The Passion (46 page)

"And you, the human who could always recognize a werewolf when she saw one," he mocked gently.

"No, my dear, there is no magic in this place save what you see before you. That's just an ordinary Arctic wolf, come to see what we're having for dinner."

Her eyes were big and fixed upon the shape beyond his shoulder.

Denis said impatiently, "He won't hurt you. He's just curious about me. He has a pack nearby and I share my kil with him sometimes."

Now she looked at Denis "Does he—know you?"

So, her mind was not gone after al . Until that moment he had not been sure. His relief at knowing that was surely disproportionate to the question, yet he kept his manner deliberately casual as he replied, "Alas, no. He is my brother, but he smel s the strangeness on me. He won't hunt with me, and he runs when I approach."

Tessa gathered up what was left of her rabbit and put the meat in his hands, staring stil beyond his shoulder toward the wolf. In a moment Denis understood that she meant him to take the meat to the animal. With a shrug, he left her to do so.

It was a long time later when he returned, and she was lying beside the fire, her head pil owed on her crooked arm, not asleep but almost. He sat beside her, sweeping a fold of the cloak over her while the remainder covered his shoulders. The cloak was cold and smel ed of the night.

He said, "We have to leave here soon. These past few weeks, the snow and the wind, they have been what passes for an Alaska autumn. Winter is coming, and the game has gone to ground. We'll be trapped here if we stay much longer, and we'll starve to death."

He saw her eyes open in the dim shadows of the firelight.

"There are caves in the rocks to the east. If we go there we can find shelter. The wolves manage to feed themselves through the winter. We can, too."

She didn't answer.

"We should leave tomorrow. A storm is coming, but if we go east we'll outrun it."

Stil no answer. He thought he had lost her, and that whatever spark of sentience had flared so brightly earlier was now extinguished by the prospect of leaving this place which had brought her such comfort. His heart sank.

He dropped his cloak over her, tucking it warmly about her shoulders, and stood to go.

She said softly, "I like Verdi, too."

Denis stopped in mid-step, and looked back at her.

Then he went out into the night to hunt.

ALEXANDER

Chapter Twenty-seven

It was an eventful winter for us, ful of plans and promises. We travel ed across Europe, making ourselves known to members of the pack who had not been able to attend the mating ceremony, making ourselves visible to those who doubted our ability to rule. We were received by human royalty and heads of state, who knew me only as a wealthy businessman and Elise as a French aristocrat and who, in their own ingratiating way, wanted to fete us on our marriage. Now that I was looking for them I was amazed by the number of business

opportunities that were presented to me through such contacts.

We bought property in Amsterdam and London, and began negotiations with Lipenstraum, the werewolf jewel er who had designed our coronation jewels, whereby we would purchase two diamond mines and he would administer them—a venture which was to have very fine and far-reaching results for al of us. Elise heard about a factory in New York she wanted to purchase and we made plans to visit there in the spring. It was a good time.

Elise took to her lying-in in late February, and would remain in wolf form until the cub was weaned some six weeks hence. I would, of course, retain my human form throughout this time in order to provide her and the new cub with those things for which human form is necessary, and to give our family unit the traditional advantage which comes of having one adult in each of our forms. This is always a difficult period for the male. But it was also a time fil ed with anticipation and the thril of discovery, and the bond between Elise and me deepened day by day.

It is important to have reliable assistants in key positions of authority at such a time, for as a birthing approaches, neither of the parents is able to summon much interest in anything else. Elise and I had taken care to surround ourselves with our most trusted advisors, and we were shielded by the loyalty and the protective instincts of the entire pack.

There had not been a royal birth in almost thirty years, and this one would hold a new century in his hands. It was exciting for everyone.

Elise's labor began an hour before dawn while a light silent snow drifted down outside the windows.

Her sisters and mine were in attendance, but they kept to the corners of the room, whispering excitedly to each other and sending young runners to announce the news, leaving Elise and me alone to bring our child into the world as it should be.

I lay with her and stroked her fur and by my presence, strong and alert in human form, let her know in the traditional way that I would protect her while she concentrated on the physical expenditure of energy required to bring our child into the world.

Unlike human women, who seem to suffer so with the travails of birth, our females, in their natural wolf form, enjoy a relatively short labor and a painless delivery. I eased our firstborn cub into the world with my own hands a few minutes after sunrise.

I knew immediately something was wrong, and the room went deathly stil . A child, poised at the doorway to run throughout the Palais with the joyful news at the moment of delivery, was stopped stil by the hard grip of his mother's hand on his shoulder.

No one moved. No one breathed.

And this was how it was in that second that seemed to last a lifetime, the moment that would live frozen in my memory forever: the soft glow of the gas lamps, turned down low to welcome the little one; the fire dancing gently in the background as a pale lemon sun filtered through the high clerestory windows of our bedchamber. The rumpled satin bedcovering stained with birth fluids, Elise bending forward to snip the cord with her teeth while I held in my hand this fragile, mewling scrap of life… so smal , so helpless. He barely fil ed my two cupped hands, his blind eyes closed and his little mouth open as he instinctively sought the teat that would ease his hunger, his fur slick and dark with the wetness of his mother's body. My heart fil ed with love for him… and with horror.

For in that moment I could see what the others could only sense. His left paw, curled under his face, was not a paw at al but a human-formed hand. His right leg was a human leg. I could hear his human-formed lungs fil with fluid as they struggled to draw in enough air for his wolf-formed body, and his undersized heart double its rhythm in a desperate effort to pump blood through wolf-formed veins.

I should have taken the child from her then. I should never have al owed it to nurse. But, oh, the agony that gripped me, the helplessness and the shock that flooded through my body like slow-acting poison. I couldn't think, I couldn't reason, I couldn't feel anything except the pain. The pain.

I dropped the child beside her on the bed and backed away, stumbling, my stained hands held out before me. I saw the stunned eyes of the women, dark with sympathy, and one of them reached for me, I think. I saw Elise, calmly beginning to clean the child. I saw the child. My child.

I threw back my head and let out a howl of sheerest agony. It was an anguish torn from my soul that reverberated throughout the Palais, across the grounds, through the whole of the countryside, and was eventual y heard around the world. I turned and fled the room.

We refer to it as the Scourge, this curse that snatches our young from their mothers' wombs and condemns them to a slow and horrible death.

Centuries of research by our most dedicated scientists have failed to produce a cure, a prevention or even an explanation. Depending upon the severity of the malformation, the infants might live as long as a month in torturous agony while their systems shut down, one by one. We would never permit such cruelty, of course. The mother wil usual y quietly enfold her infant in a smothering embrace, so that the last thing it knows—if indeed the poor creature can know anything at al —is the smel of its mother's fur, the warmth of its mother's love.

Occasional y a mother cannot bring herself to do this. There is no shame in this, for the hormones run strong at this time, and in the face of tragedy the power of reason is often diminished. In such cases the task fal s to the pack leader, who, wherever he or she might be, wil instantly come to the side of the grieving mother to ease the suffering child out of the world. We are responsible for al of the pack, and each child born into it is our own.

But when the mother of the child is the leader of the pack, there are no alternatives. I should have realized that.

But the grief was crippling, not only my own but Elise's as wel , which we shared though the mating bond. For months I had loved this child, this miracle merging of my seed and Elise's, this grand creation that was the reflection of our love. I had listened to his heartbeat and to the soft sweet sounds he made as he swam and turned and stretched in the viscous fluid of his mother's womb. He was our hope, our future, and I loved him with al my heart. Now my heart had been ripped from my chest, and al I could do was bury my head in my knees and sob out loud with the agony of loss, the sorrow, the cruel, cruel unfairness of it al .

A cold winter darkness fel over the house on the edge of spring. The werewolves who had gathered to celebrate a birth now mourned a death. The pack which had come together in joy and hope to command the brave new century now huddled among themselves in superstitious whispers, wondering what evil was boded by the tragedy that had struck their royal couple. The seed was contaminated, they worried. There would never be a viable offspring. It was the Antonov blood, they said.

No, it was Devoncroix. It was the mixing of the two.

The union had been cursed from the beginning.

I heard them al , but nothing could anger me, nothing could hurt me, nothing could torment me more than I was tormented already. I could not even change, so engulfed in the paralysis of grief was I. I could do nothing but sit with the curtains drawn in the deep velvet room I used as a study, and I wept until I could weep no more. Gault attended me quietly, but did not intrude. When I commanded him hoarsely not to light the lamps, he let the room fal into darkness. And when he would have stirred up the fire I once again stopped him with a sharp gesture of my hand. The fire died out. I let the cold and the darkness seep into my bones until they matched what was already in my soul.

It was ful night when Evelyn, Elise's oldest sister, stole quietly into the room. Her distress was evident in the salty smel of tears, the jerkiness of her movements."Oh, please, monsieur," she whispered,

"you must come!"

I roused myself like a man from the depths of drink, reluctantly, blearily and with great effort. She dropped down onto her knees beside me, her dark skirts bil owing with the whisper of satin and the scent of bitter mourning perfume. She grasped my hand. Her fingers were cold, like mine. I barely recognized her.

"It's Elise," she said. "You must help her."

Nothing but that name could have brought me back, could have generated in me even the slightest wish to ever leave this room again. I lifted my head, and Gault took a concerned step forward. "What?" I demanded. My voice was strained and hoarse, and it seemed to reach my ears from far away.

Her eyes were suffused with pain and a terrible anxiety. "Alexander, you must come. Elise cannot—

she won't do what must be done. You have to take the child from her."

It took me a long time to understand what she meant. Somehow I made the words come out. "It stil lives?"

Gault put a comforting hand on my shoulder. "It's been hours," he said.

"She won't let anyone near her." Tears wet Evelyn's cheeks again, and the hol ows of her eyes. "The first child—the grief—she hasn't the strength. Alexander, you have to do this."

I came out of the chair, stabbed through by horror and fear. "Only the pack leader can take the place of the mother!"

Gripping my arm tightly, Gault said, "Then you must be the pack leader."

I looked from Gault to Evelyn in desperate denial, and saw no escape in either pair of eyes.

"The pack is waiting," Evelyn said. "Elise needs you to do what she cannot do for herself. You cannot desert her now, Alexander."

In my mind was the memory of my cowardly flight from her side at the moment of her deepest need.

When I should have stood strong to take the child from her, I had failed. I had deserted her once already. I had deserted my son.

I tried to turn away from Evelyn, lost in shame. Gault held my arm firm. "For the love of the pack," he said with low intensity, "you can't let the child suffer."

Evelyn said, "For the love of Elise… and your son."

I looked at her then, but it was not her face I saw. It was my mate's. My love, who needed me. My son, to whom I could give only one gift.

And the pack, who needed us both.

I walked down the corridor to the bedchamber. The assembled pack parted for me, lowering their eyes, lining up against the wal . I walked straight, my head high, my movements stiff. I became aware of the shuffling and murmuring of other werewolves gathered in the courtyard, on the hil side, in the snowy garden, waiting for word, waiting to mourn with us. For the love of the pack. I kept hearing those words.