Rebel:. Zoe Archer

      “You intrigue me,” he said simply.

      Her body gave a sudden pulse of answering interest. “I shouldn’t.”

      “But you do.”

      She had been so far withdrawn into herself for all these years, the idea that she could draw any man’s interest—particularly one as devastating as Nathan Lesperance—stunned her. “Why?” she asked, genuinely baffled.

      “You’re not like any woman I’ve met before.” When Astrid gave an indecorous snort, he said, “Don’t scoff. We’re alike, but not the same. Tied together somehow, you and I. I knew it the moment I met you. You felt it, too.”

      She wanted to deny it but couldn’t. She tried to shield herself behind flippancy. “Who knew a shape-changing attorney could be so sensitive? You should write poetry.”

      “Throw your barbs,” he said with a shake of his head. “You can’t scare me off. I want to know you from the outside in.”

      Oh, Lord. She could well imagine.

      “And,” he added, nostrils flared, “there’s a hell of a lot more heat than poetry in what I feel for you. The animal in me feels the same way.”

      She, who had faced enemy gunfire, water demons, sandstorms, and cannibal trolls, trembled at his words. Images flickered through her mind of her and Lesperance, slick and tangled, mouths and hands and flesh. His growls. Her moans. And not only bodies entwined, but minds and hearts as well. Exactly what she wanted. Exactly what she feared.

      She had to change the subject before she gave in to her body’s darkest desires. “If I tell you what language I was speaking, do you promise not to say another word all night?”

      “I’ll be quiet for ten minutes.”

      “Ten! Thirty.”

      “Fifteen.”

      “Twenty.”

      He held out his hand to shake. “Done.”

      Her fingers slid into his grasp, and the sensation of fingers pressed against each other echoed in humid pulses through her body. “How did you talk me into this?” she asked, breathless.

      He smiled, wry but also confident. “I’m a very good negotiator.”

      That, she did not doubt. She wondered how many women he had “negotiated” into bed. A goodly amount, she wagered. Perhaps all his talk of being intrigued by her, their connection, was merely that—talk.

      She wished that was true. Yet knew, somehow, it wasn’t. He was no polished city attorney, beguiling women into his bed with glossy words of seduction. What he wanted, he achieved through strength of will. And he wanted her.

      It took longer to retrieve her hand than it had taken to give it. The drag of skin contacting skin. Her starved body wanted more. She refused to acquiesce. Yet he knew, too, the effect he had on her, blast him.

      She finally pulled back and kept her hand cradled protectively in her lap. “It’s Swedish,” she said, trying to herd her thoughts and the conversation toward more secure ground. “I learned from my father. Bjorn Anderson, born in Uppsala. He was a great naturalist.” Her father’s fame as a naturalist had brought Michael as a pupil, and it was over Latinate texts of botanical disquisitions that her and Michael’s love had taken root and blossomed. In particular, they were both fascinated by the works of one of England’s only female botanists, the Viscountess of Briarleigh. Astrid dreamed of exploring the world as Lady Briarleigh had, with her beloved husband by her side, and soon Michael came to share that dream. Shortly after she and Michael were married, Catullus Graves approached them, offering places within the Blades, the opportunity to travel and study while protecting the world’s magic. It had seemed perfect.

      “Was?” Lesperance asked. “Your father is no longer living?”

      “Is,” she corrected, relieved that he was willing to talk about something other than the attraction between them. “Alive. In England.”

      “You must send him hundreds of specimens for his studies. Plenty to investigate out here.”

      She shook her head. “I cannot remember the last time I wrote him,” she admitted. Her father’s correspondence, however, arrived as regularly as post could out in the Northwest Territory. The last letter had related that Michael’s youngest sister had been married and was presently on a bridal journey in the south of France. Astrid had realized that everyone else had picked up their lives, yet she continued her self-imposed exile. The idea had left her moody and restless for weeks.

      Lesperance’s brows drew down. “Are you feuding with your father?”

      “No. We’ve always been close.” Except for the past four years.

      “Why the hell don’t you write him?”

      Astrid drew back from the anger in Lesperance’s voice. How could she answer him? She could not even answer herself. When she had first arrived in the Territory, she sent her parents and Catullus a letter each, assuring them she was still alive but had no wish to return home. Their letters, however, did not stop. At first, they pleaded with her to come back, said they were worried, that it wasn’t right or healthy for a young woman to consign herself to a living afterlife. She need not contemplate another marriage. If she was done with the Blades, everyone would respect her decision. But please return, however she wanted.

      Her replies, when she had written them, were terse. No, she was staying. If her parents and Catullus wished to keep writing, they were free to do so, only know that she would no longer open their letters if they insisted on pressing her to come back.

      “I just…ran out of things to say,” she said to Lesperance after a moment. To write to them of her life in the mountains, her observations of the flora and fauna, her interactions with Natives and trappers—it was too much like returning to life, to admit that her grief was loosening its hold, and what held her immobile in the wilderness was something else. Something she dared not name. “I fail to see why that should upset you.”

      Lesperance’s handsome face was stark with fury. He jabbed a finger at her. “Unlike you, who chose to abandon your family, mine was torn from me. They wouldn’t let me see my parents after I turned eight. Didn’t want me to be tainted by their heathenish ways. I saw them alive only once more after that.”

      He didn’t explain the circumstances of this final visit, but she did not ask for further details, knowing instinctively that his pain would become her own if she knew more.

      “And when I was old enough to leave the school,” he continued, “I went to find my parents.”

      “Did you locate them?”

      “By the time I reached their village, I learned they’d died the week before from smallpox.”

      Astrid swallowed, an ache in her throat.

      “I made the medicine man show me the bodies,” he said, bitterness hardening his words. “I didn’t recognize them.”

      She struggled not to look away. “I didn’t know—”

      He was on his feet, a shadow hovering large and dark, with the glow of the fire turning him gilded, sinister. “My parents were illiterate, but I would’ve killed for something from them, even a damned rock. Didn’t matter. I just wanted them, a family to belong to. And you’re throwing that away.” To punctuate, he threw the cooked rabbit leg into the dirt, then turned to stalk off into the night.

      “The Heirs are out there,” Astrid said to his retreating back.

      He pulled at his clothes, so she was forced to look away. “The wolf will take care of me.” Moonlit mists began to gather around him, as if he prepared to change, but then he saw her watching him, and the clouds dissipated. He pushed farther into the shadows.

      “What about supper?” Astrid asked.

      The vicious smile