But Kiera didn’t move. Her legs were locked, her muscles taut with the aftereffects of fear. The temperature had fallen and she began to shiver. Running through damp fields and crossing streams hadn’t been in her game plan when she’d dressed that evening.
But she was alive. There was a sharp beauty to the night, to the chiaroscuro pattern of the leaves caught against the faint moonlight. Closing her eyes, she breathed a sigh of thanks.
Still shaking, she swung her legs over the lowest branch. With trembling hands she hung for a moment and then dropped to the ground, wincing at a sudden pain in her foot. There was no sign of pursuit. The night was silent as she crossed the road warily.
Dark tracks lined the mud. A man’s jacket lay nearby, dropped and forgotten. There was no sign of the big dog that the men had been tormenting, probably a guard dog from one of the surrounding estates. Yet there had been something strange about the animal’s size and its powerful movements. Even now the memory left her with an unsettling sense of savage strength held in precarious control.
And as she stood in the clearing at the edge of the road, looking at the distant line of the abbey’s roof, Kiera had the strangest sense that someone was watching her.
But nothing moved; nothing barked or stirred in the foliage.
“Who’s there?” she whispered.
A bird cried in the distance. Goose bumps rose along her arms. Time to leave, she told herself firmly. If someone found her here, with the marks of the attack all around her, she would have no easy way to explain. And there was always a possibility that the thugs might come back.
Fortunately, she had planned for a quick escape. Her backpack was hidden in the grass near her rental car, and her keys were under a rock nearby. Yet still she didn’t move. Something called her gaze through the trees, toward the moon touching the distant hills.
In the sudden silver light she saw the sharp outline of Draycott Abbey’s parapets. Kiera fought against a strange, almost hypnotic force of calm from the sight. Despite her anger at the Draycotts there was so much beauty here. So much history.
Then she felt the weight of the gun shoved into her pocket. It would have to be disposed of safely. She remembered there was a church about a mile from her hotel. She could remove the last remaining bullets and then slip the weapon into the mail slot.
One problem solved. Kiera took a deep breath.
That left her whole future yet to tackle.
HE LAY in the high grass, shaking.
Shaken.
His speed was gone, his muscles jerky. Blood covered his ear and dripped into his eye. He remembered the metal blade and then the sudden slam of bullets. He hadn’t reacted fast enough, never suspecting an attack at Draycott’s very border.
No excuse for bad judgment. No excuse for stupidly letting down his guard. He had too much to hide to ever be stupid or careless.
He made a short, angry sound and stood slowly in the darkness, wincing at sharp pains in a dozen places.
Wind in his face. A thousand sounds from the forest around him. None of them were caused by men.
He shook off the grass and dirt and watched the moon’s fierce silver curve climb above the abbey’s roof.
Change, he thought.
His nails dug at the damp ground, muscles tensed. But his body refused. Every nerve fought the familiar command.
From the woods came the low cry of a bird. The night called him to run, to feel the moonlight on his bare skin. Change, he thought furiously. And still nothing happened.
He remembered a sharp stab at his shoulder. They had used some kind of needle during the struggle. The darkness blurred as he sank to his knees. With a fierce effort of will he clawed his way back over the stone fence, back onto abbey ground.
He had to change. All his will focused on the command, yet no muscle shifted. Weakness pulled at him. The ground swayed.
Death moved in his eyes and he smelled its bitter breath on his face.
Not yet, he swore, struggling over the grass. Instinct told him he had to keep moving, that the toxin coursing through his veins would affect a man far worse than the creature he was now.
Damn them.
With a growl of pain he leaped over the cool earth, forcing stiff muscles to full stride. His vision blurred with pain, but he kept moving.
He smelled her suddenly. Loping through the woods, he came to the boulder where she had sat in the moonlight only minutes before.
Minutes that felt like a cold eternity now.
Her tears still clung to the damp grass. The scent dug under his skin, spelling the essence of female, and his body responded with almost painful awareness. Searching the rock, he found more of her scent, captured in a fallen square of cloth. His hunger grew and he realized there was danger here, danger from the blind urge to leap the fence and stalk her faint tracks until he ran her to ground.
And then he would have her.
He turned to stare back toward the road, pulled in every nerve and muscle, drawn by unexplainable need. In that heartbeat pain became his friend, forcing his focus to the cuts and welts that throbbed fiercely.
Still groggy, he burst over the hill, driven by sudden anger.
And then the world tilted. Darkness swallowed him under its wings like the rest of its creatures of night.
CHAPTER TWO
THE SCOTSMAN OPENED his eyes slowly. His skin burned with the clarity of his dreams. He felt sated, still wearing the heat of a woman’s naked skin on his.
For long moments Calan MacKay savored the dream memories of sleek sex, of soft laughter and passion given and fiercely taken. Then pain swallowed the pleasure, spitting him out into cold reality.
Naked and bruised under a tree in the abbey’s high meadow.
He was bleeding at his shoulder and forehead, his arms streaked with mud. A harsh, metallic taste filled his mouth.
Drugged, he thought. The injection had knocked him out for the rest of the night, no simple matter given his strength and size. The attackers had been well prepared, damn them.
The sun was just clearing the treetops as he stood up, grimacing. All the night’s memories flooded back with sharp clarity.
He knew that Nicholas Draycott was expected home at eight, and Calan wanted to be ready for his old friend. First he had to recheck the grounds and study the footprints near the road. With luck he could find the used syringe, too. He was headed in search of his clothes when he saw a piece of white silk caught on a lavender plant.
Hers.
The scent was clear, even to his weakened human senses, a mix of cinnamon, sunshine and lavender. Calan wondered who she was and where she’d gone. What had left her full of such anger at the abbey?
He frowned as he closed his fist around the scrap of soft silk. The pull toward her was fierce, and for a man like him this attraction was dangerous.
But he needed answers, starting with why she had been attacked. He remembered how she’d returned from the woods, boldly firing to frighten off their attackers. Calan had been half blind, struggling against the numbing effect of the drug at the time. Without her diversion, his fight might have been far more harrowing.
What kind of woman would come back to save a wild creature?
He rubbed his burning shoulder, frowning. He did not take any gift lightly, and hers demanded a grave weight of repayment. He had no choice but to track the mystery woman down. At the very least he had to be certain she was safe.
In the distance a truck motor raced, and he drew back into the shadows of the trees,