by Lucy Monroe
Suddenly Gart was there, standing between him and Artair. While Eirik appreciated the loyalty, the other warrior would not stop Eirik from finding out what had upset his mate.
“Stand aside. Artair will answer me.”
The slightly smaller soldier pushed his friend to the side and met Eirik’s gaze, his own speculative. “She is not well pleased with God’s plans for her future, I think.”
“She told you she is a seer?” Eirik demanded, suddenly understanding Ciara’s fury when they had first arrived and she’d discovered the Balmoral soldiers knew of his dragon.
“What? No.” Artair’s expression turned thoughtful. “Mayhap that explains some of her concern about taking a mate though.”
Outrage swelled inside Eirik and he felt the partial change taking over his hands again. “You talked to my faolán about mating her?” The dragon was too close to the surface for Eirik’s voice to come out with anything but a growl.
“You want to mate the Sinclair femwolf?” Gart demanded, apparently oblivious to the threat of Eirik’s dragon, his attention fixed entirely on Artair, and his own tone laced with fury.
“You have both gone mad to even ask me that,” Artair said with a growl of his own. He scowled, flinching only slightly at the sight of Eirik’s hands, but his gaze quickly locked hostilely with Eirik’s. “If you want to know why she’s frowning, ask her.”
Then Artair turned to his fellow soldier, no diminishment in his anger whatsoever. “As for you, get this through your thick head. I am not going to mate your sister. Ever.”
Gart stumbled back a step. “But we were to be brothers.”
“I don’t want to be your brother.” The pain and fury in Artair’s voice was difficult to hear.
However, Gart’s hurt at the other warrior’s words was so great and so obvious, Eirik could not help pitying him as well. And finally, Eirik thought he understood what Artair and Ciara had been talking about in the hut.
The two men were sacred mates, but clearly Gart had blinded himself to this truth, and he could not understand why his best friend would refuse to be his brother.
Eirik had had enough of this ridiculousness and he’d only been witness to it for a short time. No doubt their laird and Artair himself were heartily sick of the Chrechte soldier’s willful refusal to see the truth.
Eirik gave Gart a good clout on the back of the head, knocking the Balmoral guard to his knees. “A Chrechte cannot mate his brother, you idiot.”
“Mate?” Gart shook his head, though Eirik doubted his blow had knocked the man’s brain loose.
’Twas more likely that single word he was trying to dislodge. Gart looked up at Artair, who was staring at him with an expression Eirik was determined to see on his little femwolf’s features in the very near future.
“You want to be my mate?” Gart asked.
“I don’t know.” Artair did not appear to be teasing; he seemed to have some serious doubts on the topic. “Stupidity is not an attractive feature in a mate, but you seem to have more than your fair share.”
Gart surged to his feet and grabbed Artair by his upper arms, shaking him. “Do not get on your high horse right now. Just answer my question.”
“Yes.” Though Artair wasn’t looking all that pleased by the prospect.
“But you’re my brother.”
This time when Artair flinched, Eirik did not enjoy seeing it quite so much. “I am not.”
“You are my best friend.”
“Yes.”
“And have been for the whole of our lives.”
Artair nodded. “What better person to take as a mate?”
“I dreamed of children.”
This time there was no flinch, just the scent of sadness. “I cannot give them to you.”
“I know.” Gart dropped his hands from the other soldier and stepped back, putting more than physical distance between them. “I do not know if I can give up that hope.”
“You really are an idiot.” Mairi, who had been standing wide-eyed and quiet during this exchange, gave Gart a look of disapproval. “You think love is so common a gift you can just throw it away when it is offered?”
“We are not speaking of love, but of mating,” Gart replied with a frown for the small woman.
Mairi looked up at Lais and then back to Gart. “Are they not the same?”
“Nay,” Lais answered when Gart did not. “There is no Chrechte law that states mates will love each other.”
Mairi’s soft features hardened. “I see.”
“Besides, a warrior does not live his life by the dictates of his heart,” Gart said dismissively.
Eirik could not disagree with him, but it looked like Artair was less than impressed with his friend’s sentiments. Mairi didn’t look well pleased, either.
Crossing her arms, she gave Lais a look Eirik could not decipher and moved away from him. The eagle looked confused and disgruntled, though he made no move to close the gap between him and the human woman.
“You are right,” Artair said, surprising Eirik. “A warrior cannot bow to the dictates of his heart.”
The relief on Gart’s face was reflected in his scent. “So, you will begin courting my sister?”
“Never.” There was enough venom in the word to kill and enough certainty to serve as the foundation of a fortress.
“But—”
“We will feed your companions and then the women can have the hut to sleep in,” Artair said to Eirik, cutting his fellow soldier off. “I have first watch on the beach tonight and Gart can sleep outside the hut.”
“Ciara will sleep with my dragon in the forest. Lais and Gart can share the hut and watch over Mairi.”
“Do not argue about this,” he warned the eagle shifter over the Éan royal mind link.
Lais dipped his chin in acknowledgment, but he did not look happy. Eirik did not care. The man was a warrior and he knew better than to gainsay his prince.
Mairi didn’t look any happier, but Eirik did not think it had anything to do with the sleeping arrangements. She was glaring at Gart and Artair in turn.
She had a lot of spirit for a woman who could not shift.
Ciara shook her head. “It would be more proper for me to share the hut with Mairi.”
“My dragon will protect your dreams,” he said in a tone others knew better than to dispute.
Ciara did not look impressed. “I think it would be better the way Artair suggested.”
“It will be as I have stated.”
“You’re truly one of the most stubborn men I have ever known, and I’ve lived the last seven years with Talorc of the Sinclairs as my father!” The exasperation in her tone made him smile.
Odd.
Mairi reached out and patted Ciara’s arm. “Let his dragon protect your dreams this night. This quest will not be easy and you will need your strength.”
“Are you speaking as a friend or a seer?” Ciara demanded, sounding annoyed.
“Both.”
Eirik placed his hand on the small of Ciara’s back and started leading the group toward the forest and the hut concealed there. “Listen to your friend.”
“You only say that because she agrees with you. I didn’t hear you telling Gart to listen to her.”
The soldier in question had left the group already and headed down the beach. “He must make up his own mind about his future.”
“But he’s hurting both himself and Artair.”
“He would cause more pain if he agreed to a mating he resented.”
Which did not mean Eirik intended to give her much choice in their mating. Her unreasonable determination never to take a mate could not be allowed to stand in the way of the good of both their peoples.
Eventually, she would understand that truth, he was certain.
With nothing but the moonlight to guide them, Eirik led Ciara deeper into the forest. They were headed toward the small clearing protected from view by a dense growth of trees that Artair had suggested would make
a good night’s resting place for a dragon.
She’d continued to argue about the sleeping arrangements all through Mairi and Lais eating their stew and making plans for the morrow. However, Ciara came with him when Eirik left the hut. He would count that, at least, a victory.
“I would feel better if we had waited for Gart to return before leaving Mairi and Lais in the hut.”
“So you said.”
“Well, why didn’t you listen?”
“Why does it matter if he has returned to the hut or not? You are worried about him,” Eirik guessed.
He had noticed that despite her attempt to keep others at a distance, Ciara showed great concern and compassion for those around her. Abigail had told him that Ciara helped so much with the twins, she was more a second mother than a sister.
In the weeks he had lived among the Sinclairs, Eirik had noted time and again Ciara showing her natural inclination to serve her people. She had not known where that inclination came from, but as keeper of the Faolchú Chridhe she would feel the need to take care of the Faol.
No matter how much she told herself she didn’t want to care for anyone.
“I’m worried about Mairi,” Ciara said, showing again she could not help herself caring for others. “You know the way Lais looks at her.”
“You do not trust my warrior to protect her?”
“From himself? No, I do not.”
“Lais will not hurt her.” She was safer in his presence than she could be anywhere else.
“Define hurt. Will he bed her?” Ciara asked with asperity and genuine worry.
Her time would be better spent in concern for his plans for the night, but he was grateful Ciara showed no concern about spending the night alone with Eirik.
“You are very plainspoken for a clan laird’s daughter.”
“I am also Faol. I know what happens in the night between men and women.”
His sweetly innocent Faol princess? He did not think so. “Oh? What do you know, faolán?”
“Never mind,” she said, sounding flustered. “I merely meant to say that there is more than one way for Mairi to be hurt.”
“The first time is always uncomfortable.” But if Lais compromised the other woman’s virtue, he would stand by whatever promise he made her.
Though Eirik doubted very much the healer would claim Mairi this night. She was still recovering from the beating her father had given her. Lais was very protective of his patients and would be doubly so of Mairi.
“How many virgins have you talked into your bed?” Ciara demanded, her scent giving away her anger at the thought even if her tone had not.
“None.”
“Then how would you know?”
“Are you jealous of the women I’ve touched intimately?” he asked, unwilling to pass up the opportunity to goad her.
“Of course not,” she said far too quickly and with little conviction. “I have no right to be jealous.”
“If you are attempting to mask your deceit, you are doing a poor job of it.” The acrid scent of jealousy mixed with the sour smell of a lie in the air around them.
She gasped. “What? You can tell I lied to you?”
She sounded far more worried about her inability to mask her true feelings than the fact she’d been caught in a lie. Contrary faolán.
“Aye.”
“But that’s impossible.”
He could not help it. He laughed. She sounded so appalled.
“It happens that way between mates sometimes,” Eirik assured her. “Barr can see through the images my sister, Sabrine, projects with her mind.”
“I am not your mate,” Ciara claimed with no more conviction but a fair amount of horror, and doing no better a job of masking her lie than before.
“My dragon says you are.”
“No. Surely your raven—”
“Wants to rub necks with you.”
“Oh, no.” She backed away from him, her entire body tensed for flight.
Though where she thought she was going, he could not imagine. His dragon could find her across the waters.
“I do not want a mate.” The trembling sincerity in her voice mixed with the scent of genuine distress made his dragon want to roar.
He would not have her terrified of what she had to know was the natural progression of things. “You have nothing to fear from me.”
“You cannot be that naïve.”
One thing he had never been accused of was naïveté. It startled a chuckle from him.
“Don’t you laugh. This is not funny. I won’t do it. I will not take a mate.” Her voice rose steadily until she was shouting the last before she turned and ran.
He gave thanks in that moment for the style of clothes Abigail had convinced Ciara to wear because she could not shift into her wolf without destroying them.
Even so, it took him longer to catch her in his human form than he expected. Fear had given her feet wings and her wolf lent her grace and dexterity as she jumped over fallen branches and tree roots without a single stumble.
He could not help admiring her affinity with the forest as another sign of her special Chrechte heritage. Once he caught up with her though, he did not allow that admiration to make him hesitate.
Sweeping her up into his arms even as they ran, he settled her against his chest. He turned direction and slowed to a walk, heading back toward the clearing.
Ciara flailed against him, struggling for release. The fact she did not gain even the hope of it should have told her something about what her instincts were telling her to do. She struggled, but she did not fight with her Chrechte skills or strength, and that was telling.
Even if she did not see it.
Eirik simply hugged her tight, preventing her from hurting herself and made dragon noises that had never come from him before meeting her. His own instincts told him the sounds were meant to comfort. The way she settled against him, muttering to herself about arrogant dragons and mates she did not want, implied her wolf recognized the dragon’s attempt to calm her.
When they broke through the trees into the open area that was just as Artair had described, Eirik stopped. The near full moon bathed the small clearing with white light that cast shadows at the trees’ edge.
Eirik did not release Ciara; he had no desire to spend the night chasing her through the forest. “Are you done running?”
“I will not take a mate.” She crossed her arms and glared up at him, the green of her eyes so dark in the moonlight, they looked black.
“You want me.”
“I don’t.”
He shook his head. “I can tell when you’re lying, remember.”
Her glare went sulfuric, but the evidence of her desire for him remained just as strong. That subtle fragrance that said her body was preparing for him teased at his senses, pushing against his control over both his own desires and his different forms, and nearly taking Eirik to his knees.
Her stubbornness would be both their undoing if he did not take matters into his own hands.
Words were not going to convince his stubborn faolán of anything. Their mating was a primal urge and he needed to woo her at the core of her femwolf.
He lowered his head and silenced her continuing arguments, filled as they were with deceit.
Did she even believe herself?
He did not think she could be that deluded, but then Gart had proven just how easily even Chrechte might blind themselves to truth.
Just as he expected, despite all Ciara’s claims to the contrary, her lips went soft and parted immediately against his. She wanted him true enough. She might even crave his touch as much as he did touching her.
Terror pounded in Ciara’s heart, but even the fear that had so many years to grow strong could not overwhelm her natural response to her dragon shifter. Her wolf demanded the chance to touch and scent the man holding her so close to his heart.
She broke her mouth from his in a last attempt at defiance. “I am not mating you.”
’Twas not fair. Nor right, that she should be so at risk for loss, but the most stubborn will in the world could not deny the instincts and emotions roiling through her.
He laughed and shook his head, as if amazed at her audacity, so clearly not deceived by her best attempts. “In the morning, you can tell me that again.”
She could try. In the morning, Ciara could fight her wolf’s needs and instincts, and she might even win for a time. But she knew deep in her heart that by tomorrow it would be too late to hope to return to the woman with the stone-encased heart.
Tonight, she would give in to the dragon and he would finish the work he began when the first crack happened in the granite around her once-shattered heart.
She acknowledged aloud, “Tomorrow will be too late.”
“Aye, it will.” His amber gaze challenged her to deny him regardless.
Her wolf growled, not at him, but at Ciara and she knew she was lost. She tilted her head and reconnected their mouths, giving her acquiescence with desperate lips.
He took the kiss like the prince of the Chrechte that he was, with power and possession. His mouth slanted over hers until the last vestiges of her fear drowned under his passion and she could have cried with gratitude. The dread she had lived with since the final loss of her birth family had become a burden almost too heavy to bear.
Continuing the crooning sounds he’d used earlier to calm her, Eirik set Ciara on her feet. Though he kept their mouths fused, his body bowed over hers, his arms encasing her in a way that both excited her and made her feel safe.
She let that feeling of safety wash through her like a cleansing tide. If he could give her this sense of peace, it was almost worth the pain that would inevitably follow.
Finished with thinking, she focused entirely on the sensations he elicited in her with his kiss.
Her hands went to his chest of their own accord, sliding over hard muscles and brushing the tiny nubs they found there. His big body shuddered at the contact and she had to do it again, circling her fingertips around his small male nipples.
