Kneeling, she began to dig a fire pit. He noted that she made one hole in the ground, and then a smaller connecting hole beside it. He saw the rationale when, after she lit a fire, the smoke dispersed.
“Clever,” he murmured. He lowered down to sitting, cross-legged. “Our position won’t be given away by the smoke.”
“A war-camp fire,” she said. The flames were low in the pit, barely giving off any light. In the growing dusk, her cool remove kept her distant, even as she sat opposite him.
“Did you learn to do that out here,” he asked, “or when you were a Blade?”
She scowled. “I thought Indians were supposed to be stoic and silent.”
“I’m not your typical Indian,” he noted, a fair amount of pride tingeing his voice. He’d worked like a fiend to ensure no one mistook him for ordinary. And now he was far beyond ordinary, in ways even he couldn’t have envisioned.
She regarded him steadily, the fire pit between them. In her eyes was a tentative reaching out, a marked contrast to her tart words. Her voice softened, became pliant with curiosity. “I cannot figure it. You seem remarkably…adjusted to your new magic.”
“I won’t let myself go mad, even if a man doesn’t often learn he can change into a wolf.”
“Usually someone doesn’t have a say in the matter of madness. It takes them, whether they want it to or not.”
“Like grief,” he said.
Vulnerability flared in her gaze. He wanted to take that vulnerability into himself, shelter her.
“Like grief,” she answered, then looked away, breaking the connection.
The truth was, and he could hardly voice it to himself, let alone Astrid Bramfield, he felt…relieved. Late at night, he had lain in bed, at war with himself, struggling to contain something he couldn’t name, something animal inside of him that scrabbled to be let out. When he dreamt, his dreams were of moonlit forests, of nocturnal hunts and flight. Those who ran the school that raised him, they insisted Natives were wild, savage creatures that wanted taming. He had to prove them wrong. So he rebelled against not only them, but himself.
“Why—” she began, then stopped herself.
“Yes?”
She made a dismissive gesture, but he wouldn’t let her retreat so easily. “Ask your question.”
She tried again to wave it away.
“Short of being bludgeoned with a heavy log,” he said, “I refuse capitulation.”
“How aggravating,” she muttered.
“Effective,” he countered. “No one was going to hand a Native a law degree. I had to seize it for myself.”
She seemed to respect that. “Are there any other Indian attorneys in Victoria?”
“No, and probably not in all of British Columbia, either. And I wasn’t called to the bar by falling for such simple attempts at distraction. Ask your question,” he repeated.
Knowing that she couldn’t shake him, she finally asked, “Why did you turn into a wolf at the cabin? How did you know how to do it? You didn’t believe it was possible.”
He turned his gaze to the fire she had built with such skill. Only the tips of the flames showed at the rim of the pit. One would hardly know a goodly blaze burned beneath the surface. “The first time—I’m not sure. Can’t even remember. But the second time…” He frowned. “I saw that trapper’s gun pointed at you. He wanted to hurt you. And I couldn’t let that happen.”
His answer caught her off guard. “You were protecting me?”
“Yes.”
Her jaw tightened as it did, he began to learn, when she was angry. “I don’t need protection.”
Nathan’s own temper flared. “Tell that to the wolf. We both saw you threatened. And he came out. You look tough, but you’re also a woman.”
“Tough? Like an old, stringy hen?”
He almost laughed at her look of outrage. She might have been one of the most unusual women he’d ever met, but she had her feminine vanities, just the same. Made him wonder what other parts of her were as purely female.
His animal rumbled in his chest. Man and beast were both intrigued with Astrid Bramfield. He had felt it earlier and he felt it now. The man was drawn by her mind, her tenacity and will. The beast’s interest was much more primitive but just as powerful. He was both, animal and man. Each moment from now on would be a fight between the two parts of himself. Unless he found balance.
“So, to answer you,” he said, “instinct guided me.”
“And, when you were the wolf, was it you? Did you have the same thoughts, the same feelings?”
“I was there,” he said, after considering her question. “But I was also the wolf. His mind and mine…blended together. Hard to explain. I want you to feel it with me.”
The idea seemed far too intimate for her. Without another word, she got to her feet and went to the packs 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