To Catch a Wolf (36 page)

reciting a lesson from the McGuffey's Reader Morgan remembered from childhood.

He heard the words, but they made no sense. The only thing that did was the clamoring

of his body, the hot yearning for Athena, the need to finish what he had begun in her

room. Finish it completely, and to hell with Niall Munroe and all the scruples of human

society.

She sat there, so prim in her gown buttoned up to the neck, hands clasped in her lap.

He might have been a supplicant before a queen, as he had once thought of the society

women who fluttered about her chair.

But she had not been a queen when he had caressed her. She had been helpless with

need, prepared to surrender everything

yes, even the maidenhood her kind valued so

highly. If he had chosen to take it. But he had been undecided, torn between his desire

and freedom, between the life he thought he wanted and the bonds her surrender would

wind about his neck.

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If he listened to his body now, the decision was simple. If Athena made a single

welcoming gesture, gave him one sweet look of yearning

"I am going with Niall," she had said. "I will never see you again.”

Stupid words. Meaningless, born of habitual fear of her brother, the habit of obedience.

And fear, too, of him and what he made her become.

Very well. He would decide, here and now. Every instant they had spent together, every

memory of her when they were apart, led to this.

He held out his hand. "Come," he said. "We will leave now. Tonight. Your brother will

never find us.”

She stared at his hand. "What?”

"Put away your fear." He took a step toward her. "You are not a human. You will heal

quickly, now that you know your injuries are in your mind and not your body. Soon you

will be able to run. And before that—now—you can Change.”

Stark terror crossed her face. "Change

I

No, Morgan. It's been too long—”

"Stop." He stared down at her, willing her all the courage he knew she had. "Stop

believing what you can't do. Believe in what you are. Take off your clothes and come

with me.”

As quickly as it had come, her fear was gone. "Come where, Morgan?”

Her question sent ice trickling down the length of his spine. He had asked her to come

with him. To become—yes, to become his mate, to remain with him until death. He had

offered to another person the thing he had thought long dead in himself. And she asked

"where.”

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"With me," he said. "Into the woods. The mountains. We'll run, you and I, as we did in

dreams. We will hunt and breathe clean air and drink water that has never tasted the

metal of man. You will be free, Athena.”

"Free?" She dropped her head, and her shoulders rose and fell in a shudder. "What is

freedom?”

He heard the tears in her voice and closed the space between them, reached for her,

clasped her shoulder and felt it tense in his gentle grip.

"You created your own cage, and let your brother make the bars too strong to break,"

he said. "But I can break them. I will teach you everything you need to know. I will

protect you until you can protect yourself. I will never leave your side.”

He lifted her chin. Tears hung like stars on her cheeks. He bent and kissed them, one

side and then the other, tasting the salt and Athena. Then he crouched, took her face

between his hands, and kissed her lips.

She responded as she had in her room, passionately, with a new edge of violence that

excited and almost frightened him. It was the she-wolf in her, coming alive at his touch,

waiting for a final word to burst forth and make her all she was meant to be. Her fingers

caught in his hair, pulled and wound about, crushing him against her.

Then she pushed him away and let her arms fall limp. "I cannot come with you.”

He heard her this time, but he refused to believe. "Athena—”

"I can't, Morgan. I can't live in the way you want, in the wild, apart from people and

society." There were no tears now, no passion. "I am not like you. I have become

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used to my life. I have responsibilities. I try to help people, and if I were to vanish

who

would help them in my place?”

He stepped back, searching her eyes. The she-wolf had disappeared. This was the

haughty, closed-in woman he had first met on the circus lot, the one who had been so

scrupulously fair and polite to her inferiors. To him.

"You think they need you," he said, cruel in his anger. "They need your money. How

many others in your city have money to give?”

"You don't understand. Not everyone is generous—”

"As fine and generous as you?”

"No." She warded him away, turning her face. "But I have the time and the inclination to

work. I have

a place, a role that others accept. Others who might not give if I were not

there to ask.”

"Even though you are no longer a cripple?”

"I am the same, inside. The things that mattered to me

before

they still matter now.

My friends are still my friends.”

"And Caitlin? Harry, Ulysses? They are not?”

She stared fixedly at the far wall. "I care for them. For

But they are part of a different

world, as I am a part of mine. And yours is different from both. Too different, Morgan.

Can't you see that

we are simply

too different?”

"That is not the reason," he said. He grasped the top of the chair and pulled it around,

forcing her to look at him. "It's still your fear. You do not want to give up the fancy house

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and the fine clothes and the people who lick your jaw like hungry pups, because that is

all you know how to be. You like the power of giving people what they need when they

have nothing. Making them beg—”

"No. I have never made anyone beg, for anything.”

"Haven't you? What do those poor folk see when they look at you with your fine ways,

and know that you can give or take what they need? Do they hate you while they

pretend to offer their throats? All those fine ladies who follow you—what do you give

them, Athena? A reason to think they are fine and noble people because they help the

poor crippled girl help the ones they never see?”

The stark pain in her eyes stopped him cold. He knew he had hurt her, that he had

come very close to a truth he hardly fathomed himself.

"Athena," he groaned. "I do not want to

Damn you, listen to me. You have a chance to

be strong, not to need anyone." He fumbled to put his confused feelings into words.

"When you don't need, you can give freely. When you don't care what those others think

of you, you can make your own place. Your real place. Don't you understand?”

She stared at him, and he thought he saw the beginnings of comprehension before she

shut him out again.

"Do you know your own place, Morgan?" she said. "Do you know what you want out of

life? Have you ever thought beyond the next hour?" She smiled with weary resignation.

"You can cast off all your ties. I can't. I can't. But—" She closed her eyes. "You

you

could come with me.”

He held very still. "With you?”

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"To Denver. Not right away. After

after I've had time to make Niall understand, when

he has overcome his anger.”

She did not elaborate. She didn't have to. He saw what she meant in those few words,

and terror clawed its way up from his belly to fill his mouth and his brain.

"Come with you?" he said in a mocking echo. "Join you in your cage? Live in your fine

house and wear your fine clothes and become a lapdog for your ladies?”

"Isn't it what you asked me to do

give up everything?" She didn't look at him. He was

cold, bitterly cold, though the winter wind should not have affected him at all. Athena

was sucking all the heat from his body, all the tenuous hopes from his heart, all the

foolish dreams from the future he had never considered.

Just like before. Just as it always was and would ever be.

He backed toward the window. "I ask you for nothing," he said. "I want nothing from you,

or anyone.”

She made no attempt to stop him as he reached the window and gathered his muscles

to jump. The eagerness of his body had drowned in sorrow and rage and bewilderment;

he could look at her and see a stranger, an enemy, and not the woman he had asked to

become the mate of his life.

Let her look at him, one last time. Let her know what she had rejected. Let her feel what

he felt.

"Go," he said. "Go with your brother. Cripple yourself again, and pray that all your fine

things will make you forget what you have thrown away.”

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Her eyes met his, moist and expressionless. He leaped up and back, balanced on the

sill, and let himself fall from the window.

Snow cushioned his landing, but he welcomed the jarring blow that rattled his bones

and shook the despair loose from his head. Barely pausing, he Changed and began to

run as hard and as fast as he could, away from the room and the ranch and Athena.

It was a strange thing, that he returned. He dragged himself back to the barn to dress

just before dawn, aware that the snow had started again and boded a storm for the day

ahead. A storm that might trap anyone—any human—who desired to leave the

mountains.

A wolf could leave any time. That was what kept Morgan circling the house like a

whipped cur, until Harry stepped out one of the side doors shortly after sunrise and blew

a puff of pipe smoke into the expectant air.

Harry was looking for something. Someone. Morgan knew what he hoped to see, and

what the others must think. He would make sure they knew how wrong they were.

Morgan Changed in the barn, pulled on his clothes and stalked up to the porch. Harry

started slightly when he saw Morgan, and then his shoulders fell.

"It looks like snow," he remarked as Morgan joined him. "Bad weather. I feel it in my

bones.”

"A storm." Morgan willed the hair to lie flat against his neck. "You don't have to worry.

You are safe here.”

"Are we staying?”

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"Athena would not let Munroe drive you out," he said bitterly. "She cares too much

about

helping.”

Harry glanced at him. "Morgan, I am sorry. I wish I could have done something to

intervene. We all do. We've known

almost from the beginning how the girl felt about

you, and you her." He coughed behind his hand. "I'm a meddling old fool. I made her

come here, with my letters, when I should have stayed out of your business. But all we

want

all I want, is your happiness. Yours and Athena's." He blinked several times. "I

know you well enough—I presume to know—that what you want to do now is run off.

Permanently. But—”

He took a long breath and faced Morgan. "I ask you to trust me, Morgan. Trust me, as

you would your own kin. You're like a son to me, even though

though I'm a poor

excuse for a father. Even so, as a father I advise you to wait. Be patient. Stay a little

longer. Whatever obstacles may stand before you now, they can be overcome.”

Morgan swallowed and looked toward the mountains. Harry reached out a hand,

hesitated, and let it come to rest on Morgan's shoulder. It felt curious, that touch, after

Athena's. Too close, too intimate, like that of kin. Family.

A father's touch.

"You do not want to be my father," he said, holding absolutely still, afraid of his own

terror. "Do you know what happened to my real father, Harry?" He lifted his hands. "I

killed him. I killed him with these two hands.”

"I don't believe it," Caitlin said. "Not for a moment." Ulysses looked at her gravely and

met Harry's gaze. They sat, the three of them, in Caitlin's room while the storm raged

through its third day outside the sturdy walls of the ranch house. The wind howled no

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more fiercely than Morgan had done every night since Niall's arrival. No one had seen

Morgan since Harry's brief conversation with him, but he had not gone. The howls

proved as much.

Caitlin knew that Harry had waited to tell her and Ulysses Morgan's terrible revelation,

working himself into a dither over how much to share. In the end, he had been unable to

keep it to himself. It was not in his nature to suffer alone, or let others suffer likewise.