all his talk of being intrigued by her, their connection, was merely that—talk.
She wished that was true. Yet knew, somehow, it wasn’t. He was no polished city attorney, beguiling women into his bed with glossy words of seduction. What he wanted, he achieved through strength of will. And he wanted her.
It took longer to retrieve her hand than it had taken to give it. The drag of skin contacting skin. Her starved body wanted more. She refused to acquiesce. Yet he knew, too, the effect he had on her, blast him.
She finally pulled back and kept her hand cradled protectively in her lap. “It’s Swedish,” she said, trying to herd her thoughts and the conversation toward more secure ground. “I learned from my father. Bjorn Anderson, born in Uppsala. He was a great naturalist.” Her father’s fame as a naturalist had brought Michael as a pupil, and it was over Latinate texts of botanical disquisitions that her and Michael’s love had taken root and blossomed. In particular, they were both fascinated by the works of one of England’s only female botanists, the Viscountess of Briarleigh. Astrid dreamed of exploring the world as Lady Briarleigh had, with her beloved husband by her side, and soon Michael came to share that dream. Shortly after she and Michael were married, Catullus Graves approached them, offering places within the Blades, the opportunity to travel and study while protecting the world’s magic. It had seemed perfect.
“Was?” Lesperance asked. “Your father is no longer living?”
“Is,” she corrected, relieved that he was willing to talk about something other than the attraction between them. “Alive. In England.”
“You must send him hundreds of specimens for his studies. Plenty to investigate out here.”
She shook her head. “I cannot remember the last time I wrote him,” she admitted. Her father’s correspondence, however, arrived as regularly as post could out in the Northwest Territory. The last letter had related that Michael’s youngest sister had been married and was presently on a bridal journey in the south of France. Astrid had realized that everyone else had picked up their lives, yet she continued her self-imposed exile. The idea had left her moody and restless for weeks.
Lesperance’s brows drew down. “Are you feuding with your father?”
“No. We’ve always been close.” Except for the past four years.
“Why the hell don’t you write him?”
Astrid drew back from the anger in Lesperance’s voice. How could she answer him? She could not even answer herself. When she had first arrived in the Territory, she sent her parents and Catullus a letter each, assuring them she was still alive but had no wish to return home. Their letters, however, did not stop. At first, they pleaded with her to come back, said they were worried, that it wasn’t right or healthy for a young woman to consign herself to a living afterlife. She need not contemplate another marriage. If she was done with the Blades, everyone would respect her decision. But please return, however she wanted.
Her replies, when she had written them, were terse. No, she was staying. If her parents and Catullus wished to keep writing, they were free to do so, only know that she would no longer open their letters if they insisted on pressing her to come back.
“I just…ran out of things to say,” she said to Lesperance after a moment. To write to them of her life in the mountains, her observations of the flora and fauna, her interactions with Natives and trappers—it was too much like returning to life, to admit that her grief was loosening its hold, and what held her immobile in the wilderness was something else. Something she dared not name. “I fail to see why that should upset you.”
Lesperance’s handsome face was stark with fury. He jabbed a finger at her. “Unlike you, who chose to abandon your family, mine was torn from me. They wouldn’t let me see my parents after I turned eight. Didn’t want me to be tainted by their heathenish ways. I saw them alive only once more after that.”
He didn’t explain the circumstances of this final visit, but she did not ask for further details, knowing instinctively that his pain would become her own if she knew more.
“And when I was old enough to leave the school,” he continued, “I went to find my parents.”
“Did you locate them?”
“By the time I reached their village, I learned they’d died the week before from smallpox.”
Astrid swallowed, an ache in her throat.
“I made the medicine man show me the bodies,” he said, bitterness hardening his words. “I didn’t recognize them.”
She struggled not to look away. “I didn’t know—”
He was on his feet, a shadow hovering large and dark, with the glow of the fire turning him gilded, sinister. “My parents were illiterate, but I would’ve killed for something from them, even a damned rock. Didn’t matter. I just wanted them, a family to belong to. And you’re throwing that away.” To punctuate, he threw the cooked rabbit leg into the dirt, then turned to stalk off into the night.
“The Heirs are out there,” Astrid said to his retreating back.
He pulled at his clothes, so she was forced to look away. “The wolf will take care of me.” Moonlit mists began to gather around him, as if he prepared to change, but then he saw her watching him, and the clouds dissipated. He pushed farther into the shadows.
“What about supper?” Astrid asked.
The vicious smile he sent over his shoulder chilled her. “The wolf can take care of that, too.”
Then he was gone, disappearing into darkness. She thought she heard the sounds of paws upon the ground, racing into the night, but the night’s noise soon hid this.
He would come back. He had no choice but to stay with her, since, even with the wolf in him as protection, he would die in this wilderness without her. Yet she did not doubt that, under different circumstances, he would have left her then, to forge his own path.
Though she was hungry, it was a struggle to force herself to eat. She told herself that she didn’t give a damn, that Lesperance could do whatever he pleased, and if he starved out there or got himself killed by a bear, it mattered not a whit. If the Heirs captured him, she might have to come to his rescue, but the location of the Heirs’ fire showed they were at least a day behind, likely more. He was in no danger on that front. And the man had turned into a bloody wolf. He was well situated.
Astrid lay down to rest, uneasy but insisting in her mind that there was nothing to be troubled about. She had spent weeks on her own in the wilderness away from her cabin. She wasn’t afraid.
Had she been selfish, shortsighted? Callously tossing aside love. When she knew that there was all too little of it in the world. The idea disturbed her.
She looked at the empty space across the fire. For the first time in years, she felt very alone.
A warm muzzle nudged her from her light doze.
Astrid’s eyes opened to see a large silver-and-black wolf hunkered over her. She bolted upright, hand flying to her gun.
The wolf made a sound, halfway between a growl and a whine. An alert. It paced closer, brushing against her, moving in a circle around her. A primal fear snaked through her to be so close to the massive
