The faηade of strength seemed to bolster Gabriel a little. “Well, then. I need you here, Gid. How soon can you come home?”

It was, Gideon realized, the first time he could remember that Gabriel, whom he knew to be quite self-contained and independent despite his outwardly gregarious nature, had ever told him he needed him. He found himself surprised and, despite the situation, touched.

“I’ll leave first thing in the morning. What good’s the family money if we don’t throw it around once in a while, eh?”

Gabriel’s voice remained sober. “They’ll keep him alive long enough to be able to access the Stone. What are they about, Gideon? What do they think it can do? I’ll be honest, I never really thought of it as more than a … a priceless artifact, you know? Something we guarded because of a tradition. I never quite bought into the reverence Dad accorded it, never bothered to ask him why. The secrecy, the ritual … a show, I thought. Hell, Gideon, I don’t even know where the damned thing is!” Frustration welled in Gabriel’s voice. “If it’s so bloody important, why didn’t he tell us?”

“He was going to,” Gideon growled, battling his own frustration, along with the dull misery of chances lost, opportunities missed. I should have been there, he thought. “When I got back, he was going to tell me everything. I told him I was finally ready. And now it’s too late, and I know as little as you, I’m afraid.”

“You mean, he never told you? You next in line to lead, and he never told you?”

“The full knowledge is never passed until the old Alpha is ready to hand over the reins to the new one. Tradition, remember?”

“Tradition,” Gabriel spat. “Always bloody tradition. Lot of good it’s done us here. What if he’d kicked off before now, accidentally? Then where would we be? Bloody wonder the whole thing hasn’t fallen to pieces before now.”

“I’m beginning to think bits of the truth have gone missing in the past, or someone might have seen this coming. Ian and Malcolm know more, I think. Enough, at least, to keep us going … and to get you and me started.”

Gabriel snorted. “That’s reassuring. How long do you think we have, Gideon? How long before Malachi and that evil bitch manage whatever they’re trying to do? Because for them to do this, they’ve discovered something I don’t even think I want to speculate on.”

His thoughts exactly, Gideon silently agreed. He’d heard the myths, the legends surrounding the Lia Fαil, had grown up on them. But it seemed that he too had always regarded it as more powerful in its symbolism and age than as a force to be reckoned with in its own right. A power that could actually be used. Or exploited. Well, it seemed that he, and the rest of the Pack, were slated to pay for their incuriosity if he and Gabriel didn’t move quickly. He needed to get home. He needed a plan.

“Talk to Ian and Malcolm. We’ll need all that they know. I’ll be there as soon as I possibly can.”

“And your Carly? Will she be safe, if you leave her?”

Carly. She, and all the promise she carried with her, seemed an ocean away from him already. Here was the only path that could ever be his, laid out for him in the starkest light. He would forge ahead like Duncan; with honor, duty. Alone. And she would be safe. Especially from him.

“The moon is nearly full. No, I think, with me gone, there’s little chance she’ll be harmed. They’ve too little time left to bother now. I’ll suggest she stay with her family, though, until this is over. One way or another.”

“So … you’ll be going back for her, then?”

Gideon closed his eyes, allowing, just for a moment, the warm music of Carly’s voice, drifting from the other room, to fill him up one last time. “No.”

And for once, Gabriel appeared to accept this at face value, and let it be.

“Whatever you think is best, Gid. This is certainly no place for a human right now. Just hurry home.”

Hurry home, Gideon thought with a bitter twist of his lips as he replaced the phone in its cradle.

He’d been a fool in many ways, but in one, he thought, above all others.

For he’d begun to let himself think, if only for a moment, that he was already there.

Chapter Thirteen

“YOU’RE JUST … LEAVING? AND THAT’SIT?”

He’d wanted her to stay. But she’d had to follow. And now Carly stood in the doorway of her bedroom, watching Gideon hurriedly stuff what few things were his into a duffel bag. One large suitcase, apparently the only other piece of luggage he’d been traveling with all this time, already sat neatly by the front door, ready to go.

Just like he was.

She should have known it was coming when his brother had called her parents’ house. She should have known. But then, Carly reasoned, she hadn’t wanted to believe he was ever going to go at all, had she? Despite the fact that he’d never uttered so much as a word to that effect. Despite the fact that she’d given herself to him, body and soul, like the lovesick idiot she’d turned out to be, all I’m-an-independent-career-woman bullshit aside. Three short days together, but because they’d felt like a lifetime to her, she hadn’t been able to imagine it would be so easy for him to walk away from her.

Maybe she could have tried to understand if he’d been up-front with her, if he’d come right out and explained why he had to go like the hounds of hell were right at his heels. But after he’d politely excused himself from dinner, he had not so politely tried to get her to stay put. To let him go, just like that.

“There’s trouble at home. You’ll be safer here, until this is over. I’ll let you know. But I have to go,” he’d told her as she stood shivering on the front porch, searching his beautiful face for any hint of the warmth that it had always held for her. But all she saw was blank shock, weariness, and seething, bubbling rage beneath it all. There was nothing there of the man she’d come to know as Gideon. And though he didn’t bother to protest when she’d simply come with him, it soon became obvious to Carly that there was to be no further explanation. He had closed himself off from her as neatly as though no bond, strange and intense though it might have been, had ever existed between them.

In this moment, as he quietly gathered his things in preparation to leave her life, Gideon MacInnes was as much a stranger to her as he had been the night she’d found him. It hurt, more than it should have, more than she’d thought possible. But what was killing her, what twisted like a knife in her heart was that it was so cold, so clinical. So intentional.

When he answered her, Gideon barely spared her a glance. “I have to go, Carly. I was always going to have to go, sooner or later. I never pretended otherwise. But for what it’s worth, I am sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” she asked incredulously, and the deliberately cool tone of his voice, that rich, deep voice that had called her sweetheart and love, burned right through her. Angry tears that she absolutely, unequivocally refused to shed in front of him stung her eyes. Sorry. Well, so was she. If only she hadn’t told him she loved him. Oh, he’d been asleep when she’d said the words, but it shamed her that they’d even passed her lips. More, that she’d allowed them to be true.

In love, with this stranger, Carly thought as she glared at Gideon’s broad back with a toxic mixture of anger and abject misery. A bitter laugh welled up in her throat, nearly choking her. This whole thing was a mockery.

And yet who could say she didn’t deserve it?

But now he turned and looked at her, and there was something in his eyes, something almost like sadness, though Carly refused to believe its sincerity. “I am, Carly. More than I can say. But it’s better this way.”

Carly fought back the urge to grab the nearest object and hurl it at him. “Oh, yeah,” she snapped instead. “Running back to Europe with no explanation, shutting me out. It’s great this way, thanks.”

Gideon sighed and shook his head at her before turning away as, Carly thought with rising anger, a parent would from a petulant child. “I know you’re upset. I don’t expect you to understand.”

“No,” she replied mockingly, “you wouldn’t, would you? You don’t seem to expect much from me at all, as a matter of fact. But then, I am just an inferior human. Good for a quick fuck and some giggles, but that’s about it, huh?”

Vicious joy surged through her when his head snapped back around and his brows lowered threateningly. This was so painful … she wanted him to feel it too. Wanted him to feel something.

“Don’t do this, Carly.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it,” Carly gasped in mock horror. “Making a scene, that is. I mean, I’m so grateful that you even bothered with me at all!”

Gideon grabbed one last shirt from the end of the bed, stuffed it into his bag with a force that Carly was surprised didn’t rip a hole right through the bottom of it. “You’re making this harder than it has to be,” he muttered under his breath. Carly smiled thinly and folded her hands across her chest. She was getting to him, then. Good.

“No,” she said. “I think this needs to be hard, actually. Because normally, when someone saves your sorry ass from complete destruction, it merits more than a quick screw and an even quicker exit. You want walking away from me to be easy, after all of that pretending to give a shit? Well, tough.”

Gideon stood there glowering at her, clutching his bag in one hand, the other clenched at his side, and Carly could see that his civilization, what polish he had, had worn dangerously thin. With frustration pumping off of him in palpable waves and his eyes burning like two live coals, Carly could see the beast within him as clear as day, an ancient and wild thing. A beast she should run from while she could.

But though she tried to hate him, even managed it to some small degree, the potent emotion that flowed through her rising temper was a love she’d never thought existed. The heady, intense connection between them, far from being snapped, pulled at her more strongly than ever. They were bound, the two of them. She didn’t understand it. Hell, she didn’t even know if she wanted it. But she’d be damned if she’d let him go without a fight.