PRINCE OF WOLVES

by Susan Krinard

  Joey turned away from the chill of his words. "Quite satisfactory. I don't think you'll find that I'm any burden to you."

  There was a moment of silence, she felt his eyes on her, burning into her back. "It's late, Joey. You'd better get some sleep."

  Walking over to the window, Luke drew back the curtains and stared out into the night, Joey glanced uneasily at the bed. It was certainly big enough for two people—if they didn't mind close proximity. Luke showed no signs of leaving—or hinting that he expected to share it with her. After the night at the cabin and today's unsettling confrontations, Joey's feelings were so muddled that she could do nothing but stand frozen there, torn between an unremitting awareness of Luke and her own desperate uncertainty.

  "Go to bed, Joelle." Luke's voice was soft, almost gentle. He leaned against the window frame, his breath condensing on the glass.

  "What about you?" Hugging herself, Joey was appalled at the way her words emerged, small and vulnerable. The silence grew so complete that she could hear the faint whisper of his sigh.

  "Go to sleep." He did not turn from the window, and at last Joey crept over to the bed, gathered up her night things from the bedstand, and closed the door softly behind her as she made a final trip to the washroom down the hall. The time away from Luke while she brushed her teeth, combed the tangles out of her hair, and donned her warm pajamas gave her a chance to put things back in perspective, and she was ready to face him again when she came back to her room.

  Except for the single bedside lamp and the faint glow of moonlight sifting through the curtains, the room was dark. Joey paused to scan the room, searching for Luke's form in the dimness. She found him at last, stretched out on the floor under the window, head pillowed in his arms. His side rose and fell with the even breathing of sleep, and Joey padded quietly to the bed to pull back the covers.

  She paused again with her hand at the lamp, watching Luke where he lay on the hard, cold floor. The overwhelming flood of sympathy and yearning that came to her then was something she wanted to reject utterly, something that could bring nothing but pain and more questions than she could answer. She struggled for a moment, but the struggle was brief. Tugging at the quilted bedcover, she bunched it up in her arms and let her bare feet carry her across the room. She stood over Luke, closing her eyes against the longing, and crouched down beside him to lay the bedcover over his shoulders, pulling it down so that its inadequate length covered everything but his feet.

  He turned then, half-rolling onto his back with a sigh. Joey held herself still until the moment passed and he subsided, she knelt there and stared at his face where the faint haze of moonlight defined it, at the harsh planes softened in the gentlest of illumination. The grim line of his mouth had relaxed, stirring memories of the few times he had truly smiled at her with a warmth he hid from the world, a mouth capable of tenderness and possessive fury against her own. Lines of care between the dark slash of his brows had eased, and Luke's face in the utter repose of sleep was that of a man she didn't know and had barely glimpsed. A man she could want, even now.

  It should have helped to remind herself that he had pursued her for his own ends, twice rejected her, treated her with careless negligence, and even come close to violence. It should have been possible to regard him with contempt, but she could not. The only resolution she could make was that he would never know her weakness.

  She risked tucking the edges of the bedcover under the curve of his body and retreated before the feel of him against her hands could demolish the remaining fragments of her composure.

  The bed seemed very cold and empty when she crawled into it at last. Sleep was long in coming, when it took her at last, the dreams had returned.

  When Joey woke early the next morning, it was to a room as significantly empty as her bed.

  She sat up in alarm, aware immediately that Luke was gone, along with half the equipment. Her heart began to pound with the certainty that he had left her once again, changed his mind and abandoned her without explanations as he had twice before.

  By the time she came fully awake and could think more clearly, she realized how ridiculous that assumption was. He wouldn't have taken the canvas sack of her gear if he'd intended to leave her. A moment later her hand, fumbling for the small alarm clock on the bedtable, brushed against a loose sheet of paper.

  Meet me at the edge of the forest with your gear. Those were the only words in the note he had left, scribbled impatiently in bold lines. Her hands almost shook as she crumpled the paper into a tight wad and tossed it into the wastepaper basket against the wall.

  It was time Joey tossed back the sheets and set her feet on the floor, mentally cataloging her final preparations. She pulled on underwear, a light shirt and a warmer wool one over it, sturdy wool pants, two pairs of socks, and boots. Two light wool sweaters, a medium-weight parka, hat, and windbreaker lay draped over her backpack, rain gear was already stowed away where it could be easily reached. A quick glance out the window revealed the biting blue sky of a cold autumn day.

  She took her compact toilet kit to the washroom. The features reflected in the mirror seemed almost a stranger's. Dark hollows shadowed her eyes, and it took a conscious effort to smooth away the almost permanent frown that had settled between her arched brows. She schooled her face until it looked back at her with complete and remote indifference, and then she returned to the room for the last time to stow the remaining gear.

  The edge of the forest loomed before her, a wall of trees that marked the final barrier between the world she knew and the one she had yet to discover.

  Luke was waiting for her there as he'd promised, blending so completely with the wilderness that only Joey's ever-present sense of him kept her from walking past. He nodded to her once and turned for the woods in silence.

  They followed the same route Joey had used to track Luke to his cabin; it was familiar to Joey, yet utterly different because this time she was not alone. Even as they walked in tandem, Luke slowing his long stride to accommodate hers, Joey could not for a single moment lose her awareness of him at her side. The lean grace of the simplest of his movements impressed itself on her, and she felt remarkably clumsy next to him; it did not add to her peace of mind.

  But there was another, unexpected side effect to his presence. Before, when she'd hiked to the lake, she had felt almost at one with the wilderness that surrounded her, grasping in some tenuous way the fragile bonds that connected all life. With Luke that awareness was magnified beyond anything she had ever experienced. It was as if he possessed some mysterious power to make her see things she never would have seen otherwise, without any effort on his part, or on hers. The very forest around them seemed like a living entity, and Joey felt less like an intruder than a welcome guest in Luke's domain.

  Even so, the time came when the silence, broken only by the cries of birds and the distant grunts of moose in rut, began to seem oppressive.

  Slanting a glance at Luke as they walked, Joey broke the peaceful accord. "I've been wondering for some time, Luke—why don't the townsfolk like you?" She hesitated a moment, hearing the ill-mannered bluntness in the question. It was not something they'd ever discussed. "I mean—it seems to me that something strange goes on whenever you come to town. The reactions..." She trailed off into awkward silence.

  Joey knew she'd struck a nerve by the tightening of Luke's jaw, the hardening of his profile as his strides lengthened. Joey skipped a few steps to keep up until he'd slowed again, he did not turn his head as he answered.

  "That's old history, and none of your business," he snapped. All at once the tension rose between them again, an invisible force that repelled any risk of intimacy. A retort rose to Joey's lips, and then she flushed, knowing he had the right of it, she had deliberately provoked him. For a moment she tried to consider rationally why she had shattered their unspoken harmony, and found she could not face the conclusions that came in answer.

  "I'm sorry," she murmured at last. Her flush de
epened when he ignored her apology, and she ducked her head between her shoulders with a firm resolution to say nothing more for the remainder of the day.

  She came up out of her thoughts to find him looking at her, his face still rigid but his eyes belying that hardness. They were almost yearning.

  "I'm sorry I pried," Joey repeated, dropping her gaze to the gravel path at her feet. "You're right—it wasn't any of my business." The words dried up in her throat, and silence fell between them again.

  Joey never quite regained that sense of belonging she'd felt before her questions had disrupted the truce between them; they had almost reached the lakeshore when Luke called a halt. It was only then when Joey realized how the weight of a fully laden pack had made the distance seem far longer than it had before, her stomach made known its needs with embarrassing boldness.

  Luke looked up, his face relaxed almost into amusement. He'd found a convenient rock to sit on, propping his feet on another with long legs stretched out between. Joey released the hip belt of her backpack, struggled out of it, and set it down with a sigh of relief. A few moments later she had a pair of slightly compressed sandwiches in hand.

  "No point in eating jerky and nuts if you can have roast beef," Joey said lightly, holding the larger sandwich out to Luke. He looked at it a moment, nostrils flaring, and then shook his head.

  "You eat both. You'll find you need them." At her dubious expression, he smiled. It was a real smile, albeit a small one. "Believe me, you'll need more food on this trip than you'd ordinarily eat in a month."

  "What about you?" Joey frowned.

  "I'll take care of myself. I had a very large meal yesterday." As if that provided adequate explanation, Luke leaned back in a bone-cracking stretch and turned his face into the late-morning sun. After a moment of vague annoyance Joey shrugged and bit into the first sandwich. She supplemented it with juice from one of her plastic bottles and found room for most of the second sandwich, just as Luke had predicted.

  As she finished, Luke got up and headed for the lake, gesturing for her to stay put, she watched until he disappeared. When he returned, his hair was wet, painting his broad shoulders with watery brush strokes. "We'll rest here for a while, let you digest a bit. The first camp is a few kilometers beyond the cabin, we'll stop early tonight." He looked up and down critically, nodding to himself. "So far, so good."

  Joey swept him a mocking bow from her seat on a rock opposite his, and he almost smiled again.

  They took an easy pace after the meal. The lake danced in and out of view, a perfect echo of the achingly blue sky above. Gradually the sense of peaceful oneness with nature—and even with Luke—returned, and Joey resolved not to shatter it again.

  They passed by the place where Joey had confronted the town roughnecks, she shuddered and felt Luke's presence as an unassailable protective force at her side. He never touched her and seldom spoke, but it didn't seem to matter, and for once Joey felt content enough to let the miles pass on in silence. The most delicate birdcall pierced the air with the intensity of a siren amid the profound quiet, even the fall of golden aspen leaves seemed to whisper secret messages. The forest embraced them, and the mountains rose up like distant guardians, and all was right with the world.

  There was still a good hour until sunset when Luke led her to the place he had chosen for their first night's stop. Luke set about making camp at once, and Joey helped where she could, they put up the small tent and rain fly, and Luke set her to clearing an area for a fire while he collected tinder, kindling, and dead wood for fuel.

  He nodded approval of her thorough elimination of all but bare ground and gravel where the fire was to be built, and together they gathered rocks to form a rough circle in which Luke set dry needles, bark, and twigs for tinder. Joey sat back on her heels to watch him as he built a construct of twigs and small branches, she almost jumped when he spoke.

  "Matches?"

  He almost grinned at her startlement. "You didn't think I'd do it the old-fashioned way, did you?"

  Joey, who had been thinking just that, flushed and rummaged in her jacket pocket for the waterproof container. Luke got the fire started on the first try, something none of Joey's other guides had managed. She leaned closer to the fire instinctively as Luke nursed it into full flame.

  He'd already rigged up a dingle stick—a long, sturdy branch balanced against a large rock so that one end hung high over the fire—and Joey pulled one of the pots out of her pack and filled it with some of the water Luke had collected from a nearby stream, suspending it from the end of the stick. As the water heated for coffee, Luke bagged the extra food and hung it from a high tree branch, where animals were less likely to reach it. By the time the water was boiling, the campsite had the look of a temporary home, more comforting than Joey would have believed possible.

  Not greatly to her surprise, Luke declined the coffee she offered and crouched beside her as she sipped hers, his head tilted back as if to test the early evening air. Rays of dying sun painted the sky with vivid colors against the dark silhouette of the wood.

  Joey savored the remarkable comfort of a hot drink and sitting absolutely still. A hush had fallen over the forest as day made transition into a darker and more mysterious country, the sounds that broke the silence were strange and haunting.

  She hardly noticed when Luke vanished again and was content to do nothing but stare into the flames as she heated more water for soup. The cheese Joey had procured that morning disappeared quickly, she was amazed at how hungry she still was when Luke reappeared with a pair of sizable fish, gutted and cleaned.

  Joey eyed the fish with considerable anticipation. "Those look terrific. I've got foil in the pack—learned how to cook them that way on my last trip." She couldn't resist a bit of pride for what she'd learned of wilderness cooking, but Luke shook his head.

  "I'll show you how to do it the old-fashioned way." He set down the fish and produced a pair of flat rocks, which he set directly in the fire. Joey dropped her chin into her palm and turned to watch the sun slide behind the peaks of the nearest range, creating a pattern of deep blue silhouettes against the fading light. It was easy to get lost in the perfect beauty of it as the first stars winked into existence, heralding the brilliant display that overwhelmed these northern night skies. It came to Joey then that there was still something left in her to wonder at it, even she could not quite take it for granted.

  "Watch, Joey," Luke commanded. His voice reminded her of the growing chill and her unsatisfied hunger; she observed him as he pulled the hot rocks from the flames, salted and greased the fish, and set them on the rocks at the edge of the fire Soon the rapturous smell of cooking filled the air, and when the fish was ready Joey had no qualms about eating it directly from the rock with her knife and fingers. She looked up to watch Luke eat his with momentary surprise, realizing it was the first time she'd ever seen him actually ingest anything but water; he seemed to enjoy the fish as much as she did, leaving nothing but bones to be consigned to the fire.

  The quiet between them was companionable and content. They cleaned up so efficiently that they might have been a team for years rather than a day; afterward Luke added more wood to the fire, and Joey watched the sparks fly up to mingle with the stars.

  Luke's voice was very soft, hardly troubling the serene silence. "I have to go back to the cabin now, Joey. I have my gear to collect." Joey started and stared at him where he crouched, sketching formless shapes in the dust with a twig.

  "You're going to leave me here alone?" Joey could not quite suppress the quiver in her voice, it summoned up irritation at herself that turned on him.

  "By all means, go. I'll have a nice time here with the bears and wolves and anything else that might want a quick snack." The absurdity of her words changed her annoyance to humor, but before she could continue Luke had risen to tower above her, his face solemn in the flickering light.

  "You'll be safe," he said gravely. "And you won't be alone." He turned on his heel, loo
king over his shoulder as he reached the edge of the trees. "Watch the fire—if you get sleepy, put it out as I instructed. And stay in camp." Without another word he bounded off, swift and silent as a stag in an alpine meadow.

  Joey was left to consider his words. You won't be alone. Tugging on her second sweater against the growing chill of the night, she had the uneasy feeling that she knew exactly to what he was referring.

  As if in mocking confirmation of her thoughts, a howl rose and echoed beyond the pitiful illumination of the fire. Joey turned her head, trying to locate the sound, but it eluded her, the darkness seemed suddenly alive, and very alien. It was then she realized how much Luke's presence had kept that terrible strangeness at bay. He was part of it, and it accepted him—and so it accepted her as well.

  Now the only familiarity lay in the stars overhead, and even they were more vast and fathomless than the domesticated variety that shone feebly in the skies at home. She stared up at them and tried to concentrate on naming the constellations as a second howl joined the first, and a whole chorus broke out around her. The uncanny serenade continued for an endless time as Joey huddled by the fire, and then just as suddenly fell silent. But they were not gone. Joey knew it as surely as she knew anything at all, they were still there. All around her. Waiting.

  She was very far from sleep when Luke returned. Bolting upright in an excess of jangled nerves, Joey was fully prepared to give him a thorough tongue-lashing. But the desire to do so died almost immediately; beyond Luke, at the edge of the trees, she could see the eyes—eyes that reflected the firelight and glittered from a dark core of shapes that moved in utter silence. Eyes that focused on her and then turned away, winking out of existence one by one like fireflies. There was not so much as a rustle of brush to mark their passing.

  Luke set down his pack and sighed as he joined her by the fire. Joey was still shaking with reaction, but her relief at having him back was so powerful that it overcame every other consideration. Without thinking, she went to him and touched his arm, feeling the welcome solidity of his hard muscles under her hand.