PRINCE OF WOLVES

by Susan Krinard

  "Outsiders," Joey muttered. Luke seemed not to hear as he led her across the room, pausing once or twice to exchange bonjours with friends and family. At the door he paused, turning to sweep his gaze across the room as if to take it all in, lock it so deeply into memory that it could never be lost. As if he never expected to see it again. Joey shivered at the blast of cold air that invaded the room in the wake of departing villagers.

  Luke's familiar, intense warmth kept the cold at bay as he walked her across the village common, his arm brushing hers, their footsteps falling into a safe and comforting rhythm. The quiet after constant noise was almost overwhelming, and Joey was content to savor it, as she savored Luke beside her. When he would have left her at the door to his grandmother's cabin, she caught at his arm, held him there with more will than physical strength, until he had no choice but to look down at her.

  She felt herself beginning to lose her way in his strange, pale eyes, but now it brought no unease. A muscle jumped in his jaw, skin stretched taut across his high cheekbones—she knew instinctively that he was poised on the edge of flight. But he stood unmoving, and she waited until his hands came up slowly to brush her arms, to burn her skin through the sweater and pause there on the edge of embrace. She turned her face up, her breath coming faster, willing him to read in her eyes the things she could not say aloud. Her hands slid up of their own accord, resting on his narrow hips, moving up over the firm hardness of his torso, splaying on his chest. His heart pounded under her palms.

  "Y etait temps que vous r'veniez!" The cracking interruption of Bertrande's voice behind Joey made them jump apart in the same instant. Joey nearly stumbled, a firm grip caught and steadied her. The old woman's not-unpleasant breath puffed against her cheek. "Easy, my little owl. Time for bed." Bertrande turned to Luke, who hovered in the doorway looking considerably shaken and almost forlorn. "As for you—" Joey could not miss the gleam in the old woman's eye as she looked back and forth between them. "You will have time for that later. Allez. Go!"

  Luke looked one last time at Joey—a long, oddly vulnerable expression—and turned on his heel before she could open her mouth to speak. His grandmother leaned out the doorway and called after him, cackling. "I know what I see, boy! Tu vas d'voir attendre un peu plus!"

  Too dazed to do anything but obey, Joey let herself be coaxed and gently bullied into preparing for bed. Her clothes had been washed, hung on a line to dry before the fire—not decorative, but certainly practical. The bed that she was given was surprisingly soft, stuffed, she guessed, with down—the quilts that covered it were works of art in themselves, and very warm. Bertrande chattered to her in incomprehensible French, casting her knowing, amused glances all the while, and it was only after Bertrande had blown out the candles and settled with a sigh into her own adjoining bed that Joey had the peace to think again.

  The old woman's whistling snores filled the unfamiliar silence of the room. Joey lay wide awake, and all her thoughts were of one thing. It seemed almost frightening to realize how much she missed Luke, even now—even when he was only a few houses away. She wondered if he was thinking of her too. This strange game between them, this dancing back and forth, was driving her to the brink of something.

  Tossing her head against the pillow, Joey muffled a groan of frustration with her fist. At one time it had helped to concentrate on the goal she was so close to reaching, forget about every other distraction. Somewhere along the line that simple solution had ceased to be effective. Somewhere along the line she had fallen over the edge.

  When sleep finally came, it was a different kind of falling, and the dreams that followed consumed her and left nothing but ash.

  Chapter Eleven

  Luke accepted one more embrace from his grandmother, who seemed unable to stop cackling and winking conspiratorially at him. "You be sure and come back soon, Luc—and you bring her with you, too, hein?" The gap-toothed, triumphant grin she turned on Joey made him long to lose his temper, but he'd done it once, and it hadn't done a damned bit of good. Not with her. As he should have known. Only one thing would make her realize how wrong she was, about him—and Joey. He'd have to come back once Joey was gone and show her. That her guesses were wrong, her expectations a kind of torture. The mental image of her leering face falling in disappointment held little satisfaction.

  What Joey thought of all this, what she must have thought of his grandmother's behavior, he could not guess. She seemed cheerfully friendly to the villagers who came to wish her well on her journey, unaware of deeper meanings. He was profoundly grateful, now, that she had not understood all the words that had been spoken of them, around them—words that might have made her grasp the significance of the knowing looks the villagers turned on her.

  She was smiling as she came up beside him, her hair smelling of soap, eyes bright with excitement. He looked away before the whirling gold sparks could trap him "This is the day, Luke, isn't it? The day we reach the mountain?"

  Her voice was so filled with innocent enthusiasm that he could not quite hold back a smile. Or a rush of feeling he could ill afford. "Perhaps. Depends on how hard we push. But we aren't going to rush this, Joey. Remember, I want to get you there in one piece."

  His admonition failed to quell her high spirits. "Fine. Whatever you say, Luc!" The way she gave his name the intonation of his mother tongue almost made him touch her, caress the soft pale curve of her cheek, draw his fingers down the arch of her jaw. But he stopped the action within his imagination.

  "I'm glad you've learned how to cooperate," he said dryly.

  She drew herself up, arched her brows, and folded her arms across her chest. "I beg your pardon, but I'm always cooperative. I know some people who aren't nearly as flexible." Abruptly she bit her lip, as if she'd said something she hadn't quite intended. Luke felt the slight burn of heat in his face as he searched her words for hidden meanings but was spared a retort by the sudden appearance of Claire, who flung herself with characteristic abandon at his legs and began to babble in French.

  "Luc, are you going away already? Why can't you stay longer?" With a lightning-quick glance at Joey she added, "And are you going to bring that strange mademoiselle back with you next time? Is she going to be your...?"

  Luke quieted her with a hand on her shoulder. She understood instantly, falling silent and gazing up at him with wide, suddenly solemn eyes. He dropped to his knees and held her tightly. "Claire, there are some things it isn't polite to ask about. You don't want to make Joelle feel embarrassed, do you?"

  Claire considered that with a cocked head. "But she doesn't even speak French!" she protested at last. Luke suppressed a chuckle, confining himself to brushing one of the tangled curls out of her face.

  "You know that words aren't everything, Claire .There are some things you'll have to wait until you're older to understand, but I promise I'll explain to you one day. When I can."

  With a somewhat belligerent outthrust of her lower lip, Claire nodded slowly. "Okay. But you better come back soon!"

  Luke accepted her vigorous little girl's embrace, taking great care as he hugged her in return "Be good, Claire."

  "I'm always good!" the little girl declared. In a flash she dashed off, brushing by Joey without another word.

  "I wish I had that much energy," Joey said fondly. The last of the villagers were departing now with final good-byes, last-minute offerings of advice and occasional smirks that Joey, fortunately, seemed not to notice.

  For an instant Luke tried to imagine what Joey must have been like at that age. Even now she seemed almost carefree, with something approaching a child's innocence. He knew she was not an innocent, far—very far—from being a child. He had only to remember and the blood stirred in him, had only to allow his full awareness to acknowledge her and be lost to her seductive power.

  He set those thoughts carefully aside, knowing it would never become any easier, not until she had left his territory and his life. The ache of the thought was consigned to that same cold
place.

  His grandmother appeared suddenly to interrupt the disorder of his thoughts, breaking in, for once, at an opportune moment. She spoke in French, momentarily ignoring Joey. "I forgot to tell you, Luc—the doctor is coming later today. Sure you don't want to hang around and wait for him?"

  Luke glanced quickly at Joey, noting with relief that she didn't seem to pick that one word—docteur—out of the others. "We have to be going, Grandmother—now, in fact." He bent down to pay the expected tribute of a peck on each cheek, which she accepted as her due before turning to Joey. The expression on Joey's face was almost comical when Bertrande gave her a loud, smacking kiss in similar but much more dramatic fashion, Joey peered up helplessly at Luke until the old woman released her.

  Bertrande beamed impartially at both of them for a long moment, and then raised her head to sniff at the ai.r "The season is changing," she announced in English. "I smell something strange on the wind." Abruptly her mobile, weathered face grew serious. "Maybe you'd better stay here after all, Luc."

  For an instant Luke registered her words and dismissed them before doubt could mar his resolve. Stay here another night—and listen to the suggestive comments, see the shrewd nods and insinuating smiles of the villagers, knowing what they expected and what could never be—stay here another night and find himself pushed to the edge, pushed so far that he would have no hope of recovering his balance—no. It was out of the question.

  He gathered up his pack and hitched it over his shoulders. Joey donned her own pack before he could help, she grinned at him in total incomprehension of his inner struggle, and he forced his muscles to relax.

  With a final nod to his grandmother—who pierced him with a final, narrow-eyed stare bereft of the usual humor—he touched Joey's arm and said, "Shall we go?"

  "Allons-y!" Joey matched his steps so buoyantly that her enthusiasm, her sheer joy, reached the dark heart of his deepest fears and illuminated it for an instant, so that he was able to forget everything but her happiness. As they settled into a ground-eating, steady stride across the valley floor, the cold morning seemed brilliant with promise. It was her hope he felt, and for the moment it seemed enough.

  Joey paused only once to glance back at Val Cache as the protective forest closed around it, veiled it from the world Outside. Her words were so soft, he knew he had not been meant to hear them. "Good-bye. I wish..." And then she turned again and filled the new day with idle chatter that rivaled the birds and eased the void in his soul.

  They crossed the valley floor during the course of the morning and, after a noon break, began the ascent up the first of the slopes that marked the foot of the mountain range among which Miller's Peak stood. When they reached a meadow that provided a clear view of their goal, Luke pointed it out to Joey, watching her face change as she gazed at it, the stubborn determination that settled there. It served to remind him what she valued most, what truly mattered to her—what she had to do before they could both be at peace.

  He told her, then, what the villagers had confirmed that a plane had gone down there among those mountains years before, lost in a late-spring snowstorm. They had even sent men out to look, but they had found nothing, for the softened snows had buried whatever might have remained to be found. He saw the hope in Joey's eyes.

  She was quiet after that, all her concentration focused on reaching the source of a year's worth of hopes and dreams. Luke did not welcome the silence. He could not fill it as she did with idle conversation, light comments to pass the time, it was not his way. But the silence became a terrible burden as it had never been before. It left him free to be fully aware of her—the rich female scent of her, the sound of her breath and the steady beat of her heart—the gleam of sunlight on her hair, the perfect curves of her body, made to fit his.

  It was all he could do to erect the barriers one by one, keeping the awareness so deeply buried that he felt bereft of his senses, blind and deaf, unable to feel at all. The kilometers passed by in a fog, only instinct kept him to the right course, and even so he stumbled and lost the rhythm of his stride again and again, clumsy with the need to stay tightly locked within himself.

  Once, Joey touched him. It was no more than a brush of her hand, an inquiry or expression of concern—he never registered her expression. Within an instant he had rounded on her, snarling, nearly knocking her backward with the force of his turn. He did see her face then, frozen in astonishment, a flash of fear in her eyes before she disguised it with anger. She backed away from him, searching his eyes, what she read there set her expression into lines of utter coldness. After that she kept a careful distance.

  So they continued with the wall firmly back in place between them. Luke felt it like the bars of a cage that he could never hope to escape.

  Moving slowly and steadily up the slope, they began to pass into the realm of the hardier trees that ruled the higher elevations, leaving the protection of the valley behind. At the top of the ridge that lay between Val Cache and Miller's Peak, Luke stopped to survey the last portion of their journey.

  Another valley stretched below them, the deep green of forest giving way to the brilliant blue of a lake that lay at the foot of Millers Peak The mountain itself rose steeply, a stony giant knee-deep in water and clad to the waist in a garment woven of fir and pine.

  Joey came up beside him, and he heard the hiss of her indrawn breath.

  "That's it, isn't it?" she whispered. She wriggled free of her pack and set it down on a bare patch of rock, raising a hand to shade her eyes.

  "Yes." Luke kept his eyes from Joey's face and silently calculated the distance around the near side of the lake and to the foot of the mountain. "There," he said, pointing to the sheer cut of the mountain's face, ridged and striated and touched with the crystal fire of sun-struck glaciers. "You said the plane had been coming from the east. In a bad storm that portion of the mountain could be a deadly obstacle. A plane hitting anywhere on this side—"

  He broke off, cursing the need for detachment that made his words so cold. But Joey only gazed at the mountain, breathing hard and fast.

  "Yes. It fits." Her voice was strangely calm. "They'd said they were coming up on a large lake. They caught a glimpse of it through the storm just before they lost contact—" Luke heard her swallow. "This is it. I know it."

  She bent down to retrieve her pack and was already moving past Luke as he pulled it on again. Her plunge down the slope toward the tree line was almost reckless, loose stones rolled under her feet and bounced down the rocky ridge with hollow rattles.

  Luke pursued and overtook her, setting himself in her path. She skidded to a halt and looked at him, eyes brilliant and skin flushed with emotion.

  "It's so close, Luke," she breathed. "So close."

  "Not that close." Luke held her gaze, refusing the response of his heart. "Distances are deceptive here. We'll go a little farther down, to the lakeshore, and around as far as we can before nightfall. Then we'll make camp and be fresh in the morning."

  "But—"

  "This isn't a suggestion, Joey. We may have days of searching to do once we reach the foot of the mountain. And even then—"

  She lifted her chin. "Do you think I don't know?" Abruptly she looked beyond him, lips parted. "But until I'm certain...

  With every fragment of discipline he possessed, Luke stopped himself from touching her, holding her against the sadness that gathered in her eyes. "You need sleep to think clearly, Joey. If we start now, we can cover a good distance before dusk."

  Her gaze lifted to his, and she nodded slowly. "All right," she said. "I can wait one more day."

  Luke turned away and started down the slope again before he could betray his thoughts. He heard her following, moving with greater care as they reached the tree line and entered the forest. She was silent, pushing herself without mercy even when he set a slower pace. They rested briefly by the clear waters of the lake and continued along the shore as the afternoon waned.

  By nightfall they had r
eached a point close to the foot of the mountain where the trees marched up the steep incline, obscuring the rocky mass above. They made camp without a word spoken between them; Joey was lost in her own world of memory, and Luke took the respite with bitter gratitude. He waited as she sat staring into the fire, seemingly bent on keeping vigil throughout the night. It was only when she surrendered to exhaustion, retreating at last to the tent, that Luke was free to escape.

  He stalked into the night, following his senses and the instinct men called intuition. He loped through the forest to a place where scree had worn away from the mountain and cut a pathway through the trees to the water's edge, an unbroken sweep from the sheer face towering overhead.

  He found what he sought as the moon began its downward path, just before the first eldritch light of false dawn. He wrapped the fragment of metal in his shirt and carried it back to camp cradled in his arms.

  Joey woke with the dawn, and Luke was there when she emerged from the tent, her fair hair loose in her eyes.

  "I found it," he told her softly.

  Joey stood beside Luke in the early morning stillness, turning the rusted metal over and over in her hands.

  "There may be more," he murmured. "I didn't make a thorough search."

  She looked up, focusing on his face with difficulty. He was remote, as he had been since they'd left Val Cache, but there was a softening in his eyes. Almost as if he knew what she felt at this moment.

  When he had led her here, she had expected—what? A sign to proclaim that she'd reached the end of her search at last? A whisper of lost voices to comfort her and send her, sorrows banished, on her way?

  If only I could be sure.

  She shivered in the shadow of the mountain and gripped the metal until it almost cut into her fingers. The small rocks that made up the talus slope, worn away from the mountain's face by time and wind and weather, rolled under her feet. Luke moved away, impossibly silent on the scree, and paused by a jumble of larger boulders wedged among the trunks of close-set pines.