by Lucy Monroe
“Wouldn’t you agree?” the Sinclair asked.
And Eirik had to think quickly to remember the laird’s last words. “Yes.”
“Ciara’s change is particularly welcome.” Talorc gave Eirik a look he could not quite read.
“Good.” But Eirik did not think the laird would be as happy with the events of the night before.
The kiss that should not have happened, the sexual desire that had flared hotter than dragon’s fire between Eirik and Ciara.
The two warriors moved closer, circling each other. Eirik was watching for any opportunity as he knew Talorc was as well.
Finally, the Sinclair swept his foot out with a wolf’s speed to try to trip Eirik. “When Ciara came to live with us, she barely ate, spoke only occasionally and never, ever smiled.”
Eirik was no wolf though. He was not even purely raven. He was dragon. Jumping over the swiftly moving foot, he used the momentum to gain a short distance from the other warrior. Enough space to land a solid kick.
He kicked out with his right leg, while leaping forward to land an openhanded blow against Talorc’s head. “She seems fine now.”
The Sinclair avoided the kick and moved so that the blow was glancing, while bringing his own arm up toward Eirik’s chin. “She has nightmares and barely sleeps. She’s stopped eating again.”
The blow landed, knocking Eirik’s head back as the older man’s words sunk in. “And you claim she is doing better since my arrival?”
“Yes. The dreams and lack of sleeping started before you came; Abigail and I feared Ciara would become a ghost among us again, but she has not.” The laird stopped fighting in order to meet Eirik’s eyes. “Since her family’s deaths, Ciara has held her emotions so close, there are times she seems not to feel anything at all.”
“And yet you treat her as your daughter.”
“The first day she came into my keep and I looked in her eyes I saw pain unlike anything I had seen before. She hid it after that, but I never forgot it was there. She does not have to call me father for me to know I am hers. One day, she will realize this as well.”
Eirik felt regret for his words the night before, but the woman he knew was not lacking emotion at all. She was filled with anger. Toward him.
Perhaps it was time to tell Talorc the truth of Ciara’s brother’s death.
Ciara had lost her peaceful sanctuary on top of the towers, so she sought her next favorite place of solace—the forest. And solace she did need. She’d done her best to stay out of Eirik’s way, but her emotions were in more turmoil than they’d ever been. Busy seeing his people settled in, he seemed just as intent on avoiding her.
That did not stop him from giving her looks that made her thighs clench, her toes curl and her heart pound uncomfortably in her chest whenever he did see her though. He alternated between those heated looks and scowls that let her know he was still angry with her for questioning his intentions toward Laird Talorc.
Knowing the dragon was so disgusted with her did no good at tamping down her own feelings, either. Ciara had never been as aware of her own femininity. Her wolf wanted out to howl, to hunt…to mate.
Thankfully, Eirik was not another wolf to recognize the signs, or take advantage of them. It was all she could do to keep her reactions hidden from her adopted family.
It did not help that Ciara was still wavering in her decision to tell Laird Talorc of her dreams.
She berated herself for her indecision. She knew she could trust her laird, but to give the dreams to him was to let go of the last bit of her life she had shared with her brother.
With her mind in such turmoil, Ciara had no choice but to let the beast take over some nights. Unbeknownst to anyone else, she had taken to running in the forest after the others living in the keep were safely asleep.
Ciara had learned that in her wolf form, she could jump from her window to the castle wall, though it did not look possible. Then she would jump the nine feet from the top of the wall to the grass below. While the towers were more than three times that high, the castle wall was tall enough to keep marauders out, but not a determined femwolf in.
She was sleeping no better and disturbing dreams were plaguing her more than ever before. Worse than the nightmares of her brother’s or mother’s deaths, were the heated dreams replaying the kiss between her and Eirik.
Some did not end with her pulling away, either.
Those scared her the most.
The only sleep she got was in her wolf form, snuggled up at the base of her favorite tree. It was old, so tall she could not see the top if she looked straight up from the base. So big around, a whole family could live inside its trunk if it were hollow.
A tree that had grown since the beginning of time, or at least since the beginning of the Chrechte in the Highlands—she felt a connection to God and the Chrechte that had lived before her here. It was a special place. Perhaps even a sacred one.
So, she should not have been surprised to find someone else had found sanctuary at its base. A human woman curled against the bark, her body shivering in the cool summer night.
Moved by pity and concern, Ciara padded over in her wolf form and nudged the human female.
The woman flinched and whimpered, but did not scream. She sat up, looking wildly around before letting her gaze settle fully on Ciara.
Pale hair hung down around a face pinched with worry and blue eyes filled with tears. “Please tell me you’re the one. The dreams led me here, but if you’re not the one, you’re probably going to eat me. I don’t want to be eaten. I don’t think that would be much of an improvement over my father’s fists.”
Ciara was so shocked by the implication that a Highland man beat his daughter, she barked.
The other woman started, but seemed to try to force herself to relax. She put a trembling hand out as if to shake Ciara’s hand, or maybe let the wolf scent her. “My name is Mairi. Please tell me you are a shifter and not a wild wolf.”
Ciara’s wolf took over, sniffing Mairi’s hand. She smelled of herbs, dried blood and fragile human skin, but nothing to give concern.
“My father is a wolf,” Mairi continued to prattle. “His first mate was a non-shifting Chrechte like me. My mother. Please be the wolf I dreamed about. Father took a Chrechte for his second wife. He and my brother don’t think much of me, and neither does his new wife for that matter. I don’t have a wolf. They call me weak. Defective. Useless.”
The human woman’s voice broke on the last words and Ciara had to suppress the urge to growl. The anger growing inside her was not directed at Mairi and Ciara would not have the other woman frightened because of it.
Mairi clearly knew about their people and her scent said her story was true. But Ciara knew from her own experience, deceit could be masked.
Still she nudged the woman to stand. Mairi did, wincing as she gained her feet and Ciara’s determination to stay in her wolf’s skin faltered.
The scent of dried blood was strong, but so was that of desperation and fear. This human needed help.
Chapter 5
If you ignore the dragon, it will eat you. If you try to confront the dragon, it will overpower you. If you ride the dragon, you will take advantage of its might and power.
—CHINESE PROVERB
Ciara turned and trotted around the tree so she could shift. When she came back, Mairi was leaning against the tree, her face set in misery.
But it transformed with anticipation when she saw Ciara. “You are the one. You’re the princess of our people who can gift me with the ability to be a wolf, with strength to protect myself.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” She had never heard of such a thing. Not even in the ancient stories. “Besides, I’m not a princess. I’m an orphan.”
“Oh, no, my dreams do not lie. They led me here, to you. Only a princess of our people would dare roam the woods alone at night, unafraid of what might be lurking in the shadows.”
“You are alone.”
“But I’m scared spitless.” Mairi nodded as if to reinforce the claim, though her scent did that well enough, fear and fatigue coming off her in waves. “If I had any choice, I would not be out here; you can be assured of that.”
“You need help. You will find sanctuary with my clan.”
“If your clan takes me in, my father will consider it an act of war. He will insist on my return.”
“This same father whose fists have driven you into the forest alone and unprotected?”
Shame tinted Mairi’s cheeks. “Yes.”
“Your father’s dishonor is not yours.”
“If I could shift—”
“He would find another reason to hurt you. Men like him always do.” She thought of Luag and what kind of man he would be now if he had lived. Her reflection sent a shiver of old dread down her spine.
Ciara would help Mairi, whatever it took.
But the talkative yet frightened woman was shaking her head as if reading Ciara’s thoughts. “I…it wouldn’t be right…I can’t put your clan at risk.”
“Our laird will not fear the wrath of a man who takes his anger out on his own daughter.”
“He says I am stupid, that it’s my fault,” Mairi admitted as if telling a horrible secret about herself, not her abominable father. “My father says I make him too angry to hold back his fists.”
“He can’t be much of a Chrechte if he cannot control himself any better than that. And you cannot be so stupid if you made it all the way to this part of the Sinclair lands without being discovered before now.” They were only an hour’s walk from the keep, much too close for any but a truly clever woman to have traveled without detection.
Mairi shook her head, wincing as she did so. “I think perhaps your father was a very special man.”
“Yes, he is.”
“You said you were an orphan.”
“The Sinclair and his lady adopted me when the last of my family was lost to me.”
“He won’t want to make an enemy of my father.” Mairi’s voice was heavy with defeat. “Father is a laird and very powerful.”
Ciara would have none of it. “You do not know Talorc of the Sinclairs. There is no laird in the Highlands that he fears.”
Laird Talorc respected the Balmoral and his old second-in-command Barr, currently acting laird of the Donegals, but he feared no man, wolf or even dragon. It went without saying that no English baron or Lowland Scotland laird would intimidate him, either.
“I have heard of the Sinclair. ’Tis why I came to his holding and not another.” Mairi’s expression showed awe and a desperate hope Ciara understood too well. “Many fear him and his brother by marriage, the Balmoral.”
“And rightly they should.”
“You do not fear him though?” Mairi asked warily.
“No. He does not prey on those weaker than him.”
“That is good.” Though Mairi still didn’t sound entirely convinced and Ciara could not blame her. To be hurt by the one who was supposed to protect you had to have destroyed her trust in all who would have authority over her.
She whispered, “I wish I did not fear my father. My brother is not afraid of him.”
“Your father has broken the ancient laws of our people. Chrechte do not beat their children.” Though clearly some did. It made Ciara’s stomach knot with tension.
Mairi frowned. “I have heard my father say that the old laws don’t matter any longer, that the Faol have to make a new way.”
Laird Talorc and the secret council Ciara was not supposed to know existed would want to hear that. A pack leader who dismissed their oldest tenets to live by was a danger to them all, Faol and Éan alike.
Grief now mixed with pain and fear in Mairi’s scent and Ciara felt empathy for her. She knew the pain of accepting that the one you looked up to most in the world lacked what all Chrechte deemed of greatest importance—honor.
“Your father is part of the secret group determined to eradicate the Éan, isn’t he?” Ciara was guessing, but it just made sense.
A Chrechte so twisted he would hurt his only daughter was a man who would entertain unreasonable prejudices as well. And that new way for the Faol business just sounded too much like something Luag would have said to Galen.
“How did you know?”
“I didn’t, but I suspected.” She reached out and touched the other woman in comfort. “I have known others of like mind.”
“They want to kill all the Éan and say that the Faol cannot thrive until they are the only Chrechte left. My father hunts often, but once a month, he and others go hunting and it is not for game to feed the clan.”
Memories made Ciara clench her jaw so words would not come out.
“He wants the Faolchú Chridhe,” Mairi whispered.
“No,” Ciara practically shouted. “The sacred stone would not be safe in his foul hands.”
“You are right.” Mairi’s expression turned even more miserable. “He wants its power to overthrow Scotland’s king.”
“How does he know of the sacred stone’s existence?”
Mairi’s eyes glistened with tears. “My mother had the sight. She told him everything she saw, including her dreams of the Faolchú Chridhe and the power that can be drawn through it.”
Mairi’s voice softened when she mentioned her dam, but it was evident that she did not approve her mother’s choice to share such sacred things with a man like her father.
“She was deceived by her loyalty to her husband,” Ciara comforted the other woman.
Mairi nodded. “But he had no loyalty to her.”
“I am sorry.” The words felt inadequate, but Ciara had no others.
“He wanted more children, a son, but my mother miscarried with her two pregnancies after me. The last one when I was six summers. She drowned in the loch she did our washing in two months later.”
Was Mairi saying her father had killed her mother?
“He knew.” Mairi said it like she’d had too much drink and Ciara realized the woman’s condition was worsening.
“What did he know?” she asked as she tried to ease the human woman to the ground.
But Mairi fought Ciara’s efforts, remaining standing against the tree. “He knew that to have more children, he had to bed another and he could not do that while my mother lived. She was his true mate.”
Ciara’s stomach roiled at the implications. For a Chrechte to kill his mate was anathema to even the worst among their people. “You realized this so young?”
“No, but later, I knew and I hated him for it, even before he learned of my deficiency, that I am not wolf.”
Ciara had no words of comfort for something so evil.
“I have it, too, the sight, but I never told him.” Mairi sounded pleased by her deception.
And well she should be.
Ciara asked, “Not even to stop the beatings though?”
“No. It would not have been worth it. I would not help him in any of his plans.”
“You are strong of mind and spirit.” Ciara’s voice was warm with approval and she hoped the other woman heard it.
“For a human, you mean.”
“For anyone. I told my brother about my dreams and he would have misused the Faolchú Chridhe for his own gain.” And that was Ciara’s own shame to bear.
It was Mairi’s turn to extend comfort and she did. “It was not wrong of you, to trust the one you loved.”
Ciara wished she could believe that. “His ignorance cost him his life.” It was the first time she’d admitted it aloud.
“I’m glad you can finally acknowledge that.”
Both women jumped at the sound of Eirik’s deep masculine voice, but Ciara felt more than shock. A lot more.
Even the gravity of her talk with Mairi could not diminish Ciara’s instant reaction to the prince’s presence.
Ciara spun to face him. He stood as naked as she in the moonlight, both having left their clothes behind to shift into their animal forms apparently.
She could not help letting her gaze slide down his body where it snagged on the quite impressive protuberance from between his legs.
He was physically prepared to mate and against all logic and her will, her body throbbed in response.
“As flattering as your interest is, faolán, now is not the time to pursue it.”
He called her little wolf? Arrogant warrior! She might be smaller than he, but she was no babe in arms. However, her wolf preened at the endearment, snapping for a chance to come forth and scent the dragon.
Ciara gritted her teeth and fought her feral nature with all her considerable will. “Do not mistake curiosity for interest.”
Even if her own wolf wanted to do so.
He laughed, his head thrown back, his body showing no signs of losing its own interest. “You are a spitfire, but I am no fool. Say what you like, your body tells the truth.”
Why did she find it so difficult to mask her scent around this man? What had become ingrained habit for her flew the way of the sparrow seeking warmer climes for the winter when he came near. Her body betrayed her in ways it never did with others, not since she’d taken to hiding her thoughts and emotions so long ago behind a façade of unperturbed calm.
It was the only way to allay Abigail’s potent concern and Laird Talorc’s rough brand of compassion.
“What are you doing here?” Ciara demanded, ignoring Eirik’s claim and hoping he would let the matter drop.
“You run at night, alone in the woods.” The censure in his tone would have done their laird proud. “It is not safe.”
“So, you’ve been watching over me?” Why would the dragon do such a thing?
She did not need a protector, nor did she need to know he saw himself as such. Her wolf and feminine instincts both found that possibility far too appealing.
“Aye.”
“I don’t believe you.” His appearance tonight had to be happenstance. “I would have noticed.”
It was not as if a dragon flying overhead in the sky could be so easily overlooked.
He rolled his eyes as if reading her thoughts. “A raven is not so easy to detect.”
Oh, of course. Her mind was too muddled with lack of sleep and meeting up with injured women in the forest.
