disappeared.
If I had been in human form, I would have cried. As it was, all I could do was throw my head back and let forth a long, mournful howl. Other voices joined mine, a chorus of grief for my grandfather, the alpha wolf of the Crystal Pines pack. I felt warm bodies crowding in around me and I knew they were there, even Kyra, who had always hated me, and Ron and Matt, who had betrayed me for their own purposes. I saw the future and knew the pack would scatter, but for that night, it was all of us together, howling in grief at the waning moon.
I sat in Peter Bowman’s old office, where a fresh young partner went through the formalities to make me the heir to my grandfather’s fortune as well as the land on which Wolfsbane Manor had stood. It had been eight weeks and four days, and the process had been held up, first by assertions of insurance fraud, and then by the resulting arson investigation. There hadn’t been evidence of any foul play, and the whole thing was ruled as a tragic accident.
The fire had been caused by a short in the electrical system, the insurance report said. The house was such a shambles even the arson investigator had a difficult time pinpointing the cause. There had been a spark near a place where the gas line had cracked, and the whole system had gone up in flames. Along with it went the house. My grandfather, ostensibly exhausted from his ordeal, had slept through the alarms and had died of smoke inhalation in his bed before his body had burned to a pile of charred remains. They used dental records to identify him.
My mother sat in the other desk chair, petite like myself, but with iron-gray hair and a mouth perpetually twisted into a sneer. Her bitterness at losing my grandfather’s fortune to me was almost palpable. He had left her enough to live on very comfortably for the rest of her life, but he knew her innate selfishness would never allow her to be satisfied. She signed the necessary papers and left without saying a word.
“Your grandfather was a smart man,” the lawyer said. “This will is ironclad.”
“So was his.” I signed the last page with a heavy heart. That meant the final papers were drawn up, so he handed me over to the banker, who had come all the way from Memphis to help transfer the money and the accounts to my name. I walked out of the office with more money than I could have ever imagined, but more bereft of family and friends than I had ever been.
Denial that the body in the house had actually been my grandfather’s gave way to anger at him for sacrificing himself, and now grief. It would be a long time to acceptance. I hadn’t even been to what was left of the Manor since it all happened. The nice, perky Crystal Pines real estate lady had been very helpful in finding me a new house. “It’s on the cul-de-sac and very quiet.” It turned out to have been Peter Bowman’s, who had skipped town with his family the day after the raid on the lab in the woods. They had taken what they could carry and left most of the furniture, which had been sold with the house. I still sold off most of the stuff in the office and decorated it so it looked like my grandfather’s. My possessions had finally arrived from Memphis the day after the fire, and I rented storage space for it until I could put it in my new home.
Ron had disappeared as well just after the Bowman family had left. I later found out he had gone down to Little Rock and was trying to convince UAMS to re-admit him to his residency program as well as to win the heart of the charming Lisa Temmerson. Iain, meanwhile, had flown to Washington, D.C., to act as a consultant and expert witness for the FDA’s suit against Hippocrates-Cabal. Leo had gone after Peter, and I hadn’t heard from him since. I sometimes wished we could talk about it, what had happened, and I wondered if the aconite lozenges would help with his mood swings, but there was no whisper on the wind.
And what of Gabriel? I knew he wasn’t dead—he had been beside me in body on the night of the fire, and I could sense his spirit was still alive somewhere. But he had been a wanderer and would probably never settle down. He’d come hoping I could finish my grandfather’s work. Now I could be of no use to him. It sounds crazy to say it, but his betrayal hurt almost as much as Robert’s. They had both shown me a world beyond what I could have imagined.
I had never found out what happened between him and Lonna the morning after we left them, and I honestly didn’t want to know. Lonna and I still saw each other occasionally. My grandfather had left me the recipe for the aconite lozenges as well as my brother’s and my letters in the boathouse, and it’s how we managed our symptoms. We would occasionally hunt together; the trust just wasn’t there anymore. I felt like a hypocrite for being so hard on her about Peter when I’d still lusted after Robert. She would never admit it, but she resented me for having brought her into a situation where she was compromised on every level. That it was partially her fault for being overconfident was something she’d never admit.
So I was alone, the rich heiress in a small town in the Ozarks in Arkansas. I pondered it on the way back to my new house filled with furnishings that still felt like they belonged to other people. I reminded myself it could be worse, and maybe I needed to be alone for a while. But when I turned the curve to the cul-de-sac, I saw someone sitting on my front porch steps. My heart skipped a beat at the sight of the wavy dark hair, the intense black eyes, and the muscular body in blue jeans and a black leather jacket.
“Leo?”
He came and opened the car door for me. “Good afternoon, Doctor Fisher.”
“Good afternoon, Doctor Bowman. What are you doing here?”
“I had to disappear for a while—there was something I needed to investigate on my own. But I’m back. They said you live here now.”
“I can’t go back to the Manor, not yet.” I brushed a tear from my eye. “It’s too soon. I still can’t believe he’s gone.”
He looked away and bit his lip.
I held my hand out to him, and he took it. My hand looked so small in his, but his felt warm in spite of him having waited out in the cold for me.
“We both loved him,” I said.
“And we’ll both miss him. I can’t believe I didn’t realize he’d been taken to that place. And Ron…” His voice broke.
“Ron betrayed you for love.”
“Right.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I hope it was worth it. Did you hear they’re thinking of starting a CLS specialty at UAMS?”
“Then he’s ended up in the right place.”
Leo followed me into the kitchen, where I put on a pot of coffee.
“No butler?”
“Nope. Gabriel left after the fire. It wasn’t really my style anyway.”
A little of the tension seeped out of Leo. “Why live here? Why not rebuild?”
“I’m not ready yet. I have to feel like it’s the right time.”
He leaned against the counter and crossed his arms. “There’s a reason for that. Let’s go up there this evening, at twilight.”
“Go up to where? The manor ruins?”
“Yes.”
Tears stung my eyes, and the kitchen blurred. “Leo, I can’t. I haven’t been up there since they found his body.”
In a moment, his arms were around me, and I cried into his shoulder. It felt so good just to let it out, to let someone else hold me up for a change, especially when I felt one of his tears plop on the top of my head.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be with you. Have been from the beginning, you know.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. You remember how I told Galbraith he didn’t need to bring Gabriel in?”
I raised an eyebrow. “No, I didn’t hear that part of the conversation, remember?”
“You heard the end of it. If I couldn’t keep Gabriel away from your grandfather’s estate, I hoped to at least keep him away from mine.”
“I see.” I put my cheek against the warm leather of his jacket.
“After I met you, and you were so feisty with Kyra, I couldn’t help but fall for you. And then you never let my wild moods intimidate you. It was like you saw beyond all the CLS stuff. You could say I was your greatest admirer. Still am.”
