• • •
The wolf paced the forest. It wanted to go to her. It needed to be near her. But Aidan exerted his will over the beast’s and refused it. She’d betrayed them both; portrayed the wolf as a monstrous, vicious beast that should be feared. People would come now; fanciful people would be filling the woods with strange scents and sounds, careless people would litter and damage the beauty they were unaware was all around them, and some would come to hunt. Him.
Her scent and the sound of her voice filled the wolf’s mind, and memories of the morning they’d shared flooded Aidan’s. The wolf shared the memory of the lovemaking. He remembered how he’d lain with her after, the sensation of her petite, curvy body sleeping alongside his. The wolf’s need, his desire to protect his mate, was overwhelming. Aidan felt his control slipping, knew the wolf would fly to the cabin to be near her. He felt ashamed and weak for wanting it, too. She’d trusted him, with her history, with her body. He felt her heart beat under his lips. She took him and then surrendered to him. She was his.
The wolf flew through the woods as both man and beast thought as one, “She is mine.” When he could see the moon shining down on the tiny cabin, he slowed. The lights were all off. The cabin was still. He ambled down the hill and across the stream onto Black land, carefully approaching the cabin. He popped up on his hind legs to gaze into the window where he saw her bags half packed. Both man and wolf bled. She was leaving.
He drifted towards his own lands, slowly, and when he stood in the little clearing where he had first seen her, the wolf loosed a mournful howl.
When dawn broke, Aidan strode into his bedroom and instantly wished he could live in the woods indefinitely as her scent washed over him. He could tell she’d washed the sheets and made his bed for him, but she’d left her scent all over his room and he imagined in every room of his house. He’d be haunted by her enough without the sensory overload. When he’d stripped and entered the bathroom he saw the message on the mirror and smiled despite himself. He left it there while he showered. It was still there an hour later when he left for the stables. He intended to put Jez through her paces today.
He passed Sly as the old man led a young mare to the paddock, nodding to acknowledge the chipper “Mornin’, boss” that was thrown his way. He sensed her presence in the stable as soon as he entered and just a second before her scent reached him. She was talking quietly to Jezebel, who was eating grain directly from her palm. He stared at her a moment, unsure if he was simply imagining her there or if she really existed. His voice was quiet but it carried as he said, “You’re here.”
Maggie turned toward him, anger and hurt etched across her beautiful face. “Good morning, Captain Obvious. You got a problem with my being here?”
He simply stared at her as his heart rejoiced, then he thought maybe she was just saying goodbye to Sly and the horses. His eyes narrowed while he tried to tap down the spurt of hope. “Why are you here?”
“Because I’m no coward. You regret yesterday, fine — that’s your problem not mine.” She tucked her hands in her back pockets in an obvious effort to seem casual. “And I wanted to set the record straight. I didn’t write that article. My boss asked a junior editor to put one together from my pitch and initial research notes. He gave me the byline so I’d get one last paycheck. And I also suspect so that the finance department wouldn’t give him hell over okaying expenses without results. Anyway, I didn’t write it. I just wanted you to know that.”
“You didn’t write it.” He wanted to touch her, to taste her, to be one with her again.
“No, I didn’t write it.”
“You’re not leaving?”
“No, I’m not leaving. Why did you think I was?”
“I went to the cabin last night. I saw your things packed; I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. The article had been written so you got what you came for.” He took a step toward her. Then another. Watching as the anger swept over her face.
“I didn’t write that piece of shit article and the paper is printing a retraction. They’ve already posted an apology and removed the piece from their website. If you’d asked, I would’ve told you that I hadn’t written it. If you’d looked for any of my articles online, you’d have clearly been able to tell it wasn’t my work. And I was angry last night. I couldn’t understand why I had tossed away my job and was wasting my time and my savings on a man who doesn’t trust me. Or respect me enough to stick around after making love to me.” He moved quickly, picking her up under her arms and pressing her against the stall door. Her legs and arms wrapped around him, an instinct to keep from falling.
“You didn’t write it. You’re not leaving. You’re here,” Aidan whispered against her lips before he took them. She felt so right, so good in his arms. He hadn’t realized how empty his heart and life and been before her. The sudden need to possess overtook him and he began tugging at the button on her jeans without breaking the contact with her mouth.
He could feel her resistance but didn’t understand it. He pulled back and looked into her eyes. He saw the desire there, the need that matched his own. Confused he asked, “What’s wrong?”
“First of all, Jez is licking the back of my neck. Second, Sly is going to be back in here any minute. Third, you’ve yet to apologize for yesterday. Remedy all three of those things and you can have your way with me, with one caveat.” Aidan smiled as she listed off her reservations to being taken against the stall door in his stable. Truthfully, though the idea of mating with her with the good smells of hay and horse surrounding them was enticing, he hadn’t meant to love her here. He’d gotten carried away.
“What’s the caveat?”
“I need to know you trust me. I can’t be with you if we can’t trust each other. I’m not asking you to tell me about the wolf — you will when you’re ready — but I need to know that you trust me. I can’t wake up alone again and find another note dismissing me like I’m nothing more than a casual one-night stand. I don’t have anything against them, but this is more than that. And you know it.” She paused before adding in a small voice, “You hurt me yesterday.”
Her vulnerability made Aidan feel small, but at the same time the trust it took to share that with him made him feel like a giant of a man. She humbled him. “I’m sorry, Maggie. I was hurt and angry. I thought you’d betrayed us. Used me to get to the wolf and vice versa. I knew, deep down, it wasn’t like that. I knew if you’d already written the story you had no reason to still be here, but I’ve lived my life hidden away for so long, the instinct to protect both myself and the wolf overrode my better judgment. I can’t promise I won’t screw up again, but I can promise to try.”
Instead of responding, she fused her mouth to his, kissing him with the same desperate passion he’d shown her. They were still wrapped in each other when Sly entered the barn, clearing his throat delicately and continuing on with the horse as though he hadn’t seen them jump apart, blushing and twittering like children caught with their hands in the cookie jar. They worked side by side in the stable for a while, stealing glances at each other. Aidan would’ve sworn she intentionally aimed her heart-shaped bottom at him on purpose. Who’d have thought manual labor could be so seductive?
Finally, Sly suggested the two of them go for a ride to use some of that extra energy exercising the horses and let him get some actual work done. Aidan smiled, enjoying the play and Sly’s self-declared role as chaperone, and saddled Jezebel and Delilah, his two most prized mares. Sadly, Delilah got the least of his attention, as Jez had his heartstrings.
“Can you handle a spirited horse, Mags? Delilah really doesn’t get to run as much as she should, she’ll want to get her head. I’d rather you take a gentler mount, but she’s the only girl I have that can keep up with Jez.”
“Just watch me.” They led the horses out into the sun-streaked meadow and Maggie urged Delilah into a sprint. Aidan watched, both in awe and arousal, as the line between horse and rider blurred. His heart galloped as he heard her shout to the sky, and he let the anxious Jezebel run full out to catch up with them. They rode in harmony, the only sound the horses’ hooves as they both took turns taking the lead. Aidan was impressed with Maggie’s style and skill, remembering belatedly that her early childhood had probably included riding lessons.
As they entered the tree line, they had to slow the horses or risk injuring them, which gave them a chance to talk. She told him about her best friend, Jenna McAllister. And how she’d felt bad about keeping things from her when they’d spoken the night before. How that guilt combined with the hurt and the anger had prompted her to start packing.
They rode along quietly side by side for a bit. Aidan was mildly surprised to find he enjoyed sharing the silence with her almost as much as he had enjoyed the laughter. In only a few short months, weeks really, Maggie had given him laughter, silence, companionship. All she’d asked for in return was to be trusted. They slowed and stopped, allowing a mother doe and her fawn to pass. Aidan thought it sadly poetic.
“After my mother died, I was lost and didn’t know who I was anymore. When I received the inheritance, I drifted around trying to work through my grief and figure out who I was and who I wanted to be. First, I idled through Europe using the money those horrible women never wanted me to have, but I bored of that easily. They have so many ways to waste youth and wealth there. I’d thought the revenge would be sweet; it just made me feel emptier inside. So I came home and backpacked through the country, working odd jobs here and there, trying to make something of myself, trying to find somewhere I fit.” Aidan paused.
“I found myself working on an Ojibwe reservation. I quickly became involved with a beautiful young woman there; her name was Tala, she was about a year younger than me, and we were stupid in love the way that children are. Her mother didn’t approve of me and to be honest the woman terrified me. I’d been working on the res long enough to hear the whispers about how Tala was descended from a long line of powerful priestesses and that her mother had the gift. Even though Tala respected her family’s history and culture and values, she didn’t shun modern life as her mother and many others in her community did. She thought the only way to keep her way of life alive was to merge it with modern society. Her strength, her intelligence, her humor, they reminded me of my mother.” He looked over at Maggie before adding, “In a completely non-creepy sense.”
Maggie smiled. “I get that. Like a girl marrying a man that resembles her father in spirit because he makes her feel safe.” Aidan nodded before going on.
“I was her first and even though I’d had sex before, she was my first in a very real sense. I felt like I had made love with someone. I figured we’d be together always and I asked her to marry me. She cried when she told me about the boy she was already engaged to marry. They’d grown up together and he was away at college on a scholarship. I was heartbroken and I said some cruel things to her before I walked away. I left the reservation that night. It took me more than six months to make my way back home.
“When I arrived I had a letter waiting for me from Tala. She begged me to come back to her. Told me she had broken off the engagement and wanted to accept my proposal because she was lost without me. She also said she understood if I couldn’t forgive her, but that she thought I had a right to know that she was pregnant with our child.”
“Oh, Aidan.” Maggie’s voice broke as she reached a hand out to hold his. He looked at her outreached hand before grasping it tightly in his own. “What did you do?”
“The only thing I could do; I jumped on the first flight I could. Only I was six months too late. I found out that the boy Tala had been engaged to had a psychotic break at school. That he’d had a girlfriend there, a white woman who, between the culture shock and the onset of paranoid schizophrenia, he’d nearly beaten to death causing him to get expelled from college. He returned to the reservation only to learn the woman he believed was waiting for him no longer wanted him and was pregnant with a white man’s child. He killed Tala and our unborn child with her before killing himself.” Maggie gasped and clutched his hand harder.
“I went to see Tala’s mother, thinking we’d share our grief, but she blamed me for both Tala’s death and what she saw as her family’s disgrace. She screamed at me in a flurry of words I didn’t understand and attacked me with her fists and nails. I left there, alone and hurting, just walking without direction and found myself standing in front of Tala’s tiny headstone in the reservation’s cemetery. I cried myself to sleep right there on her grave, wishing for death. That was the first night I changed.”
“She cursed you?” Maggie asked in a shocked whisper.
“It was either her or Tala’s spirit.” Aidan paused and looked into Maggie’s eyes before explaining, “Tala means wolf.” He continued, “I had no idea what had happened to me. I woke up in the woods outside the reservation, naked and freezing and covered in blood, none of which was mine, as I didn’t have a scratch on me. Not even the ones that Tala’s mother had given me the day before. I was scared and confused. I got cleaned up in a stream but couldn’t find my clothes anywhere, so I stole someone’s pants and shirt from a clothesline and made my way back to the reservation.
“Everyone was talking about this large wolf that had invaded the outlying farms through the night, slaughtering sheep and cattle. I started worrying and went back to Tala’s mother‘s house. She took one look at me and laughed. It was a cruel laugh. And then she shut the door in my face. I changed again that night, only this time I was aware of it and I was terrified.
“I never returned back East; I hired lawyers to take care of everything out there. I hid out in the woods for a time, not sure if it was safe to be near people. The wolf doesn’t think, not like you and I do, he simply feels and his feelings are intense. His every action is an instinctual response. In the beginning I had no control over those instincts but I was, and am still, consciously aware while in wolf form, like an observer. And it’s the same for him during the day. But over time we adapted. When I was sure I could control the beast, I bought the Cherry Farm and made a life for myself.”