Susan Krinard - Luck of the Wolf

“Well,” he said casually, “it is an ability not everyone can master.”

She plopped down in the chair and gazed at him as if he were a demigod and she his acolyte. “You are very kind,” she said.

Yuri would have laughed. Cort would have done the same if he hadn’t seen in her eyes what he had hoped to see: complete and absolute trust.

Will you betray that trust? he asked himself, then shook off the thought. “Yuri will be bringing dinner presently. Is there anything more you need?”

“I want to go outside.”

She had managed to startle him yet again. “Surely, after what has happened—”

“I’m not afraid.”

“Nevertheless, it would not be wise, especially after dark. Those men—”

“They won’t come around if you’re with me, will they?”

Not openly, perhaps. But the type of scum Cochrane would employ would use any tactics to get her back, and Cort had no more desire to fight now than he had before.

“I can’t stay in this room forever,” Aria said.

“It has only been one day. For the time being …”

She hopped off the chair. “But you’re like me! ” she said. “Why can’t you understand? Werewolves weren’t meant to be confined like—” She broke off and glanced toward the door, jaw set. “You can come and go as you please. Why should you care if I go out, too?”

The girl was stubborn, yes. And apparently used to getting her way. That was certainly a Renier trait. But her insistence that being loup-garou should allow her to run free was not.

Cort listened to the quickening of her breath and observed the high color in her cheeks. It was as if she remembered racing through wood and over meadow, hunting the marshes and tasting the raw, steaming flesh of a deer or rabbit.

He remembered. Once he had relished such barbarities. But he had only Changed a half-dozen times since he’d left New Orleans, and one of those times had been today.

“You must be patient,” he said. “Your time will come.”

Aria’s shoulders sagged, and she retreated to the sofa.

It was an unpalatable victory. Cort knew better than to leave her alone in such a mood, but he could at least give her privacy to overcome her anger. He went out into the hall and sat on the stairs, counting the minutes until Yuri’s return.

The Russian came bearing a generous dinner and the requested bottle of wine. Cort and Yuri shared the wine without offering any to Aria; she seemed indifferent to the slight. The three of them ate in near-silence. Yuri looked between Cort and Aria with suspicious curiosity. Cort saw no reason to enlighten him as to the cause of the tension.

That night was not an easy one. Aria had finally agreed to use Cort’s bed, while Yuri slept on the sofa. Cort spent the night pacing back and forth in the street, every sense straining for the approach of footsteps or the smell of the men who had played against him in the tournament. No one came. When he went back inside a few hours before dawn, he could hear Aria tossing and turning in his bed, her warm body tangled among the sheets.

It was not only Aria who would have to be patient.

THERE WAS ONLY ONE SMALL, dirty window in the sitting room, and Aria spent nearly all the next three days planted in front of it, watching the parade of men and women in the street below go about their business. She had seen almost every kind of American in her journey west, from the fine ladies Cort so admired to the most common folk, like those she had been accustomed to in the mountains.

This part of the city, however, had no “real” ladies or gentlemen, except for Cort himself.

Aria had become very familiar with the dark, stinking streets of the Barbary Coast. When she’d first arrived in San Francisco, she had quickly learned that this city was almost as vast and incomprehensible as New York had been. She had discovered how difficult it was to find anything when you were alone, and how important money was when you didn’t have any.

She had managed to survive on her own for a while, moving from the brighter areas of the city into the grimy, fetid alleys where she could find food and shelter without having to pay for them, using her hunter’s senses and instincts to win her small advantages over the untrustworthy folk who knew and understood this terrible place so much better than she ever could.

But Cort had been right. She had assumed everyone she met was human because she didn’t know how to recognize one of her own kind. In the mountains, she had always known that she was stronger and faster, and could smell and hear better, than anyone else she met. Franz had finally told her that all wehrwölfe , at least those of pure blood, had such advantages over humans. She had been able to use them in the human world, but she wouldn’t have known a Carantian werewolf if she had bumped right into him.

Aria sighed and leaned her chin on the window frame. After weeks of keeping to herself, she had made one mistake. The mistake of letting hunger drive her to trust a stranger because she had not been able to fill her stomach in three days.

Now she had everything she needed to eat, and a quiet, safe place to rest. She knew she shouldn’t be so ungrateful and troublesome, but she couldn’t help it. Her feet were beginning to itch with the need to run, and her nose longed to smell the ripe scents of wood and mountain.

If only Cort could understand.

Someone shouted in the street, and Aria leaned closer to the filthy glass to see what it was. A wagon had turned over, and two men were shaking their fists at each other as the overripe vegetables were crushed on the ground beneath their feet.

The sight didn’t distract her for long. She was too busy trying to decide who Cort Renier really was. After she’d gone to bed last night, when she’d really taken the time to think, she had remembered all the expectations she had carried with her from Carantia.

She had always assumed that the wehrwölfe she met would be like her. Any werewolf would prefer the freedom of the wild to a human city with its high brick walls and crowds of people, even if they had to live among humans some of the time.

But Cort liked this place. He felt at home in it. He didn’t understand why she wanted to get out, even if it was dangerous.

Were the werewolf families, the Hemmings and the Phelans, like him? Cort had made very clear that they would want her to be a lady. Were they happy to stay in small boxes like this one, in a world where you couldn’t smell anything green or hear anything but the clatter of wheels and loud voices and clashing metal?

The itch in Aria’s feet became a nagging pain. She moved around the room, and examined each stick of furniture and the faded paintings as if she hadn’t already memorized every inch of them.

No, she couldn’t make any sense of Cort. What was worse, she couldn’t make any sense of herself. She’d never had such feelings as she had when she was with him. Unease, annoyance, frustration, confusion.

But those were not the only feelings. Nor even the strongest ones. She had been so glad when he had offered to help her and when he’d agreed to bring her the boys’ clothes. She had basked in his compliment about her French. She had wanted to tell him so much more than just her real name. She had wanted to surrender the last of her suspicions.

Maybe that was why she had embraced him. Because she finally wanted to let go. She’d wanted him to.

Her face went hot, and she touched her forehead with her fingertips. Franz had told her about men and women when she was sixteen. Humans and werewolves weren’t so different from the wild animals she’d seen mating in the woods, he’d said. They wanted to be together, male and female, and make children in the same way the forest animals did.