Only 04 - Only Love

cost.
    “Shannon,” he whispered in agony. “ Shannon. ”
    There was no answer.
    Whip opened his eyes. He was alone with the cold wind.
    He told himself that it was better this way, for Shannon and for himself, better to hurt now than to spend a lifetime regretting a choice made because his blood was running hot and she didn’t have enough sense to say no.
    It’s better this way.
    It has to be.
    Nothing else would be worth the pain I saw in her eyes.
     
    S HANNON awoke at the first unearthly notes of the panpipes. She had never heard the tune before, but she knew it was a lamentation. Grief resonated in the keening, minor key harmonies and shivering, wailing echoes, as though aman was breathing in pain and exhaling sorrow.
    The haunting music closed Shannon’s throat and filled her eyes with tears. As remote and desolate as moonrise in hell, the music mourned for all that was untouchable, unspeakable, irrevocable.
    “Damn you, Whip Moran,” she whispered to the darkness. “What right have you to mourn? It was your choice, not mine.”
    There was no answer but a soulful cry of loss and damnation breathed into the night.
    It was a long time before Shannon slept again, and she wept even in her sleep.
    When Shannon awoke again it was still dark. There was nothing to hear but the peculiar hush of a fresh snowfall mantling the land in silence. Shivering, she went to the badly fitted shutters and peered out.
    Beneath a clear sky and a waning moon, snow lay everywhere, soft and chill and moist. Too thin to survive the coming day, the layer of snow waited for its inevitable end in the rising heat of the sun.
    But until that came, every twig, every leaf, everything touching the snow would leave a clear mark. Especially the hooves of deer.
    Hurriedly Shannon dressed, forcing herself to think only of the coming hunt. Thinking about yesterday would only make her hands shake and her stomach clench. If she was to have any chance at all of bringing down a deer, she would have to have steady hands and nerves.
    Don’t think about Whip. He’s gone whether he’s here or on the other side of the world.
    He doesn’t want me. He couldn’t have made it any plainer if he had carved it on me with that bullwhip of his.
    The unexpected weight of her jacket made Shannon check its pockets. The first thing she found was the shotgun shells. The second was the jar and its accompanying bag.
    With a grimace of remembered humiliation, Shannon shoved the jar onto a cupboard shelf. The shotgun shells she kept, for she would have a use for them. Blindly, forcing herself not to think of anything but what must be done, Shannon shrugged into the jacket, grateful for its warmth. She felt cold all the way to her soul.
    Shivering, she lifted down the shotgun from its pegs, checked it, and found it clean and dry and ready to fire. She grabbed a handful of jerked venison, drank a cupful of cold water from the bucket, and eased out of the cabin into the dense, featureless darkness that preceded dawn.
    Breathing softly, Shannon stood just beyond the door and waited to see if Prettyface was going to object to being left alone. As much as she would appreciate his company, he still wasn’t fully recovered. He tired too quickly and was a bit stiff in his hindquarters where he had been shot. Another week would see the dog entirely healed, but she couldn’t wait that long to go hunting. A tracking snow such as this one was too good to pass up.
    Prettyface whined at the door and began scratching to get outside.
    “ No, ” Shannon whispered.
    Quickly she moved to the side of the house, where the wind couldn’t carry her scent inside.
    Prettyface’s whining increased in volume and intensity. So did the scratching sounds.
    Shannon knew Prettyface well enough to predict what would happen next. He would start to howl. That would awaken Whip, wherever his campsitewas, and he would come investigating.
    The thought of having to face Whip again made Shannon’s skin clammy and her stomach churn.
    Even if she could face Whip, he would pitch a fit about her taking off to hunt by herself. Yet that was exactly what she had to do. She had to hunt and hunt successfully, without depending on Cherokee. If Shannon couldn’t manage that, she faced death in the coming winter or a lifetime of taking care of other people’s homes, other people’s children, other people’s lives.
    And never having her own.
    Shannon wasn’t certain which was worse, dying or never