Page 61 of A Wolf for Winter

He leaned forward to retrieve the photograph. It was a little worse for wear, stained in addition to its worn edges, but her face was just as beautiful and sad as he’d remembered it. As it was now, behind that cool façade. He lifted his gaze, owing the woman before him his undivided attention.

“My name is Allen Chase,” he began, “and I’m a Nemean wolf.”

Lilac seemed startled, her mask slipping, then: “Any relation to a Lewellyn Chase?”

Now it was Allen’s turn to start in surprise. “My older brother.”

“And are you a low-life mercenary like him?” she spat.

Clearly her grandmother had employed his brother in the past.

“Retrieval specialist,” he corrected, trying to keep the heat from his voice. That was his brother, after all, and despite their differences, Allen looked up to him. “And no. Other than our last name and some shared physical traits due to our bloodline, I’m nothing like him. I’m Retired Corporal Allen J. Chase of the United States Army Special Forces. A former Green Beret.”

“You look a little young to be retired.”

A wry smile flickered across his face. “Well, technically I’m not retired. According to the Army, I was killed in action in Afghanistan. To most of this world, I don’t exist.”

“Why?” she blurted.

Allen fiddled with the photograph. “Because I showed them my true nature, my wolf, and they . . . shunned me for it.” His voice wavered. “And I’m terrified you’ll do the same.”

Lilac didn’t say anything, but she fidgeted uncomfortably in her chair.

“I’m sorry. You need an explanation, not pressure.” He sucked in a breath, letting it and the tension drain from his body. It was all or nothing. “I’m not sure what you know of Nemean wolves, but our bloodline is cursed. It’s said our ancestors drank the blood of the Nemean lion after Hercules killed it, assuming its power of invincibility. But the desecration of that magnificent beast came at a cost—for our greed, we were never to belong, even amongst our own kind. Lone wolves, eternal wanderers, without soulmates.

“But I didn’t want that to be me. I guess I was different, refusing to let my ancestry provide an excuse for my life. To victimize me. I saw what easy friendships looked like, what love looked like, and . . . I coveted it. As you can imagine, dating was off the table—a human would never understand me, and shifters don’t associate with lone wolves—but there was a fraternity that willingly accepted anyone who wished to serve. The military.

“Long story short, I joined the Army and worked my way into Special Forces. Seems I was particularly cut out for it. Green Berets are specialists in unconventional warfare—infiltration, guerrilla, training foreign troops. Manipulation. We’re the chameleons, and we’re very good at it.”

“I know.”

He winced, not looking at her. “My last mission sent my team and me to a desert town so far removed from civilization that it rarely found itself on any map. Probably for good reason, since it’s an oasis and water is more precious than oil or gold in the desert. But it was also a holy place, one now spoiled and corrupted. It was no longer a place of peace, but a tactical location to be exploited. A haven for criminals and murderers. We went there to free it, and, of course, ensure they remained more friendly to their protectors—the United States—than their own countrymen.”

Allen let the photograph drift from his fingers and leaned back against the headboard with a resigned sigh. “Timing is everything, and shortly after we landed and started ingratiating ourselves, opposition arrived. Intel had claimed such a force wouldn’t be arriving for a least a month, but it was a last-minute decision on their part. We weren’t fully engrained yet, the town torn in its allegiance, and we were driven into the desert. Hunted like wild beasts.”

He paused, feeling the phantom sting of sand against his skin, the stink of death, the howling of the wind, the sharp staccato of three-round bursts. His voice was barely audible. “We holed up in a cave during a sandstorm. But they knew the terrain better than we did and were picking us off at their leisure. Like it was sport. Hell, they’d killed Omar and Levi already. The rest of my brothers and I were dead men, or so they thought.

“I shifted. When someone like me is about to lose everything, you have no other choice than to blow your cover and risk it all for the ones you care about.”

Lilac’s face remained unreadable, but it was no longer as frosty as it was before.

Allen tensed, afraid to reveal the entire truth but knowing he had no other choice. She would see him as a monster after this. He swallowed past the lump in his throat—his heart, trying to strangle him—and forced out: “I killed them all. Every last one of them, even their horses. And not a scratch on me. The Nemean wolf hide is wholly impenetrable, so what are bullets and machetes compared to that?

“Then, I returned to the cave. As a wolf, obviously, because my rage was running hot and there still was a sandstorm going on out there. My brothers . . . well, it’s different watching werewolves in the movies and actually coming face-to-face with one.”

His hands clenched into fists, the fabric of the bedsheets actually tearing in his grip. “I’d just saved them, and they couldn’t fathom what I was. That I was wholly wolf and wholly their brother. ‘Brothers don’t keep these kinds of secrets,’ they told me. Maybe it was the shock, I don’t know. But they turned their backs on me. Couldn’t trust me after that.”

Allen lifted a hand to his eyes, dabbing away the color-correcting contact lenses. Lilac stared at their true color, a deep, luminous gold reminiscent of the treasure found in ancient pharaohs’ tombs.

“Couldn’t trust me, though I had put my whole life in their hands to defend and save theirs,” he whispered. “How does a man come back home and explain that his brothers no longer want to serve with him? That they won’t. Uncle Sam doesn’t like complications, and I was exactly that. So my unit suggested a solution: Corporal Allen J. Chase was to die in the desert, giving up his life in the defense of his unit. They would not breathe a word to anyone what they had witnessed, and they would take care of all the evidence. They funded my return to the States from their own pockets.”

“Allen, that’s . . ..”

Not looking at her, he waved away her pity, if that’s what it was. “I applied to the Coalition next, knowing it was a long shot, but there was nothing else for me. They were my last chance at belonging. Until . . . you.”

She swallowed, some of her composure slipping as her fingernails picked at the leather binding of the book she clutched in her lap. “The photograph?”

“You three were my mission,” he answered solemnly. “I was to come to Annesley Valley, infiltrate, and watch. Protect from afar.”