<BLOCKQUOTE>"I saw the only woman I ever loved almost destroyed by my secrets.But it was the telling of them, in the end, that brought her to ruin."<DIV ALIGN=RIGHT>From the journals of Matise Devoncroix</DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><P>Hannah Braselton North has abandoned civilization to spend her life in the Alaskan wilderness.And now she holds in her hands the supposed "memoirs" of one Matise Devoncroix.It is a story of strange desires and forbidden love--the tale of a magnificent hidden race and a tortured, doomed relationship.And it is somehow connectedto the critically injured male wolf Hannah pulled from the same airplane wreckage in which she discovered the diary.</P><P>But the deeper she delves into Devoncroix's story--and the stronger her recovering "patient" becomes--the more the sad, reclusive scientist realizes that what she is reading is no mere fiction.The world's true rulers have been revealed to her: fierce, strong, beautiful, and sensual creatures who have long dominated civilization in secret.The burned and bloody wolf she has taken into her small cabin is one of them: a living relation of the tragic Matise, Nicholas Devoncroix.And as his broken body mends, his awesome powers of attraction strengthen as well--as do his memories and his rage...and his lust for vengeance.</P>