Her breath was short, her eyes huge when she ran up the steps to pound on his door. She gripped the flowers in one white-knuckled hand.

“What did you do to me?” she demanded the moment he opened the door.

He watched her steadily as he stepped back. “Come in, Rowan.”

“I want to know what you did to me. I want to know what this means.” She thrust the flowers at him.

“You gave me flowers once,” he said, almost brutally calm. “I know you’ve a fondness for them.”

“Did you drug the tea?”

Now that calm snapped off into insult. “I beg your pardon?”

“It’s the only explanation.” She whirled away from him to pace the room. “Something in the tea to make me imagine things, to do things. I’d never walk into the woods at night in my right mind.”

“I don’t deal in potions of that kind.” He added a dismissive shrug that had her trembling with fury.

“Oh, really.” She spun back to face him. Her hair tumbling over her shoulders, her eyes snapping vivid blue. “What kind, then?”

“Some that ease small hurts of body and soul. But it’s not my … specialty.”

“And what is your specialty, then?”

He shot her a look of impatience. “If you’d open your mind, you’d see you already know the answer to that.”

She stared into his eyes. As the image of the wolf flashed into her mind, she shook her head and stepped back. “Who are you?”

“You know who I am. And damn it, I’ve given you plenty of time to deal with it.”

“With what? Deal with what?” she repeated, and stabbed a finger into his chest. “I don’t understand anything about you.” This time she shoved him and had his own temper peaking. “I don’t understand anything about what you expect me to know. I want answers, Liam. I want them now or I want you to leave me alone. I won’t be played with this way, or tricked or made a fool of. So you tell me exactly what this means”—she ripped the flowers back out of his hand—“or I’m finished.”

“Finished, are you? Want answers, do you?” Anger and insult overpowered reason and he nodded. “Oh aye, then, here’s an answer for you.”

He threw out his hands. Light, brought on by temper rather than need, flashed cold blue from his fingertips. A thin white mist swirled around his body, leaving only those gold eyes bright and clear.

Then it was the eyes of the wolf, glinting at her as he bared his teeth in what might have been a sneer, his pelt gleaming midnight black.

The blood drained out of her head, left it light and giddy as the mists faded. She could hear in some dim distance the harsh, ragged sound of her own breath and the trembling scream that sounded only in her mind.