Defying Destiny (12 page)

had seen every woman of his pack in

naked human form dozens of times. The

thought of Maralee without clothes was

somehow different. Perhaps it was

because it wouldn’t be natural for her to

appear before him without clothes.

Despite her physical interest in him, he

knew she was inexperienced. He was

likewise

inexperienced

in
human

expressions of physical intimacy. She had

seemed aroused by his attentive cleaning

of her wound and breast, and yet she had

not thought enough of him to clean his

wound properly. She had used a wet

towel, as if the taste of him was unsavory.

He had used the healing powers of his

saliva on her wound. Why hadn’t she done

the same for him? He didn’t understand

her, but she intrigued him.

When all sounds coming from the

bedroom ceased, he turned and went to his

desk beneath the window. The moon was

large and bright, but not full. His pack was

free of its madness for the time being and

if he fulfilled his obligation, they would

escape its curse forever. Nash lit

additional candles and selected several

books from the shelf. He’d accomplished

nothing all day. Sweet Maralee was far

too distracting to allow him to work. It

was impossible to believe she was the

same woman who had so viciously

slaughtered his brother. Had that really

only been the night before? It didn’t seem

real, as if it were all part of an alternate

reality. Cort would be scratching on his

door any minute now to ask his little

brother to accompany him on a midnight

hunt.

Nash sighed, and sat down at his desk

with a book. There would be no midnight

summons at his door ever again.

He forced his concentration to his

work. Nash had puzzled over these thick

volumes for almost a century now, and

still the answers were no clearer to him

than when he’d been named the pack’s

Guardian as a pup. Now that Nash had

their mortal enemy under his protection,

perhaps he would gain a sudden

understanding of the words written by the

last Guardian who had lived five hundred

years ago.

Nash opened the first volume, and

touched the crumbling, yellowed title

page. In neat print, the title
Of Immortality

and the Curse
was scarcely discernable.

The ink had faded. Nash had spent many

long years recopying the words in this

book to preserve them, but the general text

did not interest him tonight. Instead, he

wished to examine the random notes

written in the margins. At one time, they’d

been nothing but an annoyance.

He flipped several pages into the old,

hand-written manuscript to the description

of the curse. Nash knew the story well.

One of his species, a chieftain named

Burl, had captured a powerful sage. The

sage had been a philosopher and wizard

who had procured, in his vast knowledge,

the secret of life. For reasons undisclosed

—Nash was certain torture had played a

part—the sage had worked a spell of

immortality, granting eternal life to Burl

and all of his descendants.

Upon his release, the sage worked a

second bit of magic—a curse that would

drive the pack to insanity beneath the full

moon. Humans would hunt them as

monsters rather than allowing them the

peaceful eternal lives they desired. Only a

Wolf beneath the constant protection of the

crescent moon would be free of the Full

Moon Curse, and only that one, ordained

Wolf Guardian, could break the curse.

Unfortunately, though Nash had been born

with the white mark of the crescent moon,

he had no idea how to break the curse.

Each of the Wolf Guardians, grand total of

two in the pack’s long history, had studied

the words of the sage religiously. Neither

Nash nor the guardian before him had

come close to breaking the five hundred

year old spell.

Nash squinted, trying to read what was

written in the margin alongside the

description of the curse. The words were

faded and in places not visible at all. As

far as he could tell it read,
Silver poisons

..ld’s soul. The Guard... ..st find l… in

the ..r. of the ..emy. True form is of ..e

..ver.

Nash sighed forlornly. How was he

supposed make sense of faded garble? It

seemed like a warning, but he was already

quite aware of silver being a poison. The

sage had not tried to hide their weakness

to silver from them, but the embittered

man had not been so open with

information concerning the curse.

Two things were made clear in the

text. Only the Wolf Guardian could break

the curse and once broken the Wolves

would lose all they had garnered. But

even what they would lose was unclear—

their lives, immortality, humanity, their

dual existence? Maybe he shouldn’t even

try to break the curse. The outcome might

be worse than the curse itself. Still he had

to try. They expected it of him. He must

have been born beneath the protection of

the crescent moon for a reason, and he

would do everything within his power to

see his duty fulfilled. Even befriend the

enemy.

Nash searched the familiar volumes

for more clues, hoping to stumble across

something related to the Wolf Hunters and

if they had anything to do with breaking

the curse. Something had always teased

Nash’s subconscious about their role in

the curse, but he found little specific

information. He marked several pages to

peruse more carefully when it wasn’t the

middle of the night and his thoughts

weren’t diverging every few minutes to

the warm body sleeping in his bed. It was

well after midnight when he returned his

books to their shelves, banked the fire in

the grate and snuffed all the candles in the

house.

He went to his room, careful not to

wake Maralee who slept on the far side of

the pallet. Nash typically slept naked, in

his Wolf form, but tonight he left his

undershorts in place and climbed into bed

with the beautiful young woman who

interrupted all coherent thoughts. Her

small body was warm and comforting

when she turned over in her sleep and

cuddled up against him. He tensed,

wondering how she would respond if he

used his tongue to clean her body from

head to toe, concentrating most of his

attention somewhere in the middle. Would

she allow him to taste a sample of that

glorious scent beckoning from between

her thighs? His groin tightened at the

memory of her delicate, lust-inducing

fragrance.

“I can’t let myself think like that,” he

murmured to the sleeping Maralee.

Sleeping with the enemy was one thing,

sleeping
with her, something else entirely.

“Self-control,” he said, and inhaled

deeply to catch her delightful, foreign

scent in his sensitive nose.

The dream was forever the same. Maralee

always awoke just when the terrifying

growl of her memory sounded behind her,

but tonight she did not wake. Tonight she

relived the terror of fighting for her life

for the first time.

Six-year-old Maralee, trembling with

a mixture of grief and fear, turned to

look at the Wolf behind her. Her father

lay dead at her feet behind her on the

porch. She could not be certain which of

her blood relatives had fallen to this

particular enormous black beast, but it

had killed at least one of them. Its bared

teeth were stained with blood. Its muzzle

glistened with the substance.

The sword was heavy. She had to grip

it with both hands and use all of her

strength just to keep it from dragging on

the ground. The Wolf seemed unaware of

the weapon. It lunged for her and

Maralee lifted the sword in the same

instant. It impaled itself and dropped

lifeless at her feet.

Inexplicably, the sword in her hands

lightened, and was comforting instead of

horrifying. She was no longer six, but

twenty-one, with years of Wolf-slaying

experience. Nash materialized amongst

the bodies of the fallen Wolves. He

stared at her as if appalled by what

she’d done. He moved closer. A black

Wolf replaced him, still approaching.

Maralee took a step backwards, but Nash

replaced the Wolf again. A look of

devastation

twisted

his

handsome

features.

She wanted to hold him, to take the

pained look from his eyes, but he ignored

her. He bent down, lifted the body a dead

Wolf and disappeared again. Within the

same instant, he appeared directly in

front of her. She lifted her arms to reach

for him, but instead of embracing him,

she drove the point of her sword into his

chest. She knew what was happening, but

she couldn’t stop. She forced the blade

slowly into his heart. His golden eyes

transfixed her. She didn’t stop pressing

forward until the blade was buried to the

hilt, protruding from his back. He

blinked and she tore her eyes from his to

look down at her hands. It was apparent

why she hadn’t been able to stop driving

the sword deeper. Nash’s hands covered

hers, and he was forcing the sword into

his own body.

“With my spilled blood, this curse

doth die,” he whispered.

Maralee sat up with a startled cry. A

hand touched her in the darkness and she

gasped.

“It’s me,” Nash said, sleepily.

“What’s wrong?”

She knew it had only been a dream,

but that didn’t stop her from collapsing

against him. She kissed him; missing his

mouth, her lips brushed his chin. She

kissed him again, higher this time, finding

his lips in the darkness. Her kiss was long

and deep, as she pressed her body up

against his and wrapped her arms around

him. She filled her hands with his warm

flesh to reassure herself he was alive. She

hadn’t killed him with her sword. He was

here with her now. He wasn’t dead. He

wasn’t.

Nash broke her desperate kiss. “You’d

better slow down,” he said. “I don’t think

you realize what you’re doing.”

“Oh, Nash,” she whispered, hugging

him closer. “I had a horrible dream.”

He gave into her need for comfort. He

wrapped his arms around her and stroked

her hair with one hand. “Do you want to

tell me about it?”

“No, it’s too terrible. I don’t want to

think about it.” She squeezed her eyes shut

and willed the horrific images to leave

her.

“It was just a dream,” he murmured

drowsily, planting a brotherly kiss on her

forehead. “Go back to sleep and have

pleasant dreams from now on.”

Her dreams were never
just
dreams.

They either reiterated her past or

prophesied her future. It had been that way

for as long as she could remember. Nash

hadn’t been there the night her family had

been murdered so maybe, just this once,

she’d had a dream not based in reality.

She hadn’t killed Nash. She wouldn’t. It

wasn’t as if he were a Wolf so she had no

reason to kill him.

Maralee could never fall back to sleep

after her ritualistic nightmares, but the

warmth of Nash’s body beside her and the

comfort of his hand in her hair soon had

her eyes blinking drowsily. “Thank you,”