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Before his brother could speak, Royce turned to issue a sharp command to the other man to leave them, then his gaze slashed to the two prone female figures lying at his feet, one of them in a dead faint, the other curled into a ball, trembling so violently that her body shook as if in the throes of convulsions. For some reason the quaking girl enraged him more than her unconscious counterpart. "Get up!" he snapped at Je
Je
"And I'll give you one if you'll cease roaring at me. These women are-"
"Nuns!" Royce bit out, his gaze suddenly riveting on the heavy crucifix hanging from a black cord around Je
"Nuns!" Stefan gasped, astounded.
"Whores!" croaked Je
"I could kill you for this folly, Stefan, so help me-"
"You'll feel differently when I tell you who they are," Stefan said, yanking his horrified gaze from Je
Royce stared at his younger brother, the hands at his sides unclenching as he turned to contemptuously survey Je
"Nay, I wasn't fooled. She is truly his, I heard it from her own lips."
Catching Je
He saw the flare of anger his words brought to her face as she jerked it out of his grasp, but instead of being touched by her courage, he was angered by it. Everything about the name Merrick infuriated him, making vengeance boil up inside him, and he grasped her pale, smudged face and jerked it back to his. "Answer me!" he demanded in an awful voice.
In her state of near hysteria, it seemed to Bre
"They don't call Je
"Who the hell are you?" he demanded furiously.
"She is no one!" Je
"Is that true?" Royce demanded of Bre
"Yes!" Je
"No," Bre
Clenching his hands into fists at his sides, Royce Westmoreland briefly closed his eyes. It was like a nightmare, he thought. An incredible nightmare. After a forced march, he was out of food, out of shelter, and out of patience. And now this. Now, he couldn't even manage to get a sensible, honest answer out of two terrified women. He was tired, he realized, exhausted from three days and nights without sleep. He turned his haggard face and blazing eyes on Bre
Bre
I want them alive tomorrow for questioning… the words reverberated in Je
"Je
"No," Je
Chapter Three
The Wolf's camp seemed to stir to life before the last stars faded from the sky, but Je
"Bre
"Yes."
"When the Wolf questions us, let me give the answers."
"Yes," she said again, her voice quaking.
"I'm not certain what he'll want to know, but it's bound to be something we shouldn't tell him. Perhaps I'll be able to guess why he asks a question and so know when to mislead him."
Dawn had scarcely streaked the sky with pink before two men came to untie them and to allow them both only a few minutes of privacy in the bushes in the woods on the edge of the wide clearing before they retied Je
One of them, a towering giant over seven feet tall who could only be the legendary colossus called Arik, gave her a blood-chilling look and walked off. The other guard continued leading poor Bre
The half hour Bre
"Are you all right?" Je
Bre
"Don't cry," Je