris hugged Lola; Lola hugged back, but she clung. Lola had been raised in a large, loud, loving, pushy Polish family. Combine that with her appearance, and Lola had probably never been alone for five minutes in her entire life. A good thing since she didn’t like it.
Kris felt guilty for leaving her, but she didn’t have a choice. She couldn’t start over again with another show. She believed in Hoax Hunters.
She also believed that the Loch Ness Monster was ripe for debunking, and she was just the woman to do it.
Kris gathered the backpack that contained her laptop, video camera, and purse. “I’ll be fine,” she assured her friend for the second time. “It’s not like I’m going to Iraq or Columbia or even the Congo. It’s Scotland. What could happen?”
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