Trauma. Was that the right word for near total destruction? Rosalind didn’t like the description. It left a bitter taste in her mouth.
“If he were to continue to get better,” her father went on, “he will likely choose to walk his own path, because he will have one foot in this world and one in the next. He has straddled the fine line at the end of his own existence.”
Rosalind ignored the fact that her father was eyeing her closely. She held her breath until he spoke again.
“Ghosts see out of the eyes of both worlds. This wulf was strong, and of royal lineage, but who could be the same after what has happened?”
“He is a wulf, and a cop. He will know what to do,” she protested.
“Rosalind. Listen to what I’m telling you. No soul can survive the cost of those kinds of internal damages intact. He wasn’t just wounded, he was mauled by vampires. Their blood has mingled with his. This fight didn’t kill him, but it has changed him. He has been altered. The white hair proves that. The best healers can’t change or reverse the process.”
No, Rosalind silently protested. She had just found her brave, lovely Were, and wasn’t ready to let him go. She was eager to find out why she felt connected to him, and why she wished so fervently for him to heal.
She desperately wanted to be near to this wulf—ghost or otherwise. She could feel him upstairs. She wanted to go to him.
“Maybe those are just stories, about the ghost wulf,” she suggested.
This strapping Were could not have been broken by vampires. Fate couldn’t be so cruel.
“Truth often fans the flames of myth and rumor, as you well know,” her father counseled.
“And some rumors are just rumors.”
“Werewolves, to the human population, are a myth. But we exist. We blend with humans because we choose to. We keep our secrets because it’s better for everyone that we do. A ghost wulf who has had a life here won’t be able to blend so easily. What will his friends think when they see him? How could he go back to work, or explain?”
Rosalind stopped pacing and looked at her father.
“He will leave them behind,” he father said. “He might choose to live in the shadows, on the fringes, not because he will be forced to, but because he will have to make peace with what he has become.”
“Which is?”
“An old legend, made new. A ghost wulf. Part man, part wulf, and for all we know, part vampire.”
Her father sighed, as if these explanations were a chore, and painful for him.
“You don’t know that. You’re not sure of anything,” Rosalind said.
“You’re right. Time will tell. But the elders who have tended to him have noted that something new has entered his bloodstream, and that out of necessity, this new thing will likely change his soul.”
This information didn’t sit well with Rosalind. In spite of everything being told to her, she still felt connected to the Were, oddly enough, now more than ever.
She had rushed to his side when the other Weres had arrived. She had seen him close his eyes, and fall to his knees.
She had pressed her mouth to his while the others finished off the vampires, and breathed into him some of her own chaotic energy.
If he was changed, as her father was saying, theirs would be a sympathetic bond. She had been forced to be a loner, almost held captive by her father for most of her life. She could relate to being apart from others, and living on the fringes. She had been called special. Which also translated to mean different.
They were both different.
A ghost and a loner. She and this injured Lycan were perfect for each other.
Her father’s voice dropped in tone. “You can’t wish him back to normal, Rosalind. You must accept this as fact, just as the Were upstairs will have to accept his fate.”
Rosalind squeezed her eyes shut to avoid her father’s wary expression. But the thought persisted that he had kept her from all Weres in the past, and that maybe this warning was just another example of her father’s overbearing overprotection.
Well, she wanted to say to him, I can’t be kept from this one. I won’t be kept from him. Not this one.
“He’s a ghost because of me,” she said. “The responsibility is mine.”
“Not so,” her father countered vehemently. “A vampire attack caused this. You were brave, but also foolish to have joined in such a fight. It’s a miracle you weren’t hurt equally as badly, and that Landau and the elders were with me, searching for you. You could be lying in a bed upstairs. What would I have done then?”
“Those monsters killed his family. He went after them, just as you or I or Judge Landau would have. He did this alone.”
A long pause preceded her father’s next remarks.
“Rosalind. It’s important that you hear what I’m going to say to you now. You and I will go home tomorrow. You have to let this wulf go. We will leave him in the Landaus’ care.”
“No.”
“I’m not blind or insensitive to your feelings, but this male is not for you. He wouldn’t have been compatible before this event, and certainly isn’t now. You have no idea what would happen if...” Her father’s voice trailed off, then returned. “You have no inkling of what his life might be like if he heals well enough to keep it.”
You have no idea what would happen if...
If what? Rosalind wanted to know, picking up on the unsaid portion of an argument and tasting the tang of withheld secrets.
Rosalind chilled up as she stared at her father with a new thought. Has he been keeping secrets from me all this time?
“I want to stay with him,” she said.
“That’s impossible.” Her father shook his head.
“Judge Landau will let me stay, if I ask.”
“You won’t ask. I forbid it.”
“Then the wounded Were can come with us.”
“You cannot have your way in this, Rosalind. My decision is final. You might be in real danger here, now that vampires have your scent in their filthy noses.”
“The bloodsuckers were killed.”
“They can transmit signals we have no notion of.”
Rosalind stubbornly stood her ground, legs splayed, hands on her hips. “It was my fault he was hurt so badly. My inattention did this. I owe him. Don’t you get that?”
“The Landaus are a powerful clan with powerful friends, and are experienced healers. He needs time, and couldn’t be in better hands.”
“He could be in mine.”
Her father got to his feet. “You can’t help him. This is a fact. Moreover, you cannot remain near to him. It’s imperative that you two are separated, the sooner the better.”
The authority in her father’s tone had hardened his formidable features. In the firm set of his mouth, Rosalind sensed the gap in his explanations. Her father’s secrets were heavy enough to be like the aura of another person in the room.
“Are you going to tell me the real reason he can’t come with us, without going around in circles?” she asked.
“It isn’t time for that, or necessary.”
“I’m