The Passion Read Online Free PDF Page A

ennium, human and werewolf, you wil do the same. The choices you make wil change the course of history. I counsel you only not to make them in ignorance."
    "You gave me the power, mon père ," Nicholas said stiffly. "You can take it away." It was the rote and proper reply for the young, ascending ruler to make to the standing ruler whenever their ambitions came into conflict. Nicholas meant it… and he did not. The thirst for vengeance was a dangerous thing, singular and obsessive, and it had the ability to blind him to everything that was important—even the ultimate welfare of the pack. Perhaps that was the most important lesson his elder had to teach him tonight.
    Alexander replied, with perhaps a touch of irony, "I would not want your power at this moment, thank you. Nor would I want your choices."
    Another silence. Humans scurried in the distance.
     
    Sirens. Garbage trucks.
    Nicholas said very lowly, " Why ? How did you come to know of the existence of this creature and why was it here?"
    "Because," replied Alexander wearily, "I am responsible. I have always been responsible. It was I, you see, who first brought the human woman into the pack."
    Five years earlier, in an inauguration ceremony that had drawn werewolves from al over the world to the Devoncroix compound in Alaska, Nicholas Devoncroix had been official y named heir designate to the pack leadership. Since he was the youngest offspring of the ruling family which had held its power uninterrupted for more than a mil ennium, the choice was no surprise, but the ceremony was essential. They were a people of ritual, of tradition and slow, certain change. They did not like surprises. Upheaval was vastly disturbing to them.
    Nicholas tried not to think about what an upheaval of this magnitude would do to the pack.
    Nicholas had been groomed from birth for his role in life. His primary education had been at an exclusive school in Switzerland which turned out more than its share of scientists, statesmen and prodigies in the arts—and which no human had ever attended—and he held graduate degrees from Princeton, Oxford and Cambridge universities. At twenty-three he had been president of one of the Devoncroix Corporation's most lucrative companies; at twenty-five he had perfected the satel ite technology which was the basis of the entire communications and security system that blanketed the pack around the world. By age thirty he had been responsible for bringing into the col ective coffers some thirty-two bil ion dol ars' worth of new business.
    From the compound in Alaska—a vast and secret, mostly underground complex which served both as company headquarters and as symbolic ancestral home to al the pack—Nicholas had travel ed the circumference of the globe, from the rain forests of the Amazon to the mountains of central China, learning the business and the pack he was to rule.
    He had won at Wimbledon, broken the sound barrier in an experimental aircraft, climbed Kilimanjaro and Everest alone. He had negotiated delicate deals between humans of warring countries—al to the pack's benefit, of course—and settled dangerous disputes between competing clans within the pack.
    Although technical y he would not assume control of the pack until the death of his father, in every other, practical way he was the pack. He was wel loved, wel respected. It was general y agreed without argument that Nicholas Devoncroix would continue the fine tradition of progressive, benevolent rulership his ancestors had established over a thousand years ago.
    But now, sitting beneath the cold shadow of the stone wolf, Nicholas felt an emptiness grip his bel y and he thought, I have failed. Three of my own are dead at the hands of another werewolf. A monstrous hybrid human is at the heart of this disaster and I never even knew of its existence. The pack looked to me for protection, but I have failed.
    History wil record that the beginning of the end was on this night, in this place… on my