by Lucy Monroe
Now the acrid scent of bitterness came off her in waves when he was near.
’Twas no easy thing to accept, that change in his mate’s regard, no matter that his own actions had brought it on.
He’d survived the last six years holding her promises of eternal love inside where none could see, question or condemn. He’d known he didn’t deserve her love after letting her down as he had, but he’d been without choices.
Though she did not know it, he’d taken the blame on himself. He hadn’t wanted to add to her resentment of their laird, realizing too late what a mistake that had been. Not least because when her parents decided to move away from the clan, showing no hesitation, Shona had gone with them.
Caelis had never considered she might leave their people, or him. He’d thought he would have time to change his alpha’s mind about the mating, to make up to Shona the hurt he’d caused her.
Caelis had believed in their future even as he told her they had none. Her father’s leaving the clan had been an unforeseen circumstance. The fact that Shona went with him had shocked Caelis to the core. She had a life among her clan, friends if no family left.
The clan was her family. It was what they’d been taught since infancy.
And Caelis had believed her love stronger than even his alpha’s will.
There was no love in her pretty green eyes now when they fell on Caelis. At worst they swam with pain filled fury, at best with distrust so sharp it cut him to the core of his soul.
Not even the briefest flicker of joy had shown in the emerald depths since he’d first spied her in the courtyard, none of the relief or happiness he felt at this chance reunion. She did not share his delight that they had made a child together.
She would deny Eadan’s paternity if she could. Caelis had seen it in her eyes, but the boy looked too much like Caelis to be mistaken for anything but his own.
In Shona, Caelis could sense only resentment toward him.
While it might be well-earned, he hated it—almost as much as he had loathed every moment of their time apart.
He had spent six years craving nothing more than to be reunited with her. She had spent those same years despising him completely.
Even when he’d believed his laird that she was not his true mate and the later lies (when word had come of her death, which he’d later come to question but could never be certain about), Caelis had never stopped aching for her.
Not one day had gone by in six years that he had not wished to have the mate of his heart by his side.
But ’twas clear she’d rather be in the presence of a diseased rat than him.
She trusted the two English wolves and even Niall more than she did Caelis.
Shona worried that he would take their son away. His promise to the contrary had had no impact on her at all. She denigrated his vows as of having less value than the border treaties signed by an English king.
But he was not the only one who had broken promises.
She had sworn she would never stop loving him and that she would always belong to him.
Mayhap he had no reason or right to expect her to keep such a promise, but he and his wolf shared a sense of betrayal that would not simply be shaken away.
’Twas clear that Shona did not understand Caelis’s determination to make them all a family, either.
His duty to his people would prevent them being together for a time. But now that he knew where she was, that she was indeed his true mate, nothing would keep them apart permanently.
Caelis had begun to doubt his laird’s claim that Uven alone could identify a pack member’s true mate within a year of Shona leaving their clan. Caelis’s wolf had grown increasingly difficult to control after she left and only Caelis’s dedication to his pack and his duty kept him among the MacLeod instead of chasing after her.
But Caelis had believed Uven, laird of the MacLeod and pack alpha, to be a great man. Caelis had accepted the other man’s words as truth when they’d been nothing more than vicious lies.
It had been hard to admit he was so wrong about the other man and too easy to doubt himself after the laird told him Shona had died.
His wolf was not so easily swayed, though it submitted to the more powerful (at that time) alpha wolf without question.
Still, the beast longed for the woman that was no longer in their life. The longing never abated and the wolf refused the touch of any other female, no matter how lovely the Faol Uven had paraded before him. Despite Caelis having believed for a time that Shona was dead, he wouldn’t even try to mate another.
He’d only begun to doubt that lie in the last year, when he’d started to question far more about his laird than his clear predisposition toward Chrechte-only matings.
That stupid, prejudiced man had cost Caelis five years of his son’s life. Even if duty did not dictate Caelis returning to the clan and challenging Uven for leadership, knowledge of what the man’s lies had cost him personally would make the challenge necessary.
“Nice man,” Marjory said for the second time that day, patting Caelis face. “No be sad.”
He smiled at the wee one. “All will be well, mo breagha.”
She giggled. “I’m not beautiful.”
“You look just like your mama.” Though Marjory’s curly red hair was more a halo of fine baby curls and her mother’s fell in long ringlets down her back. “You are beautiful indeed.”
“My dreams say we are a family,” Eadan said from near his hip. “But I do not think Mum wants to be one.”
Caelis dropped to his haunches, careful to keep Marjory secure in his arms, and met his son’s blue gaze. “We will have to convince her then, won’t we, my son?”
His voice nearly broke on the word son, but he was a warrior and he would not show such weakness. Bad enough he’d fainted down in the bailey like a woman at court.
“We can try,” Eadan said doubtfully. “Mum doesn’t change her mind easy.”
“I remember that about her.” Though her stubborn tendencies hadn’t often shown with him, he saw them in the way she related to others all too frequently.
“She didn’t want to be with Percy. We runned away instead. I don’t like Percy, either.”
“Who is Percy?” Niall asked.
“My not-brother.”
“Percival.” Shona had mentioned him, Caelis remembered. “The new baron?”
Eadan nodded. “He has a wife but no children. He wanted Mum to be his lemon and give him children. But she wouldn’t let him have us.”
“Lehman, he wanted to make her his lehman.” Percival would have made Shona, his former stepmother, his mistress with all the responsibilities and none of the privileges of his wife.
It was monstrous and disgusting, and no more than he expected of an English baron, though he’d never tell Abigail that.
Fury filled Caelis, but he did his best not to let it bleed through his countenance and scare the children.
“In my dreams, men turn into wolves sometimes but women never turn into lemons.”
He didn’t correct his son’s pronunciation, but he did wonder at it.
“What is a lemon?” Niall asked, however.
Eadan’s brow furrowed like he was surprised by the question. “It’s a yellow fruit. Sour. Mum read to me about it from a book written by one of the priests in Italy. My lord was ever so fond of the writings of the Church.”
“I see.” Caelis made no attempt to hide his smile. “Percy isn’t turning your mother into his lemon, or anything else.”
Eadan nodded in complete agreement. “Mum won’t let him.”
“Neither will I.”
“Good. Mum isn’t as big as she thinks she is.”
Niall laughed. “She seems plenty big to me.”
“Mama is tiny but strong,” Eadan replied staunchly. “I’ll be taller ’n her soon enough. She always says so.”
“Aye.” Emotion threatened to choke Caelis.
This child standing before him with blue eyes the s
ame gentian shade and oval shape as his own was his son. The fruit of sacred passion he had shared with his true mate.
Because only a true mate could become pregnant by a Chrechte when she was human.
All his former laird’s arguments against the mating shattered in the face of that truth. Not only had she given birth, but his son’s enhanced ability to smell indicated that he would go through the change into wolf form when he reached age.
Caelis shuddered to think what would have happened to his son if he had shifted without a pack to protect him. But then, he had a pack.
An English one.
He looked to Thomas, who was already teaching a game with sticks to the Sinclair’s twin sons. Their baby daughter slept above stairs this time in the afternoon.
Caelis carried Marjory to where Thomas and the children played on the floor of the great hall nearby. He set the girl down and she immediately grabbed for her brother’s hand. Eadan took it, as if he was used to doing so and led her to the others.
Caelis lowered himself to the floor beside Thomas. “Teach me this game,” he demanded.
The young wolf merely nodded and explained the rules. They’d played for a bit, even getting the wee Marjory to participate, when Caelis asked, “How came you to be such close friends to my mate?”
“Her father sought us out. I do not know how he knew of our true nature, or that of our mother, but the steward was well aware and wanted us nearby in case Eadan made the transition.”
“What of your own family?”
“My father is a minor baron and wanted nothing of us, offspring from his lehman.”
“Does he know she is Chrechte?”
Grief twisted Thomas’s youthful features. “No. He never knew and now she is gone.”
“I am sorry.” Caelis had lost his own parents, only to learn recently it had been at the hands of the very man who had insinuated himself into Caelis’s life as a second father.
Uven had played mentor and parent to Caelis, all the while guilty of the most heinous betrayals.
“She loved us, but fate picked poorly in her true mate,” Thomas continued in a quiet voice as he directed the children’s play. “Our father is a hard man with no love in his heart for those he uses so cruelly.”
“How did she die?”
“Fever. She was pregnant again, but too old to carry mayhap. Anyway, she and the babe died. That was five years ago. Father took a fee from the Baron of Heronshire for us to come into his household as personal companion and servant to his lady wife.”
“The ways of the English are beyond my ken,” Caelis said with disgust.
“It was Shona’s father who instigated the transaction. As I said, he wanted us to be near if his grandson made the change.”
“Eadan will,” Caelis and Talorc, laird of the Sinclairs, said in unison.
The others had remained in the great hall, watching the children play, remaining quiet amongst themselves, though Caelis did not doubt Abigail and Talorc had conversed across their mate bond.
Ciara nodded her agreement. “His wolf is already strong in him.”
“Shona is still ignorant of the Chrechte’s existence,” Caelis observed.
“She is.” Thomas didn’t sound happy about that. “There was no pack nearby, but our mother taught us that we could not share our secret unless there was dire need.”
“Mating constitutes dire need, in case you are wondering,” Abigail said with more sting than she usually spoke, and a look of old censure at her husband.
“Aye. Though how you could not realize she was your true mate when it is clear you shared in the physical bonds of love…” Talorc let the criticism trail off, but there was no doubting his disapproval.
“My laird told me she wasn’t and I didn’t believe her when she told me she thought she was pregnant. I asked Uven and he said that it wasn’t possible. That Shona could not be my true mate; as my alpha, he would know if she was. I knew matings between humans and Chrechte were rare, but I had hoped so fervently. I was very angry I had to let her go; I wasn’t thinking clearly at the time.”
The admission was hard to make.
Ciara frowned. “Unless he had the gift, an alpha has no more hope of divining one’s mate than any other member of the pack.”
“I know that. Now.” It would have been a great benefit to have known this truth of their heritage six years ago.
There were too many things Uven of the MacLeod had kept from his people in his quest to control the clan and the pack so completely.
“You made one hell of a mistake,” Niall observed without rancor but without pity either.
“I did.” But Shona would forgive him once she understood.
His sweet mate’s forgiving nature was every bit as ingrained in her as her stubbornness.
He turned his attention toward getting to know his children while the woman he and his wolf ached to claim slept upstairs.
* * *
Shona woke to the absolute dark of the wee hours on a moonless night.
It had been so long since she had slept well and deeply, comfortable in a bed she knew would not be disturbed.
She wasn’t sure why she knew this bed was an absolutely safe one, but she did, in that place in her brain not too influenced by waking. So why the urge to get up?
The next question her brain always conjured upon waking answered the first.
The sensation of something not being right pushed her into full wakefulness when her body wanted to settle back into sleep.
Where were her children? She remembered coming to the guest room in the Sinclair keep for a much-needed nap, but that had to have been hours ago.
She must have slept through the evening meal, her children’s bedtime and into the night. Though Shona could not be sure of how late it was without seeing the stars position in the sky, how refreshed she felt indicated she’d slept away all of the afternoon and a good deal of the night.
She reached out to feel around for the edge of the bed and realized two things at once. The first was that she was in the center and the second that Audrey was no longer in the room.
This concerned her nearly as much as not knowing where her children were. Though Audrey was no fool, at nineteen she had a less jaundiced view of the world than Shona.
This made her vulnerable to those who might deceive and use her, as Shona had been six years ago.
With increasingly urgent moves, Shona used her hands to find her way around the room. On a shelf that jutted out from the wall near the head of the bed, fingers encountered a candle and flint for striking. ’Twas an unexpected extravagance, but she quickly made use of it and lit the candle.
The glow from the single candle dispelled the darkness, though the corners of the room remained in shadow. Shona spied a dark shape that she assumed was clothing Audrey had pulled for her from the small bundle of possessions taken on the flight from Heronshire barony. She grabbed the fabric, only to realize that Audrey had pulled out Shona’s green velvet dress.
Shaking her head at Audrey’s silliness, Shona donned the garment free of dust and the detritus of travel, unlike the dress she’d arrived in. It took precious time to secure the sleeves, but running about the keep in nothing but her shift was not an option.
Especially after the last months at the barony, when the most innocent of gestures had been taken as invitations she’d never had any intention of offering.
She didn’t take the time to brush or pull her hair back. Neither did she search for her shoes.
Shona needed to find her children and hoped she would not wake the entire keep doing it. But if that was what it took, wake them she would.
She rushed out the door and nearly tripped over Caelis’s form. He was sitting directly in front of her door, looking around as if trying to figure out where the danger was coming from. His big body rippled with muscle, even in his low position on the floor.
“What are you doing outside my room?” she demanded in a whisper, wishing she had not no
ticed anything appealing about his physical appearance.
He stood with the fluid grace she’d worked hard to forget. “What are you doing rushing around in the wee hours of the morning?” he asked instead of replying.
“Looking for my children.”
“They are sleeping in the room beside yours. Your champions are in there as well, guarding the lad’s and lass’s sleep.” Caelis’s disgruntled tone implied he wasn’t as pleased about that as Shona was.
Her own heart, which had been beating near out of her chest, settled into a more normal rhythm. “Which one?”
He indicated a door to the right with an incline of his head in that direction.
She immediately headed toward it, but Caelis’s arm shot out, his hand closing over her wrist. “Where are you going?”
“To see them.” She spoke slowly as if to a not very bright child.
“You will wake them.”
She didn’t intend to, but ’twas not her greatest consideration at the moment. “I will be quiet.”
“Eadan will hear you.” The certainty in Caelis’s tone implied he somehow already knew about their son’s acute ability to detect sound.
“Nevertheless, I will see them.”
“Why? I have told you they are resting with your friends. Do you not trust Thomas and Audrey to watch over the children?”
“Of course I do, but I only have your word that Eadan and Marjory are behind that door, safe and sleeping peacefully.”
Caelis’s head snapped back as if she’d slapped him with all the fury she’d wanted to six years ago. Back then, she’d been too much in love to do him harm, despite his betrayal.
Now, she would not hesitate.
“You do not trust my word?” he asked with shock too real to be feigned.
She was hit by her own sense of unreality. “You expect me to?”
“Aye.”
“Then you are a bigger fool than I was six years ago.”
“I have told you there were reasons for what happened between us.” And he sounded like he fully expected her to listen to him list them.
“What happened was that you made promises that had no more substance than the morning mist.” And no amount of explaining could change that.
