Code of the Wolf (13 page)

Jacob seemed deeply preoccupied, though his final
glance as she left held a wealth of meaning she didn't know how to interpret. She slipped out and walked slowly back to the house.

She wasn't surprised to see Changying waiting for her on the porch.

“Revenge will not cure your unhappiness,” the Chinese woman said as Serenity reached the door.

“I don't want revenge,” Serenity said. “I want—”

“Justice, as you did with Leroy?”

The deep compassion in the other woman's eyes was more than Serenity could endure. She mumbled a vague response, went inside and returned to her room.

This time her mind and body were exhausted enough to let her sleep, but her dreams were laced with glittering yellow eyes, sharp white teeth and a voice that spoke the same words over and over again:

“Killing doesn't know any barriers between race or blood.”

The barrier between her and Jacob was high indeed. But as long as she never forgot what he was, as long as she kept her distance, she would be safe until she didn't care about being safe anymore.

T
HEY RODE OUT
on a warm June morning, an hour before sunrise. The season's most important work was done, the ranch was well stocked with supplies, and the other women were as prepared as they would ever be.

Jacob watched from the saddle as Serenity made her farewells. Most of the women seemed resigned to her departure, but a few of them—Changying and Caridad, in particular—didn't much trouble to hide their true feelings. Zora had been as stolid as usual. She and Jacob had hardly exchanged a word since their conversation in the stable, but Jacob had been sure that she'd resolved any problems between her and Serenity.

Unlike the women, Jacob had to conceal his thoughts and emotions. He couldn't let Serenity so much as guess what was going through his mind. Until he'd done what he had to do, the last thing he wanted was for Caridad or Victoria or one of the others to decide he couldn't be trusted to look after Serenity and her interests.

Can you?
he asked himself as Victoria gave Serenity a hard embrace. He could still hear Caridad's challenge:
If you fail or betray her in any way, we will find you.

The threat didn't bother him, though he didn't doubt that Caridad would try to kill him if anything happened
to Serenity. He didn't plan to expose Serenity to any danger at all.

But he
would
betray her.

The voices of the women faded from Jacob's awareness. He stared blindly at his gloved hands resting on the saddle horn. If there'd been any other way, he would have taken it. But there wasn't. Serenity had done everything possible to make him believe she accepted what he was, that the Change hadn't affected her deeply. She'd spoken calmly and allowed him to take her hand. Few humans could do as much, let alone one whose family had been killed by werewolves.

It was her need to show him just how unafraid she was that had made her insist that they keep working as partners. She'd neither kept her distance nor given any indication that she so much as remembered their kiss, which should have made him glad. It would make things so much easier later.

But the constant ache of desire, the wanting that had come on him so hard and quick in the barn, made it impossible for him to ignore her as she pretended to ignore him. The smell of her, her constant nearness, the flex and bend of her body on her horse…all those things kept him aroused when that was the last thing he wanted to be.

So he'd worked himself to exhaustion every day in hopes he could get some relief in sleep. There hadn't been much. He'd ended up spending most nights running, though even that hadn't helped. He was weak, and finding out he was still subject to that kind of weakness had been a hard lesson to learn. Just as it had been hard
to realize that the vengeful creature inside him hadn't been extinguished.

The men Serenity wanted were the men who had killed Ruth. And now that Serenity had set him on their trail, he couldn't turn back. He couldn't pretend it was better to leave them alone than add to the bloodshed that had kept the feud alive so long. Bonnie had brought that home to him. So had Serenity.

He would go after them, sure enough. But the Code, as much as it had been stretched these past few days, wasn't yet broken. He would do one thing he'd promised Serenity. He would bring them in and stick with them until they hanged or he was forced to finish the job himself.

But that would be the last resort. And it would be the end of the Code. Of himself.

A brief touch on his knee snapped him out of his thoughts.

Zora was standing at his stirrup, looking up at him with eyes as flat as the top of a mesa.

“Serenity has offered you money,” she said. “I will give you more if you finish this hunt alone.”

Werewolves couldn't read each other's minds, but Zora might as well have seen right into his.

“I don't need money from you,” he said quietly. “But I've got the same plan in mind.”

The Indian woman nodded. “You know these men she seeks,” she said. “I know
of
them.”

“I think it is more than that. It is not only because of Serenity or the money she will give you that you hunt these men.”

“My reasons don't matter. I'm doing what you asked me to do.”

She rested her brown hand on his horse's croup. “Hatred is a powerful thing. It blinds Serenity. She has no sense where these men are concerned.”

“That's why I plan to leave her somewhere safe before we get anywhere near them. I'll see her to some town where she can find her way back here with no trouble.”

“How will you do this?”

He met her gaze. “I know what she hates and fears most,” he said.

“You will not hurt her?”

“I'll do what I have to do, no more.”

“You will do this soon?”

“Soon as I can.”

“Then we will be watching for her.” She paused. “She will hate you for this.”

“She's halfway there already.”

“Maybe not as much as you think.”

Jacob kept all expression from his face, though his heart had contracted into a tight little ball. “Once this is finished, we likely won't lay eyes on each other again.” He looked out across the desert grassland sloping away from the mountains behind them. “You take good care of her.”

“We will.”

She walked away just as Serenity rode up. Her eyes were sad, but her jaw was firm and her shoulders set.

“How do werewolves say goodbye?” she asked.

“Not so differently from anyone else.”

Serenity cast one last look around the yard and the
women gathered to see her off. Caridad raised her hand, and she waved back.

“Let's ride,” she said.

They set off at a trot, their spare mounts keeping pace at the ends of their leads. Serenity didn't look back again, but Jacob suspected he saw a wetness in her eyes.

She believed she might not come back from the hunt. She wasn't discounting the danger, at least the danger she imagined. It was just that she was willing to die if she could see her enemies destroyed. Any regret she felt about Leroy—and he'd become sure she did feel regret—wouldn't be enough to stop her from killing again.

Only he could do that. But not yet. He had to wait until he'd set things up just right. When he was done, she would be glad to get away from him, even at the cost of her revenge.

In the meantime, he would have to be close to Serenity every waking hour and every night, breathing in her scent, listening to her husky voice, struggling to remember that she was untouchable and always would be.

They rode south along the Rio Grande through the morning, stopped in the shade of the vast cottonwoods by the river during the hottest part of the day to rest and change horses, and continued on into evening. They made camp ten miles northwest of El Paso, taking advantage of the river's proximity to provide not only water but fuel for their fire. Jacob knew they wouldn't always have it so easy.

Not that it would be easy for Serenity much longer
after tonight. He had decided to wait until the next evening to begin putting his plan into effect. He gathered up an armful of fallen cottonwood branches, built a small fire and watched her boil the beans and coffee. They ate as they usually did, in silence, and then spread their bedrolls on either side of the fire. It didn't make much of a barrier, even a symbolic one, but then, that didn't really matter.

In the morning, they broke camp and continued on to El Paso under a brilliant blue sky. They reached the busy town in the early afternoon and stocked up on supplies, then kept riding south toward Fort Hancock. Though they still traveled along the river and parallel to the tracks of the Southern Pacific, the landscape away from the bosque had grown increasingly harsh, dominated by hardy desert plants and patches of grassland.

On the second night, when they camped at the edge of the bosque, Jacob slipped out of sight behind the trees, stripped out of his clothes and Changed.

Maybe Serenity sensed what was happening, for she was staring in his direction when he reemerged. She flinched a little when she saw him, struggling to get herself under control again.

“Are you going out to catch our dinner?” she asked casually.

He turned and burst into a standing run. He could feel her gaze locked on him as he loped away from camp. She would seem indifferent when he returned, but she wouldn't be. She would be thinking of the Reniers and everything he had in common with them. And he couldn't let her forget.

Jacob turned up a jackrabbit in less than five min
utes, scented another one soon after and caught
it,
as well. The meat would be scanty and tough, but along with the beans it would be enough.

Just as he'd anticipated, when he returned, Serenity seemed relaxed as she boiled the beans over the fire. She hardly glanced up as he trotted into the firelight with the two rabbits dangling from his jaws.

“Good,” she said. She patted a cloth she had spread on the ground beside her. “Please put them here.”

Feeling like a cad, Jacob did as she asked and returned to his clothes. He Changed, dressed quickly and rejoined her. She had drawn the knife she wore at her waist and was reaching for one of the rabbits.

Jacob crouched on his haunches a few feet away. “Let me do that,” he said, unsheathing his own knife. “I can skin a rabbit in my sleep.”

She wouldn't look at him. “You did the hunting. I'll do the cooking.”

Arguing would only make the situation seem normal again, so he lay back against his saddle, pulled his hat over his eyes and pretended to sleep. Two hours later Serenity “woke” him, and they ate beans and rabbit without so much as a word passing between them. Jacob moved a little more quickly than she did to clean up and dispose of the rabbits' remains. She left him to it and sat brooding over the dying fire, poking at the embers with a stick and studiously avoiding his gaze.

The next evening, when he Changed, Jacob upped the stakes. He turned his back and stripped in front of her, letting her witness the transformation as he had done the first time at Avalon. Before he left to hunt, he stalked around the camp, bristling up his fur and show
ing his teeth without ever turning his attention directly on Serenity.

Once again, they cooked and ate the brace of cottontails he brought in a silence fraught with tension and unspoken fears. Jacob reminded himself again and again that this ugly game was necessary, but he hated it all the same. For the first time in years, he despised what he was.

On the following day, they stopped in Fort Hancock, then turned west toward Sierra Blanca, riding into a country of vast, flat plains broken by high mountain ranges that seemed to spring straight out of the parched earth. That night, when they made camp in the open desert, Jacob behaved in as bestial a manner as he could, growling and snapping in the darkness just out of Serenity's sight, nearly tearing the night's prey apart before he brought it back to her, eating his bloody portion as wolf instead of man, and howling at the moon long after she had taken to her bedroll.

He didn't come back until dawn, when the fire had burned to ashes and Serenity's attention was focused on saddling her horse. Her shoulders twitched when she heard him trot into camp. Self-disgust curdled in Jacob's gut as he Changed, dressed and retrieved his own saddle and bedroll.

Acutely aware of Serenity's inner turmoil, he saddled his own mount and checked on his spare. The weak part of him wanted to apologize to Serenity for his behavior, but he knew one slip would undo any progress he had made. By tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that, she would have seen enough of the beast that she would rejoice to be rid of him.

“Are you trying to frighten me?” she asked suddenly.

An unseen rock rolled under Jacob's boot, and he almost stumbled. “No,” he said, half choking on the word. “What makes you think—?”

“Are you hoping I'll give up rather than travel with a werewolf?”

Hell. She'd seen through his ruse so easily. “Serenity…”

She stood very still with her palms flat on her horse's barrel. “You don't understand me at all, do you? If you think staring at me with those yellow eyes and howling all night will make me turn back…” She turned to glare at him just the way she'd done when he'd been lying in the barn after the rescue, completely at her mercy. “I saw Zora speaking to you before we left. I know she never wanted me to come with you. Was this your idea, or did the others put you up to it?”

“It was my idea,” he said. He removed his hat and held it in both hands, forcing himself to meet her gaze. “I thought if you saw what you'd be up against—”

“You think I don't know?” She shook her head sharply. “When you changed the first time, in the barn, I thought I had passed your test. I thought we had an agreement. But you were lying all along. You never intended—” She caught her breath. “There is nothing—
nothing
—you can do to make me change my mind. If you try to leave me behind, I'll come after you. Even if you take the horses and all the supplies and leave me in the desert, I'll find a way.”

Her blazing eyes did more than send his emotions spiraling into a black pit of confusion. Her stubborn courage didn't only arouse his admiration, but his body,
as well. Her fresh and passionate face with its straight, sandy brows, high cheekbones and full lips had never been more beautiful. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, pulling her shirt taut across her breasts.

Jacob knew then that he hadn't wanted to get rid of her only for the sake of her own safety, or because putting her in danger would go against the Code. He hadn't wanted to feel again what he was feeling now, that powerful, pounding lust that was such a deadly trap for both of them.

If it hadn't been for the wild contradictions in the way she looked at him—angry and pleading, defiant and vulnerable, all at the same time—he might have done better at resisting her. He would have remembered the time she'd tried to buy him with her body. He would have remembered Ruth.