LITMIR.BIZ

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my eyes, and my strange surroundings—and the unbelievable memories that explain them—jolt me to alertness. I sit upright and push my hands against the door almost before I remember that I’m doing it to keep the wolf back.

      There’s light now—thin and gray. Dawn, then. There must be portholes to let the sunlight in. I look down, but the wolf isn’t lying in front of the door any longer. I can’t hear him panting, either, nor any claws against the tile. Might it have left? Died in the night? Or is it at least far enough away that I could run to the door and pound against it? Someone might be closer now.

      With a shaking hand, I pull the door open, so slowly that it seems to take forever. No movement. No sound. So I dart out, thinking to run for the door that leads to the hallway and do whatever I can for myself—

      —and I jerk to a halt within two steps.

      Lying on the floor, entirely naked, perfectly formed, and dazed nearly to the point of unconsciousness, is Alec Marlowe.

      The red wolf.

       Chapter 7

      FOR A MOMENT I CAN’T MOVE; I CAN ONLY STARE. Last night, as I drifted between waking and sleep, I had realized the red wolf must be another version of Mikhail—another transformed human being. But with all his talk about his “friend” and his “compatriot,” I believed it had to be one of the men he’d been walking with that night in Southampton. Never did I suspect Alec Marlowe.

      Alec comes to enough to recognize me standing over him, and he rolls onto his side, slightly away from me—maybe to show me that he doesn’t want to hurt me, maybe just because he’s embarrassed to be naked in front of a girl he hardly knows.

      Maybe I should run. But seeing how he moves—slowly, still confused—it seems too cruel to leave him like this.

      He says, “What are you doing here?”

      “You—you don’t remember?”

      “It’s all a blur.” Alec tries to push himself up, but he can’t. His muscled arms shake too much to bear his weight yet. “What happened?”

      “Your friend, Mikhail—he dragged me in here. He . . . ” How do I say this? “He changed. The two of you fought, and I couldn’t get out until—until you changed back.”

      Now that it’s light, and the steam has finally run out, I take a good look around the Turkish bath. There’s a cabinet I’d bet anything is for linens, and sure enough, when I open the door, there are towels and plush robes folded inside. I take a robe to Alec and kneel by his side. The tiles are cool against my bare knees. “Here,” I say gently. “Are you all right?”

      He snatches it from me, though he’s apparently still too weak to put it on. He just drapes it over his lap. “There’s no need to worry, Tess. Nothing’s happened here. Just leave me. And tell no one.”

      I almost want to laugh. “Are you really going to pretend I don’t know?”

      Alec turns his head toward the corner; his firm jaw clenches, as he struggles against some deeper emotion: shame, I realize. He’s ashamed to be seen as what he is.

      “Most people . . . prefer to forget, instead of admit what they’ve seen,” he says roughly. His voice sounds terrible—as though he had been screaming for hours. I remember how he growled and snarled. “You should go.”

      “I can’t.”

      “Because you want to stare at the monster?” Alec’s green eyes blaze, but with a wholly human fire now. “Or because you pity me?” I couldn’t guess which possibility he loathes more.

      I fold my arms. “I can’t leave because the door’s locked. Believe me, I would’ve gone hours ago if I could have.”

      “Oh. Of course.” Then he looks so abashed—so boyish, and so handsome—that I almost want to laugh.

      But the strangeness of the situation keeps me quiet. I am still frightened of Alec, knowing what he truly is. And yet this morning he is weary, bruised, naked, and exposed on the floor of the Turkish bath. Vulnerable.

      If I want answers, I had better get them now.

      “You’re a—” I hesitate on the word, one I’ve heard only in stories to frighten the gullible. “A werewolf.”

      Alec lifts his head to face me. His chestnut curls glint slightly red in the dawn light. “Yes.”

      “And Mikhail, too.”

      He grimaces with pure dislike. “Yes. Older. Stronger. More powerful.”

      “Did he . . . do this to you?” I wouldn’t put it past Mikhail to do something so wicked. “Or were you born a werewolf?”

      Taking a deep breath, Alec pushes himself up to a fully seated position, then struggles into the robe as I avert my eyes. Only now, as he puts something on, do I remember that I’m still in my underclothes, which are made of flimsy linen. Should’ve gotten myself a robe while I was at it, but now I simply draw my knees toward my chest, for a little modesty.

      Once the robe is on, Alec slowly rises to his feet. Movement still seems to hurt him, and he sways as he straightens for the first time. Before I can rise to help, though, Alec steadies himself.

      He looks down at me. “I’ve never told anyone this. Anyone besides my father, I mean.”

      Mr. Marlowe knows? I wouldn’t have expected that. But how would I have expected any of this?

      “I became a werewolf two years ago,” Alec says. “My father and I were on a hunting trip in Wisconsin.”

      I’ve never heard of this “Wisconsin,” which is apparently a dangerous place. So I imagine it like the great woods near Moorcliffe, where the Viscount sometimes goes to shoot—ancient trees that stretch up toward the sky, their leaves so thick that they almost blot out the sun. The ground covered with clouds of ferns and carpets of moss. A profound silence broken only by the flapping of birds’ wings.

      A bitter, rueful smile plays on Alec’s face. “It was just after sunset. My father had told me earlier to come in for dinner, but I hadn’t shot anything all day. I refused. I was going to prove what a great hunter I really was. But there was a better hunter in the forest, waiting.”

      “Mikhail?”

      “Another. I’ll never even know his name, or what he looks like as a human, unless he someday chooses to reveal himself.” Alec’s tone makes it clear that this would be extremely unwise for the werewolf to do; he wants revenge so badly that I can feel it in the room with us, as tangible as the walls. “I didn’t understand what had happened to me at first. I thought I’d simply been bitten by a wolf. But immediately I became sick—so sick—God, the fevers. I remember tossing and turning in bed, thinking that I knew what meat must feel like when people cook it on a spit.”

      I’ve been sick like that—well, not exactly like that, but I know what he means.

      “Then the full moon came,” Alec says. “And for the first time, I changed into the wolf. Luckily, I was in our stables at the time, and only my father was with me. He was able to shut me in alone. Of course, we lost all our horses.”

      Meaning, he killed them.

      He sounds so disgusted with himself that I feel more sympathy than horror. But there’s one thing that’s confusing me: Something from the old wives’ tales, and from what he’s just said, that doesn’t add up. “I’m sure last night wasn’t a full moon.”

      “You’re right. It wasn’t. The full moon is important to our kind—that’s when the curse finally awakens in us. When our powers are at the zenith. And it’s the one night we can never escape from; no matter what, on the night of the full moon, we have to change into wolves.”

      “The rest of the time, you can choose? You chose to change and attack me

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