PRINCE OF WOLVES

by Susan Krinard

  She was happy. He knew she was happy, knew it in the way he knew so much else about her, felt so much of what she was feeling, bound to her by more than mere physical desire or primitive instinct. It was enough, most of the time, to keep the guilt pressed far enough back so that she couldn't see it, so that it did not destroy the very real joy between them. Almost enough to make him forget his fears.

  He had tried to tell her, once. Tried to clear away that one shadow on their happiness. She had stopped him, and he had never again found the courage. Now, as he pressed his face into her hair to inhale the compelling and unique fragrance, he let himself forget in the sheer rightness of having her in his arms.

  Her eyes were bright with anticipation, the gold flecks dancing, as she stepped back to watch him open the pack. "What did you bring me?" she said with a grin. "I've been having this incredible urge for chocolate.

  He put the box of fine imported truffles into her hands before she could finish. She sighed dramatically as she read the label. "I'm impressed! I never indulged myself this much." She stretched up to kiss his cheek. Even so light a touch affected him profoundly, as it always did. He busied himself unloading the rest of the pack, laying out all the things he had brought for her. For the first time he wished he had a vehicle capable of transporting larger items, he wanted to give her so much more than these few small luxuries .Perhaps after the snowfalls were regular enough, he could borrow Val Cache's single antique snowmobile, or rig up a travois.

  "Music," Joey breathed as she found the cassettes. "And more batteries." She laughed softly "I'll have to restrain myself, or we'll be swimming in batteries."

  Luke dropped down behind her, wrapping himself around her like a cloak, nuzzling the soft skin behind her jaw "Never restrain yourself, Joelle," he murmured against her. She turned in his arms and kissed him. Hard.

  "I won't. I absolutely promise that I have no intention whatsoever of restraining myself in anything."

  They were delightfully preoccupied for the next several moments, Luke groaned softly into her mouth at the inevitable result of her touch. "Unless you're deliberately trying to torture me, I suggest you stop," he growled, nibbling her chin. "Or there won't be any supper until very, very late."

  "I think we have a glass of wine and a loaf of bread somewhere." She grinned "And considering my current appetite, that should be plenty." Her words caught on a half-stifled laugh as he swept her up, the sweet weight of her body against his heart as light as new-fallen leaves and as profound as the one word neither one of them had yet learned to say.

  When she lay cradled against him, the taste of her still on his tongue and her skin cooling under his stroking hands, her voice cracked the lazy, sated silence.

  "There was something I wanted to tell you, Luke. Somehow I kept getting distracted."

  He could not see her face, tucked under his chin, her body shifted, and one small hand reached down to lace through his. "I love you, Luke."

  After a while his heart resumed its cadence, and he knew he would live. But it was a very long time before he slept.

  Happiness was not an entirely new thing to Joey. She knew that there had been a time when she had felt almost this happy, almost this loved and protected. But she also knew it had been in another place and time long ago, almost beyond memory. And memories had become fragile, uncertain things, like the past and future, they flickered in and out of reality, formless as ghosts.

  Days or weeks or months might have passed without her knowing it, she felt the changing of the season, understood Nature's perpetual cycle, but the counting of time by the calendar had become meaningless. Luke owned no clocks and needed none. Joey gave herself to a rhythm of life older than mankind.

  And Luke indulged her He brought her small luxuries and sometimes bigger ones. One day, impossibly, there were flowers brought in from some distant place, reminders of far-off springs and summers in a world of endless cold. On another, he arrived with a number of cookbooks and a set of culinary equipment that he promptly, if somewhat apprehensively, put to use in learning more creative ways of preparing the "exotic" foods he brought in from town. Joey was impressed by his successes and sympathetic to his failures, his chagrin always made her determined to make him feel better, and that was far from a bad thing. Eventually she took pity, and they formed a partnership in the small, primitive kitchen that actually resulted not only in edible meals, but also in very pleasant—and enthusiastic—desserts.

  As the days grew shorter and the autumn nights lengthened into winter, Joey's life with Luke settled into a comfortable routine. The lovemaking was the one thing that always held a hint of surprise, never the same, never dull, as the nights stole away the daylight hours. Luke became, if anything, more energetic than before.

  "It's our way, the way of my people," he'd told her once, after a long night of passion. "In the winter and early spring we become—" He had almost blushed then, and Joey had finished for him.

  "Insatiable?"

  He had laughed, and there'd been no more time for explanations. And when he drew back to ask if it was too much, Joey had been the one to laugh. She'd found within herself such a fierce passion for him that sometimes it took no more than a glance of his smoldering eyes or the faintest touch of his fingers to make her ready. As often as he demanded her body, she matched his lust with equal enthusiasm. They could not get enough of each other.

  That, Joey often thought on the long days when Luke had gone hunting or to town, was adequate compensation for being snowbound and treated to so few of the comforts of civilization. She seldom thought of that hazy outside world, but when she did, it was hard to miss things she used to take for granted. Oh, yes—there were more than adequate compensations.

  Her thoughts were running rather heatedly along those lines one misty afternoon when she heard a thump on the door. Joey jumped to her feet with a little thrill of expectant desire. When Luke returned from his runs, he always appeared at the door in human form. Generally stark naked.

  Anticipation made her grin as she opened the door. A pair of shadows flowed past her, and a warm puff of breath brushed over her hand as she shut it again. She blinked, adjusting to the unexpected sight of Luke and Philippe in wolf form as the smaller, darker wolf dashed off into the back room. Luke sat on his haunches by the fire and yawned, showing rows of very sharp white teeth, and grinned at her. Wolves couldn't grin, of course—but Luke could, and there was no other word for his distinctly unlupine expression.

  "You didn't warn me we were going to be having guests, Luke," she said with hands on hips

  Luke cocked his ears and waved his tail in a way that told her he was in a very good mood. It had been a long time, too, since he'd seen his family. The signs of the change began to manifest themselves, Joey's eyes had trouble focusing, and the impressive lines of the graceful predator's body blurred and shifted.

  "Wait!" She held out a hand to forestall him, the blurring stopped. While his bright feral eyes watched her, she retrieved her sketchpad and sat down cross-legged in front of him, tapping her pencil against her lip thoughtfully. "Stay just like that for a while, Luke."

  His expression became suddenly alert and intent as she began to sketch, Joey got the distinct impression that he was deliberately presenting his most noble wolfish aspect, though he made such a magnificent wolf that it was impossible to be other than impressed with him at any time. Or in either form, for that matter.

  Joey brought her attention back to her work, roughing out the proportions, the triangular ears, the heavy ruff of fur flowing back from the sides of his head and about his neck, the green-gold eyes focused on her. She was momentarily distracted by those eyes, so distinctly his no matter what form he took. They were arresting in any situation, but when they were trained on her in that particular way.

  "Bonjour," a familiar baritone called out. Joey turned to see Philippe emerging from the kitchen, buttoning up one of Luke's spare shirts, the borrowed clothing loose on his lanky frame. His gray-gr
een eyes were smiling as he moved around behind her to look down at the sketchpad in her lap. "Tres bien, Joelle. It looks very much like him."

  Flushing a little at the compliment and at having her rough sketch on display, Joey smiled up at Luke's cousin. "I just do it for fun. But I'll bet there are any number of wildlife artists who would kill for a chance like this."

  Philippe was silent, absorbing and undoubtedly translating her words, as Joey resumed her work. Luke suddenly shook his head, bristled the fur along the nape of his neck and gave a low, melodious growl, Philippe laughed softly.

  Joey's pencil skidded on the paper. "Did I miss something? Hold still, Luke!" She frowned back and forth at the cousins. "Why do I always get the feeling that most of the conversation is going right over my head?"

  With a stretch and a sigh, Philippe sat down on the edge of the sofa. "It—loses something in the translation," he said, hesitating slightly over the English words.

  Luke made a sound that could only be described as a "whuff," and Philippe sat up a little straighter. "Luc reminds me that you could learn to understand it, if you wish to do so."

  The line Joey was drawing wobbled off in the wrong direction. It was not only the words but the tone that caught her attention; Philippe was clearly uneasy, though the emotion did not reach his face. His eyes tracked from Luke to Joey and back again, as if he were trying to read some significant and unspoken message.

  "I could learn—what? Luke's been teaching me some French, but that's not what you mean, is it?" She turned to stare at Luke, who had stretched out sphinx-fashion, his big forepaws extended before him. "You can understand each other when you're wolves, or even when only one of you is, right?"

  Philippe nodded, almost reluctantly. His eyes were now wanly fixed on Luke, as hers were.

  "Luke never discussed it with me before." Frowning, she put the sketchpad aside. "How do I learn this mysterious language of yours?"

  This time there was no mistaking Philippe's discomfort. "We are born to the understanding of it. It would be possible for you to learn, but it would take a certain... " He trailed off, Luke abruptly sat up and fixed his ominous challenge-stare on his cousin. Philippe cleared his throat. "It would be necessary for you to become as we are. If you were to go through the change, understanding would come to you." He stopped abruptly, his eyes, as they met Joey's, both relieved and anxious.

  It took several moments for Joey to absorb his meaning. "You mean change into a wolf?"

  Her voice came out as a squeak. Rubbing her palms on her thighs, she licked suddenly dry lips. The thought was at once so ridiculous and yet so strangely compelling that she could hardly find the words to respond.

  "But I'm not—I'm not—" She swallowed hard "Why do you think I could do what you do?"

  Philippe's unease was as manifest as her own as he shifted on the sofa, looking everywhere but at her, or Luke. His voice was very soft. "You carry our blood, cousine Joelle. You have the gift within you."

  Joey stared at Luke, eyes widening. "You're not saying that there is some truth to those old legends—you bite me, and I turn into a werewolf, too?" The words earned a faint edge of hysteria barely shaped into humor, she struggled to keep her breathing steady and her mind clear. Luke growled deeply. He shook his head in a gesture clearly intended to mimic the human one.

  "No, it is not like that," Philippe put in hurriedly. "The gift cannot be given. It is born into the blood. You have this within you ever since you came to us." His expression was earnest, asking her understanding; Joelle wondered dazedly why he spoke with such urgency. Why Luke merely watched her with those cold lupine eyes

  She stared at Philippe uncomprehendingly. "I don't understand. You can't be serious."

  His eyes held no hint of a lie, or of humor. They were the eyes of a man, more than a man, steady and bright with the natural honesty of the wolf he could become. He was something impossible. He spoke of something equally impossible. Surely she would have known. Surely Luke would have told her.

  It made no sense. Her past—what she remembered when she thought of it—revealed nothing to justify Philippe's impossible claim. Why then, did she find herself accepting it—without proof, without fact, as if someone had whispered it in her ear long ago in some vivid yet half-forgotten dream? Why did her very blood beat with the truth of it? It was as if every critical faculty of her mind had been stripped away to reveal a primitive certainty that made her muscles clench in sympathy, preparing to shift and change.

  She shook her head, mouth forming words that gave no sound. Denials rose and fell, stopped by that same cold certainty. Somehow she gathered her shattered composure, looked again at Philippe, managing somehow a faint reassuring smile; the look she turned on Luke was not quite so tranquil.

  She had no time to confront him. Luke seemed to have reached the conclusion that she needed a moment of privacy to assimilate what she had been told; in one graceful move he was on his feet and trotting toward the back rooms of the cabin, leaving her alone with Philippe in an awkward silence.

  It was, surprisingly, Philippe who broke it. "I am sorry, Joelle," he said softly. "I did not know before that Luc had not told you."

  Drawing in a deep breath, Joey forced her rebellious body to assume the fragile calm of the expression she turned to him. "Its all right, Philippe. Like everything else, it's going to take some getting used to." She almost laughed at his obvious relief, the absurd humor of their situation saved her. "I wonder if Luke drove everyone in Val Cache as crazy as he drives me."

  Philippe's grin, a rare expression on his ordinarily serious face, was answer enough. "You know him well, cousine." As suddenly as it had come, the grin faded. He leaned forward, long-fingered hands dangling over his knees. "Are you happy here, Joelle?"

  The change in topic caught her up short. There was very real concern in his voice—concern that reminded her unexpectedly of friends she had not seen in many weeks. She considered his question even after the immediate, obvious answer rose to her lips, all at once there were layers of complexity she had forgotten, little pricks of uncertainty that teased at her mind but could not be seen or confronted.

  "Yes," she said at last. "I am happy."

  The words were true, in spite of the unfamiliar ambiguity that Philippe's question—and his revelations—had unleashed. "I am happy." She looked up into Philippe's green-gray eyes and smiled with sincere warmth. Her fingers cupped over his hands in silent thanks. "Don't worry about me, Philippe."

  He sighed, taking her hand and lifting it to his lips in an antique but charming gesture. "I am glad to hear it, cousine. We all wish you to be happy. Ever since you came to us, we have seen the changes." He stopped for a moment, considering his words. "We have seen what you have done for Luc. For that, we are grateful. But Luc can be intimidant." He shook his head "Overpowering. We also wish that it is right for you."

  Joey followed his careful words, deeply touched. She squeezed his hand and let it go, getting to her feet with a soft groan at the painful unclenching of her muscles. "I'm more grateful than I can tell you—for everything you and the others did to help me. I wish I knew how to thank you."

  "There are no debts among kin," Philippe said gravely.

  She shivered at his words. Kin.

  "And you have repaid us a thousand times by what you have done for Luc."

  Almost frightened by his words, Joey looked at her feet. What she had done for Luke. The words meant more than she could grasp, but the deeper meanings slipped away even as she reached for them. She looked up slowly. "I hope we can be friends, Philippe."

  With the gentlest of touches he clasped her hands and planted a light, whiskery kiss on each cheek. "We are all your friends, Joelle. We are your family."

  She blinked away tears and managed a smile. "Thank you." It seemed inadequate, but it was all she could find to say. Family. The word was almost painful in its intensity. It conjured images of laughing faces, arms that kept her safe and made her feel wanted. Things she
had lost, had almost forgotten.

  Strong arms pulled her back from the edge of the void. She gasped into Luke's shoulder, rigid as stone under her cheek. When the swirling darkness subsided and her vision cleared, she looked up, still tightly locked in Luke's embrace. Philippe stood motionless against the sofa, his eyes turned aside.

  The tension was palpable, it pulled Joey out of herself instantly. She shifted in Luke's hold, which tightened even further, a clear nonverbal message she was not quite prepared to contest.

  "Um—gentlemen, I don't know about you, but I'm getting rather hungry." Joey could hear the shaking in her voice and spent several seconds getting it back under control. "And Philippe is going to think we are lacking in the hospitality department. So, if you'll just let me go, Luke..."

  "There won't be any time for that now, Joey." Luke's voice held an edge that stopped her from pulling away. "Philippe and I are on our way into town."

  Joey twisted against him with a frown. After a moment just long enough to make his control abundantly clear, Luke loosened his hold. She stepped back to a place at an equal distance from both men and raked them with her glance, taking in the two parkas draped over the sofa behind Philippe and the snowshoes propped against it.

  "Isn't it a little late to be going out again?" she asked. "If you've run all the way from Val Cache, I'm sure you could both use a rest." The words she wanted to say—begging them to stay with her, not to leave her alone—were painfully locked in her throat.

  Luke's expression was unmoved and almost stern as he met her eyes. "We'll spend the night in Lovell. I have business there, and I don't want to keep Philippe away from his family." For a moment his gaze moved to his cousin, who seemed quite content to look in the opposite direction.