Instead, for the past week, she’d imbibed too much at Beck’s Sun-Down Tavern—as an NGO volunteer, she’d learned to drink army boys like him under the table—then spent the rest of her sleepless hours wandering around the chilled forest, the November wind nipping at her skin.
But no matter how much skin she exposed, no matter how the cold chomped down, still the verita luna—the Second Truth that was her wereling heritage—evaded her.
She’d been at the same hospital where they’d brought Beck with the wounds that had ended his military days, but she’d known even then his injuries weren’t as bad as hers. Shredded muscle and broken bones would heal, especially for a strong Alpha wolf like Beck, but her damage, though unseen, went deeper.
That cold at her heart sapped even a hint of hope. “If I fall to the il-luna, you’ll stop me.” She didn’t make it a question.
The wolf werelings glanced at each other, the bond between them like a silent song. Their merged strength soothed the jagged edges of her anxiety for a moment; together, they would be enough to end her.
But Beck shook his shaggy head. Though his hair had grown out of its regulation oorah high-and-tight, his jaw was set with the same obstinacy she remembered from grueling days of PT. “Don’t borrow trouble. You’ll find your way to the verita luna.”
When she growled low in her throat and he rumbled back, Merrilee touched his hand to quiet him, her blue eyes half-lidded. “Whatever happens, Yelena, we’ll be here. This is our home and we won’t let anything threaten that.”
Yelena nodded, grateful for the rock steadiness in the other Alpha’s stare. A woman who had brought a wolf to heel—sort of, since he was willing, anyway—was a woman to respect.
A pang of longing for the wolves’ closeness, even in their disagreement, shook Yelena more than she cared to admit. She’d never gotten around to seeking a mate, being too focused on “more important” things.
Some had thought teaching at a girls’ school on the edge of Helmand Province was asking for trouble, but she’d armed herself with grand dreams. She’d hoped to prove a fractured country might be put back together so maybe she could give her family hope to overcome their own difficulties.
She’d gone to Afghanistan to change the world.
Now she couldn’t even change herself.
She pushed away from the bar, relieved her feet stayed under her. “I need some fresh air.”
“Don’t go too far.” Sliding the tub of empty beer cans across the oak, Merrilee reached out as if to pat Yelena’s shoulder.
Yelena sidled away. The coldness inside felt too brittle to bear even the lightest touch.
Under a full moon, with fresh snow on the dark trees, the whole world seemed to have turned to black and white: beautiful but dead. At least the cold darkness kept everyone else away from her. Going so long without the verita luna left her vulnerable to lapses of judgment and loss of self-control. Those whiskeys weren’t helping matters either, but the effects of alcohol wore off eventually while the consequence of failing to change would only worsen.
She didn’t mean to wander, but numb as she was, she didn’t even notice the passage of time until her boots crunched through the snow to the edge of a high mountain lake. Ice rimmed the still, inky water, slowly freezing inward.
She knew too well how that felt.
If only she could sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream. She hadn’t taught Hamlet to her students. Her half-sisters had been underwhelmed by Ophelia’s convenient madness, and she doubted the Afghan girls needed schooling in patriarchal oppression. So she’d focused on Shakespeare’s comedies instead, letting the language and the laughs form a bond with the girls. But in the end, tragedy had found them anyway, and now...
Like the mad Dane, she could see no way out. She was trapped, broken and plagued by nightmares when her only goal had been to set others—those Afghan girls and her troubled sisters—free in a world where their hopeful dreams might come true.
Her eyes burned with the cold and whiskey and sleepless nights as she edged down to the waterside. Past the frozen rim, the full moon blazed a white hole in the open center of the lake like a pathway to some other realm. If she thought for a second she might find her lost other half there, she’d willingly brave the water’s icy kiss.
“What dreams may come,” she muttered as she started to turn away.
Despite the stillness of the night, a ripple made the reflected moon dance. Before the wave subsided, a wash of crimson turned the white orb to blood.
Startled, Yelena glanced up at the moon—pristine-white, as always—and the sudden unbalancing made her boots skid.
She windmilled her arms but found nothing to hold onto. Her ass hit the snow hard enough to jolt a curse from her, then she was sliding. The icy rim at the shore shattered, and the shock of the lake water was as sharp as a knife. She drew a breath to shout—but darkness closed over her head.
Chapter Two
Raze pressed the point of the athame into the geas on his wrist, feeling his pulse beat against the steel. A bead of red welled up. His blood would feed the wards he’d carved around the court and seal the phaedrealii forever. He needed to slice deep and fast before—
Though he was holding his breath, the crimson frost that had melted across the floor riffled, as if an unseen finger swirled the pool. Suspicion stayed his hand. He was the only one in the corridor. Nothing could pass the wards he’d carved. Except...
Letting the athame fall to his side, he leaned forward to peer into the pool.
He had only a glimpse of a wild golden eye before a massive form burst from the shallow pool. Impossible, of course, but the phaedrealii had a way of throwing the impossible in one’s face.
Just as he was face-to-face with those golden eyes, not to mention the ivory fangs connected to a giant, infuriated tiger.
A spray of icy water followed the beast in a scintillating veil that smelled of dark forests and moonlight. And something hotter, spicier. Instinctively, Raze raised the athame, but the tiger batted it away. In all his battles during the Iron Age, even when defeat had become inevitable, he’d never lost his grip.
He lost it now.
The athame spun away down the corridor, the metallic clatter lost in the tiger’s roar that shook the marble. The sound vibrated in his bones, and the beast’s spicy breath swept his face.
He spun the opposite direction of the lost knife, whirling behind the beast, feeling the smoldering heat from that big body.
He had a tigress by the tail.
Not literally, though. The long striped tail lashed him across the thighs with power enough to stagger him.
This was no illusion of the phae, no glamour to melt away come daylight. This was a creature of sun and shadow, her pelt hued from richest gold and saffron to darkest night. And her claws were almost as long as his athame.
He dodged as she raked at him, faster than anything that
