viciously trying to get to his heart! He felt the invasion of the wolf’s massive, powerful jaws, the sound of his own shallow breathing. And then, as he struggled to take one last breath of air into his lungs, he felt the wolf bury his fangs in his heart.
“No…!”
The scream reverberated off the walls of Dain Phillips’s bedroom. Abruptly, he sat up, naked and gleaming with sweat, a tangle of sheets wrapped around his legs. Burying his sweaty face in his trembling hands, eyes shut tightly, he desperately tried to get rid of the white-wolf nightmare, of the warm blood flowing across his chest and torso as the wolf wrenched Dain’s beating heart out of his body.
“No,” Dain rasped, angrily jerking the sheets aside. “Damn him. No!” As he got to his feet, dizziness assailed him, forcing him to drop unceremoniously back onto the bed. Dain hated feeling so damn weak. But there was nothing he could do about it, he remembered with anger and resignation. He was dying. Yes, he was dying. A malignant tumor had grown in his brain, too deep to operate on. The doctors said he would die during the surgery, and without it he had less than six months to live. Six lousy months!
Breathing harshly, Dain battled his own weakness and dizziness and forced himself to stand. Anger had always given him power and control over his life. Now he used it as never before, to fight his failing body as he got to his feet. Water. He had to have water. His mouth was dry. He was burning up. The doctors had warned him of a fever coming and going as his body tried to fight off the swiftly growing tumor.
Sweaty, hot and shaky, Dain used the wall to steady himself as he stumbled from the large master bedroom to the bathroom. His mouth was so dry it felt like it was going to crack. That damn white wolf. He hated the animal! He hated the nightmare that plagued him every night!
Cursing, Dain fumbled for the light switch. The resulting glare hurt his eyes. The doctors said he’d be photophobic from now on—sunlight, or indeed, any bright light, would make him wince like he was being struck. Not that a little pain should bother Dain, who’d taken enough beatings as a young kid. One of the matrons at the orphanage had loved to slap the boys across the mouth. Smiling mirthlessly, Dain reached for a glass on the sink. He’d lost count of how many times that old crone had slapped him, but he remembered he’d always had red cheeks. Back then, it was a badge of honor.
Jerking the faucet handle, he felt the cold water spill across his hand. To hell with it. He set the glass aside, cupped his hands and filled them with the cold, delicious water. Leaning down, he splashed it across his face. Yes! The cold always revived him. Helped him. Steadied him. He remembered going to the boys’ bathroom to cry after getting a few good slaps from the matron. When his tears abated, he’d wash his face with cold water and make the redness disappear from his cheeks. What a lucky lad he was.
The cold water chased the last of the white wolf’s yellow eyes out of his haunted subconscious—at least, for now. Jerking a towel off the rack, Dain wiped his face. Filling the glass, he drank the water in huge gulps, some of it spilling out of the corners of his mouth, dripping down onto his chest and across his still-pounding heart.
Absently, he ran his fingers through the dark mat of hair across his chest, spreading the water over his heated skin. Water always soothed him. Turning, he put the glass aside. Why not take a swim in that Olympic-size pool of his? Indeed, why not? In six months, he wouldn’t be here to enjoy it, anyway.
Moving robotically and using his hands to steady himself, he walked through the fifteen-room mansion he’d bought for a mere ten million. It had every convenience, designer this and designer that, artwork from the Old Masters, Ming Dynasty porcelain from China and anything else a man could want with his money.
But money couldn’t make this cancerous tumor deep in his brain disappear. Opening the sliding glass door, he walked woodenly toward the pool as the predawn coolness wrapped around his hot, sweaty body. Dain halted and looked up. The lights of New York City glimmered in the distance. His mansion sat on some of the most expensive real estate a New Yorker could buy. But what did his magnificent house mean to him now?
He laughed harshly and glared heavenward. The night sky was light with a nearly full moon. Many of the stars were blotted out because of the moon’s pale, radiant light. Scowling, Dain was reminded of the white radiance of the wolf’s coat. Shrugging off the image, he turned his attention to the pool, long and rectangular and inviting. Without hesitation, Dain dove in.
Just the act of leaping into the cold depths, chilled by the early September weather, was enough to shock his senses and bring him back into the here and now. He swam with hard, swift strokes, trying to outrun the last of the nightmare, burying himself in the nurturing water, which surrounded him like a lover. He turned over and did a backstroke, moving like an arrow, his legs strong and powerful. Water raced and gurgled around him, healing him.
By the time he’d swum ten laps in the pool, the eastern sky was just beginning to lighten, not quite gray, but no longer inky black, either—a promise of something to come. As he dragged himself wearily out of the pool and wrapped himself in a thick, white terry-cloth towel, he studied the eastern horizon. The sun would edge it in gilt within a couple of hours. A tremor raced through him as he dried the short, black hair that clung to his skull and wiped the last of the rivulets from a harsh, rugged face that few would call handsome, he knew.
Well, he might not be a pretty boy, but he’d carved an empire that no one on the face of this earth could steal from him. After the orphanage had stolen his soul, crushed his heart and destroyed his hope, he’d sworn that once he got out of that hellhole of the damned, he’d insulate himself against the cruelty of the world and make a safe place for himself.
Laughing bitterly, Dain walked to a chair and sat down. His knees were feeling weak again. As he buried his face in the white towel, he closed his eyes and took a deep, shaky breath. He was dying. How damned unfair! He was only thirty-eight, one of the richest men in the world, and there wasn’t a cure on earth his money could buy to stop this brain tumor from growing, from taking his life.
Looking up, Dain gazed at the moon. Somewhere in this world there had to be something that could help him. But where? And what? His money had bought him advice from the world’s top specialists and they’d all told him to go home and die. There was nothing they could do for him. Oh, sure, they could operate and more than likely injure the other parts of his brain, leaving him a helpless dullard who couldn’t speak or walk.
Dain balled the damp towel in his hands as he studied the white orb in the sky, hanging so silently. It was so beautiful and free. In six months, he’d never see the moon shine again. And then he thought of the white wolf of his dream. Wolves howled at the moon. A sad, twisted smile pulled at his mouth. Well, maybe he was more wolf than he realized.
Laughing bitterly, Dain shook his head. What was he going to do? There had to be some kind of healing for his tumor somewhere in this forsaken world! For the last year, ever since the tumor had been discovered, he’d sent his best people abroad to find such a medicine and such a person—and they’d all come back empty-handed because no one in traditional medicine would tell him what he wanted to hear: that they could cure him of the tumor.
His mouth flattening, Dain studied the moon’s reflection on the surface of the pool, the water shivering now with ripples from the morning breeze. There was a wild, animal restlessness in his soul. This wasn’t the first time he’d felt it. No, when he’d been caged in that orphanage as a young boy no one wanted, he’d felt just like the white wolf that had pursued him in his nightmares. Yes, that was it. Maybe the white wolf that haunted his dreams nightly ever since he’d gotten the tumor was actually him.
I’m going crazy, Dain decided as he studied the water. Well, he if he wasn’t crazy yet, he would be soon enough. Toward the end, the doctors said, he’d be drugged and put away—for his own good—as the runaway tumor began to make his behavior volatile—even dangerous to himself and others. That was a joke. He’d made nothing but enemies growing up and later, while creating his empire. And while he’d loved many, many women, taken the fruit of their bodies, he’d never married. He’d recognized the greed in women’s eyes when they saw his billion-dollar empire, and he knew each and every one of them was simply playing