Rebel:. Zoe Archer

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СКАЧАТЬ taken from the horses. Nathan almost believed she, too, had some animal within her, she moved with such lithe grace, like a sleek mountain cat. But this cat would sooner claw him than accept a caress. He grappled with the urge to stalk her now like prey. Or a mate.

      She rummaged in the packs until she produced what Nathan recognized as dried meat and pemmican, and a canteen.

      “Dinner,” she said, coming back beside the fire. “Courtesy of Edwin. We’ve enough provisions to last us awhile without hunting.” She handed him the food, careful to keep their hands from touching. It was the same with the canteen.

      Nathan was ravenous. He hadn’t eaten anything since the night before at the trading post. Hell—had it been only a day since the world as he knew it had changed completely? Yesterday, he’d been an ordinary man. If not ordinary, then certainly less unusual. He had believed himself on a certain path. Retrieve Douglas Prescott’s belongings, take them back to Victoria, and then continue his pursuit of justice and equality for Natives.

      Now he’d discovered something about himself, something that tested the strength of his will. A man who could transform into a wolf. Yet even this was a small piece within a larger wonder. He stood in the middle of an ongoing war. A war for the world’s magic. Heirs of Albion. Blades of the Rose. Even the names were fanciful. He’d wandered into an adventure story and found that it was not fiction, but truth, and he was part of this fantastical, yet real, world. It was a world that Astrid Bramfield knew well. He wondered what she had seen. Enough to have her accept his shape-changing ability immediately.

      As Nathan watched her, the beast tried to push its way out, but he held it down. A dark smile curved his mouth. She might be able to accept him as a shape changer, but she didn’t have to wrestle with the damned thing every time he looked at her.

      They ate without talking, but he heard everything: the pop of the fire, the horses and mule cropping grass, the nearby river flowing over rocks, and the profound loneliness surrounding Astrid Bramfield, revealing itself through her silence. He knew that loneliness. It marked him from the moment he awoke to when he lay down to sleep, and in his dreams, too. They both belonged to no one, and no one was theirs.

      Night descended, enveloping them in darkness.

      After trading sips of water from the canteen, she struggled yet again to keep herself from speaking. Maybe this was why she had become a Blade, her relentless curiosity that even she couldn’t contain. He thought about what she must have been like all those years ago, bursting with a need to know, a need that propelled her toward defending the world’s magic. It was the same demand for knowledge he’d felt as soon as he was aware of his own consciousness.

      He wanted to see that part of her, unguarded, eager. He would find a way to bring it back.

      So now he waited. Like a wolf stalking prey.

      Finally, she asked, lowly, “Can you do it now? Change into the wolf?” In the darkness, he couldn’t tell whether she blushed, but he felt it, the subtle warming of her skin. His own flesh heated in response.

      Nathan hadn’t tried to deliberately change, not yet. “I feel it. Just beneath the surface. It wants to come out.” Wants you, he added silently. He knew she’d flee at the first open mention of the pull between them.

      “Then it shouldn’t be difficult,” she said.

      He couldn’t resist. “I’d have to strip.”

      He didn’t miss the way she swallowed hard. He wasn’t alone in this desire. Not much comfort, when the woman in question was more closed-off than a vault. Buried beneath ten feet of solid stone. Defended by man-eating dragons and poisonous, carnivorous vines.

      “And if you did…undress,” she rasped, “could you then?”

      Could he? Reach into himself and channel the beast inside of him? The thought both unnerved and thrilled him. Without telling her so, he let slip a little the bonds he’d lashed around the animal, but then, seeing her watching him carefully, he forced the beast back under control. It growled in frustration.

      He toyed with an evasion. Or an outright lie. But the only way past her armor was to show her that he wasn’t without his own vulnerability. “Not now,” he said, “even though I’d be a ferocious animal, something about it, about changing, that’s exposed. Unguarded. Maybe that doesn’t make sense.”

      “No,” she said slowly. She seemed to recognize what he had done, how he had opened himself to her as a show of faith. Her gaze fastened to his and he saw the shadows fall away, just a little. “It makes perfect sense.”

      Man and beast were one at that moment. They both saw in Astrid Bramfield courage and need, strength and softness. And they both wanted her.

      Her eyes widened slightly as she held his gaze. She read in his eyes his intent. Before she could push it away, a responding desire gleamed in her silver smoke eyes. Not just desire of the body, but of the mind and heart as well.

      Then she stood and grabbed her bedroll. “Get some sleep,” she said gruffly as she unrolled the blanket. “All the days now will be long.” She didn’t take off her boots or coat, only her hat, which, after she laid down, she used to cover her face.

      The drawbridge is up, Nathan thought. A siege it would be, then. But not one of outright force. No matter what the beast demanded. He was still a man and had his own needs. This woman would be his, but she would give him herself by her own desire.

      He took the blanket that once belonged to the trapper, then lay on the grass bedding and looked up at the stars. There were legends and stories about the stars, tales he once thought were nothing more than fancies dreamed up to while away long nights. Now he knew differently.

      And all around him, the mountains whispered. You are very close. Come, we await you.

      Chapter 4

      The First of Many

      Renewal here, in the mountains and alpine meadows. She had felt it when first arriving in the Rocky Mountains, and she still felt it to this day.

      As she and Lesperance rode along the base of one mountain spur, the sky gleamed in a chalcedony of blue and white, and the ground still wore its carpet of green velvet. Autumn would soon arrive, but its season was short, and winter beckoned in traces of frost upon the grass.

      Home. This was home to her.

      After Michael’s death, Astrid had lost her mooring, herself, swept into a tide of grief that saw no cessation. She’d taken the voyage from Africa back to England, alone, dressed in the widow’s weeds she purchased from an English tailor in Cairo. A black shade of herself, she stood upon the ship’s deck and felt nothing. Not the punishing sun, or the sway of the ship upon the waves. She spoke to no one and could not sleep because Michael was not there. They had been married for five years, and she needed his large, solid presence beside her to guide her into dreams.

      In Southampton, her parents met her at the dock. Catullus Graves had been there, too, with Bennett Day, Jane Fleetwood, and nearly a half dozen other Blades. All full of condolences, their sorrow at Michael’s loss sincere. Tears marked Catullus’s and Jane’s faces. And yet Astrid remained numb, even when her mother, her dear, middle-aged, lilac-scented mother, embraced her, whispering, “My poor little Star,” Astrid remained entombed in ice.

      She couldn’t go home with them, to their little СКАЧАТЬ