PRINCE OF WOLVES

by Susan Krinard

  Discover your heart's truth, Collier had said. She closed her eyes so tightly that they flashed red sparks.

  There was a silence then, so deep and profound that Joey followed it down, beyond the physical boundaries delineated by Luke's embrace, past the slow vibration of the emotional bond that tried to block her passage, deeper still into the very core of what she was.

  Emptiness. It sucked at her, and she struggled to hold herself free of it. The core of her being was a black void. Above was the promise of light, Luke's strong hand reaching down to grasp hers and pull her up into brightness. Blinding brightness that was just as deadly, reducing her into a mere shade, a weak reflection of the man from which it came. Either direction was loss, terrible loss—the familiar aching loneliness of the void or loss of herself.

  Luke had filled that void. He had not asked her if she wanted the brightness, he had simply filled her mind and soul with it so that no darkness remained. And in the absence of darkness, there was no contrast. No meaning. No truth. No self.

  She only knew how hard her body was shaking when Luke shifted her in his embrace and held her away. She stared into his eyes from behind dark shutters even his will would not penetrate. "Joey?" he questioned, his fingers tightening on her arms.

  With deliberate care Joey pushed back the light that pulsed between them. She felt the bond constrict into a fragile cord, and Luke jerked, the muscles in his bare chest seemed to ripple under the tanned skin. The pupils of his pale eyes constricted with shock. It was as if she had struck him, she felt the blow rebound against her, just as she had felt his pain and joy. She rejected it and pushed again. The void came up to swallow her; the tiny deadly kernel of ice that had formed in her heart when she had changed—when she had discovered his betrayal—grew hard with resolve.

  She forced herself not to see the dazed and naked bewilderment on his face. "It's wrong, Luke," she said. Some small part of herself was stunned by the brittle coldness in her voice. Her arms slipped free of his nerveless fingers. "It's too late."

  From a great distance she watched his expression change. Not quite grasping, not yet.

  "Don't you understand, Luke? I know what you did." The locus of emptiness shifted within her, for the first time she gathered her anger, her fear, her outrage into a single hard knot and forced it outward, along the path of the fragile cord that linked them. There was a sudden, blazing shock when it struck him, and Joey reeled with the backlash.

  He cried out, a harsh, astonished grunt of pain. His eyes were glazed with it as she stared into them.

  "You think everything is fine, everything is completely under your control," she said softly. The broken waves of her distress slapped her and again, bringing tears to her eyes like physical blows. "You're wrong, Luke. When I changed—when I saved your life—I broke through. I broke your influence. I learned what you'd done to me."

  Comprehension pierced the blank shock of Luke's gaze. "No," he gasped. Denial, and the first stirrings of reaction.

  "Yes." Coldness began to melt in the heat of anger. Blazing, all-consuming rage. Fury that had banked its fire in loneliness and fear, fed by loss upon loss. "It must have been easy for you, when I didn't know what was coming. Easy and convenient—to make me forget everything but you." A voice not her own grated out a harsh, alien sound. "You made one small mistake, Luke. You underestimated me. You helped me break free by teaching me what I was."

  The rage had a life of its own, and Joey could no more control it than she could slow her racing heart and the fierce need to make him realize his error. It overwhelmed her vision until all she could see were sparking embers in blackness. It blinded her to the sudden change in Luke, the moment when his astonishment gave way to cold resolve.

  "Stop, Joey." The voice seemed as far away as her own, utterly emotionless. Joey tossed her head and ignored it.

  "You lied to me. Violated me. Is that the only way you know how to form relationships, Luke? By taking over someone's mind? Not only mine but Allan's—yes, I know what you did to him, too, Luke. How you made him believe everything was all right."

  "Stop now, Joey." There was a sudden flash of pain, her own, as iron bands tightened on her upper arms.

  "You wanted to suck me into yourself and make me lose everything I am. You're a coward, a damned, selfish..."

  The wordless roar blotted out her words and blew them back, hard, shocking her into silence. She came back to herself as if she had been hit by a balled fist.

  Luke was poised above her, his expression so savage that she retreated before it, the invulnerability of rage abandoning her all at once.

  She teetered for an endless moment between ice and fire, between fear and defiance. There was still a tiny shred of sanity left in the maelstrom her mind had become, and she clung to it in desperation. Pain was another anchor, Luke's fingers bruised her arms with unleashed strength.

  Then his eyes gripped hers She knew when he tried to breach her defenses, and she found the strength to fight. She met his assault and repelled it, forced him back step by hard-won step, until she reached the place where she faced him on equal ground. Trembling there, she held the line between them until her body shook with exhaustion.

  "No, Luke," she whispered, too weak to summon up any emotion at all. "It's too late for that."

  His hands fell away. Inches apart, they regarded each other from opposite edges of a yawning chasm. A cold wind swirled up to scatter the ashes of Joey's heart.

  In the absence of light or darkness, Joey stepped back from the verge. She had found a desolation beyond the void where nothing could touch her. Nothing.

  "Why?" she said at last, meeting his alien eyes. "Why didn't you trust me?"

  Slowly the harsh lines of his face altered, all the feral fury leeched away. She saw the hollows of exhaustion under his eyes, the bitter dregs of longing rose to choke her.

  "Trust?" He curled his lip in a harsh smile. His glance raked her from behind: a rampart of stony indifference, and he dropped back and away from her, rising to his feet. Firelight bathed his bare skin. Joey huddled deeply into the sofa and closed her eyes against him.

  "My mother trusted my father," she heard him say, very softly. "She died because of it. Because he left her."

  The words hung, heavy with bitterness, in the space that stretched between them.

  "And you—you were afraid," Joey whispered, staring into the darkness behind her eyelids. "You couldn't risk giving me the right to choose."

  "And what would you have chosen, Joey?" he asked. She heard the murmur of his footfalls as he paced before the fire.

  She swallowed heavily. She had asked herself that question a hundred times, fearing the answer. "It was my choice to make. My choice." The ashes of previous anger stirred. "You had no right..."

  "No right." He gave a harsh growl that might have been a laugh. "Do you remember when I tried to warn you, Joey? I knew what was happening between us. Once we bonded, there was no choice. No choice at all." Forcing her eyes open, Joey felt the first lick of newborn flame. "Then this bond of yours wasn't enough, was it, Luke?"

  She looked up until she found his eyes. "You couldn't trust me to stay with you of my own free will. You didn't really believe there was enough between us. The only way to keep me was to take my will away, even my memories." Something caught in her throat, she set her jaw and stared at him, clenching her fists until nails cut palms.

  Luke met her eyes with such steady defiance that it took all her determination to meet it. His face was bleak in the shadows. "I didn't take your will, Joey," he said, utterly without inflection.

  "What name do you give it then, this 'influence' of yours?" she flung at him. The flame of anger burned the words like kindling and rose higher.

  He was cold, ice meeting her fire. "I didn't take your will," he repeated, eyes glittering. "I only made you forget your fears, and..."

  "Forget?" She tossed her hair so that it whipped her face. "Forget everything but you. What's the difference, Luke?"


  Their gazes locked. His pupils had expanded, leaving a narrow green-gold rim. "There was no compulsion," he said, too quietly. "I don't have that power." Suddenly he moved, advancing on her so quickly that she pressed back into the sofa and braced herself for attack. It didn't come.

  "What you felt, Joey," he breathed, crouching before her, "was real."

  "How do you know what I felt, Luke?" she said, trembling at his nearness. "Or could you read my mind as well as control it?"

  For the first time she saw the icy calm of his expression flicker. His hands reached out and hovered inches from her arms where they clasped her knees. "I know you were happy, Joey" He challenged her with his eyes. "Can you deny that?"

  Joey drew breath and choked on the denial she wanted to fling at him. Her vision blurred with the struggle between anger and honesty. She wanted to reject him, reject his quiet, cutting, deadly certainty.

  "The happiness you felt—we felt—was real," he whispered, his fingers brushed her wrists and left a trail of heat in their wake. There was nowhere left for Joey to retreat.

  She threw up a wall of words. "And the dreams—did you give me those, too?" The memory of them made her treacherous body tremble. "Did you violate me that way so that I would come to your bed like those other women?"

  He froze, all of his muscles going taut. The shock wave of his reaction reached her through the half-severed bond. "No," he said, his voice stunned. "No, I gave you no dreams."

  His eyes flickered away at some inner vision. When they came back to her, they were very bright. "I, too, had those dreams, Joey," he said slowly. "From the first time I met you." His fingers tightened on her wrists. "Those dreams came from within us, out of what we are."

  Joey tried to drag her arms out of his grasp, to cover her ears and blot him out, but he held her too tightly. "Not by my choice," she cried. With every ounce of courage and anger she possessed, she held fast against him. "I wasn't allowed to choose—not any of this! I didn't want it. I didn't want it!"

  The fragile cord that connected them knotted with pain that made her gasp. His hands slid up her shoulders. "It's because of what we are that it happened, Joey. The bond between us was forged in our blood—in your blood. It's not a matter of wanting. It's something far more powerful—"

  "Are you saying," she said with sudden, bitter calm, "that it's all some sort of animal instinct, some kind of mating urge? Nothing more than that?"

  He jerked back as if he had been struck. "No. More than that, Joey, much more than that…"

  "Then what is it?" she whispered hoarsely. "What is it, Luke?" Suddenly there were tears, and she tried to pull free again to scrub them from her face. She saw him through a haze of moisture, remembering how vulnerable she had made herself when she had believed all of it was real. She had told him the one thing she had been afraid to say ever since her parents had been torn from her life, given a part of herself she had never dared give to anyone. And none of it had been real.

  She fought down the tears and forced them back and back until she had control again. Luke's hands dropped away from her shoulders; his eyes were strange with emotion that came to her in a knotted tangle of pain and longing.

  "You're afraid," he said very slowly, as if at a revelation. "You're afraid because I made you feel too much."

  His words sliced deep into her soul. He twisted the knife. "How long have you been afraid to feel anything, Joey?" he murmured, the heat of his body burning as he leaned closer. "Are you afraid to take the risk?"

  Joey felt the shuddering start at the dark empty core of her being and radiate outward until her extremities vibrated with it. "You have no right," she whispered, "to talk to me of risk and fear. You have no right."

  The cord stretched between them trembled, one fragile link in the void. "Joey," he groaned, and before she could prepare herself or think to resist him, he engulfed her in his arms, dragging her against him, pulling her from the sofa in one smooth and undeniable motion.

  It was impossible to fight. Joey drew hard breaths into his shoulder as his hand cupped the back of her head and held it there. Her hands were trapped between them; she felt such utter helplessness that she knew herself on the edge of defeat. She knew she was on the verge of losing herself again, losing herself in him, and that one terrible fear prevented the final surrender he demanded.

  She stiffened in his arms. "I have to go, Luke," she whispered.

  His body went as rigid as hers, and she pulled free of him in the instant when the shock he felt slapped back at her through the constricted bond.

  "No."

  Drawing herself to her feet, she met his stare. He rose slowly to face her, his eyes bleakly fierce with threat.

  "I won't let you go."

  In that instant, when she knew words were no longer enough, she felt the uncertainty recede and something else gather to take its place, rising to the challenge in his eyes. Something dark and primitive, beyond the reach of human logic. Suddenly she understood what it was, grasped it, drew all the latent power together, shaped it into a weapon.

  She struck before he was ready. He staggered under the force of it, white with shock, he almost swayed, almost grabbed her for support. Tasting the bitterness of her victory, Joey stepped back from his touch.

  "You can't stop me," she said hoarsely. "I'm your match, Luke. You made me your match in every way."

  Luke heard the challenge, she saw the acknowledgment in his eyes, felt his response through the roiling turmoil of emotions that persisted in the bond. Anger flared up to deflect her attack. Anger and pride beat against her will and drove it back until it was she who recoiled. Luke's hands shot out to catch her arms in a painful grip.

  "Not quite, Joey," he growled. His eyes held hers mercilessly, no humanity in them at all. She fought him, hard, twisting to dislodge his mental and physical hold. Felt him slip, scrabble for control.

  "Don't test me," he begged between clenched teeth. His body was poised on the edge of violence. He shook her with each word. "I will not let you go."

  There was a sudden silence broken only by the twin rasps of their breathing. Deadlock. Neither one looked aside, neither one retreated. Pain and anger swirled and blazed between them.

  "You can't watch me forever, Luke," Joey said softly, coldly. "You can't keep me prisoner." Somehow she freed herself from his grasp, Luke gripped empty air with fingers curled into claws. The very air vibrated with his tension and her own bitter resolve.

  Joey gazed at him from behind a mask of remote and terrible calm. She felt as though her muscles were forever locked in ice, like the frozen world beyond the cabin walls. Cold. In frigid silence she held him back, perceiving the heat of his assault slide away where it could find no purchase. When she raged he could breach her defenses, but against this he was defenseless. Helpless.

  She pushed deliberately into his weakness. "If I were to go now, out the door, what would you do to stop me?" The words were flat and almost indifferent. "Would we keep doing this until we both collapse with exhaustion or kill each other?"

  Luke blinked, breaking the stare. Her victory. His wordless denial sparked like an electric current, briefly piercing her armor of ice. The thought of killing her, harming her, losing control, profoundly shocked him. The possibility of it made him tremble. For an instant Joey almost lost her grasp on the power that let her fight. His face—his face was nakedly vulnerable, so filled with yearning and desperation that she felt herself begin to shake in sympathy. And she felt what he felt his rage, his fear, his need.

  "You can't leave in the dead of winter." It was a last desperate argument, there was a flare of hope in Luke's eyes, and Joey fought to keep from closing hers. "It's too dangerous, too."

  "Have you forgotten, Luke?" she murmured with infinite sadness. "I'm like you."

  And before she could weaken, before her will could falter and send her into his arms, before he made her forget everything once more, she turned her newfound power on him again and made him understan
d.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  She was gone.

  Luke came back to consciousness, awakening slowly to that terrible knowledge, feeling it to the core of his being even when bones and muscles were useless things beyond his control, when the world still trembled on the verge of oblivion.

  She had left him. Her final words echoed in memory. Like him. She was like him.

  Somehow he staggered from the sofa, lurched to his feet. His vision cleared, blurred again with the red haze behind his eyes. She had left him.

  How much time had passed? How long had he lain here, insensible, after she had defeated him? His time sense was distorted, for it felt as if she had been gone for a lifetime. Luke felt a dull amazement that the twisted knot of his heart continued to beat.

  The bond—the bond between them was there, almost vanished, strangled to a thin trickle of emotion that told him she was alive. No more.

  He had faced total defeat only once in his life, nothing within his unawakened power had allowed him to save his mother when he had cried over her in Val Cache. She had gone beyond his reach forever. And now Joey—Joey had done the same, abandoning him to a slow fading death, half of his soul ripped away.

  Everything had come crashing down, all the rightness that had been between them, the close and private world they had created, the happiness she refused to accept as real. She regarded it all as a delusion he had forced upon her.

  And she had found the surest revenge. The curse that had killed his mother repeated itself, tragically and inevitably.

  Luke wandered blindly across the room, vaguely aware of the late-afternoon sunlight streaming through the cabin window. The floor was icy under his bare feet. Her assault had left his mind dulled, the brilliant predator's edge worn down by despair. And yet, somewhere deep within himself, he found pride in her newfound strength, the way she had faced him, stood up to him. Defeated him. They were mated truly. Her stubborn pride and her fear of feeling—of losing herself and all the careful barriers she had built in a lifetime of loneliness—blinded her to that soul-deep understanding.