“No!” I shouted as I wrapped my arms around Burton’s waist and flung him from the fleeing horse. A tree broke my fall and pain shot through me. Burton rolled several yards before sliding to a stop at the base of a huge pine. Luke’s body lay crumpled in the snow and a bone chilling chuckle came from Burton’s parted lips.
His pistol was pointed steadily and directly at my face.
“We killed your dog,” he gritted out, right before he pulled the trigger.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Lorelei
A week had come and gone. I knew what it meant but none of us dared to breathe life into our fears with words. The musty, gray haze of denial was the only course for my continued existence. I worked from sun up to sun down and as the week went on, Kristina, Daisy, and I stopped talking altogether. Our voices had started to shake, and the cracks in our once strong foundation had become deep and rotted.
We’d all suffered the same fate but wouldn’t admit it. Not yet.
Elias came every couple of days with food and a constant borage of hope-filled words, but even those echoed with emptiness now. Even eternally optimistic Elias knew something had gone wrong up there in those mountains. Kristina and Daisy were strong in the daylight, but when nighttime brought the dark, no one was safe from slow realization. Their heartbreak echoed through the empty rooms of the house and at some point, I gave up on sleep altogether. Our sleep brought screams conjured by nightmares.
Swaying to the rhythm of both my pain and the rocking chair I’d dragged in from outside, I lost myself in staring at the flames of the hearth. It’s warmth and the sound of the crackling wood it fed upon was a soothing balm on a burn I couldn’t seem to escape.
“Lorelei?” Daisy asked in a frail voice. It was raspy, as if she’d been crying her whole life.
I didn’t have to say anything. She was looking for comfort, not words. Instead I held my hand out to her and she sank to the wooden floorboards beside me.
Her face crumpled, all semblance of strength gone under the horrible reality we couldn’t deny any longer. Clutching onto my leg, she whispered, “They aren’t coming back, are they?”
I shook my head slowly as a tear ran down my cheek. I’d have given anything for my answer to be different.
She clutched onto my skin and cried out, “Damn those men and damn their pride.”
Her nails dug deeply into me but I didn’t mind. At least I still felt something other than the inescapable ache in my heart. Kristina appeared out of the darkness of her room in nothing but a thin nightdress. She looked pale and her skin was covered in gooseflesh. Her eyes had the hollow, sunken look of phantoms and her cheeks were red and adorned with tears.
“Come by the fire,” I said.
She sank down and laid her head in Daisy’s lap and while she gently stroked Kristina’s soft curls with her fingertips, I rocked and hummed a lullaby Mother sang to me when I was a child in need of comfort.
Over and over I hummed it until my throat was dry, and Kristina and Daisy were curled up sleeping near the hearth. And here, in the darkest hours of the blackest night of my life, I heard the scratching again. It was the scratching of my nightmares where I imagined some terrible creature coming to devour me. Scritch, scratch, scritch, scratch, it went relentlessly on as I watched the front door and imagined a hundred evil creatures that could be on the other side of it.
As if in a trance, I stood and padded slowly to the door. Crouching down, I placed my hand against the inside of it until I could feel the vibrations of the monster outside. It stopped. I removed my hand and pulled it to my chest to steady my trembling.
The pitiful whine of a dog cut through the night air.
Kristina and Daisy slept soundly behind me, but I shouldn’t wake them. Straightening my skirts in determination, I moved to open the latch. Maybe my instincts had burned up with my loss, or maybe I just didn’t care as much about living or dying anymore, but I opened that door and stepped out before the dog could come in.
A pile of crumpled fur lay across the porch, and try as I might to make heads or tails of him, the cloudy night sky selfishly lapped up any light I needed. Its fur was dark and its stomach rose and fell raggedly, as if it had difficulty drawing breath.
The dog was dying.
Another whine sealed my fate. Saving it would be my burden. I’d lost too much today and a dog dying on my front porch was just one unfairness too many. I scooped it up before I could chicken out and struggled under its great weight as I carried him carefully to the barn. The horses flared their noses and stomped their feet in the first signs of panic, but I brushed right past them until I was to the hearth. It took two matches for my shaking hands to ignite the dry tender in the fireplace, but when the flames were finally lapping at the stone walls of the fireplace, I turned and stifled a scream.
It wasn’t a dog.
The creature I’d carried in my arms was a wolf.
Chest heaving, I backed into the corner and sank down against the wall with a pathetic whimper on my lips. He looked like the wolf who’d tried to kill us outside the train. His icy blue eyes opened slowly and watched me crouched there like a coward who’d accepted her fate.
Another long whine escaped him and something about it pulled so gently at my heartstrings. No way would a wild wolf come to a home for help. He’d let me carry him with no fight, and he’d known to scratch at the door like some tame pet. He belonged to someone, of that I was sure. He’d likely been raised gently to trust humans so much. Wolf or dog, it didn’t matter what kind of creature he was. I couldn’t just sit here in a cloud of fear and watch him die.
Slowly, I patted my pocket and was comforted by the weight of my knife. At least I had a weapon. I wasn’t just blunt claws and teeth and helplessly human. Still crouched, I sidled slowly closer, and he closed his eyes as if he trusted me to touch him.
“Where’s your master?” I crooned. The wolf was beautiful. Whomever lost him was likely looking for him. Unless something terrible had happened to them. My heart ached. Perhaps he’d lost the most important person to him, like I’d just lost mine. Perhaps we were the same, he and I.
I closed my eyes and reached out until course, thick fur touched my fingertips. He didn’t move or even growl. Eventually I found the courage to stroke him gently, and then to run my hand over his side. Despite being able to feel every rib poking out, the problem was pretty obvious. Even now, I didn’t know if I could change his fate. A half-healed puncture wound disappeared into the dark fur of his shoulder and under thin skin, something hard and knotted was burrowed, poisoning him slowly.
Someone had shot him and the bullet was still there. Perhaps he’d taken it trying to protect his master.
My voice shook fiercely as I reached for my knife. A low rumble in his throat held me frozen in place. So familiar was that sound, it stirred in me…something. Confused, I pulled the knife out of frustration.
“You have a bullet in you. It needs to come out.” No, I didn’t believe dogs could understand humans, but it sure as anything made me feel better to talk to him. I leaned toward his shoulder, blade gleaming in the firelight, but pulled back. “If you bite me, I’m going to kill you the rest of the way.”
He turned his head away from me and closed his striking blue eyes.
“All right then.” The skin had to be reopened because a knot that size would never fit through a semi-healed opening that small. I made the cut quickly and then flinched while I waited for the wolf to eat me. Nothing happened and I opened one eye to find him still in the same position. “This is going to hurt,” I warned.
He was stoic as I pried the seeping wound open and shoved my finger through the hole. I hooked it around the bullet as quickly as I could, and pulled. Out plopped a disfigured chunk of metal. I held it up against the light in my bloodied hand. He must’ve been in a great deal of pain. A shuffling noise drew my attention. The wolf crept closer on his belly, head and tail down and a soft whine in his throat. He lay his head in my lap and heaved a great
sigh, as if touching me brought him relief from the heartache he no doubt felt at losing his master.
Well, if that didn’t beat all.
I debated stitching the wound closed but my shaking hands wouldn’t give him any advantage. If the wolf lived, he’d just have to be scarred. Perhaps I could keep him. I would be a poor substitute for the master he’d lost, but maybe we could shoulder our losses together.
I cried then as I stroked the soft fur on his face. I let the tide of anguish wash over me as I accepted that I’d lost Jeremiah in those mountains. My shoulders shook with my sobs, and I clutched the fabric of my dress over my heart where it felt like it would burst. I loved him, and now I understood why Kristina had said she’d never marry another.
No one else would compare to my Jeremiah.
Maybe I cried for hours, I didn’t know. All I knew was that I’d never be the same. I’d always be sad and broken. My husband had become a part of me, and now the bits of me I’d grown to care for were gone. As my tears had dried, the wolf had laid his head against my stomach as if he knew precisely the pain I endured.
Spent and exhausted, I lay down in the hay beside the dark beast. He nuzzled my face and licked my hand as I petted his ear, and down his protruding ribcage. My eyelids grew heavier with the gentle motion of my hand against him. It was easy falling asleep next to him. Maybe it was because he’d been there for me. Or because he was going through the same heartbreak. He’d never shown any aggression, only devotion to the hands that had saved his life.
I felt safe here in the firelight by my wolf.
He was wild and brave like my Jeremiah had been.
****
“Lorelei.” A voice echoed through my dreams. “Lorelei,” it repeated. “Where are you?” The voice was getting closer.
I stretched and opened my bleary eyes. Beigha stared at me from the safety of her stall and blasted a snort. Last night came back to me like a thundering avalanche, and with a combination of fear and hope, I felt for the wolf until my fingers found the rough fur of his coat.
I sat up and picked cascading stems of hay from my wild hair under the intense scrutiny of the wolf’s blue-eyed gaze. “You aren’t going to eat me now that you are feeling better, are you?”
He shook his head with a sneeze.
“Great.” My voice was scratchy and raw from crying so much, but the animal didn’t seem to mind. “Come on, boy.” I stood and hailed Kristina, who had a panicked look to her eyes as she ran for the barn. “I’m in here.” The wolf followed me, limping badly.
“There you are!” Kristina said in a tone that all but dripped relief. “I thought you’d gone off and done something stupid.”
The wolf growled behind me at the sight of Kristina, and her eyes went round. She screamed and lunged for the ladder as the wolf attacked.
“No!” I yelled as I jumped in between them. It gave her enough time to scurry up a few ladder rungs.
“Where’s Luke?” she cried over his snarls.
I backed slowly to the ladder, careful to stay in between them. This was a side of the wolf I hadn’t seen. He was terrifying. “What?” My voice shook like a flame. “How should I know?”
“I’m not asking you, Lorelei. I’m asking...Aaah!”
The wolf lunged again and I maneuvered my body closer to the ladder. Kristina scrambled straight up to the loft above me, and the wolf watched her the entire way.
“Don’t you feel some kind of connection to the wolf? Anything?” Her tone was getting frantic as the wolf approached me.
Terror snaked through me and I stumbled up the first rung with my back to the ladder. I just had to get far enough up it to escape those gleaming teeth he was baring at Kristina.
Wolves couldn’t climb ladders. Could they?
“Lorelei, he’ll still be able to get up here. Do you feel a connection?” Kristina asked from above.
“He—he let me clean his wound last night,” I stuttered. I crawled up the next rung, never taking my eyes from the hatred on the wolf’s face.
“Not what I’m talking about. Think. Why would a wolf let you do that?”
“Because he was tame. He was someone’s pet.”
“No, Lorelei. That wolf doesn’t belong to anyone but you,” she said softly. “He’s Jeremiah.”
I shook my head back and forth as I climbed higher. She’d lost it. She’d snapped with the loss of her husband and now she was crazy. Jeremiah was dead and as far as I knew, dead people didn’t reincarnate into black-furred, blue-eyed wolves.
“That’s the secret, Lorelei. He’s a werewolf.”
A hundred things that hadn’t made sense clattered into place. His inhuman speed, his shifting eye color and the soft growls in his throat when I pleased him. His heightened sense of hearing, the Hell Hunters, and the reasons the townspeople all seemed wary of the Dawson brothers.
The devil’s breeding right here in town…
But Jeremiah was a man. I’d felt his skin and kissed his lips. He didn’t match the beast below me.
“You’re his mate,” Kristina whispered.
Tears made warm streams on my cheeks and it was hard to breathe. “Stop it.”
“Lorelei—”
“I said stop it!” I screamed. “What you’re telling me isn’t real. It’s not real, Kristina! Werewolves don’t exist. This is just a way for you to hold onto the idea that Luke and Jeremiah are still alive.”
My roiling anger did something terrifying to the wolf. He pulled black lips over gleaming white teeth and looked at Kristina with such hatred. Then he hooked his paw on the first rung of the ladder, as if he knew exactly how to get up to her.
He wasn’t going to let her escape the loft.
“Save me,” she whispered from above me. “He’ll listen to you.”
I sobbed and wiped moisture from my damp lashes with the back of my hand. I would try anything. She was my sister-in-law. She was the sister I’d always wished for in every way. She was different from me in ways that challenged me and made me better. Kristina always made me laugh when I was sad or confused. She never teased me or abandoned me like all of my friends in Boston had.
I gripped the ladder and lowered myself down.
“Wait,” I said as my feet hit the ground. I held my hands out as he backed away. I crouched down slowly until I was eye level with the snarling wolf. “Please. If you’re my Jeremiah, you love me. I’m your wife and I’m begging you to let Kristina be. She’s my best friend. If you took her from me, you’d hurt me.” I sounded so silly to my own ears.
His lips fell and his brilliant eyes danced between us. His face softened and he paced in a tight circle. His lips drew up in a snarl once more before he whined and nuzzled his face against my outstretched hands. A familiar rumble played on some of my favorite memories of Jeremiah, and a tiny sliver of hope snaked its way through me.
Kristina stepped gingerly from the bottom rung of the ladder and shook like the last leaf in winter as she waited. He sniffed her outstretched fist, then licked my chin as I ran my nails through his fur.
It couldn’t be possible, could it? Was my Jeremiah in this animal somewhere? “Can he change back whenever he wants?” I asked. If it was really him I wanted him to hold me. I wanted to know what was real and imagined.
“Luke can. Jeremiah’s wolf has been broken ever since Anna passed away though. I don’t know how it works for him.”
“Can you change back?” I pleaded. “If it’s you—if you’re Jeremiah, I need you.”
He whined and shifted his weight back and forth on two humongous front paws before he trotted off for the hay we’d slept in last night.
I wrung my hands. “What should I do?”
“In my experience, its best for both of you if you watch,” she said. “Don’t scream or look disgusted. It’s brutal and it hurts them like hell. Accept him. Accept his wolf. They’re both yours for as long as you walk this earth.”
My heart pounded like the wings of a falcon but still, I approach
ed him. The wolf’s bones fractured and crunched, but never once did he cry out in pain. I tried my best to keep my face neutral as his muscles snapped in two and reformed into something completely new. He had to know I was here because he watched me, and when the fur disappeared and took the smoothness of a man’s skin, I knew without a doubt he’d kept his promise and come back to me.
In light of his assumed death, him being a werewolf just didn’t seem so bad. I’d rather have him like this than not at all.
He sat up gasping in pain but I couldn’t hold myself back a minute longer. He was alive. He’d come back to grow old with me and keep me safe. Jeremiah didn’t even lift his arms to catch my flying frame as I wrapped my body around him and cried. Even when he groaned like my touch burned his flesh, I didn’t care. I wanted him to feel me against his sensitive skin. I wanted him to feel the agony I’d gone through in his absence. It was minutes before his hands brushed my back and I rocked as I sobbed into the side of his neck.
“Don’t ever do that to me again. Don’t you ever leave me like that again,” I chanted brokenly.
“Shhh,” he said as he pulled his strong hand to the back of my neck. “I’m here.”
The clunk of a pair of pants hit the hay beside us and Kristina stood in the early morning light, openly sobbing. “I want to know how it happened.”
“Stop your cryin’, woman. Luke’s alive and well. He went with Sheriff Hawkins to take Burton to Denver. He hung from a noose yesterday morning if all went to plan. Your man will be back in a few days.”
“Hells bells,” she said through a tear stained grin. “I have to tell Daisy!”
She spun and bolted for the barn door, and when she was through, Jeremiah dislodged me from his lap and pulled on his pants. The bullet wound on his shoulder was weeping red.
“I need to dress your wound,” I said, suddenly feeling shy. I was finally in on the secret. I finally knew him. Really knew him.
He twitched his gaze to his shoulder and shook his head. “It’ll be no more than a scratch by nightfall. I heal quickly.”