Wolfe's Lady Read online

  “I can’t,” she said with honesty. “And I won’t. Do you love me?”

  His topaz eyes kindled brighter with ire. “Yes, I do. This has nothing to do with whether or not I love you – “

  She interrupted him, “It has everything to do with it, Darien.

  People who love one another trust each other and they don’t keep secrets. If we are going to have any kind of relationship at all, everything has to be open between us, no dark secrets and nothing held back.”

  “Stella.” He spoke her name in such a sad voice that her anger faded a fraction. “I do love you and I believe that you love me. I agree with all of that, but – “

  She squelched an urge to stamp her foot with outrage. “But you still don’t plan to tell me why I can’t see you this weekend, do you?”

  Darien looked down at her, his expression unreadable.

  “I will but not now. Let that be enough.”

  Stella shook her head. “I can’t. I have to have trust and that means no secrets. Don’t go like this, Darien.”

  He sighed. “I must, my darling star.”

  He pushed past her, without a touch or a kiss. Stella stood in the empty hallway, listening as his rapid footfalls descended the stairs, heartsick and afraid.

  What, she wondered, remembering his earlier remark, did the full moon have to do with anything?

  There must be a significance, Stella thought, and searched her mental library to remember all the folklore and superstitions about the full moon. This was her area of expertise so if there was a link, she should be able to make the connection. There were all the old beliefs about moon madness, the ancient idea that staring at the moon too long could cause insanity. Even today, law enforcement officers and medical personnel often claimed that aberrant behavior skyrocketed when the moon was full so there might be something to the theory.

  Lunatic came from the root word luna that meant moon. But Darien wasn’t crazy, although he did act odd. She thought about the Wild Hunt, age-old folk lore from all across Europe, where the dead or the damned hunted souls for the Devil beneath a full moon but rejected it.

  That did not fit, either.

  Another memory emerged, this one not from her studies or her thesis but from an old movie, black and white, the 1940’s classic, The Wolf Man, where an old gypsy tells the main character, who was bitten by a wolf that, “Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night can become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms and the moon is shining bright.”

  All the arcane beliefs she once studied made her nervous now and Stella stopped herself. This was silly. Darien wasn’t a lunatic.

  The moon’s power controlled ocean tides and when to plant crops for those that believed it but it couldn’t explain Darien’s strange actions.

  More anxious than before, Stella resolved to forget about it, to not think about him or his strange behavior. Always persnickety about who she would date, she knew how to spend Friday night alone and so she vowed she would just go home, watch banal television or read a book. Maybe she would even take a hot bath – she would do anything to keep her mind off Darien and away from the foolish notions she dredged up that related to the full moon.

  Come Monday, she thought, he would have some explaining to do.

  Chapter Five

  Uneasy, even a little angry, Stella did not go home after all.

  She did not want to inhale the aroma of the roses Darien brought just days before or remember how close, in every way, they had been.

  She drove her car, first time all week, out to the edge of town where the fast food restaurants, chain discount, and convenience stores lined the highway business loop and bought a salad. She had little appetite and picked at the greens, eating less than half. After that, she drove around, ending up at the little park Darien had shown her.

  On a park bench near the spring, she shivered when the evening wind turned chill but watched the evening sky darken from a pale blue to a rich black. The first stars peeked out, twinkling above and when the moon rose, it was full and magnificent. The huge orb swelled large and seemed to dominate the sky as it came up and Stella wondered again, why Darien said he would tell her his problem or secret after the full moon.

  That full moon revived all the old superstitions she thought she had rejected earlier. Although she still did not believe any of them could apply to Darien, she wanted to know what his hang up with the full moon could be. She didn’t want to wait until Monday or listen to some cryptic excuse. Stella steeled herself to go confront him now and ask for the truth. If their love was to endure, he could not keep secrets and she thought she had made that very clear. He would tell her now, tonight, or not at all. Stella marched from the park with the fervor of a warrior queen bent on battle, driving the few blocks to Darien’s house with focus. She wanted to surprise him, give him no warning to prepare for her arrival so she parked on the edge of the road and walked up the drive.

  By then, it was full dark but with the rising moon, she could see quite well. As she approached the house, a strange sound caught her attention, an odd sobbing sound that moaned too. It reminded her of wind under the eaves of a house and she wrote it off as nothing.

  When she entered the private, overgrown front lawn, she paused in the shadows when she saw Darien. He sat on the grass, hugging himself as if he might be in great physical pain, rocking back and forth. The sound she heard came from his lips and she started forward to help him. He must be ill, she thought, but another sound, this one terrible, made her stop.

  The loud cracking noise was like popping knuckles but far louder, the creak of bones grating. As she stared at Darien, his limbs twitched and then, to her disbelief, appeared to grow, elongating as she watched. His face contorted in agony and then his features changed, as his face grew longer, his jaw stretching out into a muzzle.

  Stella struggled to assimilate what she saw, but the reality of what was happening did not sink in until she saw the fur that exploded over his skin, moving like a dark fungus over his every inch. Darien, taller than before, limbs longer and stronger, came to his feet, put back his head, and howled at the moon. She hunkered down in the shadows, afraid and sick to her soul as the awful truth ripped her heart apart.

  Disbelief warred against the reality of what she saw but even though she shut her eyes and willed the sight to vanish, to be some freak of her imagination, when she opened them nothing changed. The wolf, werewolf, whatever it was, remained. His howls sent frigid frissons down her back and she feared this creature, this thing that shifted from the man she loved into this wild beast. Every scrap of dark folk belief she knew about werewolves and shapeshifters rose in her mind, haunted her like ghosts. Darien, the man she loved, was a werewolf; a creature of legend and late night movies that she didn’t even believe existed until now. Reconciling this nightmare beast with Darien seemed difficult and terror, rank and harsh, gripped her as she remained hidden, watching with horror.

  As the reality sunk into her consciousness, her lungs refused to pump air and she could not breathe. Panic compressed her chest and twisted her stomach into a pretzel like knot with such pain that she bent double, still unable to catch a breath. Such black panic seized her, body and spirit, that she thought certain for several moments that the shock would kill her, that she would die from this awful knowledge. Until now, Darien appeared to be ideal for her, matched to her in a way that no other man ever came within light years of touching, but this dark revelation threatened to destroy that and take Stella down with it. In moments, his transformation wiped away her lifelong belief systems, confirmed what she thought to be mere folklore, and threatened her foundations. If she had not been so afraid, so paralyzed with dread that she could not think with any coherence, she would have screamed, screeched loud so that she could vent her anguished agony that everything was not what it had seemed. If she could survive, if any scrap of what she thought she had with Darien could continue, she had to find something to hold fast but there seemed to be nothing s
olid that she could grasp.

  She bit hard on her lip so that she would not cry out or scream, watching as he howled again and then bounded off into the forest, vanishing among the trees. .If he sensed her, even smelled her, she wondered what he would do, if he would attack with the sharp claws or sharper teeth. The very idea made her want to shriek as loudly as he howled. If she did that, however, she might descend into a dark madness where she might be lost forever. When Darien, if she still could call him that after what she witnessed, could no longer be seen or heard, she realized that, with effort, she could breathe again but that nothing would ever be the same as it was before.

  Stella wept then, head in her hands, but when her tears ended, she walked up to the porch and into Darien’s house to wait for his return. The long hours stretched ahead, intolerable, but she curled up on the leather sofa in the library and remembered every tiny clue that pointed to this harsh reality. Despite her studies, even the cryptic hints he tossed her direction, there was no way she could have envisioned this. No woman could, she thought, still dazed and in denial. She endured the end of relationships before but never because her significant other became a creature of legend beneath the full moon.

  As the hours passed, however, she realized one thing, the one that mattered most of all, unexplainable but undeniable. She loved Darien anyway.

  Chapter Six

  Morning light filtered through the windows when she woke, disoriented and groggy. Then the memory of what she saw plunged over her consciousness like a cement block and she rose, searching the house until she found Darien. He lay on the long couch in the living room, restored to his human form, asleep and snoring. His dirty bare feet looked bruised and cut; blood seeped from some of the small wounds. Darien’s arms weren’t much better, scratched, and scraped. His long hair was matted; pieces of leaves, bits of grass, and bark tangled through it. His hands appeared to be swollen and they, too, had marks of struggle, blisters, and abrasions.

  Tenderness surged in Stella as she cataloged his many minor injuries and although she wanted him to sleep, she had to do something for him. She decided she would wash his battered feet and so she drew a basin of warm water, added a little antiseptic soap, and found a clean washcloth. With very gentle, easy movements, she washed his feet but he woke, despite her efforts not to disturb him.

  He blinked at her, and then rubbed his face hard with both hands.

  “Stella?”

  “Yes, it’s me.”

  “What are you doing, my star?”

  “I am washing your feet. After that, I will clean your other injuries and I will comb all the muck from your hair. How do you feel?”

  Darien pondered that, stared at her with bleary, bloodshot eyes and sighed.

  “I feel as terrible as I look. So, you know?”

  “I know that you are a werewolf, yes.” She kept her voice calm and quiet despite her inner turmoil.

  He sat up, swinging his legs out of her reach and groaned.

  “I will not deny what you know to be true,” Darien said. “But, how did you find out??”

  Stella dropped the sodden washcloth into the basin and met his gaze.

  “I saw you change last night under the full moon.”

  He shut his eyes and the expression on his face was as bleak as an icy winter night.

  “That must have been rather frightening,” he said, after a long silence. “I am sorry you had to witness that. I did intend to tell you, Stella.”

  “I know.” He should have done it sooner, she thought, before she found out in such a shocking way. Despite her love, fear remained whenever she thought of him in full wolf form but she tried to hide it, knowing that it would hurt him to know she felt afraid.

  “So, what do you think now that you have learned my secret?

  Will you run away, my Stella-star?”

  He expected that she would; Stella saw that in his face, harsh and ravaged.

  She collected her breath to answer without wavering, “I won’t leave. I do love you, Darien, werewolf or not. It scares me, though, and it will take time for me to get adjusted to the idea. Until last night, I thought you were a man, human like me. Now I know that you aren’t but I have to figure out just how to wrap my brain around that.

  I think that I can and like I said, I love you but this is hard for me.”

  That conclusion, reached in the dark lonesome hours of the long night, came after an inner struggle. Reconciling what she knew of Darien, the man, and the beast she saw transform staggered her soul but she found that, within the werewolf, the man remained. On that small and shaky foundation, she pondered the deepest hidden rooms of her heart to find that despite his affliction, she still found him, as a man, to be handsome, charming, sexy, and so much more.

  Only after sifting through her shattered soul had she realized that she could and did love Darien and that she would not leave him. Her hope was that love would carry enough strength so that they could endure until she could accept his status quo, in all facets. Beyond the horror, past her fear, Stella realized for the very first time in her life how very powerful love in its most basic form could be.

  He made no sound as he listened to her response but she watched the tears collect in his topaz eyes before they spilled down his cheeks like a heavy rain. She ached for him, felt his pain in herself but she struggled with this reality. If he still loved her too, then she could deal with it but at the moment, but she wasn’t sure quite how she would.

  “Stella, you are all I could hope for and more. I never thought I would hear a woman say those sweet words to me ever again and mean them. You do, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do.”

  Darien patted the sofa beside him. “But you’re both worried and afraid. I see it in your eyes. Come sit with me. I have much that I must tell you.”

  “I am worried and I told you that I’m scared,” she said, struggling to conquer both emotions without success. “The more you tell me, the more maybe I can understand.”

  He nodded. “First, do you know how old I am?” Stella thought for a moment.

  “Are you twenty-eight?”

  He laughed sadly. “I am one hundred and ninety years of age if you count from my actual birthday, April 11, 1830 in a little English village, Eckington. I am, for all purposes, however, twenty-seven for all eternity. Not that it matters, really, but I’ve been in America since just after the Civil War.”

  “How did you become a werewolf anyway?” she questioned.

  If she could ever understand and try to accept this, she had to know.

  “Did it just happen or were you bitten by another werewolf or just a wolf or what?”

  “Ah, that,” Darien said, voice steady. “I was out walking on an April evening near the village. I was on my way to visit a young lady who had impressed me with her charms. Just as I passed Dickon’s Woods, a wolf sprang out of the shadows and attacked me.

  I fought it, thinking at that time it was indeed a mere wolf and it bit me on the shoulder. I slashed at its face with a small knife I wore on my belt. Then I rushed home and let my mother tend the wound.

  Everyone, including me, worried that it might fester. After all, wild animal bites can and this was long before a cure for rabies existed. I healed, though, in good time and thought that everything would be just fine.”

  “Was it?” Somehow she didn’t think it could have been.

  “Well, no. After my wound healed the first odd thing I noticed was that a neighbor had cuts on his face just where I cut the wolf.”

  She had to sort that out for a moment. “So one of your neighbors was a werewolf?”

  Darien sighed. “He was, although I didn’t know it. I wondered why Henry Browne would have cuts on his face in the same place. That seemed very strange but I didn’t think about it much.”

  “When did you know you were a werewolf?” Saying that word didn’t get any easier for her.

  “When the full moon came around, I transformed for the first time. I h
ad felt ill but then when I began changing, I thought I was dying but I did not, just began an unending misery that has lasted more than a hundred years.”

  Stella wondered about the young lady he had been on his way to visit and even more about the neighbor so she asked about both, one question at a time.

  “Who was she?”

  Darien laughed. “Her name was Isabella but I’ve long forgotten any other details.”

  “Then what about your neighbor? Did you ever talk to him about what happened?”

  With a wry smile, he leaned over and kissed her. “You are a woman of many questions. Yes, I did. I confronted Henry shortly after my first transformation and he admitted that he attacked me. He swore he thought I was a passing traveler, which I never quite believed. You see, he had some interest in Isabella too. He also claimed that if he had not recognized me, I would have been dinner.

  He said he stopped when he knew me but I have my doubts.”

  “Didn’t you hate him for what he did to you?” Stella asked, conscious that if none of it had happened, that she would not even know Darien, that he would long ago have been buried in an English churchyard.

  Darien pondered the question. “I wouldn’t say that I hated him but I did consider trying out the silver bullet theory to see if it worked. I didn’t like the man before the attack so of course I liked him even less after he made me what I am.”

  “You thought about killing him?” That surprised her more than she thought it would.

  “It was a brief thought. I told him how little I thought of him as either a man or werewolf. Despite that, Henry suggested that we run together, in wolf form, which I would not do. I didn’t want to be his wolf friend. I did not trust him, then or now, just another small reason why I left England. I imagine Henry remains there, miserable as ever.”

  “Why did you leave England?” she wondered aloud. “And is your name really Wolfe?”