The Passion (27 page)

Tessa whirled on him, her eyes wild. "What
was
it?"

she cried. "What was it I saw? Was it a—a mating ritual? How can you come to me and talk so innocently after—after—" She could not finish. The last word caught in her throat and choked there, and she couldn't get the image out of her mind of him embracing a naked Elise, of Elise ducking her head to his lap…

Alexander's expression reflected pure bafflement.

"Great gods and fishes, what are you babbling about? A mating ritual? Are you mad? Celine was right—this
is
the trouble with having humans underfoot!"

Tessa's heart was swel ing like a great bloody bubble in her chest, threatening to burst, choking off her breath, hoarsening her voice. But she could not remain silent. Not if it meant her life could she have remained silent. "How can you come to me after being with her?" Her fingers dug into her throat, trying to capture the pain, and her eyes went hot with the agony that spil ed over. "After what you did

—what she did—how
can
you?"

Alexander gazed at her, uncomprehending. "I swear before al that I know, I don't think I wil ever understand you. Sometimes I wonder if it's worth the trouble to try."

The tears spil ed over, scalding her cheeks, but Tessa refused to sob. Alexander noticed and his expression gentled. "Tessa, dear heart…" His tone was tender, but he made no move to approach her.

"Why do you live among us if you are not prepared to accept what we are?"

As though in echo she heard Elise say,
You wil
never understand us, not real y
… And she saw again the curve of Elise's tongue as it swept around Alexander's genitals.

Tessa raised trembling fingers to her lips, and she had to turn away. "I don't know," she whispered. "I don't know."

And though the words were barely formed, the whisper hardly spoken, Alexander heard. He came to her, standing close behind, and embraced her.

"Come,
chérie
, I would not have you hurt for the world. What has made you weep? No, don't tel me, for I wil weep as wel . Just be stil in your heart and let me make you warm."

He swept her into his arms and carried her to a large chair by the fireplace, where he held her against his chest and stroked her hair and let her spend her tears.

"You know I adore you, don't you?" he murmured at last, kissing her hair. "But you mustn't be so foolish.

You try my patience."

"And you try mine," she replied thickly, wiping her face with the silk handkerchief he had pushed into her hands.

He smiled. "That's better. Now, no more tears.

You've already ruined this jacket and I haven't another article of clothing I'm wil ing to sacrifice to your human sil iness."

She looked up at him, the handkerchief clenched tight in her fist. "I can't help being human, and you must explain to me why I'm sil y."

"Because you mistake an ordinary pack run for a mating ritual," he responded with only a trace of impatience. "Because you find offensive what we find pleasurable and because you al ow your own ignorance to make you weep. We are different, you and I, and that's al you need to know."

She said careful y, "Then you—and Elise—are not… coupled?"

"Of course not." She thought a faint tinge of color hazed his face. "The notion is absurd. And it wouldn't be done in front of you even if we were."

He looked solemnly into her eyes. "Tessa, you don't belong here. It was a mistake al owing you to stay this long. What you saw tonight upset you, and I don't even understand why. I can't protect you from what I don't understand and can't foresee, so there is no solution for it but to send you back to the estate. I'll stay on at the Palais for the Festival, but then I'll be back for you and perhaps we'll go to Capri, would you like that?"

Long before he had finished speaking, Tessa was shaking her head, the handkerchief bunched in one fist and a lapel of his jacket in the other, but she was not entirely sure why she did so. To stay in the midst of such abominations as she had witnessed tonight, to face Elise again… to be exiled to the Lyons house, a stranger among strange creatures, to leave him here with Elise…

She said, "The queen…" She found suddenly that she couldn't speak of the creature by her first name, as a friend might. "She wants me to stay. You heard her say it. You can't send me away."

"You are my responsibility and she has no say in this," Alexander replied sternly. "You were not an invited guest. She can't keep you here."

"I don't want to be sent away."

"You're not being sent away. You're being returned to the place where you belonged from the beginning. Stop agitating yourself; your heartbeat is deafening. At least you're warmer."

Al Tessa wanted to do was to snuggle into his embrace, to let his heat seep into her soul and to let his strength give her peace. Yet she made herself push away and get to her feet She walked a few steps away, twisting his handkerchief in her hands.

"Why do you want me to go?" she asked in a voice that was as steady as she could make it.

"I told you that. This is not the time or the place for humans. There are things we enjoy that you cannot, and things we do that make you uncomfortable.

You'll be much happier at home with the human servants, and perhaps you can spend time with D'Avagnon and learn something of winemaking.

That would make your father proud."

She was suddenly intensely resentful of his bringing her father into the discussion. She turned to face him. "I don't have your ears to hear a lie, nor your nose to smel one," she said with simple dignity.

"But I would request nonetheless that you tel me the truth. I have been humiliated once tonight already."

A smal frown pierced his brow, and a moment of uneasiness crossed his eyes. "I have told you the truth of it."

"But not al the truth."

He stared at her, and a faint alteration of his features suggested he was surprised by her perception. "No," he admitted. "Not al of it."

Then he sighed, and stood as wel . He went to the table by the window, poured chocolate from the pot into a floral china cup, stirred, and tasted it. Then he said, "Tessa, there are machinations at work here in the palace that I don't expect you to understand and in which you shouldn't be involved. Elise… she is genuinely fond of you; I wouldn't want you to be in doubt about that. But her schemes are much grander in scope than one human, or…" And here he paused, and dropped his eyes, and seemed briefly uncomfortable. "Or one werewolf." He regarded her intently. "She is using you,
chérie
, to make a point to others of our kind, and the game she is playing is a dangerous one. I would rest easier if you were away from here."

And that, then, was the end of it, and it had been that simple from the first. Tessa might wheedle and whine and complain and try her best to change his mind, but what Alexander requested of her, if it meant his peace of mind, she gave. Such was the nature of their relationship; hadn't she always known that?

Yet leaving him was to abandon him to a way of life she did not understand and against which she had no defense, to surrender him to those—both male and female, both kind and cruel—who might yet seduce him from her. And leaving him meant stepping out of the circle of his companionship and his protection into a world that did not welcome her and held no comfort for her; without him, in that world, she was nothing. How could he not understand what he was asking her to do?

She came over to him and laid a hand lightly upon his arm. "I wil go," she said, "if you say I must. But first tel me this." She searched his eyes solemnly, earnestly, and she could not keep the touch of anxiety from her voice. "Am I stil your dearest treasure and your truest friend?"

He smiled, and put aside his cup. He took her face in both his hands and looked into her eyes. The thril that went through her with his touch, with the power of his gaze, was a mesmerizing thing. It did not occur to her to wonder whether he was aware of the force he could exercise over the human wil with such innocent weapons; she simply chose to believe he was not.

"
Toujours, chérie
," he said softly. Lightly, he kissed her lips. Then, with the tip of his tongue, he tasted the curve of her cheek, the delicate flesh at the corner of her eye, the soft skin over her temple.

Tessa's eyes closed beneath a shiver of exquisite sensual pleasure, and her breath stopped in her chest.

He encircled her with his arms, he rocked her close.

He rested his face upon the top of her head.

"Always," he repeated.

And so it was that, less than a week later, Tessa was standing atop the hil that backed up against the woods of Alexander's Lyons estate, gazing over the endless leagues of vineyard and winding road and wildflower meadow, wondering if she had made a mistake. In the very far distance, if the wind blew just right to separate the leaves of the trees, she could see the filial tops of the great iron gates that guarded the Palais Devoncroix. She knew from memory that the decorative ornaments atop those gates were forged-iron sculptures in the shape of crouched wolves, but of course she could not see the details from here.

She could walk to the Palais in an hour or two, it was that close. And yet it was as far away as the continent of Australia, or the evening star.

And as she stood there gazing, aching, wondering, a voice spoke behind her. "Ah, what a touching picture. Tessa LeGuerre, a human, thrown from the gates of paradise."

Tessa whirled, catching a gasp in her throat, but saw nothing. Heart pounding, she started to back away.

And then from the shadowed woods a figure emerged. He was tal and fiery-haired, with eyes the color of blazing waters and a smile that could melt stone at the center of the earth. He was the most magnificent werewolf Tessa had ever seen.

He simply stood there, his expression gently mocking, his gaze compel ing. "Poor dear," he said.

"Whatever wil become of you now?"

ALEXANDER

Chapter Thirteen

As my brother had so astutely pointed out al those months ago, I was quite infatuated with Elise Devoncroix, and had been for years. I knew I could rely upon my innate charm, my natural ability to entertain and my considerable wit to ensure invitations to al the important fetes and perhaps a few informal dinners, but even I for al my ambition did not expect to become one of her closest confidants in such a short period of time. That position I owed entirely to Tessa.

I can't help but reflect sometimes on the unpredictable irony of life. Had I but known how much Elise's political agenda would have been enhanced by the presence of a human in her household, I would have captured one with a net, if need be, and presented it to her. As it was, I had the secret weapon that would win her approval living under my roof the whole time and I had done my best to
keep
it secret. Coincidence, and Tessa's obstreperous nature, had conspired to put me in the queen's good graces almost against my wil .

Why, then, one might justifiably ask, had I sent Tessa home? The answer is complicated.

I confess that, at that age, I was far more interested in a good wine and a shapely leg than I was in the tides and eddies of political philosophy. In fact, I had never before given much thought to whether or not the pack
had
a philosophy, and I was not the only one. That was why, at the turn of the century, with humans even then lining up the economic and industrial chess pieces that would lead them into global war, we faced more danger than we knew.

Only one person in the entire pack had the vision to understand the consequences of our apathy, and to know what must be done to end it. Fortunately, she was our leader.

If the pack could be said to be defined in any way at al during those days, it was divided along these lines: the radicals like Denis who thought the parasite humans should be exterminated from the earth, the radicals like me who found humans entertaining and charming companions, and the vast majority in between who found humans a necessary nuisance and who simply wanted to be left alone to conduct their business and their matings and their petty squabbles in peace. Never before had a ruler seen fit to make his or her opinion on the subject of humans known, if in fact he even possessed an opinion. Even I, who at first was delighted by Elise's open-mindedness on the subject, could not understand why anyone in a position of power—and with so many far more important things to concern her—would choose to make a point of it now.

But that was precisely what Elise was doing. She was using Tessa to demonstrate where she stood on the question of humans, and she was doing it in the most emphatic, revolutionary way possible—

throwing down the gauntlet, as it were, to anyone who dared disagree with her stance. This was at first endearing, even admirable, for who cannot respect a werewolf who chooses the hard road over the easy? Power, after al , cannot be given, it must be won, and if Elise chose to test the loyalty of her friends and advisors through their reactions to Tessa, I was happy for Tessa to serve.

It was when she spoke of al owing Tessa to stay for the Summer Festival that I became uneasy. Such behavior was not brave. It was not defiant, powerful or rebel ious. It was merely reckless.