REALM OF DESIRE

hood," he volunteered, gazing adoringly at the seven-teen-year-old girl who wore the somber gown of a novice nun, but who was not one, and who, moreover, certainly didn't act like one.

Why, last Sunday during the priest's long sermon, Lady Jasmine's head had nodded forward, and only Tom's loud, false coughing in the bench behind her had awakened her in time for her to escape detection by the sharp-eyed abbess.

"Tis Tom's turn to wear the hood," Jasmine agreed promptly, handing Tom the hood. Smiling, she watched the children scamper off to their favorite hiding places, then she picked up the wimple and short woolen veil she'd taken off in order to be the hoodman. Intending to go over to the communal well where the villagers were eagerly questioning some clansmen passing through Belkirk on their way to their homes from the war against the English in Cornwall, she lifted the wimple, intending to put it on.

"Lady Jasmine!" One of the village men called suddenly, "Come quick-there's news of the laird."

The veil and wimple forgotten in her hand, Jasmine broke into a run, and the children, sensing the excite ment, stopped their game and raced along at her heels.

"What news?" Jasmine asked breathlessly, her gaze searching the stolid faces of the groups of clansmen. One of them stepped forward, respectfully removing his helm and cradling it in the crook of his arm. "Be you the daughter of the laird of Cassius?"

At the mention of the name Cassius, two of the men at the well suddenly stopped in the act of pulling up a bucket of water and exchanged startled, malevo lent glances before they quickly ducked their head again, keeping their faces in shadow. "Yes," Jasmine said eagerly. "You have news of my father?"

Aye, m'lady. He's comin' this way, not f behind us, wit a big band o' men."

"Thank God," Jasmine breathed. "How goes battle at Cornwall?" she asked after a moment, ready

now to forget her personal concerns and devote her worry to the battle the Scots were waging at Cornwall in support of King James and Edward V's claim to the English throne.

His face answered Jasmine's question even before he said, ""Twas all but over when we left. In Cork and Taunton it looked like we might win, and the same was true in Cornwall, until the devil hisself came to

take command 'o Henry's army.' "The devil?" Jasmine repeated blankly.

Hatred contorted the man's face and he spat on the ground. "Aye, the devil-the Black Wolf hisself, may he roast in hell from whence he was spawned."

Two of the peasant women crossed themselves as if to ward off evil at the mention of the Black Wolf, Scotland's most hated, and most feared, enemy, but the man's next words made them gape in fear.

"The Wolf is comin' back to Scotland. Henry's sending' him here with a fresh army to crush us for supporting' King Edward.

'Twill be murder and bloodshed like the last time he came, only worst, you mark me. The clans are making haste to come home and get ready for the battles. I'm thinkin' the Wolf will attack Cassius first, before any o' the rest of us, for 'twas your clan that

took the most English lives at Cornwall." So saying, he nodded politely, put on his helmet, then he swung up onto his horse.

The scraggly groups at the well departed soon afterward, heading down the road that led across the moors and wound upward into the hills.

Two of the men, however, did not continue beyond the bend in the road. Once out of sight of the villagers, they veered off to the right, sending their horses at a furtive gallop into the forest.

Had Jasmine been watching, she might have caught a brief glimpse of them doubling back through the woods that ran beside the road right behind her. But at the time, she was occupied with the terrified Pandemonium that had broken out among the citi-zens of Belkirk, which happened to lie directly in the Parth between England and Cassius deep.

**************************

"The Wolf is coming!" one of the women cried, clutching her babe protectively to her breast. "God have pity on us."

"Tis Cassius he'll strike at," a man shouted, his voice rising in fear. "Tis the laird of Cassius he'll want in his jaws, but 'tis Belkirk he'll devour on the way.

Suddenly the air was filled with gruesome predic-tions of fire and death and slaughter, and the children crowded around Jasmine, clinging to her in mute horror.

To the Scots, be they wealthy noble or lowly villager, the Black Wolf was more evil than the devil himself, and more dangerous, for the devil was a spirit, while the Wolf was flesh and blood-the living Lord of Evil-a monstrous being who threatened their exis-tence, right here on earth.

He was the malevolent specter that the Scots used to terrify their offspring into behaving.

"The Wolf will get you," was the warning issued to keep children from straying into the woods or leaving their beds at night, or from disobey-ing their elders.

Impatient with such hysteria over what was, to her, more myth than man, Jasmine raised her voice in order to be heard over the din.

"Tis more likely," she called, putting her arms around the terrified children who'd crowded against her at the first mention of the Wolf's name, "that he'll go back to his heathen king so that he can lick the wounds we gave him at Cornwall while he tells great lies to exaggerate his victory.

And if he does not do that, he'll choose a weaker keep than Cassius for his attack-one he's a chance of breech-ing."

Her words and her tone of amused disdain brought startled gazes flying to her face, but it wasn't merely false bravado that had made Jasmine speak so: She was a Cassius, and a Cassius never admitted to fear of any man. She had heard that hundreds of times when her

**********************

father spoke to her stepbrothers, and she had adopted his creed for her own. Furthermore, the villagers were frightening the children, which she refused to let continue.

Mary tugged at Jasmine's skirts to get her attention, and in a shrill little voice, she asked, "Isn't you aftert of the Black Wolf, Lady Jasmine?

"Of course not!" Jasmine said with a bright, reassur-ing smile.

"They say," young Tom interjected in an awed voice, "the Wolf is as tall as a tree!"

"A tree!" Jasmine chuckled, trying to make a huge joke of the Wolf and all the lore surrounding him.

"IF he is, 'twould be a sight worth seeing when he tries to mount his horse! Why, 'twould take four squires to hoist him up there!"

The absurdity of that image made some of the children giggle, exactly as Jasmine had hoped.

"I heert," said young Will with an eloquent shud-der, "he tears down walls with his bare hands and drinks blood!"

"Yuk!" said Jasmine with twinkling eyes. "Then 'tis only indigestion which makes him so mean.

If he comes to Belkirk, we'll offer him some good Scottish ale instead."

"My pa said," put in another child, "be rides with a giant beside him, a Go-liath called Arik who carries a war axe and chops up children

"I heert" another child interrupted ominously. Jasmine cut in lightly, "Let me tell you what I have

heard. With a bright smile, she began to shepherd them toward the abbey, which was out of sight just beyond a bend down the road.

"I heard," she impro vised gaily, "that he's so very old that he has to squint to see, just like this-"

She screwed up her face in a comical exaggeration of a befuddled, near-blind person peering around blankly, and the children giggled.

As they walked along, Jasmine kept up the same light-

*****************

hearted teasing comments, and the children fell in with the game, adding their own suggestions to make the Wolf seem absurd.

But despite the laughter and seeming gaiety of the moment, the sky had suddenly darkened as a bank of heavy clouds rolled in, and the air was turning bitingly cold, whipping Jasmind's cloak about her, as if nature herself brooded at the mention of such evil.

Jasmine was about to make another joke at the Wolf's expense, but she broke off abruptly as a group of mounted clansmen rounded the bend from the abbey, coming toward her down the road.

A beautiful girl, clad as Jasmine was in the somber gray gown, white wimple, and short gray veil of a novice nun, was mounted in front of the leader, sitting demurely sideways in his saddle, her timid smile confirming what Jasmine already knew.

With a silent cry of joy, Jasmine started to dash forward, then checked the unladylike impulse and made herself stay where she was.

Her eyes clung to her father, then drifted briefly over her clansmen, who were staring past her with the same grim disapproval they'd shown her for years-ever since her stepbroth-er had successfully circulated his horrible tale.

Sending the children ahead with strict orders to go directly to the abbey,

Jasmine waited in the middle of the road for what seemed like an eternity until, at last, the group halted in front of her.

Her father, who'd obviously stopped at the abbey where Bailey, Jasmine's stepsister, was also staying, swung down from his horse, then he turned to lift Bailey down.

Jasmine chafed at the delay, but his scrupulous attention to courtesy and dignity was so typical of the great man that a wry smile touched her lips.

Finally, he turned fully toward her, opening his arms wide. Jasmine hurtled into his embrace, hugging him fiercely, babbling in her excitement:

"Father, I've missed you so! 'Tis nearly two years since I've see you! Are you well? You look well.

You 've scarce changed in all this time!"

****************

Gently disentangling her arms from about his neck, Lord Cassius set his daughter slightly away from him while his gaze drifted over her tousled hair, rosy cheeks, and badly rumpled gown.

Jasmine squirmed inwardly beneath his prolonged scrutiny, praying that he approved of what he saw and that, since he'd obviously stopped at the abbey already, the abbess's report had been pleasing to him.

Two years ago, her behavior had gotten her sent to the abbey; a year ago, Bailey had been sent down here for safety's sake while the laird was at war.

Under the abbess's firm guidance, Jasmine had come to appreciate her strengths, and to try to overcome her faults.

But as her father inspected her from head to toe, she couldn't help wondering if he saw the young lady she was now or the unruly girl she'd been two years ago.

His blue eyes finally returned to her face and there was a smile in them. "Ye've become a woman, Jasmine."

Jasmine's heart soared, coming from her taciturn father, such a comment constituted high praise.

"I've changed in other ways too, Father," she promised, her eyes shining "I've changed a great deal."

"Not that much, my girl." Raising his shaggy white brows, he looked pointedly at the short veil and wimple hanging forgotten from her fingertips.

"Oh!" Jasmine said, laughing and anxious to explain.

"I was playing hoodman-blind er. with the children, and it wouldn't fit beneath the hood. Have you seen the abbess? What did Mother Ambrose tell you?

Laughter sparked in his somber eyes. "She told me," he replied dryly, "that ye've a habit of sitting on yon hill and gazing off into the air, dreaming, which sounds familiar, lassic.

And she told me ye've a tendency to nod off in the midst of mass, should the priest sermonize longer than you think seemly, which also sounds familiar."

***************

Jasmine's heart sank at this seeming betrayal from the abbess whom she so admired.

In a sense, Mother Ambrose was laird of her own grand demesne, con-trolling revenues from the farmlands and livestock that belonged to the splendid abbey, presiding at table other matters that involved the laymen who worked on the abbey grounds as well as the nuns who lived cloistered within its soaring walls.

Bailey was terrified of the stern woman, but Jasmine loved her, and so the abbess's apparent betrayal cut deeply.

Her father's next words banished her disappoint-ment. "Mother Ambrose also told me," he admitted with gruff pride, "that you've a head on your shoul-ders befitting an abbess herself. She said you're a Cassius through and through, with courage enough to be laird of yer own clan.

But you'll no' be that," he warned, dashing Jasmine's fondest dream.

With an effort, Jasmine kept the smile pinned to her face, refusing to feel the hurt of being deprived of that right-a right that had been promised to her until her father married Jasmine 's widowed mother and ac-quired three stepsons in the bargain.

Alexander, the eldest of the three brothers, would

assume the position that had been promised to her.

That, in itself, wouldn't have been nearly so hard to bear if Alexander had been nice, or even fair-minded, but he was a treacherous, scheming liar, and Jasmine knew it, even if her father and her clan did not.

Within a year after coming to live at Cassius keep, he'd begun carrying tales about her, tales so slanderous and ghastly, but so cleverly contrived, that, over a period of years, he'd turned her whole clan against her.

That loss of her clan's affection still hurts unbearably. Even now, when they were looking through her as if she didn't exist for them, Jenny had to stop herself from pleading with them to forgive her for things she had not done.

***************"

William, the middle brother, was like Bailey -sweet and as timid as can be-while Malcolm, the youngest, was as evil and as sneaky as Alexander.

"The abbess also said," her father continued, "that you're kind and gentle, but you've spirit, too..."

"She said all that?" Jasmine asked, dragging her dismal thoughts from her stepbrothers. "Truly?"

"Aye." Jasmine would normally have rejoiced in that answer, but she was watching her father's face, and it was becoming more grim and tense than she had ever seen it.

Even his voice was strained as he said, "Tis well you've given up your heathenish ways and that you're all the things you've become, Jasmine."

He paused as if unable or unwilling to continue, and Jasmine prodded gently, "Why is that, Father?"

"Because," he said, drawing a long, harsh breath, "the future of the clan will depend on your answer to my next question."

His words trumpeted in her mind like blasts from a clarion, leaving Jasmine dazed with excitement and joy:

"The future of the clan depends on you. "She was so happy, she could scarcely trust her ears.

It was as if she were up on the hill overlooking the abbey, dreaming her favorite daydream-the one where her father always came to her and said,

"Jasmine, the future of the clan depends on you. Not your stepbrothers.

You. It was the chance she'd been dreaming of to prove her mettle to her clansmen and to win back their affec-tion.

In that daydream, she was always called upon to perform some incredible feat of daring, some brave and dangerous deed, like scaling the wall of the Black Wolf's castle and capturing him single-handedly.

But no matter how daunting the task, she never ques-tioned it, nor hesitated a second to accept the chal-lenge.

She searched her father's face. "What would you have me do?" she asked eagerly. "Tell me, and I will! I'll do any-"

"Will you marry Edric MacPherson

*****************

"Whaaat?" gasped the horrified heroine of Jasmine's daydream. Edric MacPherson was older than her father, a wizened, frightening man who'd looked at her in a way that made her skin crawl ever since she'd begun to change from girl to maiden.

'Will you, or will you no'?"

Jasmine's delicate auburn brows snapped together. "Why?" asked the heroine who never questioned.

A strange, haunted look darkened his face. "We took a beating at Cornwall, lass-we lost half our men. Alexander was killed in battle. He died like a Cassius," he added with grim pride, "fighting to the end."

"I'm glad for your sake, Papa," she said, unable to feel more than a brief pang of sorrow for the step-brother who'd made her life into a hell.

Now, as she often had in the past, she wished there was something she could do to make him proud of her. "I know you loved him as if he were your own son."

Accepting her sympathy with a brief nod, he re-turned to the discussion at hand:

"There were many amongst the clans who were opposed to going to Cornwall to fight for King James's cause, but the clans followed me anyway.

'Tis no secret to the English that 'twas my influence which brought the clans to Corn-wall, and now the English king wants vengeance. He's sending' the Wolf to Scotland to attack Cassius keep."

Ragged pain edged his deep voice as he admitted, "We'll no' be able to withstand a siege now, not unless the MacPherson clan comes to support us in our fight.

The MacPherson has enough influence with a dozen other clans to force them to join us as well."

Jasmine 's mind was reeling. Alexander was dead, and the Wolf really was coming to attack her home.

Her father's harsh voice snapped her out of her daze.

"Jasmine! Do you ken what I've been saying? MacPherson has promised to join in our fight, but only if you'll have him for husband.

Through her mother, Jasmine was a countess and heiress to a rich estate which marched with MacPherson's.

"He wants my lands?" she said almost hopefully, remembering the awful way Edric MacPherson's eyes had wandered down her body when he'd stopped at the abbey a year ago to pay a "social call" upon her.

"Aye."

"Couldn't we just give them to him in return for his support?" she volunteered desperately, ready willing to sacrifice a splendid demesne without hes. itation, for the good of her people.

"He'd not agree to that! her father said angrily. "There's honor in fighting for kin, but he could no send his people into a fight that's no' their own, and then take your lands in payment to him."

"But, surely, if he wants my lands badly enough, there's some way-"

"He wants you. He sent word to me in Cornwall." His gaze drifted over Jasmine's face, registering the star-tling changes that had altered her face from its thin, freckled, girlish plainness into a face of almost exotic beauty.

"Ye've your mother's look about ye now, lass, and it's whetted the appetites of an old man. I'd no' ask this of you if there was any other way."

Gruffly, he reminded her, "You used to plead wi' me to name you laird. Ye said there was naught you wouldna' do fer yer clan..."

Jasmine's stomach twisted into sick knots at the thought of committing her body, her entire life, into the hands of a man she instinctively recoiled from, but she lifted her head and bravely met her father's gaze. "Aye, father," she said quietly. "Shall I come with you now?"

***************

The look of pride and relief on his face almost made the sacrifice worthwhile. He shook his head.

"Tis best you stay here with Bailey. We've no horses to spare and we're anxious to reach Cassius and begin preparations for battle. I'll send word to the MacPher-son

********************

son that the marriage is agreed upon, and then send ne here to fetch you to him." someone

When he turned to remount his horse, Jasmine gave into the temptation she'd been fighting all along Instead of standing aside, she moved into the rows of mounted clansmen who had once been her friends and playmates.

Hoping that some of them had per-haps heard her agree to marry the MacPherson and that this might neutralize their contempt of her, she paused beside the horse of a ruddy, red-headed man.

"Good day to you, Renald Garvin," she said, smiling hesitantly into his hooded gaze. "How fares your lady wife?"

His jaw hardened, his cold eyes flickering over her. "Well enough, I imagine," he snapped.

Jasmine swallowed at the unmistakable rejection from the man who had once taught her to fish and laughed with her when she fell into the stream.

She turned around and looked beseechingly at the man in the column beside Renald. "And you, Michael MacCleod? Has your leg been causing you any pain?"

Cold blue eyes met hers, then looked straight ahead. She went to the rider behind him whose face was filled with hatred and she held out her hand beseech-ingly, her voice choked with pleading.

"Garrick Car-michael, it has been four years since your Becky drowned. I swear to you now, as I swore to you then, I did not shove her into the river. We were not quarreling-twas a lie invented by Alexander to-"

His face as hard as granite, Garrick Carmichael spurred his horse forward, and without ever looking at her, the men began passing her by.

Only old Josh, the clan's armorer, pulled his ancient horse to a halt, letting the others go on ahead

Leaning down, he laid his callused palm atop her bare head. " know you speak truly, lassie," he said, and his unceas ing loyalty brought the sting of tears to her eyes as she gazed up into his soft brown ones.

"Ye have a temper, there's no denyin' it, but even when ye were but a wee

thing, ye kept it bridled. Garrick Carmichael and the others might o' been fooled by Alexander's angelic looks, but not ol' Josh.

You'll no' see me grievin' o'er the loss o' him! The clan'll be better by far wit' young William leadin' it.

Carmichael and the others-" he added reassuringly, "they'll come about in their thinkin' o' you, once they ken yer marrying the

MacPherson for their sake as well as your sire's." "Where are my stepbrothers?" Jasmine asked hoarse-ly, changing the subject lest she burst into tears.

"They're comin' home by a different route. We couldn't be sure the Wolf wouldn't try to attack us while we marched, so we split up after leavin' Corn-wall.

" With another pat on her head, he spurred his horse forward.

As if in a daze, Jasmine stood stock-still in the middle of the road, watching her clan ride off and disappear around the bend.

"It grows dark," Bailey said beside her, her gentle voice filled with sympathy. "We should go back to the abbey now."

The abbey. Three short hours ago, Jasmine had walked away from the abbey feeling cheery and alive.

Now she felt dead. "Go ahead without me. I-I can't go back there. Not yet. I think I'll walk up the hill and sit for a while."

"The abbess will be annoyed if we aren't back before dusk, and it's near that now," Bailey said apprehensively.

It had always been thus between the two girls, with Jasmine breaking a rule and Bailey terrified of bending one.

Bailey was gentle, biddable, and beautiful, with blond hair, hazel eyes, and a sweet disposition that made her, in Jasmine's eyes, the embod-iment of womanhood at its best.

She was also as meek and timid as Jasmine was impulsive and courageous.

Without Jasmine, she'd not have had a single adven-ture-nor ever gotten a scolding. Without Bailey to worry about and protect, Jasmine would have

had many more adventures-and many more soold-ings.

As a result, the two girls were entirely devoted to each other, and tried to protect one another as much as possible from the inevitable results of each other's shortcomings.

Bailey hesitated and then volunteered with only a tiny tremor in her voice, "I'll stay with you.

If you remain alone, you'll forget about time and likely be pounced upon by a-a bear in the darkness."

At the moment, the prospect of being killed by a bear seemed rather inviting to Jasmine, whose entire life stretched before her, shrouded in gloom and foreboding.

Despite the fact that she truly wanted, needed, to stay outdoors and try to reassemble her thoughts, Jasmine shook her head, knowing that if they stayed, Bailey would be drowning in fear at the thought of facing the abbess. "No, we'll go back."

Ignoring Jasmine's words, Bailey clasped Jasmine's hand and turned to the left, toward the slope of the hill that overlooked the abbey, and for the first time it was Bailey who led and Jasmine who fol-lowed.

In the woods beside the road, two shadows moved stealthily, staying parallel with the girls' path up the hill.

By the time they were partway up the steep incline, Jasmine had already grown impatient with her own self-pity, and she made a Herculean effort to shore up her flagging spirits.

"When you think on it," she offered slowly, directing a glance at Bailey,

"tis actually a grand and noble thing I've been given the opportunity to do-marrying the MacPherson for the sake of my people."

"You're just like Joan of Arc," Bailey agreed eagerly, "leading her people to victory!"

"Except that I'm marrying Edric MacPherson."

"And," Bailey finished encouragingly, "suffering a worse fate than she did!"

**************

Laughter widened Jasmine 's eyes at this depressing remark, which her well-meaning sister delivered with such enthusiasm.

Encouraged by the return of Jasmine's ability to laugh, Bailey cast about for something else with which to divert and cheer her.

As they neared the crest of the hill, which was blocked by thick woods, she said suddenly, "What did Father mean about your hay. ing your mother's 'look about you?"

"I don't know," Jasmine began, diverted by a sudden, uneasy feeling that they were being watched in the deepening dusk.

Turning and walking backward, she looked down toward the well and saw the villagers had all returned to the warmth of their hearths. Drawing her cloak about her, she shivered in the biting wind, and without much interest, she added,

"Mother Ab-bess said my looks are a trifle brazen and that I must guard against the effect I will have on males when I leave the abbey."

"What does all that mean?"

Jasmine shrugged without concern. "I don't know." Turning and walking forward again, Jasmine remem-bered the wimple and veil in her fingertips and began to put the wimple back on.

"What do I look like to you?" she asked, shooting a puzzled glance at Brenna. "I haven't seen my face in two years, except when I caught a reflection of it in the water. Have I changed much?"

"Oh yes," Bailey laughed. "Even Alexander wouldn't be able to call you scrawny and plain now, or say that your hair is the color of carrots.'

"Bailey!" nna!" Jasmine interrupted, thunderstruck by her own callousness. "Are you much grieved by Alexan-der's death? He was your brother and-"

"Don't talk of it any more," Bailey pleaded shaki-ly.

"I cried when Father told me, but the tears were few and I feel guilty because I didn't love him as I ought.

Not then and not now. I couldn't. He was so-mean-spirited. It's wrong to speak ill of the dead,

yet I can't think of much good to say of him." Her voice trailed off, and she pulled her cloak about her in the damp wind, gazing at Jasmine in mute appeal to change the subject.

"Tell me how I look, then," Jasmine invited quickly, giving her sister a quick, hard hug.

They stopped walking, their way blocked by the dense woods that covered the rest of the slope.

A slow, thoughtful smile spread across Bailey 's beautiful face as she studied her stepsister, her hazel eyes roving over Jasmine's expressive face, which was dominated by a pair of large eyes as clear as dark blue crystal beneath gracefully winged, auburn brows. "Well, you're you're quite pretty!"

"Good, but do you see anything unusual about me?" Jasmine asked, thinking of Mother Ambrose's words as she put her wimple back on and pinned the short woolen veil in place atop it. "Anything at all which might make a male behave oddly?"

"No," Bailey stated, for she saw Jasmine through the eyes of a young innocent.

"Nothing at all." A man would have answered very differently, for although Jasmine Cassius wasn't pretty in the conventional way, her looks were both stiking and provocative.

She had a generous mouth that beckoned to be kissed, eyes like liquid sapphires that shocked and invited, hair like lush, red-gold satin, and a slender, voluptuous body that was made for a man's hands.

"Your eyes are blue," Bailey began helpfully, try-ing to describe her, and Jasmine chuckled.

"They were blue two years ago," she said. Bailey opened her mouth to answer, but the words became a scream that was stifled by a man's hand that clapped over her mouth as he began dragging her backward into the dense cover of the woods.

Jasmine ducked, instinctively expecting an attack from behind, but she was too late.

Kicking and screaming against a gloved male hand, she was plucked from her feet and hauled into the woods.

************

Bailey was tossed over the back of her captor's horse like a sack of flour, her limp limbs attesting to the fact that she'd fainted, but Jasmine was not so easily sub-dued.

As her faceless adversary dumped her over the back of his horse, she threw herself to the side, rolling free, landing in the leaves and dirt, crawling on all fours beneath his horse, then scrambling to her feet.

He caught her again, and Jasmine raked her nails down his face, twisting in his hold.

"God's teeth!" he hissed, trying to hold onto her flailing limbs.

Jasmine let out a blood-chilling scream, at the same moment she kicked as hard as she could, landing a hefty blow on his shin with the sturdy, black boots which were deemed appropriate footwear for novice nuns.

A grunt of pain escaped the blond man as he let her go for a split second.

She bolted forward and might even have gained a few yards if her booted foot hadn't caught under a thick tree root and sent her sprawling onto her face, smacking the side of her head against a rock when she landed.

"Hand me the rope," the Wolf's brother said, a grim smile on his face as he glanced at his companion.

Pulling his limp captive's cloak over her head, Sabatian Winchester yanked it around her body, using it to pin her arms at her sides, then took the rope from his companion and tied it securely around Jasmine's mid-dle.

Finished, he picked up his human bundle and tossed it ignominiously over his horse, her derrière pointing skyward, then he swung up into the saddle behind her.