DAWSON BRIDE

(WOLF BRIDES SERIES, BOOK 3)

By T. S. JOYCE

Other Books in This Series

Wolf Brides

Wolf Bride (Book 1)

Red Snow Bride (Book 2)

Dawson Bride

Copyright © 2014 by T. S. Joyce

Copyright © 2014, T. S. Joyce

First electronic publication: November 2014

T. S. Joyce

www.tsjoycewrites.wordpress.com

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

Published in the United States of America

Chapter One

Gable

Of all the smells on earth, blood was the most interesting, complicated, delicious scent in existence. It was trapped inside of every living mammal by paper thin skin. While it was probably the most prominent of all smells, such richness and bulk certainly didn’t belong in the English countryside. It wasn’t the genocide of bunnies or deer, or the slaughter of livestock. Each animal had a different signature in the sensitive lining of my nose. No, this type of richness only belonged to humans.

A lot of humans.

A fog had fallen over the woods, and while it wasn’t uncommon where I roamed, it was uncomfortable. Mist dulled the senses. It shortened sight and dampened smells. Even forest sounds were muffled under the blanketing cloud cover. For all of its dimming qualities, still, it did nothing to mask all that blood.

Dark had come, and brought no stars or moon to illuminate the wooded land. Animals skittered to their burrows and nests, afraid of the preternatural silence that cloaked the trees. Even the wind had died down to nothing, stirring not a leaf and rattling not a branch. The air filled with tiny, frightened heartbeats and they weren’t from fear of myself.

I was a part of these woods now.

A whine escaped my throat as I slunk toward the intoxicating smell. I wasn’t a curious creature by nature but something was off, and some deep instinct pushed me farther and farther out of my territory.

My ears twitched and filled with the screams of women and the gunfire of men. Whatever was happening here in my woods was of hell’s making. I couldn’t untuck my tail from between my legs if I tried. The stench of gunpowder, fear, and violence hung in the air, and I paced frantically back and forth as a looming shape appeared through the mist.

Still, I was drawn closer.

I’d been a wolf for a long time now, but the man in me was still inside there somewhere. The shape was a castle, or as close to one as I’d ever come. Complete with sprawling trout pond in the middle of the entrance and acres of gardens, statues, and elaborate fountains. The road was cobbled for fine carriages, and the mansion boasted stonework from the finest architects.

I sniffed again. I’d been mistaken. It wasn’t a castle—it was a tomb.

I growled and shifted my weight from side to side. It was time to leave. I’d seen it. I knew what was happening inside. This wasn’t my fight. I turned and froze at the soft whimper of a child. If I’d had a chance of escape at all, it had been stolen from me with the fear-filled sigh of that little boy.

No matter what happened next, my fate had been cemented with that cry here in the woods—the cry I couldn’t turn away from and live with myself. I guess I’d die with myself instead.

Shrubs, roots, and night air rushed past as I raced for the side of the gargantuan manor.

My change from wolf to man wasn’t agonizing like it was for my brothers. I’d mastered it long ago when I became more animal than human. In a burst of light and pain and cracking bones, my blood was encased in fragile human skin once again. I didn’t cry out or hunch over in pain. None of those things eased the agony that rippled through my insides. Avoidance was a pointless waste of time and if the boy was going to live, time was a commodity I didn’t have.

Front doors were for receiving guests and making a first impression. Back doors led to gardens and quiet getaways where barons and counts snuck kisses to their wives and mistresses. Side doors were for servants.

The knuckles and muscles of my fingers were frozen with disuse and the effort to grip the edge of the cracked door was staggering. I’d been an animal too long. If I was to be of any help to the boy, I’d have to loosen up and quick.

Inside, I was met by the servant’s quarters. Body after lifeless body decorated the floor. Women. The monsters shot unarmed women. A series of crashes upstairs let me know the hunters hadn’t found their prey yet. I slid into a pair of servant’s pants I found folded neatly on one of the small, lumpy beds. A large knife shone in the dancing candlelight of the kitchen and I gripped the handle. It wouldn’t be much match for the loaded pistols of the men upstairs, but I had other advantages over them.

They were human, and I was not.

Plates of food and half-made pastries dotted the kitchen counters. Shards of fine porcelain lay shattered against the wooden floor boards. Through the door, a dining room lay in disrepair. I listened carefully for any signs of life from the bodies, but there were none. Their hunters had been thorough.

At the sound of a man’s voice, muffled through the ceiling between us, I froze. “I think I’ve found our little chicken, boys,” he said.

My heart sank and I bolted for the stairs. I’d made it up the first landing when the pepper of gunfire blasted through the house.

I was too late but it didn’t matter. I’d already made up my mind. I’d kill them for what they’d done here tonight.

I’d kill them all.

****

Lucianna

“Do you really have to get married?” My little brother, Bryant, asked with a disgusted look upon his face. “If you leave, who will play Cowboys and Indians with me? Who will sing me to sleep if I have a nightmare?”

I donned a brave smile. “I don’t want to get married but it’s not my choice. I’m a woman. Different things are expected of women than they are of men. Someday you’ll understand.”

Bryant was slight with straight, dark hair that fell forward over his brown eyes. He favored my father while I, the complete opposite, was gifted my mother’s fair skin and pale hair. My parents had been perfectly happy to settle with me as their only child after years of trying with no success. Bryant had been a pleasant surprise as was obvious in our age difference. He was only six years old while I was fourteen years older and past marrying age. I’d like to say I held out for love but though I’d tried, it hadn’t found me. Instead, Ralston Bastrop did.

I was lucky, they said. He was handsome and would be one of the wealthiest men in Britain someday, they said. He was also a tyrant and a pervert, but I supposed such things didn’t matter to parents marrying off their children.

I gripped the silver mirror handle and slammed it down. Best not to think of their betrayal. “That’s fine, Glinda,” I said to the servant pinning my hair. She’d used jeweled accents throughout the curls in the back to match the light blue of one of my finer dresses. It would be lovely if I could breathe, but as the horrid corset restrained any movement, I could not. Maybe if I was lucky enough, I’d suffocate before my wedding day.

Bryant scampered onto my bed while Glinda had another go at shrinking my waist to nonexistence with the whale bone torture device while I clutched onto the cherry wood post at the corner of the mattress. There was no use fighting it. If Mother didn’t think it was tight enough, she’d badger me into redoing it. She’d broken my spirit on such things when I was twelve and showed my first distaste for current fashion. I’d bartered a pair of pants from a boy in town and proudly wore them for thirty seconds until Mother nearly exploded.

“Is it true he’s an American?” Bryant asked while he fidgeted with two toy soldiers.

I thought of the crass way with which he came to my window on nights he’d had too much drink and the filthy, frightening things he said. “Terribly American.”

“I thought you said you’d never get married.”

“Yes, well that would have been the plan if not for Father’s need for this business arrangement. I didn’t know at the time women were chess pieces to be played.”

Glinda released me and I flopped unbecomingly onto the bed beside him. “Listen, I’ll come and visit you whenever I can. And I’ll write you every day.” My heart ached at the thought of leaving him. He was the most central and important part of my entire life, and now everything was about to change for the worse. “At least we’ll live in London so it’s not too far away.”

The door to my bedroom creaked open and Mother stood silently in the shadows. Glinda’s skirts made swishing sounds as she hurried from the room and Bryant hopped from the bed and stood ramrod straight like one of the toy soldiers clutched in his small hand.

“Bryant,” Mother said. “I need a minute with your sister. Alone.”

He shot me a sympathetic look and scurried out after Glinda. I tried not to scowl as I slid stiffly from the bed, but it was hard to bend in the middle so I likely resembled a trout out of water.

Mother tapped her foot impatiently. “Lucianna, you really have to mind your manners tonight. Tonight, of all the night’s Ralston has courted you is imperative to your engagement. Tonight it will be official.”

“So, I can relax after dinner?”

“No! From here out, you never relax. It’ll be your responsibility to keep him happy. He’s very wealthy and driven, and men like him need exceptional wives on their arms. You must be perfect. Any imperfections will invite scandal and shame his name and ours. Your father’s business depends on the success of your engagement—of your marriage. Without your father’s money, we’ll be destitute within the year. For the comfort of your family, of your brother, you’ll be the perfect wife.”

My nightmare come to life. Lucky me. Oh, I knew of my importance. My parents had been batting away proposal after proposal in order to find me the wealthiest match possible. I’d fancied a few of them along the way, and though they would’ve kept me comfortable, they didn’t benefit my family name. Father settled happily on the cruelest man of all. There was no question of who was getting the short end of the stick in this business proposal.

“Mother, I know you love me.”

Her face went completely blank.

“You do,” I said. “I still remember when you used to sing me to sleep and tell me stories when I was scared of thunderstorms. You cradled me when I fell and spent hours brushing my hair. Things have changed between us, I know they have. I can feel the difference between your love then and now. But somewhere in there, you still see me as your little girl. You can’t marry me to this man, Mother. He’ll take my happiness.”

Her lips pursed and a stirring of feeling swam in her blue eyes for just a moment before it was replaced by a disapproving look. “Lucianna, you know full well duty is more important than happiness.”

I’d never wanted to say the words aloud but this was unquestionably my last chance to save myself from the fate that was coming for me. “He comes to my window some nights.”

Her eyes widened and she looked scandalized. “Who?”

“Ralston. He drinks in town, and then he comes to me and says the vilest things. Horrifying things that haunt my nightmares.”

Mother spun and stomped to the door. Her fine heeled shoes clacked across the marble floor. “A man can speak to his wife however he pleases. I don’t want to hear another word!”

I rushed. “He tells me about what it will be like in his bed. He says he’ll cut at me until I find pleasure in the pain!”

She paused at the door. Her perfectly manicured hand rested on the frame and she turned as if she heard the fear in my voice. There for that moment, I could see the love she hid from me. In an agonized whisper, she said, “I can’t stop what’s happening. Your father made this decision without me.” She dragged watering eyes to my face. “You’ll make the best of this situation because you must. You’re a woman now. You’ll bear the pain because that’s what we do.”

I watched my last hope float lazily out the door behind her full skirts. “He’ll kill me,” I whispered. It was the first time I’d admitted the fear to myself. It had scratched away at the edges of my mind since the day I met the man with the cruel eyes, but never until this moment had I given my terror a voice.

My embroidered handkerchief lay delicately across the armoire, and I plucked it off and dotted my filling eyes with it. At least I’d leave the world knowing Mother did love me. She just didn’t know how to show it. If I bore Ralston children, they’d have to be the bright spot in my life that absorbed all the bad until the day he tired of me. I’d tell them and show them every single day how much I cared about them. Long after I was dead and gone, they’d still feel the echoes of my love in their bones. I swore it.

Glinda knocked lightly on the open door. “He’s here.” Her eyes were filled with a sadness that pressed against my chest.

I tried to smile and reassure her everything would be all right, but my lips trembled too badly. I inhaled until my restricted lungs were filled and blew it out. With my breath, I pushed the fear away to be dealt with later. I was a Whitlock. We didn’t bend; we didn’t break. We adapted. I frowned with the determination it took to harden my heart. The less I felt, the easier my life would be.

“I’m ready.”

Chapter Two

Lucianna

I paused on a break in the stairwell. A window stretched from floor to ceiling and the cool evening night beckoned me. Fog had floated in while I’d been stalling and it gave the darkness an eerie look. A fitting evening to match the shackle that would be placed on my finger.

Bryant slipped his tiny hand into mine. “I don’t want you to marry him. We can run away and I’ll protect you.”

I smiled at the top of his dark hair. I couldn’t see his face but I knew only seriousness dwelled there. “I know you would.”

“Mother says I can’t eat with the adults tonight.”

My gaze drifted to the thickening fog again. I squeezed his hand and said, “It’ll be terribly boring. If anything interesting happens, I’ll tell you all about it before you go to sleep. I promise.”

“Lucianna?” Father sternly asked.

Bryant watched me descend the stairs with sad, dark eyes. I couldn’t look back at him anymore if I wanted to keep my nerve. Ralston stood in the entryway flanked by two men I didn’t recognize. They wore suits of dark material but the quality didn’t match his. Ralston wore black silk and removed his top hat before he gallantly bowed. His eyes, as always, were empty. Raven black hair brushed his collar and the color of his eyes was a dusty hazel that seemed to change color depending on what he wore. Tonight, they were greenish. The smile that curved his lips was forced, like some actor who didn’t like the play he was performing. His gaze raked over every inch of me and a chill lifted gooseflesh on my arms.

“Lucianna,” he said as he bent forward and pressed his cold lips against my hand.

“Good evening, sir,” I said with a slight curtsy.

He offered his arm and I touched the crook of it lightly. His men followed closely behind us and the hairs rose on the back of my neck. When I turned, they were looking at each other with an unfathomable expression. Expectation and excitement mixed into their panther smiles.

After I was seated in a chair directly across from Ralston, he slid a black velvet pouch toward me. “I thought we could get this out of the way before we eat.”

The air became thicker until I could barely draw breath. Until I opened it, my reality was just a bad dream.

Slow fury burned over Ralston’s features at my hesitation. “Open it,” he said through gritted teeth.

Blast my hands as they shook when I reached for it. As I upended it, a diamond engagement ring fell into my palm and shimmered in the chandelier light.

“Put it on,” he demanded.

“Lucianna,” Father warned. His downturned eyebrows said I needed to work harder at the farce.

I slid the ring onto my finger and said, “My sincerest apologies, sir. It’s just such a big moment for me. I wanted to savor it.”

Ralston tipped his chin up and the fury in his eyes cooled. His smile didn’t quite reach the rest of his face as he said, “I’m sure you can understand my anticipation of our wedding, Lucianna. I’ve wanted you as my wife for some time now. I’m not used to waiting, you see.” His heated look landed on Father.

The servants brought bowls of thick broth and I sipped it like it was the most interesting thing in the world. Ralston’s gaze never left me.

“So, Ralston,” Mother said. “Lucianna’s told me you will be settling in London near your businesses. Have you already a house there?”

His spoon clinked against the fine china plate beneath the bowl and he wiped the corners of his mouth with a silk napkin. “I’ve actually decided to expand my business. I’m sure you know I’m originally from America and I plan to set up my home there while I get our international relations off the ground. Do you think you’d like to live in America?”

My heart fell to the earth beneath the house. “No.”

Ralston’s face turned to stone. “I’m sorry?”

I cleared my throat and spoke clearly. “No, I wouldn’t like to live in America.”

Father smashed his hand against the table and we all jumped.

Ralston put a calming hand up. “And why not?”

“Americans are crass and ill-mannered. When they aren’t in a war with Indians for their lands, they’re warring with each other.”

His smile was slow and chilling. “Well, I’m sure when you’re busy with your wifely duties, you won’t have much time to worry about such trivial things as where you live. You’ll be working too hard keeping me happy to have opinions of your own. So long as you keep your pretty face and figure, that’s all I require from you.”

The room had gone still and silent.

I dropped my eyes from the storm brewing in his and tilted my head. Mother wasn’t looking at me or Ralston. Instead, she was glaring at Father.

Her voice held the quiet rage that would rival an impending avalanche. “If you won’t speak against the abuse said to your daughter in your own house, then I will.” She slid a narrow-eyed glare to Ralston. “You’ll not be marrying any daughter of mine. I’ve heard the tawdry things you’ve said to her and turned my head thinking you’re wealth and prestige give you a realm of leniency on such things. Upon further thought and seeing how you speak for myself, I’ve come to the conclusion the prestigious don’t get the blanket of such an excuse. You should be held to a higher standard. I’m sorry Mr. Bastrop. You simply aren’t good enough for our daughter.”

My mouth was hanging open and I closed it with an audible clack. Overwhelming pride filled me as my mother stared that animal of a man down. Father seemed to be in a speechless rage if the purple color of his face was anything to go by, but hang it. Mother had just catapulted herself to heroine status in front of my very eyes.

Ralston’s lips twisted into something akin to a snarl and he looked at one of the men in the corner of the room and nodded. A shiver of fear skittered across every vertebrae in my back as a hundred incomprehensible things passed between them in a breath. The man left and Ralston picked up the spoon and slurped his soup. If a pin dropped in here, everyone could’ve heard it.

“My dear,” he said. “I thought you knew I always get what I want. Your abhorrence for an engagement with myself has only made you a more attractive conquest to me, I’m afraid. You were alluring, and mysterious, and hard to get, until this moment. Now, I’ve lost interest in the chase. My ring is on your finger, and while I won’t drag you screaming to the alter, I won’t have visions of another man in your bed to haunt my sleep either. I have an engagement gift for you.”

One of the servants came in holding a silver platter with a letter. Why did that simple linen envelope put such fear into my heart?

Ralston gestured with a twitch of his fingers. “Open it.”

I opened it and read out loud.

Run.

My fingers froze into clawed things around the letter. He stood and threw his napkin over his soup bowl.

My voice trembled. “Where are you going?”

He made a show of straightening his suit jacket and sleeves. “I’ve come to the realization that I don’t really like the sight of blood or the sound of shrieking, so I’m going to leave before the festivities begin.”

Mother snatched the letter from my hands. “What is the meaning of this? Have you made a threat upon our house?”

“Not a threat, my dear almost-mother-in-law,” he said as five men filed into the dining room with readied pistols. “A promise. Save Lucianna for last. Show her what it means to try and double-cross a Bastrop.”

“Lucianna! Run!” Mother screamed as the first shot rang out.

Father fell and still, I stayed frozen to my chair.

“Go on, little chicken,” a man with a beard and heartless eyes said. “You ain’t gonna make this any fun if you just sit in that there chair all night.”

I couldn’t see Mother anymore in the mass of bodies and pistol smoke. I turned with an anguished noise and ran from the dining room. The men’s laughter followed right behind as I ran for the front door.

“What’s happening?” Bryant asked from the top of the stairs.

The handle of the front door turned slowly and lanterns swayed outside through the window panes. Bryant would never make it down in time to escape them, so I lifted my skirts and charged up the stairs as fast as my legs could carry me. I grabbed my brother’s hand and yanked him into the furthest room down the hall. The study wasn’t big, but we’d discovered something interesting about it years ago. The lower half of the walls were covered in decorative paneling and one of them came loose. There was a hidey hole on the other side and if Bryant and I could just get in there, we’d be safe.

“Where’s Mother and Father?” Bryant whimpered as I clawed frantically at the side of the rust-colored panel.

“Shhh! They can’t help us now. Help me with this.”

Bryant’s smaller fingers found purchase and wedged the side out. I pulled it and shoved him inside. When I was in with him, I pulled the hand grips on the inside of the panel and tugged it back into place. Intricate designs had been carved into each decorative piece and ours was no different. We scooted as far back into the tiny space as we could. If we got lucky, they’d scan the room, figure we weren’t here and move on. Maybe they’d eventually give up.

I cradled Bryant into my side and stroked his hair. His eyes were filled with fright here in the shadows, and he leaned his head against my shoulder. The clunking of boots sounded against the wooden floors and a man with a gun stuck his head into the room. He searched behind the desk and left. I would’ve sighed in relief if I wasn’t petrified to even breathe. Bryant whimpered and I threw my hand over his mouth. The sound of the boots stopped. The smell of lantern oil burned my nose but there weren’t any lanterns in the study. Only candles.

Bryant shook beside me and I pressed my lips against his hair and moved my body to protect his better.

“It came from over here,” one of the men said. The thump of boots returned. Through the pattern of the panel, I could see the bottom half of the room. Four sets of boots filtered into the small study and made scuffing sounds as they looked around. I jumped when the desk crashed over on its side. One pair stayed with the toes pointed directly at our hiding place and my heart hammered so loudly, they’d surely hear it.

One of the men said, “I think I’ve found our little chicken, boys,” just before shots rang out and filled the night.

The sound of gunfire was eternal. Pain ripped through me time and time again and I held onto Bryant as long as I was able. I slumped to the side just as a pair of bare feet came barreling through the door. He wore a servant’s pants but they were much too short. He was faster than I’d ever imagined a man could be and yells ripped from my murderers as he fought them. Through the pistol fire, he seemed to dodge the searing bullets or not feel them at all. None of them slowed his determination to fight them all. I had to be imagining things. The pain that threatened to pull me beneath consciousness supported that theory.

The last man dropped to his knees and with a jerk of his body and a sickening cracking sound, he fell forward with open, vacant eyes staring at where I lay. I couldn’t drudge up any sorrow for the man’s demise. At least a tiny bit of justice had been served while I lived to see it. We were avenged. The panel was ripped away and tossed against the opposite wall like it was weightless. Bryant lay motionless in my arms and I hugged him tighter. My sweet boy. My brother. He was gone and soon I would join him. Tears streamed down the corners of my eyes as I gathered my strength to thank the man on behalf of my family.

The stranger crouched down in front of me and cursed softly. He didn’t wear a shirt and his skin was scarred and taut over musculature like I’d never imagined a man could have. He looked like a statue. His eyes glowed a crystalline blue color and the right side of his face had been marred by something he probably shouldn’t have survived. Flames lit the wall behind him and I smiled. He might look like an angel, but he hadn’t come from heaven.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“Don’t thank me yet,” he drawled.

“No,” I argued when he gathered me to him. I clung tightly to Bryant. “I can’t leave my brother.”

“He’s left you.” His strange, icy eyes held a thousand years of sadness. “We have to go before this place burns to ashes.” He pulled my arms away from Bryant and I cried out at the loss of my brother’s warmth.

My struggles were futile and weak. “He might still be alive, like me.”

“He don’t have a heartbeat,” the man said, just before he kicked through a locked balcony door. “Nobody in this house does but you and me.”

My stomach lurched as he jumped two stories to the grassy lawn below. The impact was soft and didn’t seem to hurt him, and I closed my eyes against the pain coursing through my pierced body. The loss of my family seemed very far away. Such things didn’t happen to wealthy. We’d been good, honest people. Cruelty didn’t touch us in our manors and summer homes. Not like it did to the lower-born. There was safety in money.

The man’s heart drummed against the side of my cheek, slow and steady like the hammer of a blacksmith. Like he hadn’t just killed a slew of men and jumped from a burning house. The night was dark and the fog thick like a suffocating blanket. The glowing slivers of his eyes were all I could make out. Hours ago, I would have been terrified by the demon’s eyes, but I’d seen too much now. I wasn’t scared of anything anymore.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

He frowned off to his left like he didn’t know for a moment. “Gable,” he said in a rich, deep voice. “Gable Dawson. What’s yours?”

The edges of my vision looked fuzzy and collapsed inward until only the shining blue of his eyes held me. “Lucianna,” I whispered as the world went still and black.

Chapter Three

Gable

“Doc!” I yelled, banging my foot against his ramshackle door. He stirred inside and I closed my eyes against my impatience with human slowness.

He opened the door and pulled his glasses over his nose. “Gable?”

“I need your help.”

His eyes crashed onto the still form of the girl in my arms and widened. “You know I can’t help her if you bit her.”

I shoved my way past him and set her on the unmade bed. “Does it look like I bit her?”

Doc squinted and pulled his glasses in closer. His voice was quiet and sad. “Oh, dear. Fill that water bucket and be quick about it.” He flew into action and ripped the laces of her dress. “Help me turn her.”

The water sloshed as I slammed it onto the table and pulled her over. Doc examined her bare back, and try as I might to be a gentleman, I couldn’t keep my damned eyes from the silk of her pale skin. It glowed like the moonlight and looked softer than rolling creek water.

Doc slapped my hand. “No touching.”

I pulled it away. I hadn’t realized I was.

“They all went straight through her but this one.” He pointed to her hip.

I’d known that from the second I saw her brother laying in her arms. The bullets had gone through her body and landed in his. Neither one of them was meant to live.

He handed me a bundle of white linen strips. “Hold these on the others. Put them on there tightly. She’s bleeding too much.”

My nose told me as much from the moment I walked in that room of death. I pressed the cloth on two of the holes and leaned forward onto them. A sheen of sweat brushed her forehead but she didn’t even utter a groan of discomfort. She’d be gone soon.

Doc pulled the open skin on her hip apart and jabbed a long pair of what looked to be scissors into the wound.

“Shouldn’t you put some of that sleeping cloth on her like you do to me?”

Doc talked as he worked, never slowing in his probes. The tool made a wet sound against her flesh. “She won’t physically bite my arm off like you could, and we don’t have time for all of that. She’s too far gone to feel much anyway. There.” He pulled a deformed bullet from the hole and dropped it onto the table and probed again without hesitation.

The metal made a tiny blood puddle on the grain of the worn wood and I couldn’t seem to take my eyes from the contrast. “Is there more bullet in there?”

“No.” He pulled a sliver of white from the hole and dropped it on the table. “It skimmed her hip. The bone stopped it but it took damage in doing so. We’ll get these slivers out and it’ll be less painful on her later. She’ll always limp, but with a little luck there won’t be any grinding in there.”

Another red stained sliver plunked onto the table. When a tiny bone graveyard graced the wood grain, Doc stitched her up.

The night was infinite and in the first traces of blue light that told of the dawn, he finally finished putting the last of her bandages on.

I pulled her hands over her stomach and covered her with a blanket before collapsing into the chair in front of her face. We’d cleaned the blood and finally, I saw the girl I’d pulled from hell. Her hair was blonde but a shade I’d never in my life seen. It was so light it was almost white. Her perfectly arched eyebrows were light brown and her petit nose flared slightly when she took a breath. Her lips were full and deep pink, and her skin was almost as pale as her hair. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and something deep inside of me was cut open with her pain.

I rubbed my hands over my face. I needed to get a grip. The girl likely wouldn’t last the day and the wolf inside of me was already howling his allegiance.

Doc sat in an old rocking chair and rubbed his knuckles lightly over his lips. “How did this happen?”

“Came across them in a big old country manor. Someone sicced a bunch of armed men to kill the entire family, servants and all, but I didn’t catch why.”

Doc’s eyes were troubled. “Did she tell you her name?”

“Lucianna.” I dragged my gaze away from the girl. “Do you know her?”

He closed his eyes and exhaled loudly. “She’s Lucianna Whitlock, the only daughter of the wealthy Whitlock family, and one of the most sought after eligible ladies in London. Even I, a penniless retired country doctor, have heard of her beauty.”

“I don’t understand. If she’s so important, who’d want her killed?”

“I have an idea of whom, and he can’t be touched so you get any ideas of revenge out of your half-crazy head right now. Ralston Bastrop’s been courting her for the better part of two years, along with every other bachelor with a name, but he’s the one who’s come closest to success. The day I heard of their intended engagement I instantly pitied and prayed for the poor girl. He’s a depraved man who lives above the law. I’ve lost many a patient to his cruelty. What happened to the rest of the family?”

“They’re dead. Someone lit the house up before they were even finished with the massacre. They were all dead before the flames got to them though.” I couldn’t think of anything worse than dying by fire, and the remembered flames licked the dark behind my eyelids.

“Tragic, but it just might save her. The bodies will be hard to tell apart. They’ll think she died in the fire like Bastrop wanted.”

“What about that?” I pointed to the diamond ring that glistened on her finger in the early morning light. “I’m assuming he left that bauble on her for a reason.”

Doc frowned at the gemstone. “Probably. If she lives, she can’t stay here.”

“I’d never keep a liability in your home, Doc.”

“I don’t mean that, Gable. I mean she can’t stay within reach of Bastrop. If he gets an inkling she’s still alive, he’ll search the world for her. No one escapes him.”

I let out an explosive sigh and murmured, “Shit.” I knew one place he couldn’t touch her. I thought there’d be no reason to ever go back and here she was, sleeping like some angel fallen straight from the clouds. “Guess I’m goin’ back home after all.”

Doc pulled his glasses off and pressed against his nose with thumb and forefinger. “Gable, you’re a good man, but you have to face your past at some point or you’ll never learn to live.”

****

Lucianna

Murmured voices danced across my ears, fading in and out in a meaningless jumble—just a slew of wordless syllables in a tongue I couldn’t understand. Not until a man said, “Lucianna.” The way my name tumbled from his lips was like a song. It brushed my skin and brought a warmth my body had been lacking. The voice was deep and so rich, it brought a thirst to my dry lips. A strange accent caressed it.

I opened my eyes so I could see the bringer of my name, but everything was dull and blurry. Disappointed, I blinked again and again until my vision cleared. A tiny, one room cottage with a creaking bed held me like some cage for a bird with a broken wing. My wings were more than broken though. The searing pain that licked my skin told me as much. A short, balding man with glasses stood over a pan of what smelled deliciously of fried eggs and the other, the one with the warming voice, sat in front of me. He’d stopped talking and now stared at me with eyes the blue of the first winter snow. It was those shocking eyes that brought everything back. The night crashed down on me like a hundred felled trees. “My family,” I whispered through parched lips.

His head lowered and thick, dark lashes shielded those glorious eyes from me. “All dead.”

It was the worst combination of two words imaginable. All dead. What those two words did to my insides was unbearable. Ignoring the shooting pain, I rolled until I faced the wall and silent tears ran down my face. The sorrow was my own. I didn’t know these men and I wouldn’t share. I was supposed to die with Bryant, and now I was alive to feel all of the soul singing pain and loss instead. It was my punishment for surviving. For fighting an engagement to that monster. For being born with looks that were so coveted they’d brought an end to everything I cared about.

Quietly, I sobbed, “You should’ve let me die.”

“I couldn’t. I couldn’t get to you fast enough. Your brother’s death is on me. I couldn’t take your death on top of my soul either.”

I sniffled. “Nothing’s on you, sir. Ralston Bastrop carries the blame.”

“Don’t say it like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re naming a kill. Naming a kill that won’t be yours will poison your life.”

“How do you know?”

The chair creaked and his boots shuffled on the wooden floor boards. “I know a lot about pain, Lucianna. That’s one you won’t want to bear.”

The bed creaked as he sat beside me. Even if it was highly inappropriate, his hand was a comfortable weight against the blanket over my leg. “You’re mine now.”

I turned my head and wiped the back of my hand across my damp cheeks. His head was lowered, but that didn’t shield the hideousness of the scar that snaked from his hair line to beneath his shirt. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you’re my woman. It can mean anything to you, but to me it means I’ll keep you safe. My body is yours. I’ll die before I let him harm you again.”

“But I don’t even know you.”

“We’ll get to know each other plenty where we’re going. I’m taking you on a boat and we’re going to America. You’ll be safe from him there. Doc says his reach is wide and I can’t protect you here, but there’s no place safer than where I’m from. My brother’s and I can protect you.”

The man was mad. If Ralston, that devil, couldn’t convince me to go to America to save my family, I sure as bloody hell wasn’t going with no incentive at all. My connection to the world was lost. Everyone who meant anything had been taken from me. This land was my only contact to who I was. “I can’t go to America. My home is here.”

“Death is here. You stay, you’ll die. There’s no way to mask a face like yours, Lucianna. I’m sorry.”

“And if I don’t want to be your woman?”

“I won’t force you. You can let me keep you safe or you can try and find your way alone here. I know my limits and I’m just one man. I can’t protect you from a man who has the reach of the one who did to your family what he did last night. We’ll both die and too soon. Take your time and think it through. We leave as soon as you’re well enough.”

He stood and left the cottage. There was no slamming of the door or ferocious looks like with Ralston. He’d given me a choice and it was the first one I could remember being mine. Still, I’d learned a hard lesson about men. They wanted what benefited them, and when they grew tired of their trinket, they burned them alive. I turned back to the wall. Sure, I’d think about it, but the weakness and ache in my bones told me I had plenty of time. I wouldn’t be able to travel for a while yet. Right now, I needed to mourn my losses while my insides slowly put themselves back together again.

Chapter Four

Lucianna

My heart thundered against my ribs as the stranger entered the cottage. It happened every time he came back to me.

His threadbare clothes couldn’t hide the strength that hummed through the etched musculature of such a man. His arms pressed against the thin fabric of his cotton shirt, and though his dark hair was shaggy and unkempt, it wasn’t overly long. I canted my head as his glorious, pale gaze lifted to me. His dark eyebrows were lowered just slightly as he raked his eyes over my sitting position. The linger in it held me frozen and my breath halted as if someone stepped across my neck. His throat worked as he swallowed, and I followed the movement to the edge of his collar bone that peeked out from under his undone top button.

His presence filled up the entirety of the small room. He was tall, to be sure, but it was more than that. There was a power the wafted from the stillness of his stance that sucked all of the air from the room. Inhaling deliberately, I dragged air into my drowning lungs as the crackle of something just above my senses sent a chill down my neck like the legs of a spider.

In a shaken voice, I whispered, “I’ll be your woman, whatever that means.”

His jaw worked as he clenched his teeth, and without a word, he dropped a pair of ratty shoes on the floor beside me and squatted down. Unable to move, I sat like some leaf frozen in a winter gale as he hesitated, then reached for my bare foot. Never had a man touched my skin like this, and with his hands so confident and strong, it was hard to stay unaffected by the warmth that touched the sensitive flesh there.

This was highly improper, but who was here to judge? I’d already committed a sin by staying in a man’s house unescorted. If I was going to hell, I was doing it thoroughly.

Gable glanced up at me from his position on the floor, and the corners of his eyes tightened as if he could hear my churning thoughts. I was stuck here, caught in his gaze like I had no power of my own to save my dignity. Lowering his head, he slid stockings over my foot. His finger brushed the skin of my leg as he pulled it up and, unable to help myself, I gave a quiet gasp at the intimacy of it. His downturned head was covered in dark, silky tresses I wanted to touch so badly, I ached.

I cleared my throat. “Did you hear me? I said I’d be your woman.”

He was trying to figure out how to lace the pair of peasant’s shoes onto my now stocking-covered feet. “Good,” he grunted as he shifted his weight and pulled the laces tight.

“I have terms though.”

A dimple deepened on his right cheek as the corner of his mouth turned up. “I thought you would. Let me have ’em.”

I shifted uncomfortably as my healing wounds screamed they’d been sitting in the same place for too long. “One, no touching me inappropriately.”

The lines of his face softened and the blue in his eyes danced. “Now, Lucianna. Someday you’re going to want me to touch you, and you’re ruining your chance at that with a silly rule.”

His confidence brought a delicious shiver to my stomach. I’d grown used to his scarred face during his quiet visits. He’d no doubt been a beautifully created creature before the injury. The other side of his face was unscarred and artfully angled. His nose was straight and majestic and his eyes, not quite the brilliant snow blue I’d imagined in the shock of my first pain-filled days with him, were a cool and kind blue. They rarely left me, and danced with humor in the places I liked to laugh too. He was tall, overwhelmingly so, and the memory of his shirtless chest was forever etched into my mind, but I was a lady and his breeding was very apparently beneath mine.

And he was American.

Besides, I wasn’t an animal. I could control the excited trills that sprang beneath my skin when he brushed it with his fingertips. I’d been doing it for days.

Hopefully my sigh had just enough annoyance in it to affect how unmoved I could be. “Moving on. Two, no inappropriate sneak peeks at my body if we’re living in close quarters. My privacy is to be respected.”

“I already seen you naked.”

“What?” Heat fanned up my neck and landed in my cheeks. “When?”

“When we were trying to save your life.” He sat back and surveyed his handy work. Two ugly low-buttoned, low-heeled shoes peeked out from beneath the horrendous plaid dress he’d probably stolen from some whore’s trashcan. “You didn’t think we stitched you up fully clothed, did you?”

Okay, unsettling news. Had he liked what he saw? I shook my head. Beside the point! Focus. “From here on out, no sneaky peeking,” I amended. “And three.” I waited until his eyes met mine. “I’ll never marry you. I don’t want to be married so don’t even ask. Swear it.”

He dipped his head, “Luc, I’m not trying to marry you.”

“Good, it’ll be an easy oath to take then. Swear it.”

The corners of his eyes tightened just a little. “I swear. Now pin your hair up tight and put the bonnet on. Let me see if it hides the color enough.”

The mirror over Doc’s washbasin reflected my first glimpse of myself in a week and a half. I’d lost weight and my face looked gaunt and tired, but healing as much as I needed took it out of me. At least that’s what Doc said. Maybe the dark circles under my eyes would help hide who I was.

The gnarled wooden cane under my hand was warm in my grip. I barely recognized myself.

“I’ll get you a nicer dress when we get to Boston.”

I tried and failed to keep the note of hope out of my voice. “Is Boston where we’ll be living?”

“No, it’s just the port you’ll be coming into. You’ll travel alone from Liverpool and I’ll meet you at this address when you arrive in Boston Harbor.” He handed me a folded piece of paper and I tucked it into the hidden pocket at my waist with my jewelry.

A sliver of fear snaked inside of me as it always did when we talked about this. “I still don’t understand why you can’t travel with me.”

Gable sighed and stood behind me in the mirror. “I know you’re scared, but selling your hair pin jewels only brought enough boat fare for you. I have other ways to get to Boston, but they wouldn’t be safe for you.”

“I still have three pins left and my ring. Let’s sell those and you can board the same boat.”

His hands closed around mine and the pins dug into my skin. “We can’t sell that ring on British soil without Bastrop getting wind of it, and we’ll need your pins to get to Colorado.

Stubbornly, I said, “I’m giving one to Doc.” One pale blue jewel clicked as I pressed it against the wooden tabletop under the water basin.

I thought Gable would argue, but instead he said, “I expect he’s earned it. You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

Gable left while I straightened the bed covers as best I could. The door stood open and I could hear the murmur of his conversation with Doc, but when I was sure he wasn’t looking, I lifted the lumpy mattress and pulled a pair of charcoal drawings I’d done of Bryant from beneath it. I would work my whole life to sketch the softness in my brother’s eyes just right. I folded them reverently and placed them into the bottom of my threadbare knapsack. With a final look around the small cottage, I sighed and stepped through the front door.

Doc stood outside and handed me a bundle of provisions. “If you ride straight through, you should make it to Northwich by dark.”

“Ride?” I asked.

Doc gestured to a sturdy looking dappled gray horse tied to a nearby tree. The terrifying thing snorted and bobbed its head like he wanted to eat me. “No thanks, I’ll ride in a buggy, thank you.”

Gable searched my face like I’d sprouted fingers upon it. “There’s no buggy to escort you to town, Lucianna.”

“Why not?”

“Look at your dress, woman! We’re not exactly parading as royalty.”

My filthy red and purple plaid number surely didn’t scream wealth, but I’d naively been under the impression even the poor had access to buggies. I hadn’t said carriage! I waved my hand at the likely rabid beast. “Well, I can’t ride that thing.”

Gable’s dark eyebrows shot to his hair line. “You can and you will. Unless you think you can hobble around on that thing from now until this evening.” He gestured to the cane in my white-knuckle grip.

I tipped my chin up and began walking for the dirt road, leaning heavily on the walking stick. The pain was excruciating. About thirteen yards later I stopped and slumped my shoulders in defeat. “Fine,” I called behind me.

Gable spoke quietly to Doc and shook his hand. Doc waved and smiled in that kind way of his. I’d miss the old man who cared about people’s well-being more than anyone I’d ever met. He was a kind soul. I smiled sadly and waved back. “Doc, you’ve been lovely.”

“So have you, my dear.”

The palms of my hands dampened the closer Gable approached with the horse. “This is Barney,” he said. “He’s the oldest horse in all of creation and he’s perfect for a beginner.”

I snorted. “I’m not a beginner, sir. I just haven’t ever had a need to get on the back of one of those.”

“Beginner,” he grumbled right before he hoisted me up in the saddle without a warning about it. I stifled a terrified scream as Barney walked forward behind the clenched reins in Gable’s hand.

“See you when I see you, Doc,” he called over his shoulder.

“Don’t kill anyone,” he sang back.

I twisted in the saddle but failed to find any humor on Doc’s face.

“I’m cold,” I complained.

“Poor people don’t have money for fancy jackets. You’ll get used to it. It ain’t cold enough to die from.”

I pulled the ratty shawl he’d found me tighter around my arms and sniffed. “Isn’t.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You meant it isn’t cold enough.”

Barney stopped walking so Gable could grace me with a tired look. “No, ma’am, I meant ain’t and if you’re going to be correcting my grammar all the way to Colorado, it’s going to be an eternal journey for both of us.” His blue eyes flashed before he turned and made a clicking sound with his tongue to get Barney moving.

True to his word, the horse was as docile as a feather pen. The reins lay slack in Gable’s hands as he trudged along behind the imposing man. I’d kept a conversation for the first few hours but my hurts were burning and my hip was so sore from sitting in the saddle, I could barely see straight, much less put a coherent sentence together. I’d gone to memorizing the dark brown waves in Gable’s glossy hair and waiting for the rare moments he would look off into the woods beside us and offer his profile. If he looked to the right, I could imagine him without the scar.

Without warning, he pulled me and Barney from the road and into the woods. A stream snaked its way through the scrub and the horse lowered its head to take a drink.

“You need a rest,” Gable said.

I don’t know how he knew, but I was grateful for the sixth sense he seemed to have. Frozen into the saddle and unable to use my bad hip to swing the other leg over, I looked around helplessly.

He reached for my waist and pulled me off. I groaned in surprised pain as my feet hit the ground. I couldn’t move or use my bad leg at all and while it dangled in the air, I sank against Gable’s chest and clutched his shirt until the fire became manageable. His heartbeat was strong and steady against my clenched fists and I slowed my breathing as the comfort of his warmth brushed against me.

“Sorry,” I said.

His hands hung in the air like he didn’t know what to do with them but at my apology, he pressed his palms against my back. For some reason, his touch brought tears to my eyes. “I’m sorry for everything.” The tidal wave of my emotion was thunderous and inescapable. I’d been holding everything in so well until now, but the pain was so bad and our situation so bleak that the repressed hurt from the past two weeks came back to claim me.

“Shhh,” he soothed as I sobbed into his shirt. “You’re all right.”

He was so wrong. I was anything but all right, but his words quieted my crying so I kept my argument locked in its silent tomb.

“This isn’t working,” he murmured.

“If you’re talking about my rules—”

“No, not that. You can’t keep riding a horse split legged like that. Not on a hip injury, but I don’t trust you to sit sidesaddle by yourself without sliding off at every turn. We don’t have the right leather for it. He swung into the saddle in one fluid motion that looked like he’d practiced it one trillion times at least. “Come here.” He slid to the back of the saddle and gestured for me to come closer.

I glared at the horse and grumbled, “Don’t bite me.”

Gable grabbed me under the arms and pulled me across the saddle, cradled between his knees.

“What if someone sees us?”

He kicked the horse and steered him back toward the road. “You’re my woman. Who cares?”

I’d argue everyone. Everyone would care. Not even husbands and wives rode the same horse, and we weren’t even married. Nor would we ever be. On the other hand, my hip felt a lot better like this and it wasn’t completely unpleasant to have my arms wrapped around his neck. His strong hand held my back up and kept me steady as if I sat in my very own throne in the forest.

If I asked questions, I bet I could hear the rumble of his voice against the side of my cheek. “How did you and Doc meet?”

“Doc didn’t tell you? I was shot up. Not as bad as you but bad enough and he patched me. I repaid the favor by fixing up his cabin and repairing some old furniture pieces he’d inherited from his mother.”

“Where’d you learn wood work?”

“My Da and brothers are handy with it. We always built the houses we lived in when I was younger. We moved around a lot so I got good at fixing things.”

“Who shot you?”

“Hunters.”

I waited for him to elaborate but his eyes had cooled and rested on the road. “Where do you sleep at nights?”

“Why, would you rather me share your tiny bed?”

Heat ran the gauntlet up my cheeks. “N-no,” I stammered. “That’s not at all what I was implying.”

The deepened laugh lines around his mouth said he was teasing me. Again. I’d never met a man who enjoyed baffling a woman more.

“I sleep outside.”

“Don’t you have a home?”

“I do.”

I arched my eyebrows and waited. Getting any personal information from the man was like catching a slick pig with buttered fingers. “Where?”

“I’m taking you there. A boat ride, a train ride, and a carriage ride are all that stand between you and my home.”

I relaxed into the tense and immovable crook of his elbow. “Tell me about it.”

A wisp of a smile brushed his lips and I watched them mold around velvet words as he talked. He’d grown his beard, to shield the scar he’d said, and the short, dark whiskers made his eyes look bluer and fiercer. His white teeth were a stark, bright contrast to the dark hair. I wonder if it would tickle to kiss a man with whiskers.

“You all right, there?” he asked.

“Uuh.” I cleared my throat and tried to expel the foggy sensation sitting so near him was causing. What had he been talking about? “Yes, your home. Go on.”

“It’s a small town but one you could easily get lost in. There’s lots of land out there and I live on a homestead with my two brothers, Jeremiah and Luke. Or at least I did before the War Between the States. I haven’t seen my family in years. They’ll be mighty surprised when I show up with a woman, that’s for sure and for certain.”

“It sounds like you loved it there. Why’d you leave?”

His nostrils flared slightly and he jerked his head to the side before pulling the horse from the road and into the surrounding woods. “Quiet now. Someone’s coming.”

Through the brush that hid us, a charcoal gray carriage with a two horse team rattled by, in a hurry for something. Minutes after they’d passed, Gable steered us to the road once again.

“What if someone recognizes me in Liverpool?” My heart was only just slowing down its pounding rampage. Hiding would always bring back memories of that night in the fog.

“You’ll have to keep your face down. Your lady will seep through your filthy dress from your posture and the angle of your chin. Slouch, look down, don’t meet anyone’s eyes, stay behind me. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

I don’t know what it was that inspired my utter belief in his words. Maybe it was that he’d been so good at killing all those men without so much as a pistol in his hand. Or maybe it was his unerring confidence on what would happen and when. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to lose this belief that everything would work out somehow.

Another cold chill ran through me at the thought of losing that confidence on a boat for six weeks all by myself. How would he keep me safe then?

His eyes were narrowed and studying me. “What’re you worryin’ over now?”

“Everything.”

“Mmm. Well, stop. You’re going to spook the horse.”

Chapter Five

Gable

Northwich had a seedy underbelly like every town with any size to it did. That’s where we wanted. It wasn’t hard to find it. I just followed the scent of bad booze, cheap cigar smoke, and nostril singeing floral scented perfume only a whore would wear. The underbelly was our ticket to invisibility.

I thought Lucianna would fall asleep eventually, but she’d worried herself until she couldn’t do much more that doze off for a few minutes here and there. Pained noises she held behind perfectly pursed lips told me she was hurting something fierce. She was strong and opinionated and didn’t show weakness in the face of adversity. There was no way in hell she’d milk her injuries in front of me. It just wasn’t her way.

I tied the horse off beside a trio of bays and pulled her gently from the saddle. Either she’d got clean over her fear of horses or she was hurting that bad, because she leaned heavily on the tying post and didn’t make a move at trying to run from the horses who snuffled at her dress.

“Wait here,” I said.

The pub looked promising but it may have been filled up for the night. If it was, there was no point in dragging Lucianna’s wrecked body in there for all to see. Predators could see weakness from a mile away and a place like this would be filled with them. “You got a room?” I asked a redheaded man behind the bar.

“You got money?”

I pulled out more than enough and scooted it toward him. “One that won’t get me robbed.”

His face paled when he looked into my eyes but I didn’t hide the dangerous intent. I would kill every last man who bothered us tonight. It had been a long day on the road. I’d had to keep my frantic wolf in check at the constant smell of Lucianna’s blood, and worry for her comfort had dragged me down to near exhaustion. No one would survive me in my current state.

“This much’ll get you a room in the back,” he said. “Third one on the left.”

“Much obliged.”

Lucianna hobbled through the smoke filled bar as smoothly as she could muster, and when we were finally to the room, she collapsed onto the filthy, bug riddled bed. She was pale as an apparition. Tiny drops of sweat dotted her brow and her hands shook badly, but under it all, she gave me a tiny, quivering smile that relaxed the animal in me just enough.

“Tomorrow won’t be so bad,” I promised, squatting in front of her. “It’s only a few hours to Liverpool and we’ll leave early in the morning so we’ll be there before mid-day. It’ll give us time to buy some provisions before you head out.”

Her chest heaved with the exhausting effort she’d given today, but she nodded. “I’m hungry.” I slid a glance to the door. Ruffians by the wagonload had watched her drag her body through the pub in front. I couldn’t pull myself away from her but I couldn’t make her leave the room again either. She needed sleep. What was I supposed to do?

I rifled through the pack Doc had given us. I handed her the rest of what we had. One apple, half of a baguette, and two thin pieces of dried beef.

“What about you?” she asked as her eyebrows drew up in a worried look. “What’re you going to eat?”

I shrugged her off. “I’m not hungry. Eat.”

“I can hear your stomach growling from here, Gable. A man your size can’t go two days without eating. Someone in the bar was eating a meat pie. Go get us one.”

I closed my eyes and lowered my head against the side of her knee. “I can’t leave you alone.” The words were an admission she wouldn’t understand. She didn’t know what I was or what kind of instincts were warring within me. Losing sight of her would be a physical pain to me now. A discovery that was both exciting and thoroughly disconcerting. The last thing I needed in my life was to be responsible for another human being, yet here I was, volunteering for the job to the cheers of the monster inside me.

“I’ll stand at the end of the hall where you can see me.”

“Luc,” I pleaded.

“Don’t. Let’s just do what has to be done. This won’t feed both of us after a day like today, and I can’t sit here and eat when I know you’re hungry.”

She sat up slowly and I offered my hand. Surprisingly she took it firmly in hers and leaned on me. God she smelled so good and felt so warm up against me. No one was looking, so I lifted her until her feet dangled a few inches off the ground and rushed her to the edge of the hallway before setting her down as gently as possible. I hesitated at removing my arm from her waist. It was so small, and it led to her hips and then to other places the animal parts of me howled to touch. I was losing my damned mind.

Jerking away, I said, “Call out if someone makes you uncomfortable. Drop your chin.”

I put our order in and paid, but couldn’t force myself to wait at the bar for the pie. I’d never had such an instinct to protect another human being and here I was, practically circling the tiny woman.

The pub was filled with late night patrons and an old Irish drinking song rang out across the room. Mugs of ale swayed and spilled, and a staggering man lurched and bumped into Lucianna. A snarl ripped through me before I could stifle it, and though the song was too loud for most of the patrons to hear me, she most certainly did. Her eyes went wide and still. I twitched my head in annoyance and stood between her and the too close men.

“Meat pie!” yelled the redheaded man.

“Meat pie,” a couple of the drinkers slurred in unison.

Weaving my way to the bar, I retrieved our dinner. By the time I made my way back to Lucianna, my wolf stretched under my skin to tear into someone. Literally.

“It’s too fast,” she said as I tugged at her arm.

I inhaled all of the rotten smells of the tavern and slowed. We’d left her cane in the room and she used the wall to steady her broken gate. For the thousandth time, I vowed to kill Ralston Bastrop someday. I didn’t want her singing his death chant, but I didn’t mind taking the fury and pain of waiting for it at all. Lucianna was mine and he’d hurt her. Every pained step she took was one less breath he’d take on this earth.

With the meal in one hand, I used the other to open the door for her. She placed her small hand upon my forearm and used me to balance. If she knew what her caress did to my insides, she’d never touch me again.

“Tonight’s the last night I’ll see you for a long time,” she said. “I want to eat on the floor with you.”

I nodded and tried to hide a victorious smile. She cared for me on some level. Despite the hideousness of my scars, she saw past them enough to dread an upcoming separation. “Loosen your dress first.”

She looked scandalized. “Why?”

“Because I can smell you bleeding from here. Give your injuries some air. Sitting down that deep is only going to irritate them in that tight dress.”

“Okay.”

“Here.” I set the pie on a small wooden bedside table and turned her shoulders until her back was to me. I loosened the laces one by one.

“About the rules—”

“I ain’t touching you inappropriately, woman. I swear it.”

“Are you sleeping outside again?”

I gritted my teeth. “No. This place isn’t safe for me to be leaving you alone like that.” I turned her to face me.

“Good,” she said quietly.

We set our tiny feast out on the sack Doc’s provisions had been packed in and ate in weary silence. The candle on the nightstand flecked shivering shadows across the beautiful planes of her face and when the food was nothing but crumbs, I stood and helped her up. She stayed there against my chest with an unfathomable expression lifted to my face.

Her fingers reached out and touched my unshaven jaw right over the scars. “When we get to Boston, will you shave your face?”

“Do you want me to?”

She nodded so slightly I would’ve missed it if I weren’t looking into the depths of her moss green eyes.

“You’ll never stop staring at the scars there if I shave,” I said. Her attention to them had bothered me more than it ought. At least when I was bearded, she paid more attention to my eyes.

“How can I get used to them if you hide them from me?”

She felt so warm and alive up against me. I’d give her anything in my power if she asked me like this. “Okay.”

I wanted to kiss her so badly. Her lips, fuller on the bottom and a soft pink, called to me like some siren song out at sea. And her standing here, lookin’ up like I wasn’t a monster and asking for pieces of me? Did she know I’d do anything for her? Did she even know the potent power she wielded over me?

She pulled away and apologized. For what, I didn’t know. I didn’t care about anything but the broken moment and the space between us. How could just a few feet feel like a canyon?

She took the pins from her hair until soft, pale tresses tumbled down her back, and then she washed her face. I tried not to watch, but I was a servant to the wants of my wolf. It had been years since I was human this long and my body revolted against it. I’d been sore for days and my blood hummed with the need to change but my wolf would get his body back soon enough. I had one more night as a human to protect her. He took over the responsibility tomorrow.

I lay on a blanket spread over the floor and turned away from Lucianna. As she lay in the bed above me, unable as I to find sleep, she said, “I’m scared about being alone on the boat.”

Her hand brushed my arm and automatically I reached for it and pulled it to rest across my rib cage. I pressed it in place with my arm and sighed. “If I thought there was any risk, I’d never leave you. You have to trust me on this. I promise you’ll be safe. When we get to Boston, I’ll buy you a pretty dress and we’ll eat a fine meal at a proper house.”

“What house?”

I smiled at the tattered forest green wallpaper that hung from the wall in front of me. She asked more questions than anyone I’d met but maybe that was because I wasn’t used to talking to humans anymore. “My parents live in Boston. I want them to meet you.”

She didn’t respond and after a while, her breathing deepened to the sound of sleep. Ma and Da worried over me an ocean away. A mother never stopped worrying over her boys and in six weeks, I’d be able to put mine at ease.

Physically, I was all right. I was alive. Ma would be happy to see me no matter how much of an animal I’d become.

****

Lucianna

I woke with a start as a rumbling growl echoed through my bones. The remnants of a dream of the foggy night shuddered through my consciousness. All I could remember were the blazing, icy eyes. Gable was crouched on the balls of his feet in front of me. I shouldn’t have been able to see him except candle light crept under the door and lit up his silhouette.

“What’s wrong?” I breathed.

“Trouble.” His voice sounded strange. Deeper. More fearsome somehow.

Shadows in the candle light under the door moved and the sound of boot prints slowly moved away. His bare shoulders glowed in the half moonlight of the window and I reached out before I could help myself. The tensed muscles under my hands relaxed and he placed a warm, strong hand over mine.

“Go back to sleep,” he said without turning. “I’ll keep watch.”

“Not likely.” I sat up. There was no possible way I’d be going back to sleep anytime soon.

“Fine, we can use the time to change your bandages then.”

If he was trying to scare me back to sleep it wasn’t working. “Fine. They’re dirty anyway.”

He turned with a look on his face that said he hadn’t in a hundred years expected me to okay him cleaning my injuries, but there it was, hanging in the air between us. I was too tired and too hurt and too stripped down to the barest parts of my heart to worry. Recklessly, I threw his words back at him. “I’m your woman, right? Who cares?”

He wore the ratty cotton pants of his peasant’s costume and nothing more, and as he stood to his full height, my gaze arched right along with him. The moon threw blue light and dark shadows across his illuminated collar bone. The left side of his chest was all taut muscle and shadowed indentations between tensed curves. One half of his abdomen belonged in some Greek painting and practically begged me to reach out and run my fingers down his skin.

I’d never taken to imagining Ralston without clothes on like some of the other ladies in society, but I’d bet my smelly dress he didn’t look like Gable.

My voice trembled as I stood. “No inappropriateness, remember?”

“Take your dress off,” he said in a voice that was as deep as it was commanding.

Okay then. I shrugged it off and clenched my eyes closed.

“Can’t dress your wounds through your shift, Lucianna.”

“Oh, right.” He turned as I shimmied out of it. The cool window air brushed against my skin and raised gooseflesh. I scampered to the bed and pulled a sheet up to cover my middle while Gable rifled through the provisions Doc packed.

My skin was so vulnerable to his gaze. Every rake of his eyes against my flesh burned and heat drove further and further into my cheeks. What had I been thinking? I was fully awake now and in control of my mental facilities again and here I was, sitting completely naked in front of a man. At this rate, I’d be a working whore in some tawdry cathouse in three weeks.

All the humor had left Gable’s eyes. Instead, a serious hunger lurked there that did nothing to calm my stuttering heart or the warmth that spilled into my center. He looked like he’d eat me right up, and I couldn’t seem to find anything wrong with it. How terrifyingly wanton I’d become.

The bed creaked under his weight and I closed my eyes as he tugged and pulled at the wrapped bandages. Three bullets had ripped through me and one had nestled into my hip bone. Seven half healed holes to dress. I didn’t know how I was still breathing. They’d managed to miss my organs and maimed muscle instead. Doc said I was a walking miracle. Maybe I’d feel the same when I could move without the cane again.

The bandages stuck to my skin and I gritted my teeth against any urge to make pained noises. Gable was a very brave man. I imagined he never even made a face when he’d sustained his injuries. His wounds were wide and deep and from the sadness that drifted from him, they’d likely cut straight to his soul. If he could survive whatever had happened to him, then I could get through a bandage change without a peep.

When the stiff, stained wrappings were removed and in a tidy pile on the floor, Gable moved from injury to injury, gently prodding them. Was he smelling them?

“Your stitches have busted on a couple of these and I don’t have a needle and thread to sew them back up. The scars will be bigger and you’ll have to be more careful on the boat to keep them wrapped, dry, and clean.”

More scars. Goody. “Okay.” I was at a loss as to how I was supposed to change my own bandages on my back, but for the sake of sparing an argument in the wee hours of the night, I let it drop.

He re-bound me with a steady hand until he got to the one at my hip. The blanket covering had to go.

“I’ve already seen you, remember?”

“Yes, but it’s different when I’m conscious.” I clutched the sheet tighter and admitted, “No man has seen me, you know, under my clothes.”

A smile pulled at the corner of his mouth and his eyes held mine like they’d never let go. “No man but me.”

I threw my head to the side with a squeak and tossed the blanket away. He could bind the injury, but I didn’t have to watch his reaction to my body.

He was finished in moments and the blanket rustled against my skin as he pulled it slowly over me. “I don’t want to look at you until you want me to. It’s no fun if I’m stealing it.”

He handed me my thin cotton shift and turned his back while I slipped it over my head. I scrambled into bed and he lay down on the floor beneath me once again. I wanted to reach out like I had before and rest my hand on his side. My hand tingled with the wanting, but the coward in me had outgrown the brave. I clenched my hand until my nails dug into the palm of it.

“Are you mad at me?” My voice sounded very small even to me, but I was on the precipice of not seeing him for weeks and I didn’t want to spend the last night together with an unsettled feeling.

He turned with a slight frown. “Why do you think I’m angry with you?”

A thousand things swirled around in my head and none of them made coherent sense. It was like reading a page from my favorite book in a language I didn’t know. I shrugged miserably.

“Well, I ain’t.” He grabbed my hand in a move so fast, his skin seemed to blur. He pressed my palm against his lips and kissed it lightly before he rolled back over and gave me his back.

I let my hand hang there in midair. It wasn’t uncommon for gentlemen to kiss the back of my hand in greeting, but this was different. This moment that came and passed in the blink of an eye was the most intimate of my life. Even more so than when he raked his eyes over my bare skin minutes ago. Tiny needles rose and fell on the skin where his lips touched it. I ran a fingertip over the smoothness there and clutched it to my chest.

Ralston had been murderously vengeful when I angered him. It was a base instinct that came from the most primal parts of his hardened soul. If something angered him, he snuffed that imperfection right out of his life by bleeding it. It was awful and sickening what he’d taken away from me in a gentleman’s temper tantrum, but it was black and white. Cut and clear.

With Gable, I didn’t understand his reactions. He was overly honest with some things and shared nothing of other parts of his life for reasons I couldn’t fathom. I ran a thumb absently over and over the palm of my hand.

If this was his reaction when he was put off by something I’d done, I would really have to try and irritate him more often.

Chapter Six

Lucianna

The sounds of the streets outside were what woke me up just as the first lights of morning graced the tops of the cluttered rows of buildings. The streets were narrow and cobbled, and the clatter of horses upon them and men fighting and yelling for space to steer their carts, was enough to wake the dead.

Gable lay tensed and twitching on the floor beside me and when I leaned over and tried to wake him from his bad dream, he shot up and grabbed my wrist in a move so fast, I didn’t see it. One moment he was sleeping beneath me and the next, he was crushing the frail bones in my arm with the most terrifying look in his eyes.

“You’re hurting me,” I breathed.

“Luc?” He blinked and scanned the room. His hand released its iron grip and I rubbed my wrist like it would make the ache better somehow. “I thought…I thought I was somewhere else.”

“Where?”

He frowned at the leg of the bed. “The woods. Get dressed.”

He didn’t seem to be much of a morning person. I’d always liked to get up with the dawn and start my day, but some people didn’t feel the same. From the way he grumbled as he splashed water over his face, I thought Gable Dawson was one of those people.

The shift I wore was soft against my skin, but the entirety of my body itched and was covered in little raised bumps. “I’ve been bitten!”

He slid a glance to me and nodded at the bed. “You probably slept with a hundred critters in there last night.”

“Ahh!” I yelped unbecomingly. I flew from the bed and wiped my skin off as best I could. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought you saw them. They were crawling all over the covers when we came in last night.”

“Oh. I guess I was too tired to notice.” I squinted at the covers. In fact, I still couldn’t see them.

Gable leaned against the washbasin table and the muscles in his arms flexed as he gripped the side. “Woman, if you don’t put your dadburned dress on, I’m breaking two of your three rules in about thirty seconds.”

My shift really was too thin to wear in front of Gable. Or anyone really, including small mammals. I snatched the hideous dress and slipped into it. Gable dried his face and gave me a lovely profile of his bare torso. Steel rippled just below his skin and ridges of muscle bunched over his ribs and stomach as he dried his face. I sat on the squeaky bed and ogled him while absently pulling my shoes on. Was his stomach as hard as it looked?

“Lucianna?” he said in an irritated voice to match his disapproving frown.

“Hmmm?”

He stared, dark eyebrow cocked. “The bugs.”

“Oh!” I slid from the bed and dusted my bottom. “Right. Very well then. I’m ready whenever you are. To be on our way, that is.”

He twisted toward me and dried his hands, and the towel hid just enough to make me patiently wait for a glimpse of more. When I lifted my gaze to his, the corner of his mouth had turned up in a crooked smile under his full beard.

I lifted my chin primly and spun around. When he was finished dressing I hobbled behind him outside to the post where the horse was tied. Barney hadn’t, in fact, died during the night of old age and instead had waited patiently for our return.

“You keep lookin’ at him like that, you’re going to hurt his feelings,” Gable said as he tucked the nearly empty canvas sack into one of the saddle bags. “Here.” In his outstretched hand was a sloshing canteen of water.

I drank deeply and handed it back. After he’d hoisted me split-legged into the saddle, he untied Barney and led us down the narrow stone road to the edge of town. From time to time, I’d been known to overthink things slightly, and now was no different. What did it mean that he didn’t want to ride on the horse behind me? Or that he didn’t talk for the entire trip to Liverpool? Perhaps I’d made him mad last night after all. But then why did he smile at me anytime he caught me staring?

The man was an enigma.

The ride took longer than the few promised hours because Gable let Barney snatch a mouth full of grass from the side of the road whenever he got the urge. My imaginings of Gable as being a demon the night he’d saved me were almost laughable. A horse wouldn’t show such devotion to an evil man.

I hadn’t been to Liverpool since I was a child on a trip with my parents. It had changed drastically from my schoolgirl memories. New buildings had sprung up on nearly every street and as we walked the sloping roads through rows of brown brick buildings and quaint homes, it struck me that I was leaving home for a country I’d vowed never to live or even visit. Would this be my last time on English soil? A deep sadness washed through me as a darkness filled the rest of the pieces of me that hadn’t been hurt in the attack. The pieces of me that had stood strong and given me a voice in the face of such a trying time. I was losing myself. My family was all gone and now my country would be too. I’d turn into something I didn’t recognize. Nothing was left of my old life, and the loss was a solid weight against my shoulders.

The air was filled with salt and sea and as we drew closer to the shopping district, I could almost make out the sound of the ocean. A chill remained in the air, but Gable had been right. I became used to it somewhere on the road between Doc’s quiet home and here. The hustle and bustle of masses of people became denser the closer to port we traveled. Markets selling wares and food, and men hauling carts of goods behind great, barrel-chested horses filled the streets. Everywhere I turned, men carried huge sacks to be delivered to the ships that waited silently at port for their next sea adventure. My boat, the Anna Gale, was probably waiting out there in the lapping Atlantic waters right now.

At a small stable, Gable pulled my waist and lifted me slowly until I could bear weight on the bad hip. He leaned forward until my cheek was against his chest and pulled the gnarled cane from the saddle bags.

“You buy horses?” he asked a filthy stable boy.

“Yes, sir.” He jerked his head toward the sloped road that led to port. “Make a good business on selling to the immigrants who get off the ships.”

“How much?” Gable asked.

The boy ran a hand over the shoulders and withers of Barney and pulled his lips away from dirty teeth. While they negotiated, I braved a gentle pet to the horse’s neck. “Thanks for getting us here safely, old chum. And for not biting me.”

His soft brown eyes studied me seriously before the stable boy led him to a tie post filled with other horses.

“Did we have to sell him?” I asked as Gable led me through the cluttered street.

“Yes. He wouldn’t last the boat ride. The Anna Gale isn’t set up for carrying livestock.”

“How do you know so much about the ship?”

“It was the same one I came over the Atlantic on. And with a little luck, she’s still run by the same captain.”

“You don’t know for certain who will be taking me across the ocean?” All right, I was starting to panic a little.

“That’s what we’re going to find out.”

We weaved in and out of the rushing crowd until we came to an ale house. A stacked row of fat, white chickens clucked away in wooden cages out front, and a dog sat tied to a lantern post. It growled and snarled viciously, and I pulled away with a ready scream. Gable threw the animal a narrow-eyed glare and said something deep in his throat that didn’t quite reach my ears. The aggression left the dog immediately, and his tail tucked between his legs.

“Come on,” he said.

“I’m not going in there. It says men only on the sign.”

He arched an eyebrow significantly at a whore who bustled past us and into the fine establishment.

“Well, I’m not some saloon girl,” I grumbled, but let him pull me anyway.

Inside, the mass of bodies was overwhelming. Every table was taken up with drinking, stinking, cursing men and cigar smoke clung to the air like a fog. I held the back of my hand delicately over my nose to try and chase away the stench of unwashed man as Gable scanned the ruffian crowd. His gaze settled on a dark-haired man in the corner. His hair was long and straight and he wore some kind of printed cloth around his head. His beard had been shaved into a curious curving pattern and his dark eyes danced merrily across the bosoms of the women who hung all over him.

Gable slammed his hand against the table in front of him and everyone within earshot froze. The man seemed startled into stillness for a moment before a genuine grin spread across the entirety of his face. Gable was smiling too and the man jumped up and clapped him on the back.

The man’s accent was thick and from a language I hadn’t a guess at. “My friend, I thought I’d never see the likes of you again. What are you doing here?”

Gable leaned forward. “Need a word in private, if you don’t mind.”

“Come.” He led us to a storage room in back stacked with casks of cheap whiskey.

“Kelley,” Gable said. “This is my woman.” He gestured to me. “This is Captain Kelley.”

Kelley’s dark eyes hardened. “Does your woman have a name?”

“No.”

“I see. You need a favor then.”

“Same favor as last time but she needs to make it to Boston Harbor, too.”

The exotic looking man frowned and crossed his arms. “How’d you know I’d be in port today, Mr. Dawson?”

“You were always my backup plan for escape, Kelley. You’re the best.”

“Mmm.” He said it carefully, but his eyes twinkled with the compliment. He ran a glance over me like he was sizing up livestock. “The Anna Gale isn’t set up to transport people and especially not ladies. It would be quite an inconvenience on my part to keep her safe, if you get my meaning.”

“Give him the ring,” Gable said.

“The ring? But I thought you said not until we get to Boston.”

“The ring,” he repeated. After I handed it to him, he told Kelley, “You can’t sell this on British soil, my friend. It’ll bring harm to everyone it touches.”

He held the glistening diamond up to the dusty light and nodded. “Is it cursed?”

“You know I don’t know nothin’ about curses. It’ll just lead a bad man to her. And he’ll plow right through anyone in his way, you catch my drift?”

“That I can deal with. Fine. I’ll ship your goods safely to Boston Harbor. We take on cargo at dark in the same place we dropped you off the first time. Now, go put a good meal in your woman. It’s hard tack from here on out,” he sang as he left the room.

I hadn’t any idea what hard tack was but it sounded inedible. My hands shook more with every hour that passed and brought me closer to separation from Gable. I hadn’t known him long, and we hadn’t spent much time together while I was healing at Doc’s house, but I felt a connection I couldn’t explain. Maybe it was that he called me his woman with such confidence, or perhaps it was because he was working so hard to keep me safe. Maybe it was this innate instinct that told me he was the kind of honorable man who’d throw himself in front of a bullet to spare me more pain. Whatever it was, I didn’t look forward to boarding the boat without him. My clinging attachment to the near stranger was unsettling, to say the least.

The streets had only become busier with our short absence and the crowd pressed in all around us until I’d surely suffocate. Gable led me to a row of canvas covered tents that housed patrons selling small wares. The store at the end sold a variety of breads, pastries, and meats to the passersby. He ordered enough to fill a small sack and pointed me toward a stone ledge overlooking the port and out of the way of foot traffic.

The air was thick with the smell of fish and brine and the moist wind lifted a lock of my hair that had fallen from its pins. I fastened it under the bonnet and glanced around to see if anyone had seen the fair tress. Would I ever get over the paranoia of being watched and hunted? Gable patted my leg and I settled. The only place I had a chance of it would be in his town in the country, an ocean away from everything I’d ever known.

It was so peaceful here on the wall with my feet dangling lazily in the breeze. The clatter of human activity hummed behind us, and the sound of waves and sea birds sounded in front—two great forces colliding over the weather-beaten shore. The boats that lined the imposing docks were enormous and I scanned the names to try and find the Anna Gale. None were my boat.

Wooden planks attached the boats to land and swayed with the waves while sea men clambered aboard carrying supplies and cargo. One man was carrying a woman over his shoulder like a sack of beans. I frowned. “Why wasn’t Captain Kelley helping load his ship? If we’re meant to sail tonight, what is he doing in a whore house?” I asked.

“The Anna Gale isn’t a merchant ship. She doesn’t take as long to load.”

“Oh.” I bit into my braided pesto bread. It was easily the best thing I’d eaten in as long as I could remember.

Passengers lined up to board a ship and signed their names to a ledger on the dock. A man in glasses and a funny black hat smiled and talked to them as they added their names to ship’s rosters. Children, wild with excitement ran up and down the planks and harried mothers and fathers reprimanded them. Their antics lightened the weight on my heart. If children could make the journey, then so could I.

Crumbs flew from the fabric of my dress as I fluffed it, and filled to the brim, I handed Gable my last wooden skewer of pork, which he ate void of hesitation. He wore a thin red shirt under a threadbare vest with a black hat that boasted a small brim. Even bearded and in a pauper’s clothes he was alluring. His height and breadth of shoulder said he hadn’t missed a meal in his life. I’d seen how people looked at him. Some crossed the thin streets to escape his path, while others openly stared. Whatever the reaction, the man undeniably drew people’s attention.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked.

His brows drew down in confusion. “Because you’re my woman.”

“Yes but what benefit does that give you? You’ll never marry me. You don’t have an intimate relationship with me. Why risk your life on a woman you barely know?”

He was quiet for a long time. So long that I thought he wouldn’t answer. I leaned back on my locked arms and lost myself in the deep blue of the sea.

“If something happened to you, it would hurt.” He placed his hand over his chest and inhaled deeply. Honesty crept into every syllable. “I don’t care about that other stuff right now as long as you exist.” He leaned forward on hands that gripped the edge of the wall and looked away.

My insides churned. I knew what he meant. If something happened to him, I’d break too. I didn’t know him very well but that didn’t matter. Even in his confusing way of explaining feelings, I understood. I saw him.

“Swear to me you’ll be careful,” I said. If he was getting to America by means that weren’t safe for me, I wasn’t at all confident he wouldn’t get hurt in his travels, or worse.

“You worried about me?”

I stood and brushed sand and dust from my skirts. “No, but it would be terribly awkward if I showed up to your parents’ house without you.”

He offered his arm and we strolled slowly toward the make-shift shopping district near port. Offered at the market were any and all supplies one could need for any length of journey. Gable assured me food would be taken care of, but he bought enough breads, cakes, and smoked meats to last until they started to rot. Enough food to binge for a week and a half. He pressed the food gently into a large canvas sack and hefted it over his shoulder. Next he paid for a small looking glass I’d taken a fancy to, a sewing kit, a bar of rose soap, and a large knife tucked into an animal hide sheath. The last one bothered me, but I suppose it was a wise idea for me to carry some sort of defensive weapon on a ship full of sailors. The handle lay limply in my hand and he pulled me to the side of the street and gave me a quick lesson on the finer points of stabbing someone. I imagined Ralston at the end of my blade.

Gable pressed a small coin purse of money into the palm of my hand. “Use this to get you to the address I gave you when you get to Boston Harbor. Don’t wait for me at port. I’ll meet you at the house.”

I pushed the small cache into my hidden pocket with shaking fingers. The rest of my trinkets along with the knife fit into one of my big pockets. Admittedly, the comforting weight of the blade did make me feel safer.

Two small boys begged coins from Gable and he leaned down and pulled a shilling from behind one’s ear like magic. He grinned at me when they asked him to do it again and handed the coin back. I laughed and continued looking at the tables of offered goods.

“Lucianna?” a woman asked.

Automatically from a habit of answering to my name since birth, I looked up to find Mrs. Tabernathy, lifelong friend to Mother, waving frantically to me. Gable was nowhere to be found and my heart pounded as I searched for an escape. I backed up and into the considerable weight of Mr. Tabernathy.

“It is you,” he said. “Sarah swore up and down it was you but I told her she was seeing ghosts again.” He grabbed my escaping shoulder. “My dear, everyone thinks you’re dead.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but you have me mistaken for someone else.” Where was Gable? The masses roiled around us and faces blurred together in my panic. Mrs. Tabernathy caught up and hugged me until I thought my bindings would burst.

“We have to tell everyone back in London you’re still alive. Ho!” she hailed to a passing man in a uniform.

“No! No, no, we don’t. I don’t know of whom you’re speaking ma’am, but I’m not who you think I am.”

I yanked but Mr. Tabernathy’s grip into my collar bone was like steel. He was spry for an old man.

“Ralston will be so relieved to hear you are alive, Lucianna,” he said through a steely gaze as he helped his wife hail the officer. “It’s unkind of you to let your fiancé mourn you like this.”

“Please, sir. I’m begging you to unhand me. You’re hurting me.”

The officer had found a uniformed friend and they weaved through the crowd toward us.

“Let me go!” I shoved Mr. Tabernathy as hard as I could and hobbled through a hole in the passersby. I didn’t look back or hesitate, I just ran for my life.

Frantically searching for a familiar face, movement caught my attention from a brick shingled roof. How in creation had Gable managed to get up there? He waved me toward an ally and I bolted for it as fast as my cane would allow. Pain screeched through me but I couldn’t slow down now. Whistles trilled out around me and terror snaked down my spine as I gasped for air. Gable was close. He hung from a roof with his hand outstretched. It was my salvation if only I could get there in time. I pushed my legs faster as the sound of men’s voices entered the ally.

“Miss! Stop right there! Stop!”

I didn’t stop until I heard the crack of a pistol being cocked. I skidded to a stop and threw my hands up. The cane clattered to the muddy street. “Please don’t shoot me,” I stammered. I couldn’t feel that kind of pain again.

Gable’s face was frozen in some unreadable expression and I closed my eyes against his disappointment. I was a coward. I turned to find twenty men, both uniformed and not, in the mouth of the alley. The man with the gun approached and ripped my bonnet off to expose my unusual hair.

“I’ll be damned,” he said through a foul, yellow smile. “It’s her. Somebody let Mr. Bastrop know we got her.”

Chapter Seven

Lucianna

What was I going to do? Bars covered the window of my tiny prison cell which, as it happened, was my only way to tell how late in the day it was becoming. I’d paced frantically for hours but it hadn’t slowed time. Shadows had lengthened and the sun had disappeared over the horizon and left the deep blue of evening in its absence. I was going to miss the boat. I would miss my chance at freedom—at survival.

There was no doubt Ralston was on his way this very moment. If he were in London, it would buy a little time but not much. He wouldn’t leave my death in the hands of others the second time around. I’d led him on a delightful chase. One a hunter waits a lifetime for. He’d make sure I was thoroughly dead this time.

I wrung my hands and stood on my tiptoes to see through the bars again. The side of a red brick building gaped back at me. In the sky, a star had popped up since my last lap around the cage the British officers had hurried me to. I’d grossly underestimated Ralston’s reach.

Three of my jailers sat around a small table playing cards by candle light. They laughed and joked about the handsome reward they’d get when Mr. Bastrop arrived. It made me sick to my stomach. They didn’t know it yet, but they were selling their souls for a few pounds.

The front door creaked open and in stepped a finely dressed man in a powdered wig. The officers stopped their game and stood to greet him.

“I have it under good authority you have my client detained without any formal charges being brought.” The man smiled patiently. “I’m her lawyer, you see.”

“We don’t need charges on this one, sir,” one of the officers answered. “She’s a suspect in the murder of her family.”

“Oh, I see. And there’s evidence enough to bring charges?”

“Well, no.”

I pressed my face against the bars and squinted. My so-called lawyer looked vaguely familiar. He gave me a dark eyed wink as the officers quibbled. The intricate patterns of his beard had been shaved into smoothness and he’d powdered his eyebrows into a grayish and dull color. He’d found a fine silk suit somewhere, but under that pompous powdered wig was the dark hair of Captain Kelley. I would’ve laughed if my situation weren’t so dire. His accent had been lost somewhere along the way and he now held an impressive English one, if I did say so myself. He carried an air of authority right down to his pointed leather shoes.

“Luc,” Gable whispered from the window.

“What are you—”

“Shhh. I’m getting you out of here. This is going to make some noise. Look bored.”

I draped my arms across the bars of my iron cage and kept my eyes carefully forward on the argument Captain Kelley had started between the officers. He stood there with dancing eyes that said he was thoroughly enjoying himself.

At the sound of metal on brick, the officers turned as one. They couldn’t see the window from their vantage point but the scraping of my escape was noisy enough. I shifted my weight and scuffed the toe of my boot soundly against the bar. “Are you going to let me out sometime tonight or do my lawyer and I really have to listen to you figure out how many laws you’re breaking?”

“I’m not leaving without my client, gentlemen!” Captain Kelley yelled, and as the officers turned back to argue with him I slipped to the window and Gable pulled me out like he was lifting a hat box. His strength and speed were stunning, but there was no time to overanalyze it.

“Hurry,” he urged me.

My hair was loose and flowing down my back in gnarled tendrils and he clapped a wide brimmed hat over my head in an instant. My cane was probably still in a mud puddle in the alley I’d been arrested, but apparently I didn’t need it. Gable scooped me up and ran like I was weightless.

Down narrow side streets and lanternless ally’s he ran. All I could do was clutch my hat and cover my face from the surprised passersby who jumped out of our way. We ran for hours, or what seemed like, and when the brine filled every inch of the air once again, I peeked out. We weren’t at the port like I’d thought but at a small pebbled beach. Two ratty row boats and three men talking quietly were the only things to grace the edge of the lapping waves. A large wooden crate sat beside the far boat and without stopping, Gable set me in the first skiff.

Despite the run that would’ve brought other men to their knees, his breathing was barely even accelerated. “Over there is the Anna Gale.”

Two of the men pulled out oars and began to push off.

“Wait, don’t I need to sign a roster or something?”

The moonlight shimmered off the shock in his expression. “Yes, if you want Bastrop to know exactly where you’ve gone. Besides, this ain’t one of those big merchant ships. This one is better at staying out of sight.”

“Sounds illegal.”

Captain Kelley came crashing through the brush with the biggest grin plastered on his gasping mouth. He hunched over and sucked air like a landed fish and laughed. His wig and clothes had disappeared along with his English accent. “We sure got those pot gutted land lubbers, didn’t we?”

Gable clapped him on the back and smirked despite the worry on his face. “They’ll be searching every inch of port and sea for her. You’d better push off soon.”

“Boys, take her to the Anna Gale. I’ll follow shortly with our final cargo.”

“Aye, Captain,” the one in the front of my oar boat said.

Gable knelt beside me and searched my eyes for a moment before his lips crashed down against mine. I was shocked into stillness. His hand found my jaw and his thumb rubbed a lazy circle against my cheek as I softened against him. His mouth turned to silk and he sucked gently on my bottom lip, as if he were drinking a fine wine. My chest heaved against his and as the seconds stretched on, I prayed he’d never leave my lips to the chill of night air. I’d never kissed a man before and I certainly hadn’t ever imagined doing so in front of a rowdy group of likely pirates, but Gable was consuming. His jaw worked as his teeth grazed the closed seam of my lips, and I wanted more. Wantonly, I angled my head and opened for him, then clutched his shirt helplessly as his tongue brushed mine with languid strokes. The warmth inside of me spread until surely I’d burn up with the wanting.

He pulled away with a pained sound and rested his forehead against mine. “Remember, go straight to the address I gave you when you get to Boston Harbor. I’ll find you there.”

I unclenched my fists from his shirt and breathlessly, I said, “Promise?”

He leaned forward on the balls of his feet on the pebbled shore, holding my hand as the row boat pulled away. At the moment our fingers parted, he said, “I promise.”

He stood on the beach beside the captain until the darkness swallowed them up. My heart lurched with every row of the oars that placed waves in between him and me. I wasn’t entirely sure I’d ever see him again and the fear broke apart something in me that I’d managed to keep whole until now. Silent tears streaked down my cheeks as we drew up beside the Anna Gale. One of the men hauled my two small bags Gable must’ve stowed in the row boat, and the other helped me climb the treacherous rope ladder that scaled the side of the ship.

My arms shook with the effort of hauling myself upward on that flimsy rope, and my lungs burned as I gasped the briny air.

The deck was amiss with the chaos of sailors readying for sea. Ropes were tied and pulled, knotted and thrown. A man sat comfortably on a rafter high above, readying a sail. The murmured chatter of the workmen ceased when I fumbled on board.

“Oy,” the seaman beside me yelled out. “Just a stowaway, boys. Get back to work then!” He was a short man with a slight build and when he smiled, half of his teeth were missing. “Name’s Cyrus Dreck. The hands just call me Dreck. I’m Captain Kelley’s first mate, so’s if you need anything and he’s busy, you come to me.”

“Thank you, Dreck.”

“This way, milady. I’ll show you to your quarters and then I must get back to the men. A little birdie told me you’re being chased by something fearsome. Best we get out of port the second the Captain boards, yes? Now, I don’t know what Captain Kelley’s told you, but the Anna Gale isn’t equipped for passengers, and especially the kind of your…” He looked me up and down. “Merit,” he finished with a snaggle-toothed smile. “Living arrangements won’t be up to snuff, but that ain’t the point far as I hear it. The point’s to get you to the Americas safely, am I right?”

“You’re correct, Sir. Whatever living arrangements you have will be fine, I’m sure.”

He puffed out his chest and said, “Smashing,” in a hoity-toity tone.

He led me to a steep stairwell and I clung to the rope handrail for balance on my pained hip. The boat rocked to and fro and as I sank deeper into the belly of the ship, panic washed over me like the drizzle of rain. Dreck lit a lantern and hung it from a rope tied to the ceiling. It swayed gently with the rocking of the waves. “Careful with these, milady,” he warned. “Don’t want to be lighting the ship on fire out in the middle of the sea.”

Note to self: I’d need to learn to see in the dark.

The rolling lantern light washed over row after row of wooden casks. “Is this what you’re shipping?”

“The best whiskey money can buy. We’ve boxes of fine French wine in the back over there as well.” He pointed to a hammock attached to the ceiling. “That’s where you’ll sleep. You’ll get used to the motion of the ocean eventually, and hanging in the air will keep you from rolling out of bed. We sleep in ones similar but all the boys sleep in the same room like a barrel of packed fish. Captain thought you’d be more comfortable with a space of your own. He’ll put down strict orders for the men not to mess with you, so if they get too handsy, you come to him or me. We’ll throw them overboard.” He dropped my bags under the hammock and shimmied back up the ladder.

The boat rocked and lurched and the wood of the hull creaked rhythmically. Outside the waves splashed against the bottom and created a sea song that would be the new rhythm to my life for the next several weeks. Above me, men yelled and clomped against the deck and as I sat to take in the very real path my life had taken, a shadow covered the moonlight from above.

“Easy,” a man said. He grunted under the weight of the huge wooden crate that had decorated the shore.

A snarl that lifted the hairs all over my body filled the small storage room, and as two burly men descended the stairs with a caged animal, I scurried farther away from the metal cage they dragged it to. Iron bars, much like my recent prison, ran the length of one of the walls. The door screeched and clanged as one of the men kicked it open and slid the crate inside.

“Back,” the bearded giant bellowed to the other. He kicked a latch on the wooden crate and backed out of the cage. He jammed the iron bar into place over the door and turned to leave.

“Excuse me?” I asked in a voice no louder than a mouse’s.

“What?” he demanded.

I poked a finger at the cage and squeaked, “What’s that?”

“That, milady, is a very good reason not to go putting your fingers through the iron bars if you value them. Happy sleeping.”

The chains of the anchor rubbed against the ship as it was hoisted away from its bed in the sand but it still wasn’t enough to drown out the animal’s snarling. The wooden door of the crate fell down with a muted thud and out slunk a huge, white wolf.

“Oh, dear,” I breathed as I crept back against the wall. “This can’t be happening.”

Why on earth would anyone want to ship a wolf across the ocean? Maybe if I closed my eyes and opened them again, he’d be gone. Nope, still here and staring at me like I’d probably taste delicious. He was lanky with paws so huge, the black claws that clicked across the wooden floor boards had to be the width of my little finger. There was no color variation to his coat. Just a gray so light it looked white. His nose was black to match his eyelids, and his eyes were the most unsettling color of icy blue. When he pulled his lips back from glistening white teeth to growl at me, his ears laid back and his face morphed into a ferocious snarl. I blinked hard again with the same result. Closing my eyes wasn’t going to banish the animal from my life.

The boat rocked and made a slow, wide turn and I pressed my hand against the wall to steady my land legs not used to the embrace of the waves. The wolf splayed his feet and lost his snarling focus on me. Pacing the cage and pressing his nose through the bars as far as he could manage took his attention away from delectable looking me. Maybe he’d get used to my presence.

I moved away from the wall and he gnashed his teeth at me.

Or maybe not.

Sleeping in here would probably be a delightful experience riddled with fear and night terrors. What had Gable been thinking when he planned for the safest place for me? It couldn’t be in the hull of a pirate’s ship within feet of a wild wolf, surely.

I was tired, and utterly alone, and my stitches hurt in thirty different ways and now I was having a staring contest with a feral animal. And sadly, this wasn’t even the worst day of my life. A pathetic whimper escaped me as I slumped onto a box of pilfered French wine. I picked up one of the bags Gable packed and pulled it to my chest with the intentions of cradling it like the stuffed lamb I had as a child. The odd shape of the canvas sack, however, prevented my affection.

I frowned and pulled the drawstrings open. Inside sat a loose leaf drawing journal and a bundle of feathered pens of various sizes. The weight of a vial of ink and small box of charcoal clung to the bottom. I drew back the thin, wooden cover and writing was sprawled across the first page in heavy, hurried hand.

Luc,

I’m sorry I wasn’t there in time today. I wanted to surprise you with this but when I looked up, you were gone. I found the drawings you did of your brother in Doc’s house and thought you could use something to take up time while you’re on the ship.

Gable

He’d seen the drawings I’d done of Bryant? When? Had he looked at them while I was sleeping in Doc’s cottage? I wanted to feel violated, but he’d given me a gift as a direct result of his findings. I reread the letter. That’s where he’d gone off to earlier. Gable hadn’t abandoned me. He was purchasing a meaningful gift and everything went wrong in a bout of impeccably bad timing. I touched my lips with the tips of bare fingers. He’d kissed me because he cared about me. Not because of what I looked like or how prominent my name. The wolf sat down and cocked its head to the side.

“What’re you looking at?” I grumbled, turning away until my back was to him.

The cool wood of the ship pressed against my cheek and I hugged the little book to me. His thoughtful note and gift would get me through the trials to come. I wished I’d given him a token of my affection back, but something told me he didn’t need it. He’d unwaveringly called me his woman since the day he met me. I didn’t have a clue what that meant, but he felt strongly enough about me that he’d risked everything to save my miserable life, to break me out of that jail, and get me aboard a boat safely.

I wasn’t alone anymore thanks to his letter.

I had a piece of my stranger.

Chapter Eight

Lucianna

Every time the boat rocked, my hammock would come terrifyingly close to the wolf’s cage. He waited with his muzzle through the bars like I was a pig in a blanket dangled temptingly above him. The sleep I did manage involved dreams of him gnawing off my arm while I slumbered. All in all, it was a relaxing first night on the Anna Gale. Was it too soon to start marking off my days with white chalk against the wall of the hull?

It had taken a significant amount of time to figure out how to pour my stiffened body into the hanging cocoon in the first place, and getting out of it proved just as difficult. My hands and knees hit the unforgiving floorboards and I yelled out. I rubbed the sore spots but it didn’t help like I’d hoped. The wolf only stared with one side of his lip drawn up enough for me to see a few of his weapons. He jerked his head well before a shadow thieved the early morning light from the doorway above.

“Hello,” Captain Kelley yelled down. “Are you decent?”

“Yes,” I called.

“Pity.” He jumped over the last three stairs with a thud. “Cook made breakfast and I wrangled some away from the men before they ate it all. Here.” He set the plate on top of one of the boxes of wine. “Find me when you’re done and I’ll give you the grand tour of my Anna Gale.”

“Thank you for coming to help save me last night.”

“Don’t mention it. No really, don’t. I have a reputation to uphold. Besides, I haven’t had that much fun in a week, at least.” He frowned at the snarling wolf. “Gable was always fun to find trouble with.”

Salted pork and fried eggs covered the plate and I ate them quickly in my rush to see the ship. A quick look in my small mirror and a splash of canteen water over my face and I was ready to brave walking past the wolf in my journey to the steep wooden steps that would lead me to sea air soaked daylight. I didn’t have to worry about wearing my hat on the boat. I couldn’t hide my hair when the wind would steal the covering from me the first chance it got to throw a hefty gust my way.

The deck was awash with the furious movement of working sailors. One man sat on the deck with an awl and repaired a ripped sail, while another slid down a rope from the rafters above. The men worked like a well-oiled machine but when I stepped out on deck, the working pieces came to a screeching halt.

Captain Kelley and Dreck stood on a landing beside an enormous wooden wheel and when he saw me, the dark-haired man waved. “Listen up,” he yelled out as he launched himself down the small staircase.

Dreck let out an earsplitting whistle and the crew stopped their mutterings.

Fifteen men gathered closer and Kelley wrapped his arm a little too comfortably around my shoulders. “Boys, this is our honored guest, Gertrude, who will be accompanying us to the Americas.”

One of the men flopped his head to the side and raised his eyebrow. “Is your name really Gertrude?”

“No,” I said. He really could’ve picked a prettier name.

“You can call her Gertie if you’d like, Werther.”

“Sir, I seem to remember it being bad luck to bring a woman on a ship,” another said.

“Ach,” Kelley said, waving his hand. “You said the same thing about bringing the twins on, and about shipping the cursed jewels of Antonia and about a hundred other worries that brought us nothing but money, you superstitious old glub. If women are in fact bad luck on a ship, then how do all those fancy rigged passenger boats stay afloat, hmmm?” He pulled a knife from his belt and picked at his teeth with the end.

“I can see’s your point,” the man said to the relaxed chuckle of the others.

I stretched away from the shining blade.

“Now! Betty, here belongs to an important man who’s paid us well to get her to Boston Harbor safely.”

“Gertrude,” I muttered.

“Right, Lizzy here is to make it ashore untouched and unmolested and that means you Stanford, you creepy handsy bastard.”

The Stanford in question shrugged his shoulders unapologetically.

Kelley pointed his knife at the crowd. “If she’s abused in any way, I’ll slit your neck and feed you to the sea monsters, you savvy?” His voice had grown cold and serious.

Nods and ‘yes sirs’ peppered the deck. Kelley’s good natured smile returned and he yelled up to the front of the ship. “Dreck, you take the wheel for a few minutes. I’m going to show this fine lady around our humble abode.”

The men dispersed as Kelley led me toward a small herd of chickens clucking idly around the upper deck. “Everyone on the ship works, and your job will be to tend to the wolf chow. Feed them in the mornings, collect any eggs they lay and give them to Cook before he starts breakfast. When the seas get rough, they’ll need to be crated and stashed below deck. The stupid creatures couldn’t dodge a wave if their lives depended on it. Crate them nightly to be safe.”

I’d never in my life touched a chicken. “How do I get them into a crate?”

Kelley reached out and snatched one around the wings and tossed it in a nearby, wooden barred box. “Like so. It’ll take some practice, but you’ll get the hang of it before we see land again. Every third night, you throw one of the hens into the wolf’s cage.”

“For him to eat?”

“He isn’t going to live on air and water, Florence. If we run out of chickens before we hit dry land, we’ll give him fish.”

“How long will it take to reach Boston Harbor?”

He squinted up to the pink streaked sky. “There’s no way to tell for certain but if the weather holds, I’d say around six weeks. Maybe less if we get lucky with the winds.”

Six weeks. Six long weeks until I’d see Gable again.

Under the wheel was the captain’s quarters and below deck was the crew’s room. Rows of hammocks dotted the small space and a smelly chamber pot graced the corner.

Kelley waggled his eyebrows. “Bet you’re glad we put you in the wine and wolf den now, aren’t you?”

It was a close match.

He showed me the kitchen and introduced me to Cook, who was a threadbare and emaciated looking old man with a big butcher knife in his hand to accompany his big, toothless grin.

“Don’t let his looks fool you, miss. He’s capable in the kitchen and you’re going to thank your lucky stars we have him when the perishables disappear. He’s a creative man with the hard tack, that one.”

“Are you a pirate?”

“A pirate,” he said with a nervous laugh. His eyes darted around and his voice lowered considerably. “No and best not to be saying those words around here. It doesn’t pay to be a pirate anymore. In case you haven’t noticed, not many of them survived the purging. Humble thieves is all we are. We don’t loot other ships or dig for buried treasure. Strictly import and export business for the Anna Gale and her crew.”

“Why are you importing a wolf to America?” I whispered.

“Ah, you fancy him do you? Beautiful animal, that one. The man who owns him is an odd fellow and will be sorely happy to have him back when we get to shore. We’ve shipped many oddities over the years, but that one is probably our strangest haul. Don’t get bitten.”

That might be easily done if my hammock wasn’t hanging over its snapping jaws.

“I’d best be getting back to it. Wind to find and maps to read.” He bowed gallantly. “Welcome aboard my ship, Martha.”

I tried not to roll my eyes as he turned with a flourish and made his way back to the helm of the ship.

The eyes of the crew brought an unsettled feeling to my already rolling stomach. I’d never been on a ship before, and I swayed back and forth across the deck as I made my way back to the storage room. Becoming sick in front of all of the crew? Unsavory. Getting sick in front of the wolf? Not so bad.

After hours of trying to calm my roiling stomach, I clutched a wooden bucket like it was my last friend on earth and rocked with the gentle push and pull of the sea. If I was going to feel like this for well over a month, it was going to be a miserable time. Maybe I’d get used to the waves like the wolf would have to get used to my presence. The man who owned him must be insane. I exhaled in a puff. Owned wasn’t quite the word to apply to a wild animal. A man could own that wolf like he owned the air he breathed.

I was able to keep down very little in the days that followed. My beloved canteen was my only friend and I found a little ease in the hammock. In time, the wolf settled. After all he couldn’t growl for days on end. On the third day, I’d weakly trapped a chicken and tossed the poor thing into the cage. Its death chant brought another bout of nausea. Kelley and the crew didn’t come to check on me and thank heavens for small blessings. I didn’t want anyone to see me like this.

Cook turned out to be a kind man with a generous heart, and he brought me plates of food in the middle of each day. He said, I had to keep trying. Or crying. His gummy words were a little hard to understand on that one.

It was a week before I could stand without help again and sometime during my sickness, my hip had the break it needed to heal. It still hurt like the dickens, but I didn’t need a cane anymore. My gait would likely always be hobbled, but a part of me found the relief in the inability to be perfect anymore. My perceived perfection had lost me everything that meant anything. Through the tragedy, I’d been damaged, and good riddance.

On the fifteenth day, I began to draw on the paper Gable had given me. My brother’s face was always first out of the charcoal and I smudged it with my thumb to get the shadows of his smile just right. Sometimes, I drew him in our country garden with his back to me, and sometimes I drew just his dark eyes twinkling at something he’d found amusing. His tragedy had been the biggest. He was so young. I would have given anything, anything at all, to die in his place. The reasons I’d been spared and not him were unattainable and frustratingly so. My bullets had sang through me and killed him. I’d been helpless to stop fate from taking what it wanted, and a black fury rose up in me in these hours and days and weeks alone.

I couldn’t stop crying some days. I lay in my hammock and clutched my pictures of Bryant like some weak, mewling thing. The wolf’s ever-watchful eyes never left me for long, but I’d grown used to it. It was on one of these dark days that something shifted.

A tear slid down the corner of my eye as I swayed gently on my side in the hanging bed. The wolf lay with his head on his paws and just as an inescapable sniffle came from me, he let out the softest whine.

He hadn’t moved so maybe I’d just imagined it, but when I let out a shaky breath, he did it again. Eyes the color of a first winter’s frost stared back at me. Perhaps I’d forgot to feed him and he was hungry. No, he’d had a meal last night. His water dish was still full, so what? Was he sick? Was he lonely like me, trapped in the cage of a similar, tragic life?

I sat and rolled skillfully from the hammock. Usually he snarled at me if I got this close, but his head stayed relaxed and down. I snatched a strip of dried fish from my unfinished plate and held it well away from the bars. He lifted his head and licked the side of his lips before he whined again. Scuttling forward in a low crouch, I got as close as I dared and tossed the fish to him. With one gigantic paw he pulled the strip of meat through the cage and mouthed it lazily.

“My brother, Bryant, would’ve loved you. In fact, he would’ve loved this entire, crazy adventure we’re on right now.” Moisture from the wooden planks below me seeped into the backside of my dress but I didn’t care. Here lay a creature that had to listen to all of my sordid story without a chance at escape or judgment. He didn’t even look as if he minded. His ears twitched when I spoke again. “He always begged for a dog of his own, but Mother wouldn’t allow one in the house. She didn’t want a dog shedding all over her fine furniture.”

The wolf gave a low growl and lolled his tongue out to the side.

“Oh, you don’t think you shed? I’m almost certain you do.”

And so a tentative relationship was forged. He became an unlikely ear to soothe my heartache and in exchange, I shared my food.

Eventually, he began to whine when I left the room to fulfill my meager duties on deck, or when I’d sit up top to sketch ocean scenes. From time to time, he’d even wag his tail slowly back and forth when I returned with that serious, wild expression of his. His near kindness was only for me, as the vicious wolf reemerged whenever any of the crew came down into his territory. He would lunge and snap at the bars until his face bled red on white fur. But for me he became calm, as if he waited for something I hadn’t the instinct or knowledge to give.

I used charcoal the first time I drew him and smudged in the dark background, leaving only his silhouette the white color of the paper. The first few drawings were of a ferocious beast, but over time, and as I grew comfortable sketching my new muse, a subtle shift in the way I saw him changed his pictures. I drew the expression on his face when I came through the door, or the one he got when Cook brought me a plate of food. Or the lonely one that drifted over his furred face when I cried late at night because the homesickness got so deep I thought I’d drown in it.

Slowly, agonizingly slowly, the pieces of my soul that had broken apart like a shattered looking glass that night in the fog mended itself. It was still fractured and weak, as it likely always would be, but it was whole again. The journey to heal mattered, but the progress mattered more.

Chapter Nine

Lucianna

The temptation to reach out and touch my wild friend was consuming.

A month had passed with only a handful of small storms. The crew had become used to my presence and I’d conformed to the rhythm of the ship. As I sat here in the dim lantern light, talking softly to the animal like it could understand human words, I imagined what it would feel like to run my fingers through his thick fur. Was it soft or coarse? Would it be warm like a blanket?

I rang the water from my dress and hung it to dry on a length of rope. One of the barrels of fresh water wasn’t safe to drink anymore and Captain Kelley had thoughtfully given it to me in light of dumping it overboard. I’d boiled it and used it to wash the only dress I had to my name. Removing the last of the bandages to expose mostly healed red scars, I tossed them to the side and reached for the bar of rose scented soap. With a rag, I washed every inch of my body until my skin tingled and shone like an egg shell. The wolf watched my every move but that didn’t bother me. He had no way of telling anyone about my indecency. Into a separate bucket, I rinsed and soaped and cleaned my hair. Already, I felt like a woman again. It was amazing the difference a bar of soap and water could make to the quality of my life.

It was when I let my damp hair fall down my back and reached for a robe that the wolf lifted his head with a chilling growl. It rumbled deep in his throat as boot steps echoed down the stairwell. I only had time to clench the thin shift in front of my body before Dreck ducked into the room. The wolf launched at the bars and came close to clawing his leg but the gap toothed man stood wisely out of his reach.

My voice shook like the flickering lantern. “Sir, I ask that you leave right now.”

His eyes hadn’t managed to make it up to my face and distractedly he said, “I was just coming down here to check on the cargo.”

Lies. His smirk didn’t even try to hide the false note in his voice. The snarling and snapping of the wolf behind him was constant as he strode slowly closer. I sidestepped in a wide, slow circle. If I could make it up the stairs and to the captain’s quarters, he’d protect me. My hands shook as he pushed me further.

“The cargo’s fine. Now leave or I’ll scream.”

Dreck’s green eyes had taken on a dreamy look. “I like it when they scream,” he said in a faraway tone.

I closed my eyes as I came within terrifyingly close distance to the caged wolf. He dodged around me, back and forth and back and forth, like he was trying to see the grinning man around my legs. Dreck lunged and grabbed my wrists and just as I opened my mouth to shriek, a boat rattling howl sang out. Dreck jumped away and I covered my ears from the close volume. The clunking of men’s boots could be heard on the deck and Dreck raced for the ladder. I ran for my sopping dress and covered my body with the dripping wetness of it. The most shadowed space in the room wasn’t nearly dark enough for my comfort.

“What’s going on here?” Captain Kelley yelled from above. “What were you doing in the storage hold?”

“Nothing, sir,” Dreck rushed out. “Just checking the cargo and the damned wolf went crazy.”

A beat of silence passed. “You okay down there, miss?” Kelley yelled.

I’d give anything for them not to pile down here and see my bare skin. Even lie through my chattering teeth. “I’m fine!”

“Dreck, I swear on my ship, if you go down into that storage hold again, you’ll hang from the riggings for it. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” he mumbled and the sound of receding boot prints rattled against the bows of the ship.

I sank to the floor as relief and fear flooded me. I was safe for now but how long would that last? The wolf whined and paced the cage.

My whisper was ragged and shaky. “Thank you.”

****

Last night had been a jarring wake up. Any one of those men had access to me at any time. Without Gable to scare the crew away, I was a juicy tomato ripe for the picking. Another chicken crate clattered into place. I couldn’t do much to defend myself but I could build a hidey hole and hope I remembered how to use the knife in my pocket on anyone who got too close. A large reed basket sat on the floor and housed the three remaining chickens. The wolf snapped lazily at some flying bug buzzing around its head and when he rolled over on his side, I could see his prominent ribs under his coat.

“You’ve lost too much weight.” Three chickens left and really, I should’ve been feeding him every two days, even with the extra food from my own plate. It was time to start begging fish from Cook. I ate lightly and scraped the rest of my plate into the corner of his cage. While he ate, I used a straw broom to scoop the picked chicken bones between the bars. Into a bucket they went and I climbed the stairs to throw them overboard. I refused to sit in the storage room for the duration of the journey just to avoid Dreck and his filthy intentions. He’d scared me badly, but he didn’t have to know that.

“Mornin’, milady,” said a leather-skinned man sewing a slit in one of the sails.

“Morning, Ewen.” I tossed the bones overboard.

“Bad weather’s comin’. Best you tie down your belongings and settle in.”

I shielded my eyes from the light that sifted through the clouds. They looked only a little darker than the white, fluffy, harmless ones. “How do you know?”

“Me trick knee’s giving fits. Trust me, miss. It’s coming.”

“All right, thanks Ewen.”

A burly man named Waldon Elridge poured over maps with the captain while Dreck pulled and tied ropes with the other men. He glared at me as I passed but I lifted my chin and walked on by. It wasn’t my fault he’d molested his way into a demotion.

“Cook, I need more food for the wolf.”

The old man chopped away at a leg of dried, salted beef. “Eggs,” he demanded.

I handed him the two in my pocket and said, “He’s getting much too skinny. He needs more to live on. Do you have any fish you can spare?”

He stopped hacking away at the beef and sighed. “I’ll have Ewen try to catch something tonight. Ask me again in the morning.”

The men burst into a fit of yelling out on deck. Cook dropped the knife and ran, and I followed him in a bewildered haze.

One of the men clung to the top of the mast. “I see a ship!” he yelled. He bounded down the sails like an exotic monkey and snatched a spying glass from another’s outstretched hand. Faster than I thought possible, he was back in position again. “It’s definitely British and coming in fast.”

Captain Kelley cursed. The clouds had darkened considerably, like trails of swirling smoke dotting the sky, and he pulled the wheel toward them.

“We’ll hit the storm head-on,” Dreck warned.

“The Anna Gale can handle the weather. Can they?”

“We won’t lose them. It’s only a matter of time,” Cook said quietly.

“Hide the cargo!” Kelley ordered. His stormy gaze crashed into mine. “Get on below and keep the wolf quiet.”

Before I’d even reached the ladder, two men pulled away the wooden lip that identified it as an opening. Ewen held a square of wooden planks that fit perfectly over the hole and when I’d gone below, he secured it into place. Stacks of extra sails and wood were thrown on top and blocked the gray light from reaching the hold. The wolf paced frantically, his nails clicking against the wooden floor. His icy blue eyes were drawn time and time again to the plugged opening. A heart-wrenching whine escaped his throat. I knew how he felt, trapped here in the belly of the ship. The gaping mouth, our only escape, had clamped closed to start our slow digestion. The walls creaked inward and threatened to close in on us until we didn’t exist anymore. I drew a ragged gasp of air. What if we suffocated down here in the dark? The wolf’s throat moved as a helpless noise escaped it.

“We have to be quiet, Wolf. Our lives depend on it.”

His wet tongue stroked my knuckles and I shrieked and fell backward. I’d been so enthralled with looking at our inability to escape, I hadn’t noticed I’d squatted by the cage and wrapped my fingers around one of the bars. And he’d chosen to lick instead of maul. He lifted his head and lowered it again, like a graceful indecisive dance as he paced. Slowly I stretched my hand toward his cage again. My fingers shook as they reached for the short fur on his muzzle. He leaned through the cage and just as I was about to touch him, the boat rocked dangerously to the side and I tumbled back. The basket of squawking chickens slid across the floor and landed against the farthest wall. The waves above pounded so relentlessly, saltwater sloshed in through the cracks of the ceiling. I hurried to steady the sliding crates.

My seasickness came back with a vengeance over the next few hours. The ship rolled and groaned and my stomach turned on me while I scurried about, trying to protect the casks and wine. I tied down anything I could with loops of rope and while my knots could use work, they got better with time and effort. I was drenched with briny water and rain that showered down upon me, and my feet sloshed through an inch already. I hadn’t any way to know how many hours we tumbled through the storm, but when the waves finally slowed to a manageable thrashing once again, daylight no longer crept through the planks of the ceiling. I blew out the lantern and waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness.

Men’s raised voices bellowed through the hold and I climbed the stairs and pressed my ear against the damp wood. Sifting through the sounds of wind and drumming boot prints, a man said, “Why, if you have nothing to hide, did you avoid us boarding your ship for the better part of a day?”

Captain Kelley’s boisterous voice spoke up. “We thought you were pirates.”

The other man didn’t sound convinced. “And the British flags we were flying didn’t give us away.”

“There’re British pirates, too. Why have you braved a storm to board our humble ship?”

“We’re looking for a murderer.”

“Ahh, fair enough. Men, out of the lot of you, have any of you ever murdered someone else?”

“Me,” said one, followed by a chorus of ayes. Cheeky thieves.

The man sighed tiredly. “The one we’re looking for is a woman. Pretty, fair hair, about yay tall.”

“Is there a reward for her?” Dreck asked.

“Is her name Florence?” Ewen asked.

“Betsy? Gertrude?” Kelley asked. “Oh! Brunehilda?”

“I think we’ll search your boat if you don’t mind.”

Captain Kelley’s voice sounded poisonous. “Be my guest.”

I shot a warning glance to the chickens who clucked contentedly in their wicker basket. The wolf had gone preternaturally still. His eyes trained on the hidden opening as if it would open at any moment. I steadied my breathing and clenched my hands to stop them trembling. From the sound of the boots above us, there were a large number of likely armed men looking for me. I sidled closer to the wolf. I couldn’t help it. Nothing else in the dark room offered any comfort. As my eyes adjusted, pale moonlight filtered through the untarred cracks of the ceiling planks. Shadows cast about as the men walked just over my head.

“Move this out of the way,” the man said. The pile of wood above me made a hollow thunking sound.

“I think you’ve torn up my boat quite enough, fellows. Best be getting back to your ships before I lose my patience. I’ve been more than accommodating to a band of off duty British officers not even in uniform, don’t you think so, boys?”

“Aye,” the crew said in unison.

“This isn’t about bringing in a murderer,” Kelley said. “Now, I don’t know who sent you, but you’ve run down the wrong ship.”

“If you knew who sent us, you’d understand our need to search every square inch of every ship we can find.”

“Sounds like your problem.” A gun clicked. “Not ours.”

The clanging of blades and swords was immediate and the blast of gunfire filled the night. The wolf scratched desperately on the ground near the door as the sails that hid us scraped against the dampened deck. I ran for my hiding place and unsheathed my blade as the door to the storage opened. A handful of men filed down into the room. They were dressed in billowing shirts and dark tanned pants and black leather riding boots that reached their knees. A man with long, blond hair pulled back into a leather band at the nape of his neck headed straight for the back of the room and right past me. The wolf scratched and clawed frantically, digging grooves into the wood by the cage door.

“Look what we have here,” a short, redheaded man said. He pointed a pistol at the wolf’s head.

“No!” I screamed. I lunged for him and plunged the knife into his shoulder up to the hilt.

His hand was a flame as it blasted against my cheek and I hurtled backward. The blond man lifted me by my hair with a cruel smile. “You’re a very valuable little stowaway, Ms. Whitlock.”

If I wasn’t a lady, I would’ve spat right in his smirking face. He pushed me forward with a painful wrench of my hair and I struggled against him. The wolf snapped and snarled as I passed and in desperation I grabbed onto the bars. He kept pulling my hair but if only I could reach the latch, the wolf would give a distraction.

I used all of my strength to pull myself forward, and I gritted my teeth against the pain of my hair separating from my scalp. My wet fingers found purchase against the slippery iron latch and I pulled with the last of my ability. I’d unlatched it but failed to open the heavy iron door. I watched my salvation slip away until the huge wolf pressed two ferocious paws against the door and shoved it opened like he’d done it a hundred times.

The long haired man released me and a strangled sound came from his throat. The wolf landed over my felled body with all four paws around me. Just as I thought he’d snap at my face, he launched through the air and landed on my attacker.

The man with my knife still buried in his shoulder lifted the pistol and I scrambled to him. For lack of any weapons, I bit his leg until my teeth threatened to shatter out of my head. I waited for a kick that didn’t come. I stared dumbfounded as he fell over. I highly doubted my blunt teeth had done that much damage. The sound of gunfire echoed through the room a split moment later and I hunched against the ear-splitting loudness. Captain Kelley stood on the ladder with a look of such elated satisfaction.

“You finally let the wolf out,” he said.

The wolf in question was nowhere to be seen. My heart jumped into my throat and I ran for the ladder. “They’ll kill him!”

Kelley’s hand stopped me from scrambling onto the deck. “He’s glorious, isn’t he?”

The wolf sailed through the air and landed against a man’s back, and as he used his huge neck muscles to shake him, he tossed him into waiting sword of Ewen. Another man sat on his knees, screaming as he clutched what looked like a bite wound on his forearm. Ralston’s men scattered and threw themselves onto row boats churning in the waters below. Bodies littered the deck and my stomach turned again. It wasn’t from the rolling waves this time, but from the loss of life that seemed to follow me. All of these men would’ve lived if they’d just given up their chase of me.

Kelley helped me out of the mouth of the ship. The sky was still dotted with storm clouds and the waves were white crested and choppy, tossing the boat like a rag doll. I splayed my legs to keep my balance and my hip screamed from its recent abuse. My cheek throbbed where the man had struck me and it would be a small miracle if all of my gunshot injuries were still closed, but I was alive. The wolf stood over the railing and watched the men flee to their ship. His lips were drawn back in a snarl and lightening cracked across the sky in the distance behind him. The wind caressed his fur until it whipped in all directions and his icy gaze crashed onto mine.

“Stay still, girl,” Kelley advised before walking away.

The wolf loped up to me and I closed my eyes as he snuffled his nose against my palm, hip, and stomach. My heart threatened to drum through my chest and my lungs heaved with fear that ran through my veins as thoroughly as blood did. A familiar whine came from his throat as he leaned his shoulder against my side. Gently, I brushed my fingertips through the coarseness of his thick coat.

We were all right, the wolf and I.

He didn’t leave my side as I watched the crew bury their dead at sea. Three of the crew was lost to Ralston’s useless vengeance. I hated him. He should have been one of these men he sent to do his dirty work. What a coward he was for letting others die for his own twisted means to an end.

Cook handed me a mug of ale and I took it back to the hold. Fear and fighting had exhausted me. The cage hung open but I shook my head against it. To the wolf I said, “There’s no going back into the cage now that you’ve tasted freedom.”

He wouldn’t hurt me. He’d jumped right over my vulnerable body to save me. He was a brave-hearted beast who reminded me of Gable. His being near eased the parts of me that missed him so badly, I couldn’t breathe some days. The animal brought a fraction of the safety I’d felt so long ago when I’d been Gable’s woman.

The wolf slept under my hammock for the first time that night, and from then on he never strayed from my side. Dreck was graced with a snarl and a snap of the wolf’s teeth if ever he came too close and I lost my fear of being on deck around the crew. He sat loyally beside me as I drew seascapes into my journal.

The storm had thrown us off course, but not by much. Boston Harbor was attainable after another thirteen days. Captain Kelley assured me it had been one of the easier runs which was baffling. He was in a dangerous line of work, but he seemed to flourish under that kind of pressure. Some men were just born with the calling of adventure in their blood.

Tomorrow, we would reach Boston. Tomorrow I’d see Gable. Tomorrow I’d never see my wolf again. Tomorrow left a bitter sweet taste in my mouth and a ready tear on my cheek. I’d changed so very much over the last two months. Would anyone I’d known in my old life even recognize the woman I’d become? Would they meet her with a sense of respect or pity?

The wolf nudged his giant head under my hand and made a low, contented rumble in his throat. I leaned against the railing of the Anna Gale. Waves lapped at the sides. The men worked tirelessly to tar the cracks between wooden deck planks behind me and Captain Kelley whistled a happy tune as he stood stoically behind the wheel.

Happy moments had been rare since the night I’d lost everything, but here on a ship full of outlaws and thieves with a white wolf at my side, I’d somehow found my way to one.

Chapter Ten

Lucianna

We approached port at night as the Anna Gale likely did any time Captain Kelley needed to load and unload supplies of the not-so-legal nature.

I gripped the rail and leaned forward for my first glimpse of America. The inlet was congested with dozens of ships, and rowboats dotted the moonlit waters that glistened with a hundred tiny golden orbs.

“Is it everything you imagined?” Captain Kelley asked as he turned the wheel slightly.

“I don’t think I’ve imagined it at all.” Relaxing onto the heels of my commoner’s shoes, I pulled on the railing until my arms stretched and the salty sea breeze caressed my neck. “What will become of him?”

The wolf sat patiently beside me.

“We’ll crate him and unload him with the whiskey. This is where you get off though. We need the chaos of the dock to hide you. Ewen will escort you in one of the row boats. Are you ready?”

I swallowed hard and frowned at the dock. “As ready as I’ll ever be.” From the look on Captain Kelley’s face, I surprised him with my hug, but he deserved more than just a goodbye. He’d helped me more than he probably knew. He’d been kind to me, even after he’d lost part of his crew to Bastrop’s vengeance.

The wolf growled near my leg and Captain Kelley chuckled and patted me roughly on the back. “Safe travels, Rosalind.” He turned on his heel and his boots echoed off the wooden planks of his ship as he disappeared into his quarters.

I bent down and scratched behind the wolf’s ears, then kissed the soft fur on top of his head. My heart felt like it was breaking all over again. Thickly, I said, “I won’t ever forget you.”

He didn’t try to follow as I climbed down the rope ladder onto the smaller boat. From the rail, his pale eyes watched me row away. Did he think I was abandoning him? Could he see how much it hurt to leave him behind, not knowing for certain what his fate would be? I wiped a tear away with the back of my hand and ripped my eyes away from him to focus on the choppy waves. The pain was too much.

My nerves fluttered around in my stomach until surely I’d be sick for the thousandth time in a month and a half. I fastened my bonnet over my pinned hair with shaking fingers. Ewen pulled the boat up to a gargantuan dock and held it steady while I climbed up the narrow ladder.

He handed the small bag with my journal and other spare trinkets, then gave me a tiny salute. “Good luck to you, miss.”

I smiled down from my position on my belly. “Good luck to you too, Ewen.”

The oars splashed rhythmically as he rowed away. Kelley had been right. The dock was exactly the chaos I needed. There were so many crushing bodies, it rendered everyone invisible. Filthy-faced children dodged in an out of the crowd and one of them picked the pocket of a wealthy looking gentleman in front of me. The little bugger smiled at me before he ran away with his wares. I clutched my satchel closer to my chest. The pictures of my brother and wolf were my most prized possessions. I kept my head low and followed the flow of slow moving people from the port.

“Hey!” a man yelled right beside me.

I jumped but he wasn’t talking to me. My legs, still used to the rolling waves of the sea, took me this way and that like my bones had disappeared.

“Watch it!” a young mother with a baby said when I accidentally swayed into her.

I mumbled my apology and tried to walk straighter, but it was impossible. The bodies were so jammed together there was no space to even move my arms and I felt as if I’d be crushed to nothing without even being able to call out. The smell of sea and unwashed people made my stomach turn as I made my way from the crowd at last. A line of buggies and carriages waited to take people away but every time I tried to hail one, someone beat me to it. I couldn’t keep drawing attention to myself, so before a well-to-do dressed man, who hadn’t been waiting as I had, stepped up to one, I ran for it and climbed inside before him.

“Well, I never,” he muttered, but I was already handing the driver the money I’d kept safe in my hidden pocket all these weeks.

I rattled off the address and settled into the cushioned chair as the horse trotted down the winding cobbled streets. Boston couldn’t be judged by its port. The mass of people there took away from the architecture and character of the city. Brick buildings dotted every corner, clean and well taken care of. Quaint houses stood in rows lit by street lanterns. Stores, eateries, hat shops, and highbrow taverns lined roads made melodious by the clomping of shoed horses. A man on stilts lit lanterns on poles high above the streets, and couples strolled down the streets in quiet animation.

“Whoa,” the driver said as he pulled the horse to a stop in front of a whitewashed home with dark shutters. I scanned the flowerbeds. I bet in the spring they were beautiful. As it stood now, stumps of rose bushes and a scant amount of deep red winter flowers decorated the space in front of a cozy front porch.

I thanked the driver and pulled my bag out with me. The sound of receding hooves echoed through the quiet street. Maybe Gable was here already. Warm candle light flickered from inside and it added to the inviting look of the home. The hour was late—much too late to be calling—but I hadn’t much choice about the matter. This is what Gable told me to do and I’d clung to his words over the weeks of missing him. Now, a nervousness so potent my knees shook took me and hammered me into blatant hesitation. What if he’d changed as much as me since we’d seen each other last? What if he’d decided against me or worse, met someone else?

I brushed my hands down my dress like it would make the filthy rag any nicer looking. I was going to meet his parents looking like this. I swallowed a lump in my throat.

The door creaked open just before I gained the courage to knock. A tall man with dark hair streaked with gray at the temples stood inside.

His eyes were dark and serious. “I thought you’d never get around to knocking.”

I looked around but he was most definitely talking to me.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“M-my name is Lucianna Whitlock. I’m a friend of your son’s.”

“Which one?”

“Gable.”

His face froze into an unreadable expression. His eyes, mouth, eyebrows—all had gone slack. Quietly, he said, “Please come in. Margerie, I think you should get in here.”

Mrs. Dawson was dressed for bed already but she batted away my apology. She pulled a rose pink robe more tightly around her tiny waist and said, “Dear, who are you and what’s happened?”

“She says she’s a friend of Gable’s,” Mr. Dawson said.

Mrs. Dawson’s frown stayed on her husband like she couldn’t understand the order of his words. “Gable?” she breathed. The shocking green of her eyes fell on me. “Are you here to tell us he’s dead?”

“No! No, nooo, I hope not! He’s supposed to meet me here.”

Her eyes grew wide and hopeful. “He’s here? In Boston? Come in and sit down, child. Tell me all about it while I make us some tea.”

“How long has it been since you’ve seen him?” I asked.

“Oh, since the war. He never came back home to us after it was all done. Where did you meet?”

I wanted to tell her some romantic story of our first time laying eyes on each other. I didn’t know what I was allowed to tell her about my situation. I certainly didn’t want to put her life in danger, but Gable trusted his parents enough to send me here. I couldn’t tell her everything, but I wouldn’t lie to her either. “Your son saved my life from a man who wanted to harm me.”

Her face hardened. “Is that where you got your limp?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ve just got off a boat after six weeks of sailing and my sea legs don’t help much with my hobble either.”

“A boat? Gable gets terribly sea sick. He could never last on a boat for so long. Where did you say you met?”

“In the country outside of London. About twenty miles from Northwich.”

Mr. Dawson spoke from a corner rocking chair. “So that’s where the boy’s been hiding all this time.”

“What was he hiding from?” I asked.

Mrs. Dawson shook her head. “War does terrible things to men, honey. He’s running from himself.”

Clutching the warm porcelain teacup in the palms of my hands, I found myself thankful for the comfort. My eyes landed on the door more often than was even polite in the length of our conversation. I tried to stay engaged with Mrs. Dawson, but the more time that passed where Gable wasn’t here, the more dread filled my stomach. Maybe something had happened to him. Maybe he wouldn’t show up for days. How long was I to wait before he’d want me to move on?

“You look exhausted, dear. Perhaps you should try and sleep,” Mrs. Dawson offered. “We have an extra bedroom you can use. There are clean linens and everything.”

“I haven’t slept on clean linens since…well, in two months. That sounds lovely.” I forced myself to stand and turn away from the door.

Just as I was about to follow her down the short hallway, Mr. Dawson got the most curious smile on his face.

Knock, knock, knock.

I looked at Mrs. Dawson with wide eyes and got the same expression mirrored back. My heart pounded against my rib cage until my body almost shuddered from the beat. I hung back as a creeping shyness took me and she pulled open the door. Gable looked skinnier and his eyes were lighter than I remembered but he ducked under the door and caught his mother’s hug.

She sobbed openly and I could’ve sworn I saw Mr. Dawson wipe moisture from the corners of his eyes. “Welcome home, son.”

“Oh, my boy, my boy,” Mrs. Dawson crooned. She studied his face between her palms. “What’s happened to you, my boy? What’s happened?” She turned his face toward the light until his marred skin shone unevenly in the dim glow.

His eyes never left me. His pale gaze sent fire through my veins and a hungry desperation to touch him filled my fingertips. Could he see the effect he had on me? Could he see me burning from the inside out? He’d kept his promise to come for me. After all these weeks of missing him, I stood frozen in place and unable to run to my stranger.

He kissed his tiny mother lightly on the cheek, then approached slowly until he stood right in front of me. My neck arched back to take in his full height and I swallowed audibly. His eyes scanned every inch of me. He wore the same, billowing red shirt and black threadbare pants he’d donned the last time I’d seen him. His beard was gone and in place was the crisp smell of shaving cream. He looked at me uncertainly as my eyes fell on his scar. I’d thought they marred him, but they didn’t. They added to his fierce beauty. They gave him a rugged and dangerous edge that made my stomach do curious flip flops. I reached out and touched the roughness of it and smiled.

He answered me with a hug that lifted me from the ground. He breathed against my neck and I squeezed him until I thought I’d hurt him. It felt so good to be safe in his arms. My eyes burned with moisture and I squeezed them tightly closed to try and keep my emotion inside.

He smelled like animal, but not unpleasantly. There was something vaguely familiar about his scent but maybe it was just a memory I’d carried with me from an ocean away. He was here with me and that’s all I cared about. He rocked gently back and forth like my absence had been just as painful for him.

“I got something for you,” he said through a breathtaking grin.

With my hand in his, he pulled a box from just outside the door and handed it to me. Mrs. Dawson leaned against his father with happy tears in her eyes and I unwrapped it right there on the entryway floor. Inside, delicate paper lined the soft edges of a dress. I gasped and pulled it out. It was cream colored with tiny red rosebuds every so often. The fabric was soft as a flower petal. It was a relaxed fit from the fashion I’d been raised wearing, but I clutched it against my lips and inhaled the clean, crisp scent of it.

“Ma, can Lucianna use your soaking tub? She’s been on a boat with a bunch of heathens for weeks.”

“I’ll heat the water,” Mr. Dawson said.

“Of course you can. Come. I’ll show you where it is.”

No part of me wanted to leave Gable but he said, “Go on now. Try on the dress for me when you’re done.”

It took some time, but when I was finally in the room alone with a tub of steaming water, I slid out of the filthy dress and peeled my skin from my shift. Mrs. Dawson had a full length mirror and I surveyed the damage of all my bullet wounds. They were healing slowly, but over time they would turn silver. Gable had seen me unclothed and hadn’t complained. I turned from side to side. We made quite the couple, he and I. Both scarred and broken.

I sank into the water until even my face was submerged for as long as I could hold my breath. I used the delicately scented oils, soaps, and washes Mrs. Dawson insisted I borrow, and when my skin was scrubbed to glowing and the water tepid once again, only then did I towel off and dress in the casual gown Gable brought me. It was fitted attractively on top, showing off my collar bones and the sleeves were puffed. The skirt wasn’t meant to be filled with petticoats or the like. It was meant to cut a slim silhouette. I didn’t miss my corset one bit. My hair was still damp but quickly drying in waves and I let it fall loosely to my hips. I wouldn’t have dared leave it unpinned except that Mrs. Dawson wore her hair in a similar fashion.

Padding into the room soft murmurs floated from, Gable sat with his back to me, talking quietly at the dining table with his parents. At my entrance he turned, then stood quickly. His crooked smile was slow and mesmerizing. “You look…” He cleared his throat and pulled out a chair for me.

When I was seated comfortably beside him, he draped his arm over the back of my chair and traced lazy circles on the back of my arm. His touch left trails of fire against my skin and conjured a simmering in my stomach that had nothing to do with hunger.

“When was the last time you saw your brothers?” Mr. Dawson asked.

“Since the war. I haven’t gone back yet. We’re headed for the homestead as soon as we can manage it. I figured we’d leave on the train first thing in the morning.”

“But you just got here. We could eat a nice meal and go down to the shopping district,” his mother pleaded.

“Ma, Lucianna’s in danger from the man who shot her up. He’s been right there with us at every turn, and now’s no different. He knows she fled through the harbor at Liverpool. He don’t know exactly where she landed, but he’ll have eyes everywhere. We can’t put you at risk by staying here. I need to get her someplace safe.”

“She’s safest with you and your brothers,” Mr. Dawson drawled. “I think you’ll be surprised at how much they’ve changed since you last saw ’em.”

A significant look passed between his parents and Gable frowned. “Are they all right?”

“Hunters found them, but they survived,” Mrs. Dawson said in a somber tone. “The homestead’s still there but the dynamic has changed.”

“Hunters?” Gable whispered.

I didn’t know who was hunting his brothers, but my heart stretched out for them. I wouldn’t wish what I’d been through on anyone.

“There’s a train that leaves first thing in the morning to Denver,” said Mr. Dawson. “It’ll stop a lot but you can take a carriage from there. You’ll have to travel wary if her man’s got eyes like you say.”

“Ralston wasn’t ever my man.” I don’t know why it felt so important to clarify. “Gable’s my man.”

I was too chicken to look directly at him, but from the corner of my vision, he jerked his head to me and nearly undressed my soul with his cool blue eyes.

We said our goodnights and Gable followed me into the cozy guest room. The walls were covered in floral wallpaper and thin, white curtains adorned a small window. I collapsed onto the soft mattress but frowned when Gable lay on the floor beside it. The space between us was unfairly wide.

“Will you sleep beside me tonight?” I asked.

“What about your rules?”

“I’m not asking for you to bed me, Gable. I’m asking for you to hold me.”

He unbuttoned his shirt and shrugged out of it before he blew out the flickering candle on the night stand. The bed sank and groaned under his weight, and I pulled the covers over us.

His skin. I’d missed it, though I couldn’t recall ever touching it. His chest was strong and warm under my fingertips, like sun-bathed iron, and his arm wrapped around me in the dark as I lay against his shoulder. Jagged pink scars dotted his torso like a mountain range and I touched them each in turn, accepting them as part of the man I’d missed so badly. This must be what it feels like to lose your mind. We’d spent only a fraction of a second together against the span of our lifetimes, yet here I was, greedily absorbing his warmth as my own and wishing desperately for the moment to drag for eternity.

His hand caught my fingerings but he didn’t stop my progress, only held on and stroked my palm as I ran my hand down his ribs. Here in the dark, it was easy to nestle into his safety and not think about consequences or the immodesty of our situation. I was in a new land, far away from home and bound by different rules. Tomorrow, I could be caught and only have tonight to feel sheltered against him. I didn’t know what it was to be Gable’s woman, but I knew what it was for him to be my man. I wanted physical touch from him. It comforted me in a way I craved to soothe my fractured heart. We didn’t need to talk. I just needed to know he was warm and alive against my cheek.

He kissed the top of my head and held me close and it was enough.

For tonight, it was enough.

Chapter Eleven

Gable

Lucianna looked so beautiful as the light of dawn touched her cheek. Her snow colored hair spread out like ocean waves across the pillow and her berry pink lips were slightly puckered. Damn, she was intoxicating. She filled my head until the wolf inside of me howled to claim her. If she knew half the filthy things I wanted to do to her, she’d turn tail and never look back.

For six weeks she’d tossed and turned in that hammock, but last night she hadn’t moved a muscle. I’d checked to make sure she was breathing twice, just in case. She made a tiny sleep sound and curled closer to my ready body. If she kept wiggling around like that, I’d ignore her rules and consequences be damned.

I had to get up. The temptation to touch her skin was too much.

She stirred as I pulled my shoes on. “Gable?”

The sound of my name against her lips pulled my head to the side, just enough to see the color of moss in her sleepy gaze. “The train leaves in two hours,” I said.

While she readied for the day, I crept out of the room to find Ma had been up with the sun and was making enough breakfast to feed a small army. I ate my first meal while Lucianna was still in the bedroom, and the second when she joined us. She probably wasn’t prepared to see how much food I really needed to maintain my size and satiate the wolf.

The last six weeks had left me nearly starved, but she’d given me all she could, including food from her own rations. At least part of her thin appearance was my fault. Sea sickness was to blame for the rest.

I couldn’t travel by boat as a human. I’d learned the hard way I never got over sea sickness. I’d just wither until I died. I’d had to change on Kelley’s ship on my way over the ocean years ago, and that’s how he found out werewolves were real and I was one of them. Six human weeks on the Atlantic would’ve killed me. I didn’t know how I was supposed to explain to her that I wouldn’t be able to travel by train with her either. I’d been running as a wolf for too long and needed to change almost daily. Being stuck on a train and trying to stifle my wolf was a recipe for a bloody disaster.

I was helpless to wean myself from the necessary numbness my animal brought. The human part of me ran rampant with the horrible things I’d done in a war I shouldn’t have joined in the first place. Killing all those men for nothing more than a difference of opinion had stunted my wolf. I was the alpha in our three wolf pack, and I’d left my brothers so I could drown my wolf in blood and maim his instincts to protect. I’d butchered the balance and now, even when I wanted to stay human to touch my mate, I couldn’t manage it for long.

Da’s eyes lightened in response to my animal so close to the surface. He knew what I was now—Ripper, Bringer-Of-Death, more wolf than man—he was just too polite to say it in front of Ma.

Rows of lotions, oils, washes, and salves lined the table. Ma showed them to Lucianna one by one and told her what they were used for. “You’ll be going to the wilderness now and you’ll miss these things. I know I did.”

“But, there are so many,” Lucianna said.

“You’ll know what to do with them when you get there. I’ll send along more when you run out.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever run out,” she said as she helped Ma put the scented washes into a sack.

She sent us with a jangling coin purse and a bag of food that would keep, and when we’d said our goodbyes, I waved to Ma and Da from the buggy we’d flagged down.

As the pair of bays clomped off for the train station, I swallowed the yellow belly in me and turned to my mate. “Lucianna, I can’t go on the train with you.”

Her look was so monumentally startled, it panged at even the hardest parts of my heart. “Are you leaving me?”

“No. There’s only enough train fare for you. I’m going to find a horse and ride for Denver. I’ll be there before you, but I’ll wait. We’ll hop a carriage together.”

“I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to travel all across America alone and with somebody chasing me, Gable. I just got you back. Please.”

I rubbed my face at the thought of trapping my wolf inside of human skin, inside of a train but I couldn’t lightly ignore her pleading. Not when she was sitting here with her green eyes all round and her lips puckered out like she was about to cry. Dammit, I was in trouble.

“We have enough for me to make it part of the way. I’ll go with you as far as I can, okay?”

Her shoulders relaxed and her relief caused the ache in my bones to settle. Was it like this for all mated pairs? I hadn’t even bedded her yet, but she was mine the same as if I had. Every single instinct inside me said that much was true.

At the train station, the whistle blasted and set my hairs on end and my ears to screaming. I didn’t like all those people in one space but there wasn’t any help for it. I bought our tickets and escorted Lucianna to a red cushioned bench in a passenger car. Steam billowed outside the window and her heart pattered away.

“You ever been on a train?” I asked.

“Never.” Her excitement was catching and I pulled her into my side.

“I’m sorry about scaring you earlier. I won’t leave you unless I have to, all right?”

Her nod was solemn and serious. “I can’t enjoy any of this adventure without you. I feel safe with you around. When you aren’t, I spend every moment worrying and looking over my shoulder.”

I kissed the side of her temple and looked out the window as the train jolted forward. “I won’t let anything happen to you.” I’d murder anything that even thought of harming her and with a smile on my face, but she didn’t need to know the sordid details my inner monster planned.

The train ride wasn’t the nightmare I’d imagined. Sure my wolf howled to escape in the confined space, but Lucianna was a beautiful distraction. Accounting for all the stops and if we were lucky to avoid steam engine trouble or a train robbery, it would take us six days to get to Denver.

I’d never been much for talking as I didn’t have a way with words like my brothers did, but she was an easy speaker with a charitable disposition. She told me of her adventures on the high seas, and though I’d seen most of them, it was like listening to a new story hearing it all from her perspective. She had a different way of looking at the world.

“Can I see your drawings?” I asked.

“They aren’t gallery paintings or anything, Gable. They’re just silly sketches.”

“Please?”

She gave a put-upon sigh and pulled out the journal. It looked a lot different from the unused loose leaf book I’d bought her in Liverpool. The front was tattered and covered in smudged fingerprints and ink blotches, and the smell of sea and salt wafted from its pages. It had character and history now.

The drawings and ink sketches of her brother came first. If she thought she had no talent, she was wrong. She’d managed to capture so many faces, I felt like I’d known him. His personality showed through every smirk, every smile, and every somber expression. I moved a picture of him swinging over a creek on a rope out of the way and my breath caught in my throat as if someone gripped it with bare hands.

There was a picture of me—the me I kept hidden from the human world. The close up of a snarling wolf’s face covered the sea dampened paper. His ears were laid back and his teeth were bared. This is how she’d seen me.

I flipped slowly through the stack. Some had dark backgrounds and made the wolf look lighter in color while some she’d experimented with shadows across his face and body. Flipping through them was like getting a look into the evolution of her feelings for the animal she thought was just that. Ferocious pictures slowly morphed into something different. One was a sketch of me with my head lowered and my tail out to the side as if it were wagging. In one, my tongue lolled out like she’d seen the humor under the mask of fur. Some were of just the wolf’s eyes—my eyes if she ever looked close enough before or after a change.

“Do you like them?” She asked it as if my opinion really mattered.

“I’ve never seen anything like these in all my life, Lucianna.” I lifted my gaze to hers. “Are you trained?”

“A little. I was being taught oil painting before everything happened. I can paint porcelain too, but my instructor said he wanted more from me.”

The woman awed me. I had a talent for building furniture, but the way she saw things—created things—was beyond my comprehension.

The more I got to know of my woman, the more devoted I became.

****

Lucianna

Four days was all I had with Gable, and it didn’t feel like nearly enough. Our money had run so low, eating would be sparse the rest of the trip in order to cover the carriage fare to Colorado Springs. Guilt sometimes tugged at me for begging him to stay, but when I really thought of it, I wouldn’t have done it any differently. I needed to be with him. To talk about our travels and build our connection again. I’d needed his touch and the warm feeling of safety that brute of a man brought me.

As the train pulled away, he stood somberly with the others waving loved ones off. Steam swirled around him, and his eyes, the color of cool water, followed my window with a troubled gaze.

Our separation physically hurt. My chest burned and I found it hard to breath. Paranoia slipped over me like a second skin the moment he disappeared from view. I couldn’t relax or talk happily or enjoy the wild American countryside anymore. Any glance from the other passengers brought a tingle of fear. Were they following me? Had Ralston hired them? I tucked a strand of escaped hair further into my bonnet and faced the window to escape their stares.

Two days. I’d been separated for a month and a half from Gable. I could make it two days.

I missed the wolf for the first time since I’d left the ship. I hadn’t had time to think on him overly much but here, on this lonely train bench with nothing but miles of window wilderness and my roiling thoughts to keep me company, the touch of his fur suddenly seemed very far away. Was he happy with his owner? Was he being treated right and fed enough? Did he remember me?

I nodded off to pirate memories and woke to the chatter of the other passengers. A woman and her three small children crowded the window behind and pointed excitedly.

I squinted at the woods and through the dense trees, a wolf ran alongside the train. I blinked and it was gone. I looked for a long time after that but never saw it again. It was light colored like the wolf I’d cared for.

A dream, I decided. A dream born of wishful thinking.

Chapter Twelve

Lucianna

I almost didn’t recognize the cowboy on the train platform but his height gave him away. Gable had ditched his threadbare pauper garments for ones that seemed to suit his accent and body much better. Tanned animal hide pants slid over leather boots scuffed and dusty with use. Spurs jangled from the heels of his work shoes, and under a fitted gray vest, he wore a white cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up to accentuate the rippling muscles of his forearms. A dark cowboy hat rested on his head and the smile underneath the brim was genuine and only for me.

The silhouette the outfit cut was one of strength. The breadth of his shoulders pushed against the fabric and the contrast against his small waist was great. Scarred face or not, I’d never seen a man more alluringly made than Gable Dawson in his own western clothes.

He grabbed my hand as soon as I poured from the train. “Come on. There’s a carriage leaving right now. We can make it if we hurry.”

“What about something to eat? I’m famished.”

He held up a brown paper-wrapped bundle. “Already taken care of.”

I laughed when he picked me up and lifted me across a muddy street to a waiting carriage. Besides a few surprised looks, no one seemed to mind our inappropriate behavior like they would’ve in London. He set me onto the carriage step and while I situated myself inside, he talked to the driver and paid our fares. My heart hammered away with the happiness of our reunion. Gable slid into the seat next to me and looked into my eyes with such a bewildered smile, as if he hadn’t seen me in weeks.

“Hi,” he said breathlessly.

I couldn’t contain my grin. “Hi.”

Outside the carriage, the city bustled with life but inside, it was as if we were the only two people in the world. He brushed a strand of hair away from my cheek and leaned in. He hesitated and I closed the space between our lips. It wasn’t hurried and violent like our first kiss near the Anna Gale had been. He tasted me and sucked lightly on my bottom lip until a delightful shiver hummed up my spine. His hand went gently around the back of my neck and I groaned as he pulled me closer. A contented rumble sounded from deep within him and I was filled with the knowledge that I could have such an effect on such a dashing man.

He pulled away suddenly with his eyes tightly closed. His hand remained on my neck, but still, the separation of our lips was shocking. Had I done something wrong? I touched his scarred face with a light fingertip. It had become one of my favorite things about him. It made him different. Those scars made him strong. None other on earth had a fearsomely beautiful face like my man.

“Look at me,” I pleaded.

He kissed the palm of my outstretched hand but just as I was sure he was about to oblige me, the door to the carriage opened and flooded the small space with sunlight. I jumped away from Gable like I’d been burned.

An older lady with a tall, feather adorned hat and her tired looking husband hoisted themselves into the other seat of the covered carriage. Gable and I sat on completely opposite sides of our bench but the woman wasn’t fooled.

“Harrumph,” she said.

I smiled politely but inside I growled. It was going to be a very long trip if I was to be so close and so far away from Gable.

The final five days proved to be the longest leg of the trip. So weary was I from travelling, the prospect of our final destination being so close had me unable to sleep. The carriage made stops in the small towns that sprinkled the countryside to relieve ourselves, stretch our legs, and eat at ramshackle restaurants here and there, but I found myself eager to get back in the carriage and continue our journey. Mr. and Mrs. Higgins, our unfortunate traveling companions, didn’t feel the same. They were determined, instead, to stop at every scenic view and shop at every store in every tiny town we passed through.

If I was irritated, Gable was going absolutely mad. Over the days, his body stiffened. The tenseness in his shoulders and neck seemed only to grow and when he slept, he groaned in pain.

“Are you sick?” I asked, as worry for him threatened to engulf me.

“No,” he answered in a strange voice. “I just need to get out of this carriage.”

His smell had changed into something just on the tip of my senses. Surely it meant he’d taken some sort of illness during our travels. Nothing else explained it.

When at last, the jaunting carriage pulled over a small wooden bridge that led to the primary street in Colorado Springs, he nearly poured from the carriage. I said goodbye to Mr. and Mrs. Higgins and the driver, and hefted our small bag to my good hip. The evening was early still but orange and deep purple stretched across the horizon with the promise of a clear night to come.

Gable walked ramrod straight and left me to trail behind.

“The Gable’s back, the Gable’s back,” townspeople whispered as we passed.

I frowned at his receding back. The Gable?

I hobbled faster to keep up but when I was close he said, “No,” and wouldn’t turn around. “I need some time. Go to the saloon and get us a room. I’ll meet you there later.”

“I don’t understand. Have I done something wrong?”

“Please,” he said in a ragged voice as he scrubbed his hands roughly over his face. “Just do as I ask. I’ll be back soon.”

I stood there at a loss for a long time. Finally, after months of travel and fear, we’d landed in the place he was sure I’d be safe, and now I was alone to see Colorado Springs for the first time. Connected shops lined both sides of the street. Even in the evening hour, people stood talking under the protective awnings on sprawling front porches, and near loaded wagons that sat in front of what looked to be some sort of general store. The saloon Gable had mention was brightly lit with lanterns and candles, and men and whores boisterously laughed as they sang a song I didn’t recognize.

A dainty, blonde-haired girl locked up the door to a restaurant named Cotton’s. A sign in front boasted it was the best home cooking in all of Colorado and only ten cents a plate. The sound of it brought a hungry rumble to my stomach. It had been a long time since the early lunch we’d devoured on the road.

I wandered into the saloon. Maybe they served food here. The drunken patrons were too busy with the three over-rouged and scantily clad women near the piano to take much notice of me. I opened my mouth but was interrupted by a bartender who was pouring whiskey from a bottle.

“Men and whore’s only. You don’t look like neither. Get out.”

How rude. “Pardon me, sir, but is this the only establishment in town to get a room?”

“Yes, and no you can’t get one here. Sunday’s are our busiest day. You can’t be takin’ rooms away from our girls over there.”

My pride was too big to ask about food. I turned and ducked through the swinging doors. The night was growing darker by the minute and I didn’t know a single soul in this town. A bench sat temptingly in front of the general store. The shopkeeper was in the midst of turning the sign in the window from ‘open’ to ‘shut’ so I braved the thin layer of partially dried mud in the street and made myself comfortable. I didn’t know how long Gable would stay away, but I had little other choice than to sleep on the bench if it got too late.

The night air was chilly as the last tendrils of late winter reached for my exposed arms and neck. I pulled the ratty shawl from the canvas sack and wrapped it tightly around my shoulders. This wasn’t exactly the new homecoming I’d imagined. A trio of slurring, stumbling men exited the saloon and saluted me. I pulled my sack closer and tried to ignore them.

I don’t know how long I sat here in the dark, but the stars had popped out one by one and the half moon was high in the sky by the time a familiar silhouette approached. By then my teeth were chattering and I couldn’t stop shivering to save my life.

The moonlight illuminated Gable’s frown in blue shadows, and he rushed to me. “Lucianna,” he said, kneeling in front of me and rubbing my arms. “Why aren’t you inside?”

“They wouldn’t give a room to a woman.”

He sent a poisonous glare to the swinging saloon doors. “I wouldn’t have left you to find a room on your own if I were in my right mind.”

He lifted me until I stood in front of him, looking into his eerily lightened eyes. The color in them churned like melted iron in a blacksmith’s cauldron. Memories of the night I’d lost everything tumbled through me. Those demon eyes, not quite as bright as I remembered, looked beseechingly at me now. It was hard to breathe around the suffocating fear clawing its way up my throat.

“I need to tell you something,” he whispered.

Movement emerged from the darkness and my gaze fell on two giant men sauntering toward us. They looked every bit as dangerous as the man who gripped me tightly now, and I panicked.

“Gable,” I gasped.

He stood straight and his nostrils flared before the dimple in his left cheek deepened under a slow smile. “It’s okay. I know them.”

How could he be sure he knew them if he hadn’t even turned to see them yet?

A dark-eyed man with raven black hair cocked his head to the side and glared as Gable turned. Electricity filled the air like the end of a lightning storm. A lackadaisical smile flittered across the man’s features and he threw rough arms around Gable’s shoulders. He patted his back so hard it sounded painful, but Gable’s chuckle said he would survive the affectionate mauling. The other man’s startling green eyes flashed in the lantern light of the saloon and he wrapped his arms around the other two. He didn’t smile like the other. He clenched his eyes tightly closed and held them.

“Welcome home,” the dark-eyed one said.

“That’s what Da said,” Gable said.

“You saw Ma and Da?” the green eyed one asked.

Gable jerked his head toward me. “Had to introduce them to my woman.”

The look of shock that flitted across those giant men’s faces was almost comical. In fact, I’d have laughed if I could control my chattering teeth.

The green-eyed man was first to respond. He held out his hand in a very manly fashion. I’d never shaken a hand before but I placed my palm in his. “Luke Dawson,” he said. “We’re Gable’s brothers.”

“Jeremiah,” said the other as he offered a hand.

I smiled shyly. “I’m Lucianna.”

Gable alone was an intimidating man, but all three of them side by side? The waves of raw power that seemed to emanate from them made it very hard to speak. Gable seemed to see my dilemma because he came to stand beside me and wrapped a comforting arm around my shoulder. It did help. Even through the myriad of questions floating around my panicked mind, he always had a way of making me feel completely safe.

“Why aren’t you at the homestead?” Gable asked.

It was Luke who answered. “A friend of ours just had a baby girl.”

Gable’s nose scrunched up. “Why would you want to be around for that?”

“It’s a long story. We’re staying there tonight. It’s too late to go back home. You staying at the saloon?”

“Yeah. I need to get Lucianna warmed up and get some food in her. When are you leaving in the morning?”

“First light,” Jeremiah said. “You can ride out with us if you like.”

“We’ll be ready,” Gable said.

“Lucianna,” Jeremiah drawled. “Would you mind terribly if we bought Gable a round of drinks. You’re welcome, too, of course.”

Ha. The thought of me trading drinking stories with these barbarians in a cathouse was almost laughable. It was awfully kind of him to include me though. “Of course. I think I’ll retire early though so you boys can have a proper reunion.”

Luke’s impossibly green eyes narrowed with mischievous challenge. “Gable’s gone and found himself a proper English lady, Jer.” He held up a finger. “One drink.”

“Luke,” Jeremiah warned.

Gable only shrugged and said, “Up to you.”

I wanted to be brave and it would be nice to have a reason to be in the establishment I’d been kicked out of. “Fine. One drink and then I’ll leave you boys to it.”

Luke whooped and led the way to the saloon as Jeremiah shook his head slowly behind him. Gable took my hand and kissed the side of my forehead and I found it very hard to stay mad at his earlier abandonment. He seemed to be feeling much better and the exit of my worry added another layer to my jubilation.

The bartender frowned when I came in but one look at Gable had him tipping an imaginary hat to me instead. I thought we’d find a table, but no. Luke led us right to the bar and ordered whiskey in oversized shot glasses. He held his up and we followed suit.

“To the return of our brother. Our family is complete again. And,” he said before anyone sipped, “to the newest member of our pack. Lucianna, I don’t know how you tamed this grumpy old bastard, but you must be some woman to have done it.”

The boys downed their shots neatly while I didn’t make it look nearly as graceful. The amber liquid scorched my throat the entire way down, and I sputtered with the back of my hand against my lips. It tasted horrible. “What’s a pack?” I asked over their laughter.

Luke and Jeremiah’s faces stilled and they drew questioning glances to Gable.

“It’s like a family,” he explained.

Americans had a funny way of saying things. My lips had gone numb and the room took on a comfortable hazy look around the edges. I swayed slightly and when Gable gripped my arm, I giggled.

Luke gave a toothy grin. “You want another?”

“Most certainly not. You boys have corrupted me quite enough for one night. I think it’s time I retire.” I hiccupped.

Two perfumed whores, apparently bored with the other patrons approached the bar. One ran a finger seductively over Luke’s shoulder and he shrugged her off.

“No,” he growled.

Gable’s eyebrows shot straight up like he’d never seen his brother turn down an easy bedding. A pretty redheaded girl whispered something into Gable’s ear and my insides turned to fire. Maybe I’d stay a while after all.

“Back off,” I slurred.

The woman tipped her chin slightly and looked up at Gable.

“You heard her,” he said.

Luke was already sipping another shot and leaning against the bar like he enjoyed the show.

“You Dawson’s are no fun anymore,” a blonde haired woman hissed. “Welcome home Gable,” she called over her shoulder.

I leveled him with a glare but he shrugged remorselessly. “It was a long time ago.”

Long time or no, I didn’t like the thought of that witch’s claws anywhere near Gable’s skin. Apparently the look on my face said as much.

“Hey,” he whispered into my ear. “You’re it for me now.”

“Tread carefully with them, Gable Dawson. The day you think about bedding someone else is the last day you’ll spend with me. Jeremiah, Luke, I’m happy to meet you but I must get some sleep. It’s been a long journey. I’ll see you in the morning. You boys have fun tonight.” I turned. “Not too much fun though,” I amended with an arch to my eyebrow.

The room swayed as I limped to the room with the number ten carved into the door. Was it room ten or twelve? I frowned. Ten, I think. I pushed open the door and stood shocked and frozen. There on the bed, a dark-haired woman was perched on elbows and knees and was being thoroughly pummeled by a completely naked man from behind. The woman gave a cheery crimson smile. “You want to join?”

I shut the door with eyes so wide, I thought they’d pop right out of my head. Now that I thought further on it, the bartender definitely said room twelve. The squeaking of the bed picked up again. At least I hadn’t ruined their night of…love making? I shuffled to room twelve and knocked first. When no one answered I peeked my head into the dark space. When I was satisfied absolutely no one was indulging in pleasures of the flesh in that room, I shut the door behind me and lit the lantern on the bedside table.

I’d made my mind up long before Gable’s boots graced our room. If I was determined never to be married, his being my man had to mean something big. My views on intimacy had evolved with my feelings about Gable. I didn’t know how our living arrangements would be when we got to the homestead tomorrow, but from what Gable had told me, it was one big house with a room for each of the brothers. Losing my virginity encased in the thin walls beside his sleeping family didn’t sound like an attractive option. Losing it in a whore house, on the other hand, seemed fitting somehow.

How far I’d fallen in the two months since the tragedy. I was unabashedly and undeniably a wanton woman now, but what difference did it make? Gable and I wouldn’t be a traditional couple. I wouldn’t wear his ring, or bear his name, but I was as devoted to him as I would be a husband. And from the way he treated me, I thought it was the same for him. I was about to live with an unwed man so already, my reputation was less than nothing. Oh, if Mother could only see me now.

Gable’s boots made a patterned shadow against the bottom opening of the door, and it creaked open. I stood and clasped my hands together to stop them shaking.

“What’s wrong?” he asked as he ducked under the doorway.

I exhaled a shaky breath. “Are you drunk?”

His eyes went wide. “Not too much.”

I nodded crisply. “Good.” I plucked the final lace in back of the dress he’d given me and let it slip to the floor until it billowed into a small mountain around my feet.

Not a muscle moved except for his gaze. I viciously fought the urge to close my eyes against the embarrassment of bearing my body and soul to a man. The longer I watched his reaction to my skin, the easier it became. He liked what he saw, that much was evident in his slow, panther-like smile and accelerated breath.

His voice was as rich and deep as he asked, “Are you sure?”

For fear of my words coming out small and shaky, I nodded.

He removed his hat and unbuttoned his vest.

“Let me,” I whispered. With each button I undid, my heart beat faster.

His hand touched the skin at my waist in the barest brush that brought me closer to his warmth. When his shirt hung open to give a sliver of taut muscles beneath, I pressed my palms against the silken steel there and pushed the fabric away. His heart beat steady as a drum underneath my palm. His finger found my chin and lifted it gently up until I was hopelessly lost in the churning blue of his eyes. I didn’t see his scars anymore. Only the perfection of his face, made just for me. He brushed a strand of hair away from my collar bone, and that tiny touch of our skin filled me with an opening warmth.

Slowly, he leaned down and kissed me until I thought I’d melt right into his skin. His strong hand pressed into my back and pulled me closer as he rocked me softly backward into the bed.

“I haven’t ever—”

“I know,” he murmured against my lips. “I’ll be gentle.”

His tongue brushed the closed seam of my mouth, and I opened for him. His hand trailed fire down my neck, across my shoulder, then he cupped the fullness of my breast. I gasped and arched against his touch. Warmth pooled between my thighs as he kneaded me in that gentle way of his. I loved the feel of his skin against mine and I moved beneath him. As Gable covered my body with his own, I’d never felt safer than I did right now.

Kisses, soft as butterfly wings, dotted my neck until his lips found my puckered nipple. Tingling pressure build deep inside as he lapped at my oversensitive skin. Helpless noises wrenched from my throat, and I rocked my hips against his erection. Frustrated, I reached for the button to his pants. Gable chuckled a rich sound that vibrated against my breast.

“Woman, we need to take it slow. At least the first few times or it’ll hurt you.”

I’m sure I didn’t know what he meant. This didn’t hurt at all. In fact, it felt very very good, and I wanted more. “Gable,” I pleaded.

He canted his head and held my gaze with his.

“I’ve been thinking about being with you all day.” For weeks, if I was honest. “I’m ready.” It was true. I’d worked myself into an inferno just thinking about kissing him, and now I’d discovered he had the ability to kiss the rest of me. I didn’t want to wait anymore.

Gable’s dark brows lowered as the lantern light threw shadows across the handsome planes of his face. He cupped my sex and it felt so good, I gripped the sheets and rolled my hips against his palm. His finger dipped inside of me slowly, easily.

“Jesus, woman,” he breathed as he rested his forehead against my stomach. “You ain’t lyin’.” He lifted his gaze back to me. “You’re ready.”

He stood and plucked the buttons to his pants, then shucked them completely. My lips fell open at the sight of his erection, long and thick and ready for me too. A pang of fear washed through me as I tried to imagine how something so big would match me, but he lay against me and drew my lips into a gentle kiss. The feeling of safety washed over me again as he pressed my knees farther apart. Settling his hips against mine, he slid into me halfway. The stretch burned a little, but the pleasure was greater.

Gable withdrew slowly and I watched his face as he pressed into me again. His gaze caressed me as he buried himself deeper inside, and he let out a soft growl that raised the fine hairs on the back of my neck. The muscles in his arms strained and shook as he thrust all the way into me. As his hips met mine, he hit a sensitive spot that made me moan and arch my back. He withdrew slowly, then bucked into me again, and I gripped the back of his hair as pleasure warred with pain.

His breath shook, and I knew he was holding back for me, so I wouldn’t hurt. I grazed my teeth against his neck, and his response was instantaneous. One hard thrust for each time my teeth touched him, and I smiled against his throat at the power he’d given me.

His lips crashed onto mine as he pressed into me, and over and over, he filled me until the tingling sensation was too much. Gable gripped my shoulders and buried himself deeper, and I exploded around him. I cried out his name and clawed his back, and Gable gritted his teeth and swelled inside of me. Hot, throbbing bursts of wetness filled me as his powerful hips crashed against mine.

In that moment of utter release of control, he arched back and his eyes shone icy blue in the soft lantern light. I couldn’t bring myself to care as wave after wave of indulgence washed through me but here, in this moment, I knew what he was.

The wolf’s eyes were right there, in Gable’s face, and every peculiarity of the last two months clicked quietly into place.

I waited for a fear that never came as he brushed his lips against my neck and ear. “Your mine now, Lucianna,” he murmured.

I should’ve been afraid, but his words kept my terror at bay. I wanted to be his. Besides, I’d seen real monsters, and Gable wasn’t one of them.

Gable was good.

I didn’t know what was myth and truth about the horrifying legends I’d heard when I was a child, but my werewolf had been a tender lover, and had given so much to keep me safe. If he was dangerous, part of that ferocity was what drew me to him.

His muscles strained and twitched and I whispered, “Wolf,” into his ear.

His breathing was ragged as he lay frozen and cradled inside of me. “I wanted to tell you.” His dark stubble rasped across the skin at my shoulder and I shivered under the delicious feel of him.

I pulled the back of his hair until he graced me with those inhuman eyes. For a long moment we stayed locked like this as I accepted him—all of him. “I know why you couldn’t tell me, but you’re mine too, Gable Dawson. I’ll protect whatever secrets you carry, like you protect mine. No more hiding from me.”

His breath caressed my neck as he bent down to kiss the tender skin there. “You aren’t just my woman, Lucianna. You’re my mate. You don’t want to be married, but this is bigger.” He eased back. “Can you handle it?”

His thick drawl was so quiet and deep and I stroked his scarred face with a light brush of my fingertips. I was already devoted to him in every way. “I’m yours.”

The relief on his face brought a smile to my throbbing lips. He rolled to the side and traced an exploratory finger under the weight of my breasts. “I’m not like my brothers. I can’t stay human for long anymore.” His eyes darkened. “I’m broken.”

I wiggled closer and kissed his collarbone. “So am I. We’ll get stronger together.”

The sigh he released seemed to hold a hundred pounds of weight. His muscles relaxed and in the dark of a whore house hotel room, he confessed dark and frightening things that had burdened his soul for much too long. His war stories and the monster they’d created didn’t scare me. They made me understand him better and in turn, feel closer to him. He was letting me hold his secrets while he rested from the strain. That kind of trust he’d only given to me. What a feeling it was to utterly belong to someone, and to hold their love in return.

He hadn’t said the words out loud, I felt the truth of his love down to the very marrow of my bones.

I wouldn’t ever be a wife, but I was Gable’s mate, and that seemed more important somehow.

Chapter Thirteen

Gable

It felt so damned good to be home. I’d been running from the ghosts of the war for so long, I hadn’t even remembered the good in this town. Werewolves weren’t solitary creatures and I’d forced my animal away from the pack he led. No wonder I had no control. It was my wolf’s revenge.

Lucianna played such a big part in the happiness of my homecoming. Drinking with Luke and Jeremiah, and then me coming back to the room with her putting her needs right out there in the open like she’d done. And then her figuring out what I was, and accepting it? I shook my head in awe. Last night was easily the best night of my life.

For the first time in a long time, I looked forward to seeing the home I’d abandoned. The scrape of the straight razor was rhythmic as I shaved over the washbasin. If she liked my scars on display, they were hers. I didn’t care what anyone else thought about my looks so long as she kept touching my uneven skin with that look of wonder swimming in the deep green color of her eyes.

I paused when Lucianna rolled away from the gray light streaming through the window, but when she sighed and relaxed again, I kept shaving. Luke and Jeremiah were just like I remembered. Jeremiah was quiet and mannerly while Luke would be a rake until the day he died. We laughed into the night like I’d never left all those years ago. They liked Lucianna. I could all but smell my brother’s approval and it settled something in me.

With a smooth face, I studied the creeping scar that ran from collar bone to cheek. Lucianna was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, and for some reason, my looks were okay with her too. The fates were repaying me for good deeds and the hell they’d put me through.

Lucianna’s voice was sweet and sleepy. “Gable? What time is it?”

I wiped my face with a towel and sat on the bed next to her. Leaning forward to nibble her ear, I said, “It’s almost dawn.”

She hadn’t bothered to put her dress back on last night and thank God for that. I couldn’t get enough of the alabaster lengths of her skin. She raked her nails against my chest until little trails of raised red skin followed. I liked that she wasn’t gentle with me. My wolf liked it too.

“Do we have time?” she asked in a husky voice that just about had my animal howling.

I nuzzled her neck with my smooth jaw until she giggled and hugged me close. “I saw something scandalous last night,” she breathed.

I eased back and tried to stifle a grin. She looked appalled, which perked my curiosity right up. “Oh, yeah? What did you see?”

“I’m embarrassed to say I walked into the wrong room after I left you and your brothers.”

I propped up on my elbow and laughed. I could only imagine what she’d walked in on. “What did you see?”

A woman was on her elbows and knees, and a rutting man was…you know.”

“Makin’ love to her from behind?” That was the cleanest way of putting it I could think of.

“Yes,” she breathed. “Like animals.” Her eyebrows, just a shade darker than her hair, arched delicately. “Have you ever done that with a woman?”

Nothing good would come from talking about my past with a well-bred woman like her. “Luc,” I warned, rolling away.

She caught my hand and tugged me back onto the bed. “I mean, would you like that?”

I frowned suspiciously but she looked back at me with such open honesty in her eyes. I heaved a sigh and relaxed onto the pillow next to her. “I’d like doing that with you. I like looking at your face when I make you feel good, but the animal in me would enjoy that position. That’s how wolves mate in the wild.”

“Does it hurt?” she asked.

“Well, I don’t know if we should try it right this moment. You’re likely to be sore from last night and I can smell blood—”

“No, not that. I mean, does it hurt to be a werewolf?”

“Oh.” I traced her hip under the covers with my fingertips. “It hurts to be human,” I said softly. “Being a wolf is the easy part.”

A look of such sadness washed over her face and I pulled her closer. I didn’t want to make her sad. All I wanted in the world was for her to be safe and happy.

I could tell she wanted to try what she’d seen last night, and we would when I was certain I wouldn’t hurt her. Right now though, I just wanted to take her gently and banish whatever had made her unhappy. Wrapping my arm around her back, I pulled her against me and kissed her lips.

My brothers would understand if we were a little late.

I reached for button on my pants just as a banging knock rattled the door. Bam, bam, bam. “Gable, load up!” Luke yelled from the other side.

Or maybe they wouldn’t.

I gave an irritated growl but Lucianna pulled my face to hers and smiled. “We have forever.” The ghosts were gone from her eyes, so I nodded and brushed my lips against the palm of her hand.

After splashing her face, dressing, and pinning her hair, she was ready. I hoisted the light bag over my shoulder and wrapped my arm around her waist. From the way she leaned into me, I didn’t think she wanted to be separated any time soon either. Her sleepy smile was so sweet, I could drown in it, but the sight that met us outside had me frozen in my tracks.

In front of a string of horses tied to the post, Jeremiah whispered into a dark-haired woman’s ear and Luke leaned against a fencepost across from a pretty desert blond-haired girl.

The latter quipped, “Luke Dawson, you better feed me at Cotton’s or get me home. You know my stomach ain’t gonna stand for this abuse.”

“Ladies,” Luke said with a genteel wave of his hand. “I’d like you to meet Gable Dawson. Gable Dawson, the wives.”

Only a moment of shock registered on their faces before the little blonde catapulted into my arms. “You’re home!” she sang, like we’d known each other for years. She stood back and fluffed her dress. “I’m Kristina. Dawson if that wasn’t obvious.”

“I’m Lorelei Dawson,” said the quieter woman with a shy curtsy.

“What the hell?” I breathed. “You boys got yourselves hitched?”

Luke chuckled deep in his throat. “You should see your face right now. You look like a slack-jawed idiot.”

Lucianna had stepped away during the chaos but I pulled her to me. “Ladies, this is my woman, Lucianna.”

They didn’t hesitate with hugs for my surprised mate.

“Do they know?” I mouthed to Jeremiah.

He nodded. “Things have changed around here.”

I’d say.

The women tugged Lucianna toward the old general store while Kristina chattered on and on about, “Gable looks like he just hitched a train from the mouth of hell, and you look so pretty you could’ve just fell from heaven. What a striking couple you make!”

“We’re going to buy her a few things,” Lorelei said over her shoulder.

My mouth was still hanging open and I snapped it closed before a horsefly got a wise idea.

“We’ll be in there to pay in a little bit,” Luke called. “Come on. You need a horse.”

“Lucianna needs one, too.”

Luke sucked air in through his teeth. “You should ask her what kind she fancies before you start making purchases.”

“What? A horse is a horse. Good teeth and a strong hoof and back are what she needs.”

Jeremiah patted the back of a fancy blue-eyed, painted Indian horse. “Yep, I made the mistake of buying Lorelei a boring horse before I asked her opinion and she wouldn’t have it.”

I pointed to the red mare with the blanket of unusual polka dots across her flank. “Kristina’s?”

“Yeeep,” Luke drawled.

“Fine,” I said, defeated.

The women were in the midst of looking through a rack of ready-made dresses when I came in. “Luc,” I said softly.

She held up a yellow dress and turned at the sound of her name on my lips. The way the morning light hit the green in her eyes made my heart miss a beat or two.

“What color horse you want?”

“Wise man,” Kristina said through a knowing grin.

“I don’t care about the color, Gable. Just get me the oldest, most docile horse you can find.”

I snorted. Of course. I shook my head and bid them ado.

“What’d she say?” Jeremiah asked when I headed to the blacksmith’s barn.

“She don’t care so long as he’s about to keel over dead. She don’t like horses none too much.”

Jeremiah’s dark eyes, so much like Da’s, were steady and serious. “Why’s she limping so badly?”

The question caught me off guard. I suppose I’d become used to her broken gait. Honestly, come to think of it, I hadn’t even noticed her scars last night. I sighed and rubbed the smoothness of my jaw. “Need to talk to you boys about a few things.”

We leaned up against the blacksmith’s corral in the dusty morning light and watched a rowdy trio of stallion colts play fight. “A man, Ralston Bastrop, is after her. He’s insane. He ordered her family killed and I walked in on the massacre. Found Lucianna shielding her baby brother’s body with her own and she’d been shot clean through. Peppered with bullets. Nobody lived but her.”

Matching fury flared in my brother’s eyes. “Shit,” Luke spat.

“He’s got eyes everywhere in England and it was close on getting her to America. She’s been through it.”

“Strong little woman you got yourself there, Gable.”

“You don’t know the half of it. She figured out what I was last night and didn’t even bat an eyelash. She’s tough, sure, but she ain’t invincible. He’ll catch up sooner or later. I didn’t know you had families to care for, and if my nose isn’t messed up, I’d say Lorelei has a little wolf pup in her belly.” At a nod from Jeremiah, I continued. “I brought her here to beg your help, but it’s different now that you have wives of your own to protect. She brings danger.”

Jeremiah looked downright haunted when he spoke. “We didn’t come by our wives easy either. We’ve had to fight tooth and nail and almost died trying to keep them. Lucianna’s one of us now. We don’t abandon pack. We don’t abandon family. If Bastrop comes, he’s gonna have to go through hell to get to her.”

I looked down at the ground to shield my wolf’s reaction to me reliving some of Lucianna’s struggles but it didn’t hide anything. Not from my brothers.

“You got a problem with your wolf now,” Luke said. “You don’t smell like a man at all anymore. Is it permanent?”

“I don’t know. I can’t stay human for very long these days.”

Jeremiah clapped me on the back. “Let her heal you and your wolf. I was as bad off as you after Anna died, but Lorelei put me back together again.”

I’d only met Anna once before I left for the war, but I knew her loss had resonated through our crippled pack in my absence. I thought about losing Lucianna and swallowed hard. I didn’t know how Jeremiah was still standing. I was grit for leaving them to deal with the aftermath of something that heavy on their own. I had to know. “How’d she die?”

“Hunters tortured her because of what we are,” Luke said. “They used her blood to draw us in.”

Bile rose in my throat as my chest ached for the loss of a family member. Even if I’d barely known her, death was a scar a pack carried forever. “Da told me you met some Hell Hunters.”

“Ha,” Luke said stretching his neck to show me a clearly defined hanging scar. “That was a totally different adventure. We’re still recovering from the last fight.”

“Is that what happened to Kristina’s neck?” Oh, I hadn’t missed the maiming burns that covered one side. No one could.

Luke smiled sadly. “I got me a strong woman, too.”

I cursed softly and pulled my hat on. A woman had to be strong to handle the violence and chaos of living with werewolves. “That’s my horse.” I pointed to a deep chestnut with long legs. He looked fast as a whip crack and something told me I’d need his speed sooner rather than later.

“Great,” Jeremiah grumbled. “Another stallion to keep separated.”

“That one looks nearly deceased,” Luke said, jabbing a finger at a white and gray dappled filly tied to a post and waiting on shoes.

“Let’s go see if she’s for sale.”

Beufort Wheaton had been the blacksmith in this town for as long as I could remember. It was no surprise that the hunchbacked old man was still working away. That man was tougher than a badger in a hornets nest. I was highly suspicious he would actually live forever.

“The Gable has finally returned,” he crowed when he saw me.

I really hated that nickname. “How you been, old man?”

He dropped a red hot horseshoe into a bucket of water and it hissed and steamed in an effort to cool the metal. “Fine, fine, what can I do you for?”

I pointed to the chestnut stallion. “Wanted to know what you’re asking for him right there.”

“Four dollars,” he said without missing a beat.

“Are we going to play this game all day, Beufort?” Luke asked. “Just give us a fair price and we’ll pay it.”

While they haggled, I pulled back the lips of the docile filly. She wasn’t as old as I’d thought. She didn’t even balk at me checking her teeth. Instead she swatted lazily at a fly with her tail and propped her back leg up in relaxation. A lazy personality was likely her problem. “You selling this mare?”

The old man’s eyes glistened with intelligence. “Well, I was set on keepin’ her for my wife.”

“Buefort,” Luke said tiredly. “You’re wife died fifteen years ago.”

Buefort squinted his eyes testily at my brother and said, “But I can see parting with her for four dollars.”

“Dammit, Buefort,” Luke hollered.

I couldn’t help the chuckle that bubbled forth from my throat. He shouldn’t be encouraged but it felt so damned good to be arguing prices with that burly old blacksmith again like nothin’ had changed.

With the horses saddled, we made our way back to the general store, dragging the reins behind. Lucianna limped out of the general store with an armload of goods and Luke hopped the stairs to pay.

“The crops and herd pay well last year?” I asked. Jeremiah didn’t miss it. What I’d really asked was, where’s all the money coming from?

“We turned lawmen for a spell to repay the sheriff for helping us with the Hell Hunters.” His eyebrows waggled. “We collected bounties.” He took a wrapped paper package from Lorelei and kissed her on the cheek.

Huh. Bounty hunting was actually the perfect occupation for a werewolf. Few rules, lots of blood. I took the stacks of packages from Lucianna’s filled hands and out emerged such a bewildered look I’d never seen on a woman. “They take good care of you?” I asked.

“Yes,” she breathed. “Is that my horse?” She pointed to the white dappled filly.

“Sure is.”

Her eyes said the horse was terrifying, but her mouth said, “He’s pretty.”

“What are you going to name him?” Kristina asked in a note above what was comfortable to my sensitive ears.

“Barney.”

I frowned at the horse. She did actually resemble the dappled gray ancient horse we’d rode to Liverpool on. I pointed under the filly’s legs. “Well, he’s a she, so now what’re you going to name her.”

“Still Barney,” Lucianna murmured as I packed her new wares into the saddle bags.

“Barney’s a fine name,” Lorelei said.

Kristina punched her fists onto her hips and cocked her head. “She looks like a Barney, don’t she?”

I checked the cinch one more time and motioned for Lucianna. “Barney’s a sound name,” I agreed. “Use your good leg to swing you over.”

“You hurt?” Kristina asked.

Lucianna put a foot in the stirrup. “I’m on the mend.”

“We got salve for scars at the house if you have them.”

She hoisted herself over the saddle without so much as a pained grunt. “I’ll take you up on that. I have presents for you two sent all the way from our mother-in-law in Boston.”

The way she claimed Ma as family made me jerk my gaze up. She looked down at me with a serious expression, and I wanted to kiss her lips right here and now. I would’ve done it too if the whole damned town weren’t watching.

When she was settled in the saddle and I’d given her a short lesson on steering her new horse, I mounted my own and the rest of the Dawson’s followed suit. We pointed our ponies toward home and a thrum of excitement trilled through me at the prospect of seeing our house again.

A bigger part of me anticipated showing Lucianna who I was and where I’d come from. After so many years of hurt and fear about the animal I was turning into, I was coming home.

Chapter Fourteen

Lucianna

Barney had to be the least frightening horse to ride in all of creation. She did everything I asked and never got irritated with my pitiful riding skills. Gable’s horse on the other hand, was a monster. He sidestepped constantly and chewed at his bit. His legs had gathered a thin, white layer of sweat before we were even a mile out of town and he kicked at Luke’s black horse on several occasions.

If the smile on Gable’s face was anything to go by, he liked his livestock naughty. “I’m going to run him.”

He took off like his tail was on fire. Gable’s shirt billowed behind him and it looked like he and the horse were one being. His elated laugh echoed over the slow-paced clomping the rest of our horses had adopted.

“That horse is made to run. Gable will get him settled down in a hurry though,” Luke explained.

“You won’t ever catch me running like that,” I mumbled. I’d be a smear on the road if I even tried.

“How do you know you won’t like it if you never try?” Luke asked.

“I can guess. I guessed I wouldn’t like whiskey and I was right.”

“You just have to get used to the burn is all.”

Kristina pulled her horse beside mine. “Let her be, Luke. Give her at least a day before you start taintin’ the lady right out of her.” She turned conspiratorially to me. “I bet Lorelei’s glad to have another proper woman around. Luke’s been trying to corrupt her non-stop for months.”

“What about you?” I asked. “He doesn’t pester you?”

“Oh, no, he can’t corrupt me. I’m worse than he is.” She ducked forward. “You know Gable’s secret yet?”

“The one where he grows fangs and fur?”

“That’s the one.”

“I figured it out last night. Are they like him too?”

Jeremiah and Luke turned in their saddles and grinned from much too far in front of to have heard. Well, that answered my question.

Lorelei dropped in on my other side. “How’d you figure it out? It took me forever.”

Memories of what we’d been doing when I figured it out heated my cheeks. “Um, well—”

Kristina puffed air through her lips. “Hells bells, you found out when he was beddin’ you? Well, don’t that beat all?” She frowned to herself. “Whoa, that’s actually kind of sexy.”

I opened and shut my mouth, then looked at Lorelei. She shrugged like Kristina was a flavor I was just going to have to learn to enjoy.

“I’d shared a room on a ship with a caged wolf, who eventually became my friend. Here I was, missing Gable terribly, and he was right there with me the entire time.”

Kristina squinted. “I like the way you talk.”

Lorelei rolled her eyes heavenward. “What kind of ship did you come over on?”

“As close to a pirate ship as I’ve ever imagined. Gable had to smuggle me out of the country to escape my fiancé, Ralston. I traded my engagement ring for safe passage to America.”

Lorelei’s expression turned dreamy. “That sounds dreadfully romantic.”

“It wasn’t,” I assured her. “We were boarded by British swordsmen who were hired by Ralston. I would’ve died except I unlocked the wolf’s cage and he escaped in time to save me. Before that, I was seasick for two weeks, which was just long enough not to keep down any of the perishables. I recovered just in time for gruel, hard tack, and salted fish.”

“What an adventure!” Kristina exclaimed.

I tumbled on, fueled by their excitement. “Before we even boarded the ship, I was arrested and locked in a barred cell, and Gable swooped in with the pirate captain and saved me from Ralston’s reach.” All right, when I told the story like this, it did sound terribly romantic and adventurous.

“Where’d you get your limp?” Kristina asked, fingering a horrendous burn scar that covered the side of her neck.

“That part really isn’t romantic.”

“Maybe in time it will be,” she said.

Luke’s saddle creaked as he turned in it. He gave her a narrow-eyed warning glance. “Don’t push her. She’ll talk when she’s ready.”

I sighed heavily. “It’s okay.” She probably wanted to hear of someone else’s story to not feel so alone with hers. I understood that. I was curious about hers too. “I was shot by Ralston’s men. Three bullets went right through me, and the other lodged in my hip. Gable knew a doctor. He even offered me the bone slivers he’d picked out as a souvenir.”

Lorelei gasped and pulled her hand to her mouth. “That’s awful, Lucianna,” she said in a quivering voice. She looked positively green.

Kristina’s eyebrows arched. “Did you keep ’em?”’

“No, I didn’t keep much from my old life. Except for my new limp.”

Luke pulled his horse back. “You should’ve. There’s big magic in that kind of stuff around here.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I know an Indian or two who’d trade decently for some bones of the living.”

Lorelei slid from her horse and rushed for the fallen trunk of a tree on the side of the dirt road. I turned to dismount too, but Jeremiah was there faster than humanly possible. One moment he was on his horse in front, and the next he was rubbing Lorelei’s back as she got sick in the brush. His horse trotted away nervously and Luke ran to catch up to the runaway steed.

“She’s with child,” Kristina explained. “Just found out yesterday.”

“How’d she find out?”

“The boys smelled it on her. Gable likely smelled the baby the first time he laid eyes on her today. Their senses are uncanny.”

“And disturbing,” I mumbled. What did I smell like to Gable after a twelve day jaunt by train and carriage?

I dismounted as best I could and pulled my trusty old canteen from Barney’s saddle bag. “Here,” I offered to Lorelei.

She was pale and a light sheen of sweat covered her forehead but she gave me a shaky smile and took the water.

“I’m sorry I told that story. I’ve played it over and over in my head until it just seems like its normal, but it isn’t. I won’t tell you that stuff anymore.”

“No, please. Sit with me.” She nodded to Jeremiah and he loped back to his horse with a graceful gait that rivaled even Gable’s.

“I’ve learned the hard way you shouldn’t keep those things to yourself.” She watched Jeremiah mount his horse fluidly. “Secrets are like a poison, Lucianna. Hold them in and they’ll kill the good in you. Kristina and I have had a hard time, but have found solace in speaking of it until it doesn’t hurt to do so anymore. We’ve been thrown into an unstable life because of the men we love. If we can’t lean on each other, everything falls apart.” Her face paled again and she wretched over the tree.

“Shh,” I cooed as I held her dark tresses away from her face. I’d seen the underbelly of seasickness and didn’t wish it on anyone. Hopefully, her morning sickness would be over soon. I handed her the canteen again when she was finished and we walked carefully back to the horses.

Gable blasted through the trees. “What’s happened?” he asked from his skittering mount.

I hoisted myself into Barney’s saddle. “We’re fine. Lorelei wasn’t feeling well.”

Gable didn’t leave my side after that. Apparently he’d ridden the excitement out of his horse, because the beastly creature was on his best behavior. Gable’s hair was a shade lighter than his brother’s but even with their different colored eyes, it was obvious they were related. Their height was commanding, and their backs all straight like they’d learned to ride from the same person. Likely their Da, if I had to guess.

Luke swatted at his neck for probably the eleventh time. “Dammit, Gable. Control him or ride in front.”

Gable’s eyes had lightened considerably to the color of frost. He shook his head a lot but it didn’t seem to help and eventually Luke and then Jeremiah peeled to the back of the group. The women beside me shot questioning glances but all I could do was shrug. I didn’t know anything about the dynamics of werewolves. Bloody hell, I hadn’t even known they existed until last night. That was something the men would have to work out on their own.

The land was beautiful and mysterious. The trees here had to be a hundred years old and sprouts of green grass poked through the winter dried soil. Gable’s expression held such hope and anticipation that my heart panged when we pulled into a clearing and his gaze landed sadly on a charred pile of rubble toward the back. He didn’t pull to a stop until we stood right in front of the ruins.

His voice sounded gravelly and deeper. “What happened to it?”

It was Jeremiah’s voice filled with apparitions that spoke up. “It was the Hell Hunters. They hung us from that tree over there and burned the house with Kristina in it.”

Gable looked down and to the side and his breathing was ragged. He slid a look to Kristina. “How’d you get out?”

I hadn’t seen her face without a smile plastered across it until now.

“Some friends let me out the back and then I came for the boys.”

Luke’s tone shook with emotion. “She didn’t even know she was hurt. We watched her burning alive through that front window and we couldn’t do anything. And then suddenly she was there waving her little derringer like she’d kill them all. I hung but she shot the rope knowing they’d open fire on her. Sheriff was off in the woods lightin’ ’em up and our other friend, Elias, stood right behind her firing on anything besides us that moved. We couldn’t save the house, brother. We could barely save ourselves.”

Gable’s icy eyes rimmed with barely checked emotion. “I should’ve been here.”

Jeremiah nodded slowly. “Wouldn’t have hurt.”

Gable pulled his horse beside Kristina’s and squeezed her knee as if he was sending a silent thank you before he rode for the barn. Moments later he disappeared into the woods, shedding his shirt as he went.

Lorelei wiped silent tears with the back of her hand. “I wasn’t even here for it, but it’s still so hard to hear what you all went through.”

Jeremiah’s eyes were tortured as he watched his wife mourn what could have been.

“Come on, Jer,” Luke said. “Gable won’t be back for a while and that front field still needs to be tilled.”

“What’s wrong with Gable’s wolf?” Kristina asked.

I scanned the woods where my man had disappeared. “It’s not his wolf that’s the problem. It’s his human.”

“Jeremiah used to try and eat me. Do we need to worry?”

I jerked my face to her and grimaced. “Why did he try to eat you?”

“Because his wolf was broken. Do we need to take precautions against Gable’s wolf?”

The great white wolf from the ship sat on the tree line. One second he wasn’t anywhere to be seen, and then he was here, watching me with eyes so light they didn’t have color. The horses pranced and snorted under us but he didn’t move closer.

“Well, that answers my question,” Kristina said low. “Jeremiah would’ve attacked long before now. He changed so fast! I thought Luke changed fast since I came along but damn, your man’s quick as a shot.”

Distractedly, I said, “He has trouble staying human. Maybe the change back is harder.”

“Come on,” Lorelei said. “Let’s put the horses up before he gets any smart ideas about making one into a meal.”

Away we rode, on three splashy looking ponies. The women considerately showed me how to unsaddle and brush Barney out. I was terrified until I figured out my dappled white steed didn’t much like moving if she didn’t have to. It was like brushing a fence post and I’d just never really been able to conjure a fear of stationary wooden objects.

Hoisting my wares from the saddle bag, I nearly screamed when we shut the barn door and turned around to see Gable the wolf sitting patiently behind us. His tail wagged a little and in an instant it hit me how badly I’d missed him. Well, this part of him. I sank into the dirt and he licked my face before he let me wrap my arms around his neck. My ferocious, terrifying wolf followed closely to my side as Lorelei, Kristina, and I walked the clearing to the big house.

“Why is one house so much bigger than the other?” I asked.

Kristina talked around a dry piece of grass that flopped out of her mouth. “Jeremiah wants tons of little babies running around. Luke’s content to be an uncle.”

“You and Luke never want to have babies? But how can you even control that?”

Her blue eyes were animated and open as she said, “I was a whore by trade, Lucianna. I’m trained in the fine arts of keeping babies away.”

I don’t know what they saw on my face but both women burst out laughing.

“So, you’re joking about being a whore?” I asked.

“Well, technically I ain’t a whore no more. Luke’s turned me straight monogamous. I’m all proper-like now.”

“Yes,” Lorelei said. “Proper-like. Her manners are still atrocious. Fortunately for her, Luke needs that in a woman.”

Hm. I could actually see that. Lorelei and Kristina’s relationship intrigued and confused me. It was obvious Lorelei was well-bred, well-mannered, and educated to the teeth. Kristina, on the other hand, was crass and bold and unerringly optimistic. Yet, they seemed to get along well and had a sense of humor about the other’s differences. It made me like them more. If two women from completely different worlds could find common ground, maybe they could find room for an English highborn lady with a murderous former fiancé and a gimp leg.

Gable followed us right through the front door and lay down beside my seat at the dining table. The kitchen and living area were open and inviting. A large stone fireplace claimed most of one wall and two comfortable looking chairs sat in front of it. A book lay open on a simple end table like someone was in the middle of reading it at nights. A deep sink sat clean and waiting for a dish, while the wood burning stove shadowed the corner.

Lorelei reached up to a shelf and pulled a cookbook down. She flopped it on the table in front of Kristina and sat beside her. Slowly Kristina read the titles of dishes, stopping only a time or two to ask a sound. I’d taken literacy for granted as I moaned and balked against my tutors. Shame heated my face. Not everyone was afforded such luxuries. “Are you teaching her to read?”

Lorelei nodded. “She makes an excellent student.”

Kristina snorted. “She has to say that. She teaches me to read in exchange for tips in the bedroom.”

I clacked my teeth closed. “Like what kind of tips?”

Kristina leaned back in the creaking wooden chair with a glint to her eye. “What’ll you trade me?”

I undid the drawstrings of my sack and dumped the contents. “Mrs. Dawson sent this with me from Boston. She said I’d know what to do with them when I got here. I was thinking we should split them three ways. Equal. You get first pick.”

The women pursed their lips in an eerily similar fashion and stared at the loot as if it were bricks of Spanish gold.

“Deal,” Kristina breathed.

We spent an inappropriate amount of time sifting through each one and discovering the uses of each wash, oil, soap, perfume, and lotion.

Just past mid-day, Kristina went over carefully how to make a stand alone beef and vegetable stew, and when it was warming over fireplace embers, we shared a loaf of bread under what they called The Hanging Tree.

After our meal was nothing but crumbs, we made our way to the barn. As I proved myself a professional chicken handler from my chores aboard the Anna Gale, that task was given to me. I’d collect the eggs and later, when we had a fancy for chicken and dumplings, Lorelei would teach me how to prepare one for the pot. While I took my first lesson on milking a cow, Gable waited quietly outside the door. Thank the Lord because the last thing I wanted was for the cow to scare and kick the pathetic amount of milk I’d managed to squirt out of a marginally grumpy bovine’s udder.

After we’d mucked out the horse’s stalls, backbreaking work if I do say so myself, Kristina motioned me up a ladder to a loft. I thought there would be more hay there, but instead, part of it was partitioned off to make a small bedroom. It sat over a hearth on the first level and would likely catch an acceptable amount of warmth from the fire.

“We fixed this up after the house burned,” Kristina explained. “This was where Luke and I spent our newly wedded days, and now it’ll be yours and Gable’s until you build a house. I wanted you to sleep in our extra bedroom as that’s what Luke’s intended it for all along, but he said maybe you’d like a little privacy since you’re newly mated and all. So,” she gestured grandly, “the barn is all yours.”

Lorelei’s eyebrows knotted together in sympathy. “I know it doesn’t seem like much for a lady used to higher standards of living, but trust me when I say it’s better than sleeping in a tent in the woods. These houses weren’t here when I showed up and the barn was already occupied. It was most certainly an unpleasant surprise.”

“The barn is fine,” I assured them. “I slept in a ship hammock for six weeks, then a train, then a carriage and all on a bad hip. The bed is a welcome sight, to be sure.”

A small wooden table with a lantern and matches sat beside the inviting bed. A small rug had been thrown down as a homey touch and a rocking chair sat in front of a sizeable, uneven paned window. The sunlight streamed in waves through the lumpy glass. This would be our first home, Gable and I. I frowned at the ladder. I wished he was human to enjoy it with me. I’d have to show it to him later. When he could talk and had fewer teeth.

Chapter Fifteen

Lucianna

The day had exhausted me. There was so much to learn to be of any help working the homestead. I didn’t want to just be a pretty ornament the way I’d been in my old life. I wanted to be of value and pull my weight. These people had opened up their lives to me and I didn’t even share their blood or name.

Gable disappeared while I was setting our things up in the loft where we’d sleep. By nightfall, he still hadn’t returned. We’d planned a big welcome home dinner for Gable, but the guest of honor was sadly absent. Luke and Jeremiah built up a bonfire near the ruins of the old house in a fire pit that had obviously been used many times. With plates overflowing with the delicious stew Kristina made, with a pitiful amount of assistance from myself, we sat on old hollowed out tree stumps with seats hacked into them and talked easily in the light of the fire.

Gable finally emerged from the tree line looking disheveled and tired. I set my empty plate aside and stood. “I’ll get you some dinner.”

“I’ll come with you.”

We walked quietly, side by side, until we were at the steps of the big house. “Luc, I’m sorry.”

There was a tiny, gnawing hurt inside of me I couldn’t understand or explain. “For what?”

“For not being able to be here enough for you.” He waved half-heartedly at the foursome laughing by the bonfire. “I failed them. I’m failing you, and now I just don’t know how to fix this.”

“Gable,” I said softly. “Stop apologizing for things you can’t control. You had your reasons for staying away. You can’t keep looking back at what could’ve happened. Listen to them. Listen.”

Kristina said something crudely inappropriate and the rest of them laughed as their contentment filled the clearing.

“They’re alive and happy. You can’t change the past, Gable. You have to find a way to deal with it and move on. Let your ghosts go home.”

“I’ll try to stay with you all day tomorrow.”

I leaned my head against his chest and sighed into his strong embrace. “I missed you. I love your wolf, but it’s not the same as talking to you.” I pressed the palms of my hands against his and intertwined our fingers. “It’s not the same as touching you like this. What’s the longest you’ve gone wolf?”

His voice was so soft I almost didn’t hear him. “A year.”

His answer shocked me into stillness. “That stops now. We have to work you back up to some kind of balance. You’re using your wolf to escape painful memories you have as a human. Talk to me instead. You have a reason to spend time as both now. You have me.”

His lips brushed my hair and there was a smile in his words. “Will you give me incentives to stay a man?”

I eased back and searched his dancing eyes. The flickering light of the bonfire touched his scarred cheek and, unable to help myself, I touched it. “For every day you spend as a man, you’ll earn the night with me.”

Disappointment swam in the grim set of his mouth.

“Starting tomorrow,” I amended.

That smile. I’d do anything for that slow burning grin that sent trails of warmth through my middle like tendrils of oil against water. A smile like that could open me right up to him.

I stood over the fire in the hearth and filled his plate. Lorelei had informed me how much werewolves actually needed to eat to keep their bodies healthy and I was determined to keep Gable as balanced as possible. And he could definitely stand to gain a few more pounds after I’d nearly starved him on the boat.

He leaned against the dining table with his legs crossed at the ankles of his boots. He pulled the plate out of my hand and set it behind him before he wrapped his hands almost all the way around my waist. I was powerless to deny his wants. They were my wants to. From his almost seated position we were eye level and I found something exciting about that. I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed the tanned skin there. A low rumble vibrated in his throat and I flicked my tongue against his pulse just to taste him. Such an exciting noise, that was. I got the man with a touch of the beast. How could being this close to him feel so dangerous and so right all at once?

My kisses trailed up his jawline and I splayed my fingers against the tops of his thighs. His breath quickened and, seemingly out of patience, he cradled my head in his hand and opened my mouth with his own. Before I knew it, I was up against the wall with no recollection of exactly how I’d got here. One of the iron pans that hung from a hook on the wall clanged to the wooden floorboards beneath.

Gable’s body was pressed frantically against mine and his ragged breath brushed against the sensitive lobe of my ear as he tugged the hem of my dress heavenward. I couldn’t get enough of him—not if I lived a hundred years could I get enough of the raw power he unleashed against my flesh. I closed my eyes and was swept under a tide of frenzied sensuality as his hands found purchase under my dress.

And then he froze.

No, no, no, things were going so well, but an irritated sigh burst against my neck. “Lucianna,” he purred seductively.

I opened my eyes. “Hmm?”

“Lorelei says we better not break her kitchen.”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“It wasn’t meant for your ears.” He set me regretfully down. “We’d better get back.”

I forgot the plate of food as I swayed out the door. His kisses had a tendency to do to my body what the shot of whiskey had done. Gable, thankfully, was in more control of his mental facilities because he remembered the plate and snaked an able arm around my waist as if to steady me.

Kristina was duchess of the eyebrow waggles when we got back and the boys did a terrible job at hiding knowing smirks. Only Lorelei acted as if nothing was amiss. Apparently she didn’t notice Gable’s excited, ivory-colored eyes peeking out of his very human face, or his cowboy hat held inconspicuously across his lap but I was grateful she had manners enough not to comment. Unlike Luke and Kristina who whistled low and ribbed him relentlessly.

Gable took a seat on the ground against a felled log someone had the good sense to drag near the warmth of the fire. Cuddling into my tree trunk seat, I wrapped my new cream colored shawl more tightly around myself. The flames between us all danced and crackled against a cloudy night sky.

“Tell us about London,” Kristina said. “Does your family still live there?”

Luke gave her a warning glance but it was too late and the question hung in the air like a snowflake scared of touching the cold ground.

“My family’s dead.”

“How?” Lorelei asked.

“I didn’t want to marry a man, and he grew angry with me and ordered my family murdered. He told his men to save me for last. My mother and father were first, and my little brother died in my arms the moment I was shot. Gable took me away before the house went up in flames.”

The firelight held everyone’s attention and Gable pulled me back into his lap. It was much warmer there. I’d never in a million years do something so wanton in my old life, but here, touch seemed necessary to these unusual men. And somewhere in my months of heartache, it had become necessary for me as well.

“Tell us about your fiancé,” Kristina suggested. “Should we worry about him?”

“Yes. He seems to have eyes everywhere. He’s American but I don’t know where from and he plans to move some of his businesses here. He’s tall but not Dawson-sized,” I said with a small smile. “He has dark hair and blue eyes. The ladies in society fawned over his unconventional beauty, but I never found him a handsome man. His eyes were cold, like that of a serpent and when he smiled, it never reached the rest of his face. It was as if he didn’t have any feelings at all.”

Kristina leaned forward as if I were telling a ghost story and Gable hugged me closer.

“He’s a coward, who hires others to murder for him, so you never know who could be watching—who could be waiting for you to slip up.”

Luke and Jeremiah watched Gable through the flames. I didn’t know what they said with that look, so I asked. “What?”

“Lucianna,” Luke drawled. “You know we’re going to have to kill him, don’t you?”

The coward in me shrank away from the idea. “You can’t. He’ll hurt you. We just need to hide forever.” Oh, I could hear how silly I sounded but my desperation to keep my new family pressed me further. “He’s untouchable. Gable tell them!”

“Luc, I couldn’t do it on my own. He’s untouchable in Britain, but if comes here, we can track him down. We can get close enough. The pack can help me go after him here.”

I searched each of the brother’s faces one by one in desperate hope that they would tell me they were teasing. “He took everything from me. If he finds out where I live, he’ll take you too. Tracking him will put you in danger.”

It was Lorelei who looked solemnly over the fire. “They’re right.” Her eyes raked to Kristina. “The boys have experience with people who like to ruin lives. It has made them proficient hunters.”

I wasn’t above begging. “But you made it out by the skin of your teeth! Who’s to say we’ll be so lucky this time. Lorelei, you have a child to think about.”

“And what kind of mother would I be if I taught my child to run and hide from the dangers of this life? Things are different out here. You don’t understand it now, but you will. Out here, the pistol is law. If you want to survive, you’d better learn how to wield it. Trust in the men. They are stronger as a pack and their alpha has returned. They’re your only hope at getting through this.”

All right, I understood what she was getting at. In fact it made a disturbing amount of sense, but I’d been trained to flee for two frightening months and it was a hard habit to break. The lion in me screamed a battle cry against the man who’d so wronged me, but the mouse in me clung tighter to Gable and wished him to stay quiet and safe here with me.

“We don’t have to worry about it right now,” Gable murmured in my ear. “We’ll take a break from the strain and make a home. There’s no use worrying about things out of our control, remember?”

“What’s your favorite memory of your mother?” Kristina asked, giving the relief of a new subject other than our impending doom.

That one was easy. “The night I was shot, she stood up for me for the first time in as long as I can remember. I thought she didn’t love me, but watching her tell Ralston he wasn’t good enough for her baby was proof that she did. She was brave and fierce and it’s how I’ll always remember her. What about yours?”

“I had this mangy cat named Tiger,” she began.

“Did it look like a tiger?” Lorelei asked.

“Not at all. It barely had any hair, was brown as baby shite, and was older than dirt but he was my cat and he was beautiful to me. My mother hated that cat, or so I thought, and told me I was never to bring the wee devil inside our little home. And every week, Tiger repaid her kindness by dropping all the rats he’d hunted at her doorstep, much to my mother’s dismay. Well, I’d break her rules and let him in any time I knew she’d be out for a while and one day I’d forgotten all about him. So when I came into the kitchen and he was up on the table and my mother was sitting right next to him at the table, I thought for sure she’d have my hide. But then I looked at the reason Tiger was on the table and he was drinking out of a milk bowl that my mother had made him. For all she talked against him, she didn’t hate my mangy ratter after all. She’ll never admit that story as long as she lives though. What about yours, Lorelei?”

And so on it went into the night. My earlier panic was soothed with easy conversation and laughter. It had been a long time since I’d smiled so much, and the stretch on my face felt good.

The stars were all out and twinkling around their mother moon by the time Gable pulled me toward the barn. The smell of hay and the richness of animal fur filled the air. It wasn’t quite cold enough to start a fire in the hearth, what with all the fur blankets that lined the bed. Plus, I’d learned last night he was roughly the temperature of a blacksmith’s fire, so extra heat would only serve to make me sleep uncomfortably. We climbed the ladder and Gable began to unbutton his vest. I sank onto the mattress to watch, and he smiled indulgently, then turned so I could better see the show.

“I like looking at you,” I admitted. “I imagined what you looked like when I was on that boat. You know, under your clothes.”

A deep chuckle sounded from him and he shrugged out of his cotton shirt. “And does my body match your imaginings?”

“No.”

A worried look slashed through the blue of his eyes.

“Your body is much more dashing than anything I could think up.” I lifted up on my knees and reached for him, then traced the smattering of scars across his shoulder. “You’ll tell me about these someday, won’t you?”

His nostrils flared slightly as he inhaled. “Someday.”

I unbuttoned his pants and unsheathed his erection. “I can wait.”

Lifting my dress over my head, Gable knelt down in front of the bed and gripped my waist. His hands were warm and strong against my skin. He looked like he wanted to tell me everything that had ever been, but instead, he cupped my face and stroked my cheekbone with the pad of his thumb. He kissed me languidly, lapping at my lips until I melted against him. With a wicked grin, I pushed away from him and gave him my back. Then, lowering myself onto my hands and knees, I spread my legs wide and watched his reaction over my shoulder.

He’d gone still, and his eyes round. The man seemed helpless to take his attention from between my legs as he stood slowly. With his pants in a pile near my dress on the floor, the bed creaked as he positioned himself behind me.

“Lucianna,” he rumbled, my name reverent upon his lips. He slid his hands around my waist and forced an arch in my back until my pelvis tilted up for him.

Slowly—agonizingly slowly—he slid into me. I sighed happily when I felt his hips against my backside. I was sore, but didn’t hurt like last night. Already, my body seemed to be adjusting to take Gable’s girth.

“Here,” he murmured against my ear as he nibbled it. “Like this.” He took my hand and guided it between my legs.

I could feel him sliding slowly in and out of me, feel the wetness he’d conjured there, feel the sensitive spot he’d discovered last night. I’d never touched myself like this before, but Gable kissed my shoulder blades and pressed my hand against myself more firmly. It was hard to feel shame when my mate was so open.

His rhythmic thrusting quickened and filled me with a desperation to relieve the pressure he was building inside of me. The sound of his thighs hitting mine made me cry out in ecstasy, and when at last I detonated around him, he froze, hovered over me. He groaned and breathed my name, and his powerful hips jerked as he spilled into me.

We stayed like that for a long time, locked together and depleted. He never stopped kissing my back and neck, and when at last he pulled out of me, warmth trickled down my thighs.

“Stay there,” he said low, and then he pulled a clean strip of linen from his bag. Gently, he cleaned me, then blew out the lantern and tucked me against the curve of his stomach.

I’d known what he was for an entire day and still, the expected fear never made an appearance. Being like this, with him, under the umbrella of safety his body provided…it only served to make me need him more.

Chapter Sixteen

Gable

Talk of avenging Lucianna and her family scared her. I’d make it up to her by keeping the time until then as happy as possible.

“Hup!” I clacked the reins against the back of a mule and he gave me more. With my brothers and I all working, the fields would be ready in time to get the seeds down just when Luke felt it was right. The man had a sixth sense about that kind of stuff, just like Da did when he and Ma lived in the country.

I’d start building her a house in the evening hours when our days’ work was done. For too long, the homestead had fallen on my brothers’ shoulders, and even now, with the added help of their wives, which made a tremendous difference, there was still plenty to do. If we pooled our efforts and worked hard, this could be our best year yet.

Luke had sold most of the cattle last season in an effort to bring in a big haul of cash so he could hunt down the woman bent on Kristina’s slow destruction. It left us with too few cattle left to breed a good herd. Some of the bounty money would have to be used to buy more stock, but Jeremiah assured me that had always been the plan. They’d grown crafty while I was gone and eeked out a profit from a small ranch where many were struggling. It probably helped they each had the strength of three men and could see their work just fine in the dark.

Enough of the fancy lumber was left over from Kristina’s ex lover’s apology that we’d finish half the house with it at least. I’d have to cut the rest, which would take time, but that extra bedroom may come in handy someday. The barn was fine for now, but I’d seen the country manor she was living in and that sprawling property wasn’t even the main London home she lived in.

Lucianna deserved better and I aimed to give it to her.

Luke brought me a canteen of water and I took a long swig. “What?” I demanded at his cool glare.

“You going to visit Oupita?”

“Dammit, Luke.” I tossed the canteen out of the way and put the reins over my shoulder again. A short whistle trilled from my lips and moved the mule, but my green-eyed shit-stirrin’ brother didn’t get the hint and followed along beside me over the uneven clumps of dirt.

“I’m just sayin’, she’d like to know you’re safe. Probably. She might actually be disappointed you’re not dead.”

“I have a mate now, Luke. What possible reason would I have to be going over there and stirrin’ things up?”

“Oh, I don’t know. For closure? You came back to us full wolf, Gable. You have to start pickin’ apart the reasons why you ran. Jeremiah and I, we don’t have one bad thought about you runnin’ off, joining a war that didn’t concern us. We don’t have a bitter taste in our mouths about the years you just didn’t feel like coming back home either. But now that you are, it wouldn’t be terrible if we could get the old Gable back. Or hell, a fraction of the old you.”

“We were just kids. I don’t need closure with her.”

“How do you know?” Luke stomped away. “Nice eyes!” he yelled over his shoulder.

“Nyaaaaah!” I snarled.

Even the mule was starting to panic and it couldn’t even see me through its blinders.

Oh, should I? Should I go visit the girl I left without so much as a goodbye? Should I revisit what a coward I’d been when I left and rode off to go fight in a war that had nothing to do with her or her people? I cursed loud enough for Luke to hear it. I hadn’t thought of the girl in years and now a hundred summer memories dredged up from the bowels of my mind. I didn’t feel anything for her anymore. All of my energy and devotion was for Lucianna. My mate made me happy, she satisfied me, she understood and accepted me. And what had my relationship with Oupita been like? We fought like titans.

Thoughts of the girl made me long for the numbness of the wolf. What could possibly come from seeing her again? Lucianna’s plea to stay human drifted through my mind. Of course I’d do anything for her. She deserved everything I had and more, but what could digging up the past do to improve my control over the monster in me?

An apology.

The answer was so simple. Oupita wouldn’t accept it in a thousand years and I wouldn’t blame her one bit, but I could say the words and let the guilt go. It would leave one less thing rattling around in my brain and tempting me to go animal. I could see her happy and moved on, and I wouldn’t have to feel like I ruined her life anymore.

****

I woke before the rooster. Through the rustling of my clothes, Lucianna slept soundly within the warm folds of the bearskin blanket on our bed. Even if I was doing this for her, guilt tugged at me. Maybe I should’ve told her. But if I told her she’d worry it meant something, and it didn’t. I wasn’t doing this to go revisit an old flame. I was doing it so I could own my demons and become a better man for her. No. I couldn’t put that kind of worry on her heart. She’d lost everything and I didn’t want her for one minute thinking she’d ever lose me. I climbed down the ladder and pulled my horse from his stall. A saddle would be too loud but I was all right without one. I was just as comfortable riding bareback.

I hadn’t a hope that Oupita would be waiting at our meeting place from when we were younger. She might have waited there for a couple of weeks, but eventually she’d figured it out. She was an intelligent woman. I’d have more luck heading to the reservation the Ute had been driven to. Her family belonged to a small band of nomadic Indians, but she’d probably hooked up with a bigger tribe on the reservation. My Ute was rusty, but hopefully I could get by with just understanding the language. If not, enough of them had English. I’d find a way to track her down.

For old time’s sake, I rode right through the lands she used to live in with her tribe. They traveled where food was, but the area was central to their territory. Usually I could pick up a scent but they likely moved on years ago. Not much hope for that today. The sky was overcast and it brought out the rich green of the new grass that had sprung up after a winter of stagnancy. My horse snorted and bobbed its head as I pulled up to a long dead campfire. I narrowed my eyes. It wasn’t steaming, and when I dismounted, it wasn’t warm to the touch, but a fire had been made here recently. I rubbed some of the ashes between my fingers and scanned the clearing. Surely they weren’t still roaming around out here somewhere.

I released the dry, dead embers, and the dust traveled west on the wind. The smells in the clearing were so old, it was hard to recognize any of them with any certainty. The grass wasn’t tall enough to break under careless footfall and point me in the right direction. The Indians had a way of appearing and disappearing as they pleased and leaving little evidence of their rhythm and way of life.

I walked west with the wind. My horse followed without pulling the antics he did the first day. He was content to be in the wilderness and not confined to a corral for now. My nose missed nothing. Not a bunny ran for brush, not a field mouse escaped my attention. A thousand smells sifted through the lining of my sensitive nose, and instinctively I sifted through the ones I didn’t care about until only a few remained. I didn’t pick up anything important until well after mid-day. The smell of tanned dear hide, horses, and the sweet scent of ceremonial smoke gave the Indians away. Only problem was I couldn’t tell if I’d found the right tribe. While my brothers and I had always been on good terms with the Ute, other bands feared what we were and weren’t as friendly.

The seven large painted tipis told me I’d found the right people. Artwork differed from nation to nation and Ute painting and beadwork was no different. I left my horse tied to a low hanging branch and slid silently around the tree line.

“Mahtuhgurch Sahdteech,” a pair of women chanted.

They pointed to the north and I stepped carefully so as not to disrupt the stretched skins they worked upon. It had been years since I’d heard the nickname the Ute had given my brothers and I. A rough translation said I was a Dog of the Moon. I liked that nickname much more than the one I was given on the battlefield. The Gable stripped my humanity away. It was a painful reminder of how people, other soldiers, had seen me.

Oupita stood in a clearing next to a black horse. With a delicate touch she tied feathers into its mane. I crouched in the cover of the trees and rubbed my jawline with distracted fingers. She’d changed. She wasn’t the pin thin Indian girl from my memories anymore. She was a woman. I’d expected her to look just as she did when I left for some reason, and the surprise kept me to my hiding place in the shadows. She wore her hair long, and its shining black tresses cascaded down her long, cream-colored deer hide dress. She wore yucca fiber sandals and hummed quietly to herself. When she turned, her belly was swollen with child. She bent to pick up a woven basket and rested it on her hip.

I leaned forward out of the shadow of the trees but pulled back at a sound.

A man approached. His hair was long and braided into two trailing lengths over his shoulders. He wore a breechcloth with leather leggings over moccasins, and Oupita lit up like a new moon when he stopped in front of her. Saying something low, he flashed an easy smile. His hand rested on the swell of her belly as he kissed her. When he left her with a backward glance, she giggled and watched him leave with an adoring gaze.

“Why ain’t you on the reservation?” I asked as she turned.

Her gaze crashed onto mine, and the look of fury on her face brought chills to my skin.

For a full minute she stood frozen like the rivers in winter. She was still just as beautiful with her dark, intelligent eyes and full lips. Her chest heaved with the shock I’d brought to her. She pulled the basket in front of her belly, like a shield but still, I couldn’t keep my eyes away from the promise of life there.

“Where’s your Ute?” she asked in a rich voice.

I plucked a blade of new grass and fidgeted with it. I stood slowly. “Haven’t had much use for it.”

Disgust and accusation decorated her tone. “You lost it.” She ran her dark eyes down the length of me. “You look different. Sadder. Tired.” She cocked her head and studied the scars across my face. “I see your war brought you everything you hoped.”

Jeremiah must’ve told her why I’d gone.

“The biggest part of that war revolved around slavery, Oupita. I thought if I could make a difference and win it, people would look at the slaves differently. Better. I thought that open mindedness would trickle down to you, to your family, to your people.”

She tipped her chin higher. “Why didn’t you tell me that before you left? Why didn’t you tell me goodbye?”

I made and exasperated noise in my throat and offered my palms. How did I explain something I’d done so long ago? “Because I was a stupid kid. I didn’t know how to say goodbye to something I didn’t understand. I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry for how I left you.”

She’d stopped breathing. I could tell because I couldn’t hear anything save a heartbeat from her. “Is that why you came here? To put your mind at ease? Do you know I rode to our spot every day for months? I cried and cried and one day, your brother was there to tell me you’d gone. I’d given you everything and you spat on it. I forgive you Mahtuhgurch Sahdteech. Not for you, but for me. You brought bitterness into my life. Now, I’m letting it go. You want to know why we aren’t on the reservation? Because your government has already broken their word. We lost the mineral rights within five years and the gold rush has brought more white men to invade the land they gave us. And still the government presses our chiefs for more. We’re here because we follow Kicking Bull. He’s kept us safe—kept up our way of life. My children will be brought up wild and uncaged the way it’s always been for our people.”

“Peeh!” a little boy said as he bolted through the clearing. He ran straight for Oupita and latched onto her legs.

She scooted in front of him but not before I’d seen his face. My heart stopped. The boy had lighter skin, and though his hair was the raven black of his people, his eyes were light gray.

“Who’s he?” the boy asked in his language.

“No one,” Oupita answered. “Go play.”

He walked away slowly, never taking his eyes from me. He looked to be about six and I forced my gaze to his mother. “Is he mine?”

She gave a short, humorless laugh. “My son has a father. One who wouldn’t ever run away. Do you have a woman, Mahtuhgurch Sahdteech?”

Her use of my formal name stung. Things between us hadn’t just been broken. They had been blasted apart by dynamite. “I have a woman.”

“Good. Go home to her. Never come here again. I forgive you, now I want to forget you.”

“Oupita, for the boy, for your unborn child, you must get to the reservation. There’re soldiers here who will force you to go, or worse.”

“None of which is your concern.” Her eyes were rimmed with tears. “Go. Go!”

I glanced at the place between two tipis the boy had disappeared. My guts were being ripped open as I backed away. Nothing else could account for this amount of pain inside of me.

I left her to her life.

We’d both gained closure, but Luke had been wrong. It didn’t do me any good.

Tree branches whipped past me as I rode for a destination I didn’t even think about. It wasn’t home because of the place I’d left behind and the memories that filled it. It was home because Lucianna was there, and nothing else could sooth the fire in my soul.

Chapter Seventeen

Lucianna

I stretched and reached for him. Him. Gable. I still trilled with excitement when I thought about him being mine. He’d been so quiet yesterday when he came in from the fields he and his brothers had been working to prepare. His eyes had looked someplace far away for most of the night and he barely touched his dinner, and just when I’d worried myself into heart palpitations, he took me to our bed and touched my body and soul in that completing way of his. And there in the dark with the twinkling stars shining through the window, he’d wrapped me up tightly and told me he loved me.

I’d felt it for a long time, but hearing the words was different. He wasn’t hiding anymore. I’d gone to sleep on those words and today, I’d repay the favor. I’d tell him how I felt and give him the same security in our bond that he’d given me. He didn’t need it, I knew. He was a quiet man—a strong man. He didn’t need a token of my affection, but I’d give it to him none-the-less.

My hand found nothing but cold blankets. Leaning up on my elbows, I searched the loft but he wasn’t here. His clothes and boots were gone from the chair but the light filtering in through the window above me was still dark gray and new. Where had the man gone off to at such an early hour?”

I dressed and washed my face. With the top half of my long hair pinned in the back, I left the rest to brush my hips. He liked when I wore it long and unbound. I could tell because he couldn’t seem to stop touching it when it flowed out of its pins. I slipped into my new yellow dress but frowned into the mirror. I’d have to hem it and take in the waist. Maybe Kristina would let me borrow her sewing basket later, after the morning chores were finished. With a sigh I slipped on the dress Gable had given me. I wanted to wear something new for my confession, but he liked this one just fine. He’d told me on several occasions and his eyes always inspected my chest hungrily when I wore the fitted fabric.

Kristina stood out by the water pump and filled buckets of fresh water. I helped her haul them to the barn for the animals and after several trips, we fed them as well. I opened the door to the iron clad chicken coop, built to keep hungry werewolves at bay, and fed the hens and the ornery rooster grain from the folds of my gathered apron. Wiping my hands, I bid them ado to enjoy the rest of their day clucking and pecking around the yard. In a wire bucket, I gently set the eggs they’d lain in the night and while Kristina milked the first cow, I hauled my poultry wares to the big house. It was some distance away and I scanned the woods for Gable. I wasn’t rewarded.

Lorelei’s house had been whitewashed and the porch held one painted white rocking chair, and one charred and marred one that had likely seen the fire. I hoped my house would look like hers and Kristina’s someday. I didn’t need anything grand, but I was anxious for a place of our own that didn’t house livestock.

The smell of ham sizzling away in a greased iron skillet hit me as Jeremiah opened the door. He’d been in the midst of securing a holster with a couple of pistols and bullets shoved into small loops down the length of the leather belt around his waist.

“Mornin’,” he said in a sleepy voice as I swished past him.

“Good day. Have you by any chance seen Gable?”

“Not since last night. Maybe he needed to change. He stayed human all day yesterday.”

“How often do you and Luke change?”

“Every few days. We can go longer but it gets uncomfortable. It hurts to stay one or the other for too long.”

He’d managed to stay human for the entirety of the carriage ride to Colorado Springs. That was a six day journey thanks to the Higgins’ insistence we stop at every bump in the road. He shouldn’t be having a problem staying human for just one day. Maybe it was me.

“Go tell Luke and Kristina breakfast is on,” Lorelei said through a cloud of pork scented smoke. She used her apron to pull a pan of biscuits from the wood burning stove.

While Jeremiah called Luke’s name out in a completely reasonable voice, one that the man could likely hear over a train whistle, I cracked eggs into a bowl and dug out the shell fractures. I wasn’t as good as Lorelei at breaking them cleanly. When she’d pulled the ham out of the skillet, I poured the eggs over the thin layer of flavor at the bottom and stirred until they were scrambled.

At least I didn’t burn them to crispy flakes like I had yesterday, and Lorelei complimented them. I brimmed with pride. I’d never touched a cooking utensil in all my life, and now I’d just successfully scrambled eggs. I scraped them into a bowl and set it on the table just as Kristina and Luke filed in the door. They held hands and talked quietly and I smiled to myself. Such affection was not encouraged in society between ladies and gentlemen, but the more I was around it, the more physical detachment between husband and wife seemed sort of sad. I couldn’t imagine being with Gable in society and never being able to touch him for propriety’s sake. It would be torture.

“Where’s Gable?” Kristina asked as we sat at the table.

“I haven’t a guess,” I said.

Luke had the smallest wrinkle of worry between his eyebrows, but Jeremiah was right. He was probably running wild in the woods somewhere.

It wasn’t until late-afternoon when I really started to worry. Jeremiah and Luke spent the morning in the fields and were now sitting on Kristina’s front porch, devouring a late lunch. Kristina and I were taking up space in two rocking chairs with the sewing basket in between us. She was letting the waist out of one of Lorelei’s dresses for when she started to show, and I was taking up the hem of my yellow dress with tiny, practiced stitches.

I gasped as Gable came tearing into the clearing on an unsaddled horse. His eyes blazed so light they were almost colorless and a fearsome snarl was on his face.

“Did you know?” he yelled at Luke as he slid from the horse before it even stopped moving. “Did you know! Is that why you sent me to her on that fool’s errand?”

Her? My gaze shuffled from Gable to Luke. Who in bloody hell was her?

Luke set his plate down and stood slowly. Down the steps he went with a calming gesture. “Jeremiah and I both knew. We couldn’t just let you go on forever without knowing about him.”

“And you couldn’t just tell me? You made me relive all of that for what?”

He lunged at Luke.

“Okay,” Kristina said quietly. She snatched my hand and dragged me bodily in through the front door. My dress had fallen from my lap but a thimble still sat perched upon my finger. “Trust me when I say you don’t want to be around a Dawson fight.”

I fought for air as the door closed behind us. “Do they fight often?”

“Jeremiah and Luke do. They are forever showin’ up with bloodied faces and black eyes but they’re always in a good mood after. It’s ingrained in men to fight. It’s worse for werewolves.”

The yelling was muffled through the door and still, I stood here with my thimble clad finger pointed to the ceiling, trying to decipher the words of their argument. “What if they hurt each other?”

Kristina grunted. “Dawsons are bred hard-headed. They’ll be fine, but let’s go back to the back room so we don’t have to hear it.”

“Who was he talking about? Who’d Gable go see?” I asked, but she didn’t answer.

Instead, she pulled me onto the bed beside her and wrapped a comforting arm around my shoulders. The blue in her eyes pooled earnestly. “I don’t know. I’d tell you if I did but I can guarantee Luke started whatever it was. If he thinks he can tug the tail of your man, he’s wrong. Gable’s more wolf than anything.”

“Are you angry with Gable about coming at Luke like he did?”

“No.” Her serious eyes stayed locked on the door. “I was madder than a hornet the first time he and Jeremiah fought in front of me, but it’s the way they work out their differences. We talk things out with our lips. Men talk with fists.”

What a barbaric world I’d come to. The same rules that allowed me to touch my husband allowed violence too. We could get away with anything out here where nobody lived close enough to frown upon heathen ways.

She squeezed my shoulder. “I think they’re done. I don’t hear them no more.”

Outside, Luke sat on the ground with his arms crossed over bent knees. His face was cut and bloodied and when he spat, it was red.

“Barn,” he clipped out when his brilliantly-colored eyes rested on me.

I didn’t rush. If remnants of Gable’s anger remained, I wasn’t in a hurry to invite them upon myself. In the overcast and dusty light of early evening, Gable held on to one of the stall doors with a white knuckled grip and leaned against it with one locked leg, one bent. The slow pit-pat of blood from his chin kissed the hay beneath, and his eyes stayed firmly focused on the wood under his grip. That look on his face was what tipped me off.

My heart sank to my toes and I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Who is she?”

His icy eyes, made even brighter against the blood red of his nose and chin, found me and he straightened up. “Shit,” he said softly, then sat on an old stool in the corner. “Her name’s Oupita.”

If I’d hoped I guessed wrong before, her name sealed the truth into my heart. I wasn’t the only one he’d loved and for as much as I’d encouraged him to face the ghosts of his past, I hadn’t expected one of them to hurt me this much. Dust filled the air as I brushed off an old milking stool and sat across from him. I left space in between us because he’d earned it.

“She was your woman before you left?”

He looked absolutely miserable, slumped in the corner with his hands draped between his knees. “I’d never been with a girl before her. My brothers and I were young and green when we bought this place and we were scared to pieces the first time the Ute came to call on us. I thought they’d scalp us for sure. Oupita is the chief’s daughter. They looked the other way when I started showing up to spend time with her because of what I was. They figured out we were werewolves from the second they saw us. Don’t ask me how.”

“Is she pretty?”

He nodded slowly.

Of course she was. I could only imagine a fresh-faced, strong, strapping Gable Dawson. A woman would have to be beautiful to turn his head. I suddenly flushed with insecurity. I’d guessed he’d been with other women before. A man who looks like him would catch the interest of any female around, but never had I thought his trysts with women would be more than that. He’d loved her. That much was written all over his face. Blast it all, maybe he still did. She’d been beautiful and held his heart for a long time and here I was, the replacement lover with scars and a limp. My hands were cold and clammy as I clenched them together.

“And you loved her?”

“I did. Don’t anymore.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me you were going to see her?”

“I didn’t want it to look bad, or make it seem more than it was.”

“Gable, can’t you see?” Even I could hear the baffled desperation in my voice. “You not telling me makes it look even worse. How long were you together?”

“Three years.”

Oy, I was going to be sick. He’d had a reunion with the love of his life and here I sat, pining over him like a fool. “Why? Why would you go back and revisit her if you don’t have any feelings left, Gable?”

He stood and leaned forward which only angered me more. “Because Luke had me convinced it would help me to get some kind of closure. That it would help me be better for you if I apologized for leaving her like I did all those years ago.”

“You didn’t even leave for a reason? You were still together? So you just left your love hanging there between you all these years until I came along to fill some sort of void her absence left? Why couldn’t you tell me you hated each other by the end, or that she kicked you out of her life because you drank too much, or I don’t know, anything! Maybe you’re still together, Gable.” Okay I sounded hysterical but I didn’t care. My hurt needed a voice or I’d explode into a hundred tiny pieces.

“She’s got a man, Lucianna, and a baby on the way. She’s happier without me, and I’m sure as hell not harboring any feelings for her.”

“Then why did you need closure?”

“I…” His nostrils flared as he gave an explosive sigh. “Well, it sounds stupid now that you put it like that. It made more sense yesterday when I was thinking about it.”

“Ohh.” My laugh couldn’t have held less humor if I tried. “That’s why you were so quiet yesterday. You were thinking of her. Were you playing all of your favorite memories over and over, Gable, while I sat there worrying if you were okay?” I stomped over to him and glared up with my fists clenched at my sides. “Is that why you told me you loved me last night?”

“Lucianna, you’re being ridiculous.”

“Am I?” I screamed. I wouldn’t cry. I wouldn’t cry in front of him. Why did this hurt so badly? I wanted to double over from the pain but I’d give him no such satisfaction. He’d bedded me with her on his mind. My skin crawled as if it were dirty. “I trusted you. I traveled all the way from Britain while you rode beside me as a wolf and lied to me. And then I come here to find out I run off with a werewolf who visits his true love within the first three days of being here?”

“True love? Lucianna—”

“Is there anything else I should know?”

He hesitated and then quiet as a whisper, he said, “Yes.”

Oh, what that word did to my insides. Such fear filled me in the breath before he spoke.

“Oupita had a child, and I think the boy is mine.”

I slapped him across the face so hard my palm stung. And then I was furious with him for hurting my hand with his face. The clomp, clomp of my raging footsteps echoed through the clearing as I left the barn and headed straight for the water pump to splash water over my burning cheeks. Oh, I could just strangle the man! He’d loved another. He’d created a family with another! With a woman who wasn’t me! I sobbed and slid to the ground near the water trough. The splintered wood scraped my cheek and I’d probably look like a porcupine when I lifted away from it but none of that mattered.

All that mattered was that I didn’t matter as much as I thought.

“Luc,” he said from behind. His hands tried to lift me but I shrugged him off.

“Go away.”

He was quiet for a long time. When he spoke again, his voice sounded like he hadn’t slept in weeks. “I’ll be gone for a couple of days.”

“Good. Go ahead and run.”

“I’m not runnin’ from you, woman. I love you.”

“Don’t you say that to me right now.” I kept my eyes steadily on the tree line behind my trough pillow.

“Jeremiah’s asked me to help drive a shipment of cattle back here.”

I stood and brushed my soaked cheeks with my hand. “Great. I’ll see you when you get back. Don’t father any children while you’re away.” The agony in his blue eyes was almost enough to break me, but my stubborn fury won out. I plucked my dress from the floor of Kristina’s porch and slammed the door behind me.

Chapter Eighteen

Gable

Thank the good Lord above it was Jeremiah I was riding with and not Luke. Luke was good for some things, but man he wouldn’t ever shut up about the fifty ways I’d messed up. In contrast, Jeremiah was quiet the first couple of hours we rode. He let me wrap my head around things before he piped up with his opinions.

“It’s become really clear to me you don’t know a damned thing about women,” he said.

“Yeah, well that much has become clear to me, too.” I’d managed, in one day, to offend every women I’d cared about. It must’ve been some sort of record.

“I know you’re pissed at Luke, but we didn’t know how else to tell you.”

“Tell me what? That I had a son I’ll never know? So y’all sent me over to get filleted by Oupita instead of sitting me down and having a discussion?”

“What would you have done when we told you? I’ll tell you what. You would’ve been over there looking for him as soon as you could get a horse saddled.”

He had a point. I hated when Jeremiah was right.

He pulled his cowboy hat farther down on his head. “You should’ve told her.”

“Yeah, Jeremiah. I get that now! How’s that knowledge supposed to help me?”

“Use it for next time. When in doubt, always tell your woman everything. She’ll find out, like they always do, and it’ll be worse on you in the end.”

“You and Lorelei ever fight?”

“Hell yes we do. We like to make up afterward,” he said with a wink. “I can’t say I’ve ever messed up bad enough to get me slapped though.”

I wanted to punch the smugness from his face. “You heard that?”

“Birds fifty miles away probably heard it.” He pursed his lips. “Your face still looks red.”

“Tsh, shut up. I deserved it anyway.”

“Well, on the bright side, you know how she feels about you.”

“She hates me.”

“No, she wouldn’t be fightin’ so hard for you if she hated you.”

“She called Oupita my true love.”

Jeremiah’s booming laugh billowed through the trees. “If she ever spent two minutes with you two, she’d know that wasn’t true. You fought more than any two people I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“Then she asked if Oupita was pretty.”

“And you said?”

“Well, I wasn’t going to lie to her.”

“Jesus, Gable. It’s like you want her to shoot you or somethin’.”

“Why’d you ask me to run the cattle with you? You and Luke been doin’ it so long as a team, it don’t make any sense to bring me. I’m a liability, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“No, you ain’t. I was broken to pieces when Anna died and my wolf went nuts. I mean, next to your wolf, mine wasn’t in his right mind at all. You know, I tried to kill Kristina every time I changed from the time I met her till the time I brought Lorelei home? I mean, I was going to eat her, Gable. I wasn’t even mentally present when I was wolf. I just had to pray every time I had to change that I wouldn’t kill somebody. If Lorelei didn’t fix me, I was going to have to take some drastic measures to keep others safe. We had to lock Kristina up tight and I’d spend the whole night scratchin’ on her bedroom wall, trying to get to her. Things happen to our wolves. Things we can’t control, but that don’t mean their unfixable. You just have to figure out a way to slowly build up your human again. I brought you because its time you incorporate yourself back into our family again. You’re our alpha and you’re broken. That has to change because Luke and I can feel it and it has our wolves all but slobbering for the dynamic to improve. Plus, I wanted to give you an out. You and Lucianna will work things out when you get back and she’s had time to cool down. That woman’s got enough stubborn pride to rival even yours, and you hounding her to talk it out ain’t gonna work until she’s sorted through what another women in your life means. What a baby she didn’t know about means.” The reins jangled against the bit in his horse’s mouth as he tugged him around a turn in the road. “You think you’re going to stay here?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“Well, if it ain’t clear, that’s what me and Luke want. It’s what Lorelei and Kristina want, too. They’ve taken a fancy to Lucianna. Our pack would hurt if you left.”

I hadn’t thought about staying past protecting Lucianna, but it was something I needed to talk to her about. It was something I needed to take serious consideration of too. Running hadn’t worked for me. It had crippled me. At some point I needed to put down roots.

****

Lucianna

Time dragged on until it was almost as still as the birds before a storm. The sun never seemed to move in the sky and no matter how busy I kept myself, I couldn’t stop thinking about Gable. I’d had a right to my anger but with time also came new perspective. He’d just found out about his son and the knowledge wrecked him. I could see his breaking soul in the turbulent blue of his eyes. He had a child he’d never get to hold or tell stories to. I tried and miserably failed to imagine that happening to me. He’d already missed six years of the boy’s life and it was only a fraction of what he’d miss in the long run.

Gable had been trying to be honest with me. I could tell because what man in his right mind would admit that his previous love was beautiful to his current love? He’d probably know how to react to these situations more if he hadn’t been running as an animal for all this time. And I’d lit into him like a spike in a railroad tie. The suffering in his eyes when I’d left him out there flashed across my mind over and over, like it was my punishment for pushing him away.

I hefted the sack of seed to better balance it across my chest. A couple of days meant two days in my book. We were nearing the end of the third and I grew more and more fidgety as time when on. My eyes never steered far away from the road that edged the field we were planting. Though Kristina, Lorelei, and I weren’t near as fast as Luke, I thought we were making good progress. Planting was backbreaking work that required us to stay hunched over as we dropped seeds into the tiny valleys the plow made.

Every few hours or so, Luke would toss his seed bag to the side and cover our rows with fertile black earth. Then he’d pick right back up again. I’d forgotten my fear of Ralston over the days of work and worry over Gable. Maybe he had, too. I couldn’t imagine him leaving for any other reason, if even for a little while. The peace of this life brought a false sense of security. Oh, I understood nearly everything out here in these woods was trying to kill me, but I was in the company of strong women who tamed werewolves. It was hard to remain intimidated.

I’d been so lost in my thoughts, I came to the end of the last row before I even realized we were nearly done. Two fields planted in two days—not bad. My legs shook and my arms had been singed in the high sun, and I’d never get the filth out from under my fingernails, but there was a great sense of achievement to what we’d done. I scanned the field. Luke was covering the last of our seeds, and the other women looked at me with exhausted relief that was likely mirrored on my own face.

Luke’s startling mossy gaze jerked up from his bent position over the earth. “They’re home.”

With his sensitive ears catching the bellowing of cattle a couple of miles away, Jeremiah and Gable didn’t actually arrive for another hour, which gave me just enough time to clean myself up and fidget myself into a nervous wreck. We’d never fought before. What if he’d decided I was too easily excitable and not worth the effort?

I tried to sit patiently on the front porch with Kristina and Lorelei but the moment I saw his cowboy hat above the hundreds of bellowing beasts I jumped up and paced the yard. I bit my fingernail before I remembered about the dirt underneath. In a very unladylike fashion, I waggled my tongue and spit it out.

Gable only had eyes for the cattle. As they drove them past Lorelei’s house and toward the pond, my heart sank. He hadn’t even looked my way. I melted onto the bottom porch stair. I’d worn my yellow dress and everything. Sure, it boasted a single blood drop on the bosom from either Luke or Gable and their furiously swinging fists a few days ago, and yes, the hem was slightly crooked, but I’d taken the effort and that’s what counted.

Half an hour later, Gable returned and slid from his horse. The girls and I watched as he tied the mount to the post in front, then he snatched my hand. Wordlessly, he pulled me toward the woods and when my limp hindered the speed he apparently wanted, he gave a feral snarl and threw me over his shoulder. Right over his shoulder like a sack of flour!

“What’re you doing?” the panicked part of me asked.

I glanced up to the women on the porch. Kristina was rhythmically thrusting her hips with a ridiculous smile on her face and Lorelei was patiently shaking her head. Oh. That’s what he was doing.

“I think we need to talk,” I said in a small voice.

His voice was almost inhumanly rough. “Don’t want to talk. I’ve stayed human three days so I could be with you.”

He set me down forcefully and his mouth crashed onto mine with the violence of a sand storm. I had things I wanted to say but how could I piece together a coherent thought when he was like this? I threw his hat into the brush as he pressed me against a giant tree. I’d suffocate if he pressed any harder, but I couldn’t find it in me to care. The fabric of my dress scraped against the rough bark of a stout oak.

“Gable Dawson, I wore this dress for you and I swear if you ruin it—”

He yanked me forward and ripped the laces in back, and faster than I thought possible, my dress was in a fluttering pile near his hat. Okay then.

Wolf’s eyes blazed from his face but he didn’t hide them from me. The constant rumble in his throat only made me want him more and a whimper escaped me as I struggled to remove his shirt. It had never been like this between us. His skin burned under my hands, and I ran them over the rippling muscle that ran down his ribcage.

Mine. I wouldn’t let another woman fill his head. There was only room for me.

As he pressed against me, I ran my nails across the smooth skin of his back. If he wanted to be rough, let the man feel me. Let him bear the bleeding marks that proved he belonged to me alone. A snarl ripped from him and he threw his head back until the muscles in his throat flexed and strained. I grazed his vulnerability with my teeth and his breath turned ragged. His eyes were piercing, inhuman orbs of impossible light in the moment it took him to cover my mouth with his own.

Rucking up my skirts, he settled my back against the rough bark behind me. He didn’t even bother to remove his breeches completely before he slid into me with a noise that sounded like relief. His hand gripped the back of my hair as he bucked into me, faster and harder until my first release pounded through me, and then a second.

It was too fast and I was too sensitive now, and I opened my mouth to tell him so, but he jerked upward and swelled even bigger inside of me. His throbbing release followed as he clung to me like he never wanted to let go.

He’d always been gentle and considerate but not this time. In the cool air of early spring in our corner of these woods, he claimed my heart, body, and soul and offered no apologies for the whirlwind way he satiated us both.

My back hurt like I was a pin cushion, but Gable pulled me away from the tree and lay me on the leaf blanket the trees had provided for us. When he was tucked against me, I cradled my face against the warmth of his chest while he watched the gently swaying branches above. “Gable?”

“Hmm?” he rumbled.

I smiled as my cheek vibrated. “I love you.”

He stopped breathing under me and after a beat, he lifted his head to look at me. His eyes hadn’t darkened a single shade, but the urgency had diminished. His dark eyebrows furrowed in the most serious, beautiful expression I’d ever seen on his face. “I love you, too.”

“And I’m sorry about your son. It must be very hard for you.”

He sighed and lay his head down again. “I’m the one who’s sorry, Lucianna. I handled that in the worst way possible. I’ll be upfront from now on but you have to know, it was never like this between Oupita and I. You don’t ever have to worry about my feelings. My heart is yours.”

“I was just scared and hurt, and it all came out as anger.”

He let off a little growl. “Stop apologizing. You didn’t do nothin’ wrong.”

“Did you really stay human for three days?”

His chuckle rumbled against my ear. “I did and it hurts like hell.”

“I know you need to change, but can I watch?”

“You want to watch me change into a monster?”

“You aren’t a monster, and yes. Kristina and Lorelei told me I should. It will help me to accept all of you. Kristina watches all of Luke’s changes.”

He sat up and I leaned on my locked arm. “Really?” He looked scandalized. “It’s not all puppies and kittens, Lucianna.”

“I know. Kristina said she almost got sick the first time she saw Luke’s. Of course, he gave her no warning.”

“Mine aren’t as bad as Luke’s. It takes him a while to change but for me it’s almost instant. One of the benefits to being broken.”

“Great. I’m ready.”

His dark eyebrows furrowed but eventually he shook his head and said, “Okay,” in a way that sang, you asked for it.

He rolled over on his hands and knees and changed so fast I didn’t have time to comprehend how he’d done it. One form blurred into the other. A ripple of cracks that echoed off the trees sounded from his body, but the wolf sat down and looked at me like he didn’t feel any pain at all. This was not what Kristina had morbidly described. Where was the snapping bones? The pained groans and the puddle of blood? Where was the stretching muscle and elongating face? I’d been mentally preparing for days.

“I feel robbed,” I said.

Gable huffed and stood to snuffle at the dot of blood on my tossed dress. He waited as I slipped out of nudity and into proper garments once again. I dusted my dress and marched through the woods behind my wolf.

Kristina was draped across a rocking chair on her front porch by the time we came into the clearing. A gray-colored wolf, almost as gigantic as Gable approached him on his belly. Gable stood over him and sniffed his muzzle, and when they’d decided he was boss, they began play fighting. Or I hoped it was play fighting. It all seemed very rough-and-tumble.

“Ew-hoo-hoo, you should see your hair,” Kristina said.

I ducked down to see my reflection in her window. “Oh!”

“Here, let me. You’re making it look worse.”

I sat on the wooden floor in front of her as she picked wild leaves and twigs and a bug or two from my tresses. The motion was soothing as I watched two legendary creatures chase each other around the yard.

“Luke and I took advantage of the barn while you were gone.”

“Unsavory.”

“Speaking of, did you watch it?”

“Mm hmm. It wasn’t at all like you described.”

She stopped picking. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, Gable’s happens in a second. One moment he’s a man and the next he’s a wolf. No blood and guts at all.”

Her lip was lifted on one side as she watched the wolves running for the woods. “Huh.” She started plucking again. “Guess where we’re going in the morning?”

I nearly jumped out of my skin with excitement at a new adventure. “Town?”

“Not just town. We’re going to church and then the boys are taking us to lunch at Cotton’s. My friend, Trudy, just had a baby so we’ll get to see her while we’re there too.”

“Church? Do the boys know about that?”

“Not yet. Lorelei’s been trying to convince Luke and Jeremiah to be more involved in town so everyone’ll stop gossiping. She thinks if we go to church and everyone sees them not get smited down by lightening in the third pew, it’ll help to slow down the rumor mill.”

She braided my hair deftly and pressed a gentle touch over the burning skin at my back. “What happened?”

“Gable fancied me against a tree.”

Without an ounce of surprise, she said, “Well, come on in here and we’ll get you fixed up. You can’t blame them but hells bells, sometimes I want to.”

“Why isn’t Jeremiah running with Luke and Gable?” I asked as she smeared a smelly but soothing salve onto the cuts.

“Jeremiah’s wolf is less crazy now but he ain’t out of the woods yet. He’ll get there but it’ll take time. Gable’s wolf runs this pack but Jeremiah can’t trust his not to challenge him. And that would be one dangerous idea.” She pulled my loosened dress to one side and the other. “Good gracious, girl. That Ralston fellow sure did a number on you. You got the same holes on your front?”

“Yes, and one extra. The one that gave me the limp.”

She sucked air sympathetically through her teeth. “It looks like your stitches didn’t stay in either.”

I huffed an unbecoming snort. “I was on a pirate ship with a werewolf. Those stitches hadn’t a chance.”

She pulled another jar from the shelf of herbs and plastered a cold dollop on each scar. “Here,” she said, handing me the container when she was done. “You can put that on your front ones when you get a chance. Do each of them every night before you go to bed so it don’t rub off and it’ll take out the angry red color and help with the scarring. I use them on my burns and they’ve helped a lot.” She collapsed into the chair opposite me. “Though you probably couldn’t even tell. They looked much worse before you came.”

“Won’t you need this?”

“Trudy, my friend I was talkin’ about? She makes this stuff and I’ll get another jar when I see her tomorrow.” A knock sounded at the door and Kristina unnecessarily yelled, “Come in!”

Lorelei peeked in and said, “I’m hungry for fried chicken.”

“And so the cravings begin,” said Kristina. The grin on her face said she didn’t mind at all.

“You know what that means?” Lorelei asked me.

“Today I become a mountain woman and learn how to pluck a chicken?”

“Well, hell, Lucianna,” Kristina said, “It sounds downright elegant when you say it with your fancy accent.”

I laced my dress back up and followed the women out to the barn.

That night, we ate at the big house and convinced the boys it was time to start getting involved in the town functions. That meant barn-raisings, dances, and yes, even church. They grumbled but our argument was sound and it was hard to dispute good sense. While Lorelei, Kristina, and I sat around the bonfire with warm metal mugs of bitter coffee in our hands, the boys started building the hearth of our house right where Gable chose. It would stand just behind where the old house had been, midway between the other two Dawson houses.

The final house for our pack was in the works and a sense of satisfaction filled me. From the long looks Gable gave me in the firelight, I thought he felt sentimental too.

Chapter Nineteen

Lucianna

I’m sure we looked quite the bunch as two proper ladies, a reformed whore, and three werewolves who stood roughly as tall as redwood trees flounced through the church doors. The muttered greetings and happily whispered conversations halted, but Lorelei didn’t miss a beat. She said hello to any and every person she recognized, and when the Dawson brothers broke off to find seats on the men’s side, a dark-skinned woman with a baby waved us over to a mostly empty pew.

As we piled onto the bench, Kristina whisper-screamed an introduction to Trudy and her baby, Maya. The caramel-skinned, blue eyed infant was quite possibly the most beautiful baby I’d ever seen, and she grabbed my finger when I touched her little hand.

The preacher climbed the pulpit and the service began. It was a lengthy sermon on the importance of wedlock and the virtues of marriage and every time Gable caught my eye with his remorseless smile, I nearly burst out laughing. I had to force myself to look away from him for the rest of the service.

If my man and I were going to hell, by golly, we were going together.

As we filed out the doors and into the midday sunshine, we made a point to stay on the lawn afterward and talk to everyone who didn’t shun us. Oh, there were whispers and frigid looks, but some of them warmed up. How could they not? Apparently, the Dawson boys could be downright charming when they wanted to be.

Gable talked easily to an older gentleman named Beufort and Jeremiah and Luke were enthralled in quiet conversation with the town sheriff and a man named Elias. Trudy let Kristina hold her baby while Lorelei introduced me to Daisy Hawkins, the sheriff’s wife. We were the last ones left and I followed the chattering group down Main Street toward Cotton’s.

“Sinner,” Gable murmured against my ear from behind.

I shrugged and clutched onto his offered arm. “We’re mated. To me it’s the same as being married without the title. Besides, I seem to remember you swearing never to ask me, so wouldn’t it be just as great a sin to break a swear?”

His eyes tightened but he conceded with a tilt of his head. He didn’t wear a hat to church, and the dark brown waves in his hair shone like satin in the sun. His eyes were happy and the color of a clear sky after a long storm. The dimple inducing smile on his face was easy, unforced. I hadn’t seen him this relaxed, maybe ever. As if he could read my mind, he leaned over and kissed my hair. Oh, that man could send my stomach to fluttering. Would I ever get used to the feel of him? I hoped not. He flared his nostrils and looked down with a wicked grin like he could read my sinful thoughts.

Cotton’s was so busy, there wasn’t an open seat in the house, so we talked outside until a table cleared. I thought I’d starve by the time we were finally seated on a long bench inside. The smell of home cooked food had coated us while we waited in the shade of the porch awning. Lorelei looked as if she’d actually murder someone for a plate, and Kristina scampered back to the kitchen and came back with a buttered roll for her.

“You look familiar,” Sheriff Hawkins said as we waited for our food. “Have you come through Colorado Springs before?”

“Fresh off the boat, I’m afraid,” I answered with a polite smile.

“Where are you from?”

Gable was watching the man with a thoughtful look and he pressed a hand against my leg before I answered. “Oh, here and there.”

Sheriff Hawkins’s light brown eyes seemed to miss nothing as he leaned back. “Wasn’t meaning to pry, ma’am. Just curious is all.”

“You’ll have to excuse my husband,” Daisy said cheerfully. “You know what they say about lawmen. They always think they’re on duty.” She frowned at him and brought the conversation back around to Trudy’s newborn baby.

Even with Gable’s occasional touches, the paranoia of the last couple of months came crashing back down on me. I hadn’t worn a bonnet and there was nothing to cover my hair. It would be a dead giveaway to anyone looking for me. I suddenly felt everyone’s gaze on my back.

“Are you all right?” Gable whispered. “Your heart is racing.”

“Can we go soon? I feel exposed here.”

Gable’s cerulean eyes jerked up and scanned the crowd. He tossed a napkin over his unfinished plate and stood. With an offered hand to me, he said, “You’ll have to excuse us. I have to get back to work on a new house we’re building. Have to take advantage of the daylight.”

“But it’s Sunday,” Daisy said.

Gable pulled me from the seat. “I’m afraid our ranch don’t pay attention to not workin’ on the Sabbath. Y’all have a good day and we’ll see you next week.”

“It was lovely to meet you,” I said with a small wave to Daisy and Trudy.

Kristina started to stand but I shook my head. Let them enjoy their day. My discomfort shouldn’t ruin everyone’s time in town.

Barney slept soundly next to Gable’s horse. In fact, if I listened closely, I was fairly sure she was snoring. When we were out of town and out of earshot, Gable pulled so close his leg brushed mine as we rode side by side. “You know, if you have those kind of instincts screamin’ at you, you’d do best to listen to them. You did good tellin’ me.”

“I felt bad for running out on everyone, but I don’t think we’re being careful enough.”

He twitched his head to the side like he didn’t completely agree. “We have to be careful, yes, but you can’t stop living your life and it ain’t healthy to hole up in the barn and become afraid of your own shadow. It ain’t like London out here. If there’s a chance to socialize, you ladies need to take it. It’ll keep you from going stir crazy. Ma wasn’t so lucky. Da wasn’t part of a pack until we came of age and she didn’t have other women to talk to. She was just alone out there and I remember her struggling. That’s why Da promised they could move to the city for her after they got us grown. It has to be hard on his wolf, but she put her time in and stuck around for the gritty parts of his life. He’s repaying the favor now.”

“I can’t even imagine what your mother went through. I could see how it would be terribly lonely if I didn’t have Lorelei and Kristina. Especially the days you’re gone, or are a wolf.”

“Luc, I need to tell you something. I should’ve told you before I bedded you but the time was just never right for such a conversation. You won’t have any daughters from me.”

“What? I don’t understand. You don’t want any?”

“No, no. I’d love a daughter. One that looks just like you, but girls don’t make good werewolves. They don’t survive long. Baby girls die shortly after birth. Baby boys live and start needing to change into their wolves sometime in their sixteenth year.”

I was quiet for a long time. It was a lot to take in. We hadn’t talked about having children but we certainly hadn’t been lifting a finger to prevent them.

“Did your mother lose daughters?”

He nodded solemnly. “On the Montana ranch I grew up on, there are five little headstones on a hill. I remember watching Ma’s belly grow and praying every time it was a little boy. My prayers got answered with Jeremiah and Luke.”

I couldn’t imagine her all alone on a ranch with men destined to leave her for another form. Imagining her mourning five children she’d carried to term? It was impossible. Mrs. Dawson had an iron strength that rivaled a werewolf. It certainly took a strong woman to love one of these men.

“Do you want children?” I wanted to take the words back right away but they were out and unforgiving. “I mean, do you want more children? With me?”

“It isn’t a decision we should take lightly. Luke never wanted to have babies and he found a wife who’s okay with never carrying his child in her belly. It’s a hard feeling to give up for a woman. Ma had her last baby girl when I was twelve and plenty old enough to understand why she wanted to keep trying. Jeremiah saw Luke born and got to feel that happiness and relief. He’s always wanted lots of kids and Lorelei seems willing and able to try. Luke never saw that happiness. Ma lost three babies after him, so all he saw was the heartbreak that came with trying to make little werewolves. I fall somewhere in between. I wouldn’t mind having a baby with you. Of seeing you hold our son, but I’m scared of you being hurt. Of burying babies and it breaking you. I think you should make the decision. If someday you decide you’re strong enough to handle the worry, to handle the consequences, then I’ll happily try with you.”

“What if Lorelei has a girl?”

“Then we’ll be there for her. That’s what family does. I messed up and let go of that for too long, but it’s become obvious to me now. She’ll need Jeremiah. She’ll need you and Kristina. We’ll get on like generations of wolves have done for centuries before us.”

“How’d you find me that night, Gable?” The questions slipped from my lips before I gave it a thought.

“I wasn’t looking for you,” he said quietly. “I was a wolf and there was so much blood. They’d killed the servants and the door on the side of the house was open. I was going to turn around but I heard a little boy cry out. I couldn’t just let them hurt a little boy. The shots rang out and I wasn’t even up the stairs. I knew he was dead but I had to kill his murderers or I’d never feel settled at being too late. All I saw was red. I don’t even remember how I killed them all, but I could still hear a heartbeat and I thought it was his. It wasn’t. I heard you. And then you were laying there and your face…” He swallowed hard. “You were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and right then and there, I knew I was done for. If I couldn’t save you, I’d never find another mate. My wolf wanted you. I wanted you.” He looked at me with a steady blue gaze. “I’ll always want you.”

How could I ever question his feelings for another when he made confessions like that? “I wish he could’ve met you—my brother. He loved to play Cowboys and Indians and he went mad for scary stories. And here you are, a werewolf cowboy riding in to save him. He would’ve loved you.”

“How old was he?”

“He’d just celebrated his sixth birthday.”

Gable got that faraway look. “My son’s around that age.”

“Ten more years and he’ll be a proper monster.”

“Yep, except he doesn’t have anyone to tell him what’s happening to him, like Da did for us.”

****

Gable

I wiped the sweat from my brow and squatted down on our newly finished porch. The walls weren’t completed but it was coming along thanks to some late nights and Luke and Jeremiah’s ready help. “What do you think?”

Lucianna stared up at me with that gentle green gaze of hers. The woman melted me. Especially standing here in the late evening light with a bucket of water and a ladle for me. I took it from her and drank deeply.

“It’s wonderful. Will we whitewash it like the others?”

“A pretty lady like you deserves a whitewashed house.” I pulled her onto the porch and led her to the inside of our cabin.

She’d been quieter since we’d talked about having children. I had to give her time to take it in, but making sure she was happy was a hard instinct to stifle. She seemed to need to touch me more lately, which I thoroughly approved of. I got it. I couldn’t get enough of her touch either.

I pointed to the front corner of the unfinished house. “This here’s where the kitchen will be. We’ll put a table here and it’ll be close enough to the hearth on cold nights. The two bedrooms are back this way.”

She stopped in the space I imagined our bed would go and glanced around as if she could envision what our finished home would look like. I smoothed her soft hair away from her eyes and cupped her cheeks with the palms of my hands. Her skin was silken under the pads of my thumbs. “Look, I know it’s not the life you thought you’d have, but we’ll make the best of it. It probably feels like a sorry consolation. You were supposed to live in an English manor with sons and daughters and a wealthy husband.”

She squeezed my wrists and my pulse thrummed against her tiny fingertips. “Yes, but that life wouldn’t hold happiness without you. Will we stay here, Gable?”

I pulled her to my chest and rocked gently. I couldn’t tell the future, and I sure as hell didn’t know where we’d land with Ralston Bastrop out there hunting her. “Jeremiah gave us the invitation to. Said everyone wants us to stay, but we’ll have to take it day by day.”

“What do you want to do?”

I sighed and rested my chin on the top of her head. “Whatever keeps you safest and happiest. Are you happy here?”

“I can’t live a life on the move like we did those first couple of months and neither can you. It’s too dangerous until you can go longer without changing. I know we didn’t have any long term plans but,” she studied the walls and floorboard, “as different as this place is from where I came from, it somehow feels like home.”

I inhaled steadily and pressed my cheek against her hair. Our journey to this place hadn’t been an easy one but we would fight to keep it our home, and it loosened something in me that had tightened up during the war. The idea that I could keep a place and let myself be happy—that I deserved to be happy. I picked her up and kissed her throat until she giggled. “Woman, I like you bein’ mine.”

“Gable Dawson, you’re scratching me to pieces. You need a shave.” She pulled my hat off and loosened my hair with the tips of her fingers. Her smile was content and her eyes jumped over the scars peeking out, as if she didn’t even see them anymore.

Instinct was something I’d never been able to explain but in the roofless house, my body knew something was wrong even before I smelled it. Smoke. I jerked my head to the East and took another draw of air. It wasn’t just smoke. Death caressed the breeze.

Lucianna’s voice rang with alarm. “What’s wrong?”

I mumbled, “I don’t know,” as every hair on my body stood on end. I pulled her to the front porch and Luke and Jeremiah both stood eerily still, looking at the same thing I was. Billowing, black smoke trickled through the sky miles away.

Jeremiah swung his head to me and his eyes were more wolf than man. In the most somber voice I ever heard, he said, “Kicking Bull.”

“Luc, I want you to stay here. We won’t be back before morning so sleep in Kristina’s house tonight. Stay inside.” I kissed her hurriedly and left her wide-eyed on the porch. The smell of her fear and confusion was bitter against the smoke-filled lining of my nose.

My boy was out there. I bolted for the barn. My boy.

Luke and Jeremiah were right behind, dragging their own horses from the corral. Lucianna stood with her hand on her chest as we blew past her. The thundering of our horse’s hooves pounded against my ears like rain and we rode as streaks across the woods, ducking branches and hurdling felled trees. The light drizzle that fell did nothing to diminish the stink of smoke and pain and we rode faster, harder. The miles flew under us in the wake of our tireless pursuit and the boy’s face flashed through my mind in a constant loop. I was going to be too late, just like I’d been too late to save Lucianna’s little brother.

Smoke engulfed the forest, settling over it like a drifting fog. Metal cracked on metal as I cocked my pistol. The clearing brought our horses to a halt and my mount reared up and screamed under me. The smell of smoke and dark deeds filled my head and I pulled a bandana over my face to stop my eyes from watering. The bodies of soldiers dotted the land, run through with spears and arrows. I couldn’t find it in me to mourn them.

I slid from my horse and ran through the ash and crimson mud. The tipis had been set on fire and small flames licked the remains of homes and belongings. Two dogs left behind sniffed at the bodies warily and a band of frightened horses ran through a river in back. I strained to hear any heartbeats as I checked each Indian man, woman, and child who’d fallen. I checked their faces twice but Oupita and the boy weren’t among them.

“They ain’t here.” What did that mean? I scanned the clearing with an animal’s eyes that missed nothing.

Jeremiah stood rubbing the two day old scruff on his face. “You gonna go after them?”

“I have to. I have to make sure they’re all right.”

“Go as your wolf,” Luke said. “It’ll be easier tracking them and the soldiers won’t think anything of it. If something goes south, it can’t blow back on the homestead. Jer and I will bury the bodies and get back to the ranch to make sure the girls are okay.”

I tugged off my boots and shrugged out of my shirt as they carried the Indian’s bodies under a big shade tree. I had no doubt my brothers would perform a traditional Ute burial for them. Their families would want that for closure. They’d wash, dress, and wrap their bodies before they buried them and burn any belongings that remained intact. They’d want a burial that honored their Creator and freed their spirits.

The soldiers would find a shallow grave and a simple wooden cross.

My change from man to wolf crackled through the woods and with one final look to my brothers, I bounded after the scent of people and mourning. It was full dark before I came upon the campfires. Some twenty Indians sat around the flames with their hands tied in front of them. They’d been stripped of their weapons, and from the forlorn look in their eyes, of their hope as well.

Burning rage scorched through my body. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind Kicking Bull and his warriors had killed many a soldier, but who wouldn’t? They were defending their land, their families…their way of life.

Kicking Bull looked to be injured and his wife, Tauri, fretted over the pooled blood on his leather leggings. One of his sons and grandsons had died in the clearing, but the other sat near him.

“Mahtuhgurch Sahdteech,” a woman said in the barest whisper.

Oupita sat by the edge of the fire with her son and man beside her. The faraway look disappeared from her dark eyes and she lifted her head. I had my head low as I loped on the very edge of the firelight’s reach.

In Ute, she whispered too low for the soldiers to hear, “Bury my people.”

I ducked my head lower and she nodded. I had no way to tell her my brothers were already honoring her request as I stood there. Her man never took his eyes from me as he pulled the gray eyed boy into his lap. His fierce expression said he knew who I was. I was glad for a man such as him to watch over them. He’d managed to get his family out safely.

From the direction they were traveling, the soldiers were marching them toward the reservation. I slunk into the shadows of the forest. I’d follow them until they arrived safely for my own peace of mind, but they’d live.

Chapter Twenty

Lucianna

Sleep didn’t come easily for any of us. We’d decided to stay at the big house where we could each have our own space to fret and worry. Kristina and Lorelei told me of how they’d waited for their husbands like this before. I didn’t know how to control the blood-chilling fear inside of me, or how to look calm and collected like the other woman. In our short time together, Gable had become so imperative to my continued existence and now he was out in the night somewhere doing goodness-knows-what.

Kicking Bull, Jeremiah had said. I’d asked enough questions to gather he was Oupita’s father. Whatever the men smelled on the wind earlier spooked them badly. No human eyes shone from their faces as they raced out of our clearing in the shadow of those storm clouds. What if something happened to the boy? The question had been relentless.

“Lucianna, you’re burning the chicken,” Lorelei said patiently from the dining table where she was going over letters with Kristina.

“Oh! Right.” I stuck a fork in the chicken and flipped it over in the iron skillet. Dinner would be simple tonight. We were cooking up the rest of the snap beans Kristina had kept sacked and buried in the frozen snow over the winter. With a little luck and continued rain, the garden they’d planted just before my arrival would produce soon and we wouldn’t be without vegetables for long. The hour was late, and while I didn’t know what possessed us to wait for such an hour to eat dinner, it seemed the other women had as tapered an appetite as me. The chicken was crispy but edible and I poured us cups of newly de-creamed milk before taking my seat.

“How do you fight off the ghost of a former lover?” I asked Lorelei.

She pushed her beans around the plate and the fork made a small scratching sound against the metal. “I suppose it’s different for each situation but for me, I just let him keep her. It wasn’t Anna’s fault all of this happened, and the way Jeremiah speaks of her, she sounded like a kind woman which makes it hard to be uncharitable when I’m feeling jealous.”

“You? Jealous?” Kristina asked through a taunting grin.

“Sometimes I wonder if he loves me as much as he did her. She was his mate too, so what makes me different? For some reason, that matters. Oupita wasn’t Gable’s mate. His love couldn’t have been as strong for her as it is for you. It’s just not the way they work.”

Kristina swallowed a bite of seasoned poultry and didn’t even make a disgusted face. “I saw a picture of Anna once.”

“You did?” Lorelei asked.

“Mmm hmm. Before the fire, Jeremiah kept it by his washbasin and I found it one night. She looks completely opposite of you, Lorelei. Blonde-haired, fair-skinned, light-eyed. You shouldn’t feel jealous. Jeremiah picked two completely different mates so you would never have a reason to compete with each other.”

A small smile tugged at the corner of Lorelei’s mouth. “That actually makes me feel better.”

Around a full mouth, Kristina said, “You know what else will make you feel better? Eating. If you don’t, that baby’s going to give you hell for it in the morning.”

A roar touched my ears and the dryness of my mouth matched that of the chicken. “What was that?” I whispered. I’d heard a wide range of sounds from Gable, but none of them sounded like that. It was deep and bellowed from the trees.

Kristina washed her food down with a quick swig of milk and sauntered over to the front window. “Sounds like a bear’s after the smoke house again.” She pulled the curtains aside. “It’s too dark to see him from here, but I’d bet my bloomers that’s what it is.”

Lorelei smirked. “Are you going to shoot this one?”

“Ha. No thank you. I hunt in daylight only. There isn’t much in that smoke house. He’s welcome to it so long as he doesn’t amble on over this-a-way.”

Not even her nonchalant attitude made me feel better about a bear outside the house. I’d never seen one before, but from the pictures I’d seen in books, I wasn’t in a hurry to meet one tonight.

Lorelei squeezed my hand. “He probably just woke up from hibernation and is looking for an easy meal. He’ll probably eat and move on.”

It would’ve been quite comforting if the bear’s next bellow didn’t sound even closer.

“Ew, I can see him. He’s big.” Kristina’s voice lost its humor. “And he’s coming this way.” She pulled a hidden gun out from somewhere under her dress and made sure the door latch was securely in place. “He must smell the food.”

I stood so fast the chair behind me clunked to the floor. “What do we do?” Even I could hear the high pitched fright in my voice.

“Stay calm. Maybe he’ll give up and go away. See, he disappeared around the side of the house. Maybe he’s headed back to the woods.”

A grating clawing noise sounded from the back bedroom and I stifled a scream. The bear wasn’t giving up at all. He was trying to get in. The clawing stopped but still we could hear the grunting of the animal. The lantern flickered orange light across the other women’s scared expressions. The facade in Kristina’s bravery was even starting to slip. She peeked out the window again and crouched down. Slowly, she jabbed a finger at the door, which was clearly no match for a hungry bear.

Lorelei rushed to a shelf and loaded a pistol with shaking fingers. I pulled my knife which would be next to useless and Kristina backed in front of us with her derringer pointed at the front door. If that bear was going to kill us, we’d at least put up a fight.

I could no more help the scream that tore from my throat as I could my thundering heartbeat as the door splintered inward. A shot echoed through the house and the pressure stopped. An angry roar filled every corner.

“Did you shoot it through the door?” I asked.

Kristina turned with eyes gone round. “That wasn’t me.”

My relief matched Lorelei’s trembling smile. The boys were home.

Another shot rang out and then another and when the rattle of gunfire faded, Jeremiah yelled for Lorelei.

Her voice shook. “Yes, we’re fine!”

Kristina threw open the door and we poured out of the house like a bowl of gravy. Luke had already tied the downed bear by the feet to the saddle horn and his horse was balking against the pressure and close presence of a predator. His green eyes flashed with determination as he bullied the horse toward the barn. Jeremiah slid from the saddle and threw the reins around a post out front before he caught Lorelei’s running hug. I scanned the dark clearing but Gable was nowhere to be seen.

“He’s fine,” Jeremiah said just before I imploded.

“What happened?” Lorelei asked.

“Soldiers caught up to Kicking Bull’s tribe.” His dark eyes looked bottomless and black in the dark. “We had to bury the bodies before we came back. That’s what took us so long.”

An agonized noise came from somewhere nearby and I was surprised to realize it had come from me. “Oupita? The boy?”

“Alive as far as we know. Didn’t find their bodies so hopefully the soldiers are just taking them up to the reservation. Gable went after them to make sure the boy is safe.”

My hands shook violently. If his son was hurt, or worse, it would break Gable. It would break me. I’d carved out a special place in my heart for the boy of my man’s blood I’d never even met. The ache of my brother’s loss was a burning gash against my heart. I couldn’t mourn another innocent child.

Somberly, Kristina asked, “Who did we know from the bodies?”

“One of Kicking Bull’s sons was there. I knew others but that’s all you and Lorelei would recognize. We buried many a soldier too but I didn’t recognize any of them from town. They must be part of the new barracks. There must’ve been a shift in command or something for them to go that far out of their way to track the tribe down.”

“Kristina,” Luke clipped out from across the clearing.

She grabbed my hand and led me down the steps. “He’ll be wantin’ me to help with the bear hide. You can stay in our house tonight. Goodnight,” she called to Lorelei and Jeremiah over her shoulder.

Luke stood in the moonlight with the bear hanging from a rope on the side of the barn. His eyes shined an unnatural color that not even the dark blanket of night could hide. A constant growl sounded in his throat as he worked with a gleaming knife.

Kristina dropped my hand and stepped forward carefully. “Luke?”

“They killed little kids and women.” He made a single clicking sound behind his teeth and wiped the knife on his pants. “Can you do this?”

“You need to change?”

He grunted his affirmation.

“You want me to help you change?” she asked.

His knife made a slick sound as it slid into its sheath on his belt. “Not tonight.” He turned and strode for the barn doors without another word, and Kristina’s stormy eyes followed him until he was gone.

“I’ll stay out here with you,” I offered. Not even a little part of me wanted to witness the field dressing of a bear, but I’d rarely seen anything but happy optimism on Kristina’s face. And now troubled storm clouds swirled across her features. I couldn’t just leave her out here to harvest the gigantic animal on her own.

“Okay,” she said as she pulled a knife that rivaled Luke’s from the deep pocket of her dress.

I scooted up a wooden crate and sat behind where she stood. “Is he okay?”

“Wolves don’t kill things just to kill them. Not unless they’re crazy. Senseless death is hard on them.”

I kicked a stone with the toe of my worn leather shoe. “Do you think that’s what’s wrong with Gable? Do you think fighting in the war was what broke his wolf?”

Her answer was simple. “Probably.”

****

I became obsessed with waiting for Gable until the anticipation filled every fiber of muscle, and every shard of bone. I worked hard but by evening of the second day without him, I was worthless. I sat glumly on the rocking chair and stared at the trees that lined the clearing. If I wished hard enough, maybe he’d come back.

“Dinner’s on,” Kristina said through the front door.

Just as we sat down to eat, Luke’s head jerked up like he’d been stung by something. “Stay here,” he said as he checked his pistol and left the house.

When we ran to the windows, Jeremiah was already jogging our way from the big house with a pistol cocked and ready. It took an eternity for the buggy to round the corner and appear in front of the barn. Kristina squeezed my arm and sighed with obvious relief. “It’s the sheriff and his wife come callin’.”

I wished some of her relief would wash over to me, but it didn’t. In fact, something in me was screaming to run. Their murmured voices drifted through the thin door but I couldn’t understand a word. Luke gestured for them to follow and I eyed the back room as a possible escape.

“Hello, Eugene, Daisy,” Kristina greeted with a great hug for the latter. “We just set the table and there’s plenty to eat. Come on in.”

I nodded a polite greeting and took my seat slowly like my pulse wasn’t hammering away beneath my skin. When Sheriff Hawkins sat down, he cleared his throat and leveled me with a look before I’d even passed him the potatoes.

“Hello, Lucianna.”

I didn’t remember telling him my name. He unfolded a piece of yellowed paper from his pocket and set it in front of me. On it was a drawing of a woman with the words: Wanted. Alive. Lucianna Whitlock. A sizable reward had been posted and a vague description decorated the bottom line. The ink drawn woman looked eerily like me.

“I knew I recognized you from somewhere. Just couldn’t figure out where until I took a closer look at this here wanted poster. Says you’re wanted for murdering your family.”

“That’s a lie!” I slammed my open palm on the table and Kristina and Daisy both jumped. “I’d never hurt my family.”

“Stop.” His eyes were stone cold and dared me to lie. “Now, I know these Dawson boys. I know what they are but I also know they’re good men and it ain’t in them to be harboring a fugitive lightly. I haven’t sent a single telegraph and I took down your poster from the general store window to give you a chance to explain to me why you are one of the only women in existence with her very own wanted poster.”

Luke leaned against the front door with a hand on the handle of his holstered weapon and Kristina’s hands had disappeared under the table. The crack of her derringer was deafening. “She ain’t goin’ with you, Sheriff.”

His dark eyes never left mine, and his thick mustache twitched. “Who’d you piss off to get a reward that big, Ms. Whitlock?”

My breathing was ragged and my voice shook worse than my hands. “Ralston Bastrop. I was engaged to be married but I backed out of his proposal. He’s an evil man. He ordered his men massacre my entire family.”

“Stand up,” Kristina demanded.

When I did, she spun me and tore at the laces of my dress until my bare back was exposed. “She’s got more holes on her front from that monster. He’s probably put those damned wanted posters all over America by now in an effort to find her. He’s fishing. Bastrop will kill her if you give her up.”

Horror swam in Daisy’s wide, blue eyes and the sheriff couldn’t seem to take his level gaze away from the scars of my struggles. I pulled away and pulled at the laces as best I could while flaming heat burned my cheeks.

He swung fiery eyes on Luke and a vein throbbed at his temple. “Dammit, Dawson, what am I supposed to do with this one?”

Luke shrugged like he couldn’t care less as long as the answer wasn’t arrest me. “She’s Gable’s mate. She’s one of us, Hawkins. She’s an innocent who caught the fancy of a bad man with a big reach. We’re open to suggestions.”

“Where’s Gable?”

“Escorting a tribe of Ute to the reservation.”

The sheriff’s exasperated expression for each Dawson in turn was almost humorous. “Do you boys have your hands in everything around here?”

“Well,” Luke drawled. “It ain’t like we go lookin’ for trouble.”

Sheriff Hawkins snorted. “Every time one of you brings home a new wife, there’s bloodshed.”

Luke’s smile was predatory. “We like our women challenging.”

Kristina finished tying the laces to my dress and my knees buckled. Sitting down wasn’t exactly what I meant to do, but I think I pulled it off well. I grabbed the bowl of potatoes and plopped a blob on my plate. The table stared at me like I’d turned into a fruit tree.

“Would you mind terribly if I kept this?” I held up the poster. “I haven’t any pictures of myself and I’m sure Gable would love to carry this around in his pocket.”

The sheriff barked a surprised laugh and rubbed his face like he hadn’t slept in a long time. “Daisy, I swear if you ever get yourself on a wanted poster, I’m gonna buy you a horse and make you ride it.”

“You could try,” she grumbled.

“Let me see that.” Kristina snatched the poster out of my hand and squinted at it. “It don’t look nothin’ like you.”

“It’s a little off,” Sheriff Hawkins amended, “which is why I think you’ve avoided the townspeople sending a telegram and outing you. The description of your hair at the bottom’s gonna give you away sooner or later though. This Bastrop fellow—how dangerous is he?”

“Very. Or at least he was in England. I assume he has important contacts here too, or how else would he finagle a wanted poster on a charge that’s only evidence against me is that I survived?”

Sheriff Hawkins sighed and took an offered plate of hot rolls from my hand. “So what’s the end game here, Dawson? Are you going to get him to trial or kill him?”

Luke took his hand from his pistol and joined us at the table. “Both.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Lucianna

I traced the fine grain of the wooden wall beside Kristina’s guest bed with the tip of my finger. I wasn’t sleepy at all after the disturbing dinner conversation earlier this evening. Round and round my mind went on plans of how not only to survive Ralston, but how to protect my new family as well.

A soft knock wrapped on the door and I pulled the blanket up to cover my shift. “Come in.”

Luke opened the door, muttering, “If you bite her, I’m gonna shoot you my damned self.”

My huge, snow colored wolf loped into the bedroom. His nails clicked across the floorboards as he approached the bed.

“Night,” Luke said before the door snapped quietly closed behind him.

“Goodnight.” I didn’t say it loudly but it was enough he’d be able to hear. Gable sat and watched me with a clear, liquid blue gaze.

“Is he okay?” I asked.

He ducked his head and pressed his nose under my arm. I ran my fingers through the thick fur at his neck and closed my eyes as I bathed in the relief that came with being near him. “I missed you.”

He whined and licked my forearm once before he bounded over me. The bed caved noisily under his weight and he flopped down beside me. He inhaled and released an explosive sigh before his eyes closed. Fine, snow colored hairs outlined his dark eyelids, and I traced a fingertip up the soft fur that led from his nose to between his eyes. Twitching, his ears seemed to pick up a hundred things I probably couldn’t hear and I leaned closer and rested my head on the pillow beside him. The rise and fall of his chest slowed and his muscles relaxed.

And in no time at all, in the shadows of night with the one who kept me safe and warm, sleep found me, too.

****

I don’t know where Gable found his clothes, but the next morning when I woke, he was watching me from a rocking chair in the corner. He’d even managed to find time to shave. When I looked at bright morning sunlight streaming through the window it was apparent why.

“Why’d you let me sleep so late?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.

“You seemed like you needed the rest.”

“Did you see Oupita?”

His eyes darkened. “Yes. Are you angry?”

I waited for anger but it didn’t come. Nothing came. “No. She’s the mother of your child and you’ll always worry over her. The boy’s safety depends on hers so I understand.”

“They’re safe on reservation land. Or as safe as they can get, I suppose.”

“Were you scared?”

He nodded. “I thought I wouldn’t be able to get to him in time.”

“Like with Bryant?”

Another nod.

I handed him the folded wanted poster from the night stand.

“What’s this?”

“A picture of me, so anytime you need to run off into the night, you’ll have something to remember me by.”

He opened it excitedly like I’d actually drawn a picture of myself for him, but an expression of shock and rage filtered across his features when he saw what it was. “Ralston?”

“Yep. Sheriff brought it by yesterday.

With a tilt to his head he said, “You look a lot prettier than your wanted poster.”

I squeezed my eyes closed and shrugged my shoulders. “Flatterer.”

“Well, okay. We knew he’d catch up at some point so maybe it’s time we take matters into our own hands. Control the situation a little better. He was a good hunter in England, but America’s different. America has packs of werewolves.” The fire in his eyes said he was hatching a plan that I likely wouldn’t appreciate. “Go on get dressed. I need to go talk to Luke and Jeremiah.”

When I emerged into the early afternoon sunlight, which successfully singed my eyes, the Dawson brothers were nowhere to be seen. The distant sound of gunfire was a little unsettling, so I asked Kristina about it. She sat on the front porch, sweating freely as she churned butter.

“They’re target shooting. It’s a nasty habit to let get rusty.” She stopped mid-churn and lit up like a lightning bolt. “You should go beg a lesson. Lorelei and I know how to shoot and the ability has come in handy more times than I can count out here.”

“Will they be mad if I interrupt their, you know, man time?”

“No. Gable should’ve already put a gun in your hand before now anyway. Go on.”

Slinging pistols wasn’t something they taught in finishing school. In fact, other than Kristina and Lorelei, I hadn’t ever met another woman who shot pistols or even carried knives around in the pockets of their dresses. I stumbled on the last porch step and hobbled for the noise of gunfire.

It was quite apparent I was slowly morphing into a man.

Through the woods I stalked until I came to a meadow. Luke and Jeremiah reloaded matched pistols while Gable took shots at a trio of wooden targets they’d set up. He flicked his wrist until the pistol pointed and the sky and turned. The white of his smile against tanned skin was enthralling.

“You want to shoot?” he asked.

Luke jerked his head. “Don’t be shy around the weapons. We’ll teach you how to handle ’em safely.”

Gable put the metal in my hand and it nearly dropped my arm to the table. It was much heavier than it looked.

“This here’s a single action Colt Navy revolver. We used these in the war and it’s still my pistol of choice. Now, this is a six shot. It’s important to remember that. Always keep a tally in your head, Lucianna. Knowing how many shots another man has could mean the difference between life and death.”

I jumped as Luke stood beside me and rattled gunfire into the targets, using the palm of his passive hand to slam the hammer back between rounds. He didn’t miss a one.

“Six shots. Right.”

Gable moved around me and held my arms up straight in front. “When you get ready to pull that trigger, hold your breath so you don’t move, and lightly pull it back like your touching the side of my face. Look down the sight. Close your left eye, that’s right. And when you have it lined up, gently squeeze that trigger.”

The sound was thunderous and the gun recoiled in my hand like an angry rattle snake. Through the terror, the smoke cleared and I squinted at the target.

“She hit it,” Luke whooped. “I bet you won’t hit it the second time though. You’ll be anticipating that recoil and you’ll jerk it.”

Jeremiah rolled his eyes and slammed the cylinder in place on his own pistol. “Don’t listen to him.”

“You want to bet she misses?” Luke said as he shoved another six rounds into his gun.

“Stop putting pressure on her, you dipweed,” Gable grumbled.

“I’ll bet you I hit it,” I said bravely. Someone should put Luke in his place at some point.

“Oh, yeah? What’ll you bet?”

“I’ll brush out your horse for a week if I miss.”

Amusement danced in Gable’s eyes as his glance bounced from me to Luke and back again.

Luke asked, “And what do I have to do if you hit it?”

****

I sat happily on the porch with Kristina and Lorelei, blowing on a steaming metal coffee mug when Luke appeared out of the barn. He wore a pretty red dress with no laces in the back to save him from ripping it. The hem came up to his knees.

Kristina sipped the steaming brew with a half-cocked grin. “Now, how’d you get him to wear my dress during mornin’ chores again?”

Luke did a fine attempt at a curtsy as he hauled buckets to the water pump.

“He said I couldn’t hit a target twice and I did. Of course he didn’t specify which one, and the entirety of the thing was the size of the broad side of the barn, so my aim wasn’t exactly on but it was good enough to win the bet.”

Kristina’s giggle was downright wicked. “You’d make a pretty woman,” she called.

I snorted. A pretty bearded woman. The man hadn’t shaved in three days, at least.

Gable whistled from the roof of our nearly finished house and waggled his eyebrows. “Lookin’ good, little sister.”

I couldn’t hear exactly what Luke grumbled but it sounded suspiciously like, shut up.

Even Jeremiah sported a grin that stretched from ear to ear as he hopped the steps and kissed Lorelei. “Y’all come on in. I need to talk at you.”

We sat at the wooden dining table except for Luke, who stood with his hands on his hips in a way that clashed his masculinity with the feminine dress.

“Take that dress off,” Jeremiah said. “I can’t take you seriously in that get-up.”

Kristina pouted but her husband disappeared down the hallway and reappeared in his western garb again. Gable leaned back on two legs of his chair and draped an arm around my shoulders as Jeremiah began.

“We need to figure out what we’re going to do about Ralston. We can’t just sit on this forever. The longer we wait, the greater the chance he’ll show up on our land, and we can’t have that.”

My insides revolted at the thought of him here, and I agreed. “No, we can’t. He’s a fan of burning homes. There’s been enough fire on this land to last a lifetime. He can’t make it this far.”

“Let’s use Lucianna as bait,” Luke said.

Gable leaned forward until all four legs of the ladder backed hickory chair were on the floor again. “I don’t like that.”

“How else do you suppose we draw him where we want him?”

“I said I don’t like it. I didn’t say no.”

All right, my heart was going to gallop right out of my chest. I raised my hand tentatively. “What’s the bait supposed to do?”

Gable picked apart a scrap piece of paper with a distracted furrow to his brow. “You’ll stay where we designate and lure him in.” His eyes drifted to his brothers in turn. “Then we’ll kill him.”

I swallowed hard. “Where?”

It was Jeremiah who answered. “Up near the pass, there’s an open clearing half way up the mountain. It’ll leave her easily visible and well away from the homestead. That’s where those outlaws were hiding that we hunted down. They damn near killed us but this time it’ll be different. We’ll be the ones who know the area.”

Lorelei had been quiet with her arms crossed over her still flat stomach. “There’s still the problem of the wanted poster. If you just kill him, she’ll still be dragged to trial eventually, and the man who really killed her family will be dead and unable to confess.”

“He wouldn’t ever confess in a trial,” I assured them.

“No, but he’d confess to you,” Kristina said as she turned to me. “If he’s as terrible as all this, he won’t be able to resist rubbing it in your face that he won. All you need is a couple of witnesses to attest to it.”

“Okay.” I rubbed my bleary eyes and rested my cheek on my palm. “How will we get him out onto the mountains? We have to figure out a way to let him know where I am in a way that doesn’t spook him. He can’t send men to do it this time. We need him to come thinking he needs to finish the job himself.”

Gable kissed the back of my hand. “That’s where Sheriff Hawkins comes in. I think it’s time we pay him a visit.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Lucianna

The horses picked their way up the steep hills and alongside valleys. I held onto Barney’s saddle horn for dear life when she’d take a running start at steep embankments. The trail was nonexistent, but Gable and Jeremiah seemed to know exactly where they were going. Luke, Sheriff Hawkins, and Elias followed quietly behind. When I’d asked why Elias was here, Luke had told me quite simply, he was the quickest human draw with a pistol he’d ever met, and that was good enough for me. We also needed a second witness outside of our family.

The only sound was the careful clomping of our surefooted steeds and the occasional rock that was loosed and fell down the mountainside behind us.

Gable’s gaze drifted from the woods to me and back again, like his instincts warred within him on where to focus his attention.

We’d taken Lorelei and Kristina to stay with Trudy until this was over either way. It was strange being separated after I’d become so used to their constant presence but it was an unnecessary risk to put them in the sights of Ralston.

I didn’t envy them waiting to see if their men would come back whole and alive again. At least I’d know instantly, or I’d die and it wouldn’t matter so much to my corpse. Such morbid thoughts I had, rattling around in my head. But how could I help it? I hadn’t cared about living that night in the fog, but now, things were different. I was different.

Sheriff had answered the wanted poster and tracked down Ralston himself. He advised him he thought he’d seen me hiding out in the mountains with a man, but in order for him to bring me in, he’d need proof of my identity. The poster he’d received in Colorado Springs was spotty, he claimed. He gave specific directions and advised him to send someone who’d seen me in person before.

The clever lawman had left a juicy beef bone in front of a hungry dog and walked away.

My hunter was close. He could be here as soon as tonight if he traveled straight through. The hairs rose on my neck and I scanned the woods for the hundredth time. Nothing but occasional patches of high altitude snow and trees that dripped pine needles.

From the bear that had attacked the house, Kristina had made a fur cloak to fit me. I’d be sleeping rough tonight and without Gable’s warmth, it would serve as my bed and blanket. Gable seemed to like the look of the bearskin cape. He said I looked like a warrior but it was probably my hair, worn long and down and whipping in the frigid wind to lure in my almost lover, that made him see me that way. The cloak cascaded across Barney’s hips and contrasted against her pale coat. Snow and earth.

Gable donned a warm duster jacket that skimmed the tops of his boots. His cowboy hat was pulled low to keep the wind from his ears and when he turned in the saddle, his eyes blazed the color of crystal. He was a beautiful monster in a dashing man’s skin. The raw power and anticipation that drifted from him made me feel like I was humming with it, too. His effect was evident in the lightened colors of Luke and Jeremiah’s eyes. From the way Sheriff Hawkins and Elias carefully avoided eye contact with the brothers, it was obvious they knew what they were and how best to avoid challenging them. Even with the blunted instincts of a man, they knew the Dawson’s were bringers-of-destruction.

A wolf howled long and low in the fading light and from his profile, Gable smiled. His eyes held a faraway look, like he knew the animal’s song.

Jeremiah turned in his saddle from up front with a similar expression. “You hear that, brother? The wolves know we’re here. They’re welcoming us home.”

If ever I’d been to a haunted place, this was as close as I’d come. There were no animal sounds of life. They’d all moved down the mountain in search of better food and warmer sleeping places. The trees groaned and rocked in the cradling breath of the keening wind, and in the dim light, dark shadows were cast across the path ahead.

“This is it,” Jeremiah said. “This is as far as we go.”

Luke and Jeremiah tipped their hats and drove their horses upwind.

“See you on the other side,” Luke said.

Unwilling to say goodbyes, I waved.

“Don’t shoot any wolves,” he called behind him.

How was I supposed to tell between the wild ones and werewolves?

As if Gable could read my mind, he said, “Werewolves are bigger.”

Right. Well, if they stood side-by-side, that would be helpful.

Elias pulled his mount up on the thin trail beside me. “Miss Lucianna, Sheriff and I will be close but you won’t be able to see or hear us. We’ll be on that ledge up yonder. Call out if you think he’s going to pull the trigger on you, but be wary. We need to hear his confession so be sure.”

“Don’t worry,” Sheriff Hawkins said. “We’ll be right up there with eyes on you. And we don’t miss.”

I tried to smile a reassurance that I wasn’t falling utterly to pieces, but my lip trembled too badly to pass as anything but a grimace.

Elias and the Sheriff followed the snow-trampled trail Luke and Jeremiah had forged, and Gable nudged his horse forward. He could come with me to make camp because his presence would be expected by Ralston. He could make a second set of hoof prints in the clearing and help me make dinner before he disappeared into different skin.

My fingers shook as we tied the horses to a line Gable secured between two saplings. He grabbed my hands in his gloved ones and set a firm look on me. “You’re going to be all right. Do you trust me?”

I nodded. With all of my heart I trusted him. My trembling hands didn’t get the message though.

He brushed my cheek with the soft leather of his gloved fingertip. “I swear, I won’t ever let him hurt you again.”

We set up camp at the edge of the clearing, closer to the towering ledge above to accommodate the human eyes, ears, and aim of the men stationed there. When I looked up, I couldn’t see them at all.

Gable pulled a fur hand warmer from Barney’s saddle bag and told me to sit on a stump he’d dragged in. When he seemed satisfied that I was comfortable, he cleared snow away and built a fire wide and high enough to attract attention. I huddled near the warmth of it while Gable made meticulous tracks in the snow that told a story I wouldn’t understand but that Ralston, if he was half the tracker he thought he was, would read like a book.

I might’ve relaxed near the warmth of the flames if Gable didn’t freeze and look up every couple of minutes. He would give a slow, arched study of the surrounding woods before he would return to whatever chore he was in the middle of. It unsettled me. One of these times, Ralston would be here. I just felt it in my bones. Gable told me to listen to my instincts when they screamed this loud.

Tonight was the night I’d start my life or end it.

“Don’t,” Gable said quietly as I stood to help make dinner. “Let me take care of you.”

I sat back down onto the log slowly. Why did I get the feeling this would be my last dinner on earth? I had to stop. I’d been fated to die in the hidden room of my parents’ country manor. Instead, I’d been plucked from death’s grip and placed in Gable’s protective embrace. I was supposed to die loveless and unwed, and instead I’d lived an entire lifetime since that night in the fog. I’d been happy on my borrowed time. Those extra moments had given my life balance. At least I would spend my last dinner with the man who held my heart.

A deep rumble sounded in Gable’s throat. He was crouched in front of the fire stirring a small iron skillet of beans and salted ham. A rough meal for a rough night to come. “Lucianna, I can practically hear your thoughts.” He leaned back and wrapped a strong arm around my shoulders. “I’ll protect you. I wouldn’t ever allow you out here if I thought I couldn’t.”

His eyes dropped to my heaving chest before he leaned into me. His kiss was consuming. Like wind, it filled everything up and I swam in the soothing warmth he created within my body. Pulling the bearskin cloak around him, I stretched closer until the cotton of his shirt brushed my neck. He was so powerful, the hum of it brushed against my hands and I lost myself in the demanding way his gripped my waist.

As he ran a hand up the hem of my dress, a bird fluttered to life in the trees to our left. Gable snapped his head toward the noise. Unwilling to leave the calming feeling he’d given me, I kissed his pulsing throat. He smelled of man, leather and his wolf. My wolf. His throat moved under my lips as he swallowed.

“I have to keep my head out here, and this,” he gripped my wrists and gently pushed me back. “This ain’t helping.”

Torn between the want to be close to him for what could be our last time, and to let him keep his focus so we could live to be close another day, I dropped my face. “I’m sorry.”

“Woman, don’t you ever apologize for that.” He poured the steaming meal into two bowls and handed me one. “Eat. You need your strength. There’s no way to know if he’ll come tonight or two days from now. Or ever.”

My shoulders shook with a sudden chill. “He’s coming, Gable. I can feel it.”

The hardness of his lupine eyes softened. “When we get home, and the crops have come in, and the cattle are sold, I’m going to buy you oil paints in every color imaginable. I’ll give you brushes of every shape and size and canvases to paint on. You’ll paint a picture of the Dawson woods and we’ll hang it above the hearth of our home.”

I relaxed into the story and drifted away on his imaginings.

“I’ll carve you a dressing table to brush your hair by before you come to bed with me, and build you a fire in the stones of our hearth every cold night. And I’ll fix all the things about myself that were broken before you came along. These are promises, Luc.”

“I’m just scared,” I whispered. I leaned my forehead against his. “I have too much to live for now.”

“I…” He froze like he’d been struck. “They’re coming.”

I squeaked out, “They?”

“He’s brought others. Four men. Six rounds in a gun, Luc. He bolted from the clearing in a move so fast he blurred. “Remember,” the trees seemed to whisper.

I listened for the echoing crack of his change but could hear nothing over my thrashing heart. Buhbum, buhbum, buhbum—like a death chant.

I took a long draw of cold mountain air and held my breath. In the flames, I found my strength. I let the last memories of Mother and Father wash over me like an avalanche. I remembered the pain of Bryant’s tiny, frail body going limp in my arms. Ralston had taken everything from me and still, it wasn’t enough for him. He was here to kill me and he wouldn’t be satisfied with a clean death. The drumming pulse of fury replaced my frightened rabbit’s heartbeat.

He was here to kill me, but I’d repay him in kind.

I turned my back to the horses and put my long, white hair on display. It swayed in the wind and tickled my cheeks. Be brave, the wind whispered, and a vengeful calm filled me.

Ralston may have thought he knew me in England, but he certainly didn’t know me now. He’d forced an iron strength into my blood and bones. I was a woman who survived massacres and pirate ships. I was a woman who ran with wolves and commanded the love of the fiercest animal. I’d taken council with two women who’d refused to give up and fed only on their bond to the ones they loved. I wasn’t Lucianna Whitlock any longer. I was a Dawson.

I’d carefully cleaned my plate and wiped my mouth by the time careful horses’ hooves clomped through the tree line. I sat straight and still until the moment the pistol clicked and the cold metal of the barrel sifted through my loose hair and touched the skin of my scalp.

“Lucianna,” Ralston said with the voice of a snake. “You’ve led me on a delicious chase.”

At the sound of his voice I smiled slightly into the flames before me. He’d come. His first act of bravery would be his last.

My voice shook just enough from the rushing energy that pumped just under my skin’s surface. “My man will be back at any moment. Leave if you know what’s best for you.”

“Find him and kill him,” Ralston demanded. Four sets of boots crunched off for the woods. “Very clever of you to run away with a mountain man.” He sat beside me and looked around the clearing with that hollow, emotionless gaze of his. “I would’ve never thought to look for you here. You could’ve lived forever up here if you had any loyalty from the townspeople below.” He stomped snow from the tip of his black, shiny boot. “I’m probably doing you a favor.”

I let what I hoped was fear slither into my eyes. “Why couldn’t you just let me go?”

“Do you know the merger with your father’s companies would’ve made history? Do you know how much wealth would’ve trickled through our family? Our grandchildren’s grandchildren wouldn’t work a day in their lives and still would’ve wanted for nothing. Every eligible lady in London was slathering for a proposal from me but you.” His voice turned hard and poisonous. “You, who were the most beautiful, the most sought after, with the ripest body to torture for my pleasure. I had to have you, Lucianna. If I can’t, no one can. And now a filthy mountain man has caught your fancy. Do you know how insulting that is to me?” He wrapped his hands around my throat and tightened his grip until I was gasping. “Do you?” he roared.

The barely held together facade was just that. He’d slipped in the months since I’d seen him. He’d always been missing something, but the hunt for me had done irreparable damage to the man.

I clawed at his tightening grip. “Please,” I gasped. “You’ve already killed my family. Don’t hurt Gable.”

His grip loosened just enough for me to drag a few air molecules into my suffocating lungs. He brought his smile to my lips and kissed me. Cold fingers of skittering chills scratched down my spine as his emotionless lips touched mine. “It’s what I do, Lucianna. I couldn’t just crush you. I had to destroy you. No one crosses a Bastrop, remember?”

The death sigh of a man sounded through the woods. Ralston jerked his attention away from me and frowned into the shadow-laden forest. “Azle? Brackeen?”

A movement drifted through the woods like a phantom and he twitched toward it. Slowly he stood and yelled louder, “Moritz?”

I gasped and filled my lungs with the absence of his crushing hand. His pistol found my forehead unsteadily before he pointed it toward the woods. A black wolf slunk just behind the shadows. Its eyes glowed in the reflection of the firelight. Ralston fired a shot but the wolf was already gone.

One.

“You’re an intelligent man, Ralston,” I said in a tone as steady as April rain. “That voice in your head telling you something’s gone wrong is correct. Cry for your men to protect you all you want, but unless you have the ability to speak to the dead, they won’t answer you back.”

A gray wolf weaved through the trees only to disappear as soon as Ralston pulled the trigger.

Two.

Three.

His voice held the slightest tremor. “What is this?” His gun swung for another movement but it was gone. The metal of the gun rattled in the palm of his trembling hand.

“Did you know there used to be thousands of wolves here? They’ve been hunted until only a few hundred remain but they still thrive where humans won’t brave a living. Like in these mountains.”

“Shut up.” His gun swung for me. “Shut up!”

A snarl sounded behind him and the whites of his eyes shone all around the dead blue.

He turned slowly to find my white wolf with bared fangs just beyond the tree line. He bolted for the shadows as Ralston aimed.

Four.

Five.

I clenched my hands against the urge to pull my knife and gut him for shooting at Gable. We had to follow the plan or I wouldn’t keep the life I wanted.

Three wolves, larger and faster than possible, weaved through the trees. Closer and closer they came until Ralston screamed in frustration and took a shot. Powdered snow flew up where he missed, and the white wolf disappeared once again.

Six.

He pulled the pistol back to me and I challenged his empty gaze with my own. “If you kill me, you won’t survive.”

A cruel and twisted smile seized his face. It was easy to see it. I hadn’t ever been able to put my finger on what was off with Ralston Bastrop, but here, in the deep recesses of a mountain night, I realized what was missing. His soul.

“You’re right. I wouldn’t survive without you.” He latched onto the back of my hair and shoved me toward the snarling, snapping wolves.

One gray and one black beast stood on either side of me, but instead of attacking, they lifted their cold, feral gazes slowly to him. They waited as I stood and dusted my dress off. Ralston’s gun pointed from the wolves to me and back, and as one, we stalked toward him. The firelight was warm against my face and though Ralston’s was immersed in shadow, I could see fear in his eyes for just an instant before he aimed the gun at my head and pulled the trigger.

Click.

Click.

Click, click, click.

“Boo!” I said as the white wolf lunged from the shadows into the side of my tormentor.

A noise long and loud and bloated with terror screeched from Ralston’s throat.

Gable loped off for the woods and was followed by the others.

“You’re a witch,” Ralston accused between gasps. “You control them because you cast black magic here. Sss,” he hissed between his teeth. “It’s burning.”

His hand bled freely and was already swelling. I searched for any other weapons on him and tossed a knife from his pocket into a drift of snow.

“You should probably watch that. Blood poisoning runs rampant out here.”

His shaking hand was cradled against his chest. “What’ve you done to me?”

“I haven’t done anything to you. The consequences of your actions are yours alone.”

Within minutes he was rolling in the snow and groaning about the pain. I’d pity the man if he hadn’t just tried to feed me to the wolves. Sheriff Hawkins and Elias sauntered into the clearing and put him in chains while I packed camp. We hadn’t discussed this far into our plan, but I sure as bloody hell wasn’t staying the night in the forest with my almost murderer in custody. He belonged in a cage.

Gable and his brothers remained wolves. We didn’t need Ralston screaming werewolf and his mind hadn’t made a connection so far. He rambled on and on about how I trained the wolves to trap him. Sheriff Hawkins dragged him down the mountain on Jeremiah’s horse, and Elias pulled the two rider-less mounts behind him. I followed them, never taking my eyes from Ralston. By the time we dragged him groaning and sweating into the jail house in town, his bitten hand had turned a dark and unhealthy color.

Sheriff Hawkins wrote a formal report of the events—minus the werewolves—that had taken place tonight and credited Ralston’s lackey’s deaths as kills by him and Elias under the authority of the law. It was the middle of the night and time was of the essence, so the sheriff woke up a man named Thomas Harbringer to open the post office and send a telegram to Denver, absolving me from the crime my wanted poster accused me of. I’d still have to go to trial, but reliable, law-abiding witnesses would attest to my innocence.

“I’m supposed to tell you not to leave town,” Sheriff Hawkins said with a wink as I left.

I turned at the door. “I’m finished running.” I was going to bake he and Elias strawberry pies as soon as I learned how to make them for all they’d done. They’d probably never even know the gift they’d given with their help.

I took a deep draw of crisp air as I closed the door behind me. For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t afraid.

Gable waited patiently in front of the jailhouse, and stood slowly as I approached. “Is it done?”

“Sheriff thinks the trial will be short.” I wanted to cry tears of joy, but overwhelmed, I swallowed my emotions down. “Soon, this will all be behind us.”

Gable crushed me to him and rocked gently back and forth, like an intimate dance. “Are you okay? I wanted to kill that bastard when he strangled you. Tell me you’re all right.”

“I’m fine. Just shaky and tired. Gable?”

“Hmm?” he asked in a delicious rumble against my neck.

“Can we sleep in our house tonight?”

He tilted his head toward the pink streaks on the horizon. “It ain’t nighttime anymore.”

When he smiled at me like this, it made all of my hurts disappear. I didn’t know where they’d gone. I searched the darkest crevices of my heart, but they simply didn’t exist anymore in these moments between us. Somewhere over the past months with him, Gable had healed me.

I rested my cheek against the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. “Take me home.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Gable

“Why do people call you The Gable?” Lucianna asked in a soft voice. She looked uncomfortable with the question, like it was something she’d been wanting to ask for a long time but didn’t know how to.

I set my bucket of whitewash down and leaned against the unpainted door frame. She stroked her white-tipped, horsehair brush carefully around the front window.

“The Battle of Glorieta Pass was the first time I ever fought for the Union. Colorado was split between the Federal Army and the Confederates and it served as an important supply line. The land in the Colorado territory is also rich with silver and gold mines and both sides needed them to finance the war. The base of the Rockies was where the Confederates were making a big move to push the Union out. A couple days before the all-out battle, some of us had skirmishes with a few of the confederates. Now, we’d been training and I’d already proved I could wield a pistol, sword, and musket and I was uncanny quick, so our commanding officer said, send in The Gable, like I was more a weapon than a man. He’d said it offhand, but the name stuck as I survived the front lines of a battle we weren’t supposed to win.”

“Is that where you got the scars?”

“That’s the place. I wasn’t supposed to live. They’d shoved us in rows, the injured, and the field docs passed over the ones they thought were too far gone in order to give their services to the ones they could save. Doctor came to me and barely looked at my injuries before he moved on. A young boy was assisting him, and I remember he was white as a sheet at all the bad stuff he’d seen that day. Men were screaming, dying, and he was just a kid. Here, sir, he said to me. He handed me a dirty rag and told me to press it on my wound. Doc yelled at him to hurry on to the next one, but it was a kindness that stuck with me. I heal quickly thanks to what I am, but it was a significant injury and I got the fever the second day. I lived, but even if it was just barely, I’d been written off and some of the men I’d fought with called me The Gable, like before the fight. Like I was a machine instead of a man. Word spread of the battle and at every one I fought from then on out, my nickname preceded me. Soldiers thought I could do the impossible in a fight because I’d fought so many front lines and lived. Sometimes we did the impossible. The name stuck. The reputation that came with the name brought me more bloodshed than I should’ve seen. It killed more at the hand of my sword and musket.” This was the first time I’d talked about any of it, and I shrugged to try and ease the tension in my shoulders.

Lucianna reached out in that soothing way of hers and touched the rough skin of my face. “If you weren’t The Gable, you would’ve never saved me that night in the fog.”

A warmth spread though me that I was helpless to stop. She was right, and it was the first time I’d ever found a benefit to what I’d gone through. I had my reasons for leaving for a war my small town didn’t have much use for. The cause didn’t prevent the damage years of war, soldiering, and killing pressed against my wolf like an inescapable weight. But if the destruction had never been done, I wouldn’t be in those woods that night to save her. I wouldn’t have been running from my demons and right into the arms of Lucianna.

I leaned forward and drank in the sweetness of her inviting lips. She couldn’t even know what she’d done for me. The man in me had abandoned this world, and she’d pulled him away from the jaws of my wolf and gave me balance. I still had to change more often than was right, but I’d get better with her around. I knew I would. She was a damned good reason to be a better man.

Her lips, the soft pink of the morning sky, smiled as I pulled away.

A part of me felt him before any of my senses even whispered a warning. I turned to the silent Indian who sat on a dark pony on the edge of the woods. Luke and Jeremiah appeared around the side of the house in that uncanny way of theirs.

“Who is he?” Lucianna asked.

I could hear her racing heartbeat clear as day, so I squeezed her hand in an attempt to comfort her. “Stay here.”

She stood stoically on the porch as I stepped in front of the house. I recognized Oupita’s man, but he looked different now. His hair had been cut short as the Ute often did when they were mourning the death of someone they loved.

It was hard to swallow and a dread I was powerless against filled me until I thought the black roiling tendrils of it would surely escape me. Ute didn’t cut their hair lightly.

He nudged his horse and approached slowly. His greeting was stern and his eyes held the rigidity of stone. In the tongue of his people, he said, “I see you. You’ve been a spirit in the shadows since the day I took Oupita as my woman. I now have a daughter.”

“And Oupita?”

He shook his head slowly back and forth. He turned the horse and revealed the boy clinging to his back. “He belongs with his people.”

The boy squeezed his eyes at the words that came from the man who’d taken him into his tipi without a care that he wasn’t his own. A single tear ran down the boy’s face and my heart broke apart. What chance would a half-Indian boy have outside of his tribe?

“You are his people.” The words tore from me as if they took a piece of my flesh with them.

“He is Mahtuhgurch Sahdteech. What can a man teach a wolf he’s caged? He can’t grow into what he’s supposed to be on a reservation.” He switched to a slow, deliberate English tongue. “He is blood of my heart, but he is not blood of my blood.”

I looked up at Lucianna who stood pale and wide-eyed on the porch. Her forest colored gaze never left the boy with his dark hair that fell forward in his eyes.

“Luc,” I said, but she already knew the question.

Her eyes filled with unshed tears, and I could almost see the ghost of her brother behind them. Quietly, she said, “I want him.”

The man’s dark eyes swam with emotion as he lowered the crying boy from the back of his horse with a strong arm. “Oupita made sure he has English in case he ever made his way back to you. His name is Ukiah. Don’t let him lose his Ute.” With that, the dark-headed man pulled his horse slowly toward the woods. He looked back twice but said nothing before he disappeared.

Ukiah stood as still as a tree until the only father he’d known was gone.

He turned with such a fierce look of anger in his dove gray eyes. He ran at me and pounded against my stomach with his furious little fists. I let him until he tired, then I bent down and hugged him to me so tightly, he had no other choice but wrap his arms around my neck and cry against me.

My son. I never thought I’d hold him, or even know his name. He’d been through so much. He’d go through so much more in the coming years. Had his people even told him about the animal growing inside?

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

The admission was another hurt banished forever from its ability to overshadow my family. Ukiah, my son.

Lucianna rubbed his back and mine with her soft hands, and leaned her face against my shoulder as quiet sobs wracked her body.

Jeremiah and Luke stood beside their wives in the quite of the clearing, watching as our pack grew by one.

My family was whole.

Epilogue

Lucianna

“Kavah,” I said.

“No,” Ukiah said with a smile and a shake of the head. “Say vah, louder.”

“Kavah.”

“Good. Horse,” he said. The boy had grown in the last year. His height promised he’d be every bit as tall as his father, but his tender age kept him thin as a whip no matter how much we fed him. He held a long stick and raked it over the tall grass that waved between the trees. He pointed the stick at the sun. “Now say, tahvuhch.”

I repeated it and he nodded. He and Gable spoke the Ute language freely, and if I was ever going to escape teasing in a tongue I didn’t understand, I was going to have to learn it to better hold my own.

I crouched and plucked a tender wild onion from the earth, then set it in the basket I carried at my hip. His hair was getting longer and now brushed his collar bones. Someday it would be long enough to braid, like his mother’s people. He wore a cotton shirt like Gable’s, but the breechcloth and leggings were a nod to the heritage we were determined to hold onto.

He would leave with Gable soon to visit the reservation, and for a week he’d stay with Tauri and Kicking Bull. He’d visit with the people he knew and the father he’d grown up with. Gable hadn’t ever felt right about cutting off Ukiah’s ties with his mother’s people, so he didn’t. There was importance in knowing where he came from. Gable was determined his son would never lose the balance between the animal inside and the man he would become, like he had done. When they left for the week, I would miss them terribly.

Ukiah twitched his neck to the side and waited. The scents that caressed the wind told him a hundred things and the sounds of the breeze told him a hundred more that I was helpless to experience. A slow smile spread across his face and he looked up with curious gray eyes into the canopy above. “I see you.”

Gable sat perched on a low-hanging branch. “Good,” he said. Pride filled every inch of his expression and he leapt down in a move so graceful, there was barely any impact as he hit the soft grass below. He ruffled his son’s hair and hugged him into his side. “Lorelei says dinner’s on.”

Ukiah didn’t have to be told twice. He ran through the woods in the direction of the big house, and a warm meal, without another word. I laughed and shook my head. Typical werewolf.

Gable watched him steadily until he was gone, and then his dancing eyes landed on me. “Not so fast.” He brushed a finger against my waist to stop my advance toward home. He leaned down and kissed me with the lightest brush of his lips. My favorite kiss.

With his forehead against mine he held out his hand. In his palm sat a simple, thin gold ring. “I told you once it didn’t matter if we were married. I swore to you I’d never ask. I lied. I want you to share my last name, Lucianna. I want you to share the last name of our son and I want you to be mine in every way possible.” His nose flared and he swallowed hard. “Will you marry me?”

I dragged it out. He seemed so nervous, as if he thought I’d actually say no to his proposal. It was a delicious feeling that a man so strong, so powerful and tender in turn, could be afraid of a word from my lips. The ring sat in his outstretched palm against the cotton of my dress, and finally I said, “Lucianna Dawson has a ring to it, don’t you think?”

He exhaled like he’d been holding his breath and chuckled. Gathering me close, he said, “That’s the best sounding two words I’ve ever heard in my life. Is that a yes?”

I nodded and he squeezed me so tightly, I thought he’d bust the laces of my dress. I giggled at the rasp of his cheek against mine as he slid the ring onto my finger.

My limp hindered us from going as fast as Gable wanted, so he flung me over his shoulder and walked with long strides into the clearing. I lifted slightly and glared suspiciously at the back of his head. “Is this about Luke?”

“Mm hmm.”

“He bet you I’d say no?”

“Mm hmm.”

“What did he lose?”

Ignoring my question, he called across the clearing. “She said yes!”

Luke and Jeremiah stood on the corral gates talking, but his green-eyed brother turned with a frown. “Dammit,” he yelled, throwing his hat into the dirt. He stalked off into the barn while Gable and Jeremiah echoed booming laughter through the clearing.

Ukiah sat on Kristina’s front porch, devouring a plate of beefsteak and beans while Lorelei and Kristina sat in the rocking chairs behind him, cooing at Jeremiah’s baby boy.

Kristina rolled her eyes and shook her head. “I told him it was a stupid bet. I knew you were destined to be a Dawson bride the minute I saw you.”

Gable set me down but left his arm around my waist. The ring on my finger had weight and merit. It meant more to me than I’d wanted to admit. I didn’t want a man to control me, but Gable never tried to. He walked beside me, not in front of me. He grinned happily down at me and brushed a strand of loose hair out of my face.

This man was my match in every way. Oh, I missed the city from time to time with all of its conveniences and social opportunities. But then I’d think of how lonely I’d been. Of how I’d been a pretty ornament with an attractive dowry with no real purpose. I looked around at my family and was filled with such joy. Here, in this tiny town, in this simple existence, I’d found my place amongst people I loved who loved me back. I was important to them. I could see it in their happy eyes as they congratulated us.

We women who were strong enough, and brave enough to love these Dawson men fought to get where we were. Our struggles made the good in this life more potent somehow. They made our bond impenetrable and our importance to each other undeniable.

I was a Dawson long before the ring that glinted against the fair skin of my finger, but the acceptance of Gable’s name as my own meant even more. I drank in the overwhelming elation on my mate’s face.

He wasn’t The Gable any longer.

He was My Gable.

Acknowledgements

This series is for you, reader. You don’t even realize how much you inspire me. Every book I write is with you in mind. Your reviews, comments and messages on the website shape the adventures I write. I listen to you because you are the reason I get to tell stories. I am, and always will be, your biggest fan.

If you are reading this, it means you went on the entire three book adventure with me through the Wild West with this pack of testy, imperfect werewolves, and the women strong enough to love them. You let these characters into your imaginations, and for that, I’m truly thankful.

You. Are. Awesome.

-T.

Questions or comments about this series? Leave them here. I’d love to hear from you.

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THE WITNESS AND THE BEAR

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Read on for a sneak peek of the thrilling first book in the bestselling Bear Valley Shifters series.

Chapter One

Today was as good a day to die as any.

Jimmy’s fingers dug into her shoulder as he shoved her out the window. “Hannah! Stop fighting me. If you don’t run now, it’ll be too late.”

Another tremendous crash rattled the room. Stone’s men were coming in sooner than later and the men protecting her were sitting ducks to the hell on the other side of that door. Jeremy watched her with an eerie glow to his dark eyes. Fluorescent lights and dingy walls had that effect on him. Braced against the door, he snarled, “Get out of here!”

“And what about you?” she snapped, lunging for the window and gripping the edges with straining fingers. “Huh? They’ll kill you! There is no end to their reach. They’ll keep coming until I’m dead and I’m tired of running. Just let them have me.”

Defeated. After the last time they’d found her, she’d skimmed the insanity train. Paranoia ruled her life. And not the I-smoked-a-joint-and-now-the-government-is-after-me kind. This fear didn’t end with the high. It stretched on and on until she would drown in it. Burn in it. Fall into the darkness wider than the known world and tumble forever, hitting every rock crevice on the way down until her mind was shredded. She was so damned tired of it.

“I’ll never forgive you,” Jeremy said. His cold eyes threw ice that pierced her heart. Gray hair cropped short, wrinkles that textured his face, and most of them were probably from trying to keep her safe for the past year. Witness protection gone horribly wrong. He’d given too much for her to give up now. He knew it, and begrudgingly, she knew it too.

“Jimmy,” she breathed, tears burning her eyes.

His grip on her shirt tightened and he shook his head, slow. Bright blue eyes filled with sadness so deep, she didn’t know how he could draw a breath. Jimmy and Jeremy wouldn’t come with her this time. Their last stand would be here, in this filthy apartment in Ashland, Oregon.

Crash. Plaster spewed from the walls and ceiling and Jimmy shoved her out onto the fire escape. “Climb down and run. Don’t stop until you know they aren’t following. Take this.” He shoved a Glock into the palm of her hand, the metal cold against the perspiration of fear. “Shoot ‘em if you’re cornered.”

Jeremy flew backward with the force of the next blow and Jimmy shoved her in the back. She fell forward, catching the grate with her knees and crying out at the sudden pain. Gunfire peppered the tiny space and she tumbled down the stairs, caught herself on the railing at the bottom and shot one last look to the window, then pounded the pavement with the soles of her sneakers.

Jeremy who’d given up his life as a civilian to protect her. Jeremy, who’d calmed her fears when Stone’s men got too close. Jeremy, who’d become more like father figure than friend. He was trapped in the middle of the rattling explosions.

A sob wrenched from her throat. The last good parts of her would die with him. His death was on her. She’d made the choice to testify against Stone and his men, and that decision had caused an earthquake that rippled through her life and killed people she cared about. If she lived a minute or a decade, she’d never curse another person with her love.

A hand reached out from the darkness and wrapped around her throat like a manacle. She tried to scream but her wind wouldn’t come through his crushing grasp and as the man emerged from the shadows, the flickering street light illuminated a long scar across his forehead.

Spinning, he slammed her against a brick wall hard enough to rattle her skull and blur her vision. Sparks whipped this way and that through the edges of her vision and warmth trickled down her neck. Yanking her long, honey colored hair out of the way, the man grunted a satisfied noise and the crack of metal on metal was deafening as he cocked his gun.

Definitely one of Stone’s enforcers. No one else would be interested in the scar that marked her.

Gravel met the flesh of her cheek as he slammed her to the ground, and when his weight disappeared, she rolled over. No way was she going to die with a bullet in her back. The least this asshole could do was look in her eyes when he pulled that trigger. Gunfire had tapered off from above, and the apartment behind his shoulder had gone dark. Her breath trembled, filling the night air with the traitorous proof of her fear. Heart hammering against her sternum, she glared at the sneering man.

“Go to hell,” he said, lifting the barrel.

“You first,” she snarled, pulling the trigger on the Glock Jimmy had gifted her.

His gun discharged at the exact same moment as hers, and pain ripped through her, shredding her insides until there was nothing left. The man sank to his knees with a shocked look as his unloaded weapon clattered to the cracked pavement. She struggled to breathe as he brought searching fingertips to his chest and pulled them back crimson.

The last thing she’d do on this earth was rid it of an evil man. Pride surged through her as he fell forward. Her hand lay limp in front of her, smattered with blood. It felt detached from her body. Everything did. Nothing worked except her lungs, dragging air in, and pushing it out, and even that small movement was failing.

The man’s eyes dimmed until the dark orbs saw nothing at all. Her lungs rattled with every breath, but she smiled despite the pain. Stone won the war, but at least she’d go out on this tiny victory.

Her vision shattered inward and she winced at the blinding pain.

Nearby, an animal roared loud enough to rattle her bones.

If it was her death the creature sought, he was too late.

She was already gone.

THE WITNESS AND THE BEAR

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About the Author

T. S. Joyce

T.S. Joyce is devoted to bringing hot shifter romances to readers. Hungry alpha males are her calling card, and the wilder the men, the more she'll make them pour their hearts out. Experienced at handling an alpha male of her own, she lives in a tiny town, outside of a tiny city, and devotes her life to writing big stories. Foodie, bear whisperer, ninja, thief of tiny bottles of awesome smelling hotel shampoo, nap connoisseur, movie fanatic, and zombie slayer, and most of this bio is true.

Bear Shifters? Check

Smoldering Alpha Hotness? Double Check

Sexy Scenes? Fasten up your girdles, ladies and gents, it's gonna to be a wild ride.

For more information about T. S. Joyce and her work, visit her website here.

Contents

Other Books in This Series

Copyright

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

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