by Lucy Monroe
Audrey choked out a laugh as her skin heated with another blush. “No.”
Relief covered Shona’s features.
“I am still innocent,” Audrey admitted.
Shona’s eyes went wide again and she pulled Audrey into the bedchamber before slamming the door. “Why?”
“I wanted to wait.” Feeling the pain of her healing injuries, Audrey moved to sit on the edge of the bed. “I do not feel married. You were not there to witness my vows, nor was Thomas. Vegar and I were married standing on the stairs for the sake of Heaven.”
Shona sat beside Audrey and took her hand. “How did that come about?”
“Vegar wanted to see to my wounds. He takes being mates very seriously.”
“That is good.”
“Yes, but I have a feeling it is also going to be annoying at times.”
Shona nodded, a great deal of understanding in her eyes.
“Laird Sinclair would not allow Vegar to accompany me upstairs, much less take me to his room because I am…I mean, was…an unmarried woman under his protection. Vegar refused to promise not to compromise me. He just kept saying I was his mate to see to as he saw fit.”
“He’s a very stubborn man.”
“Yes, but I am quite accustomed to dealing with stubborn.” Audrey gave Shona a significant look.
The baroness laughed as Audrey had meant her to. “You are, at that.”
“At any rate, I was sure the two men would come to blows and that was upsetting enough, but then Laird Sinclair ordered Vegar to stand down. Vegar refused, point blank. He was going to challenge the laird. I just knew it.”
“I still do not understand how you ended up married.”
“That was Vegar’s idea. He told the laird he could proclaim us man and wife if it would satisfy his civilized rules of propriety. I never knew civilized could be considered a dirty word, but the way Vegar said it…” Audrey shook her head. “So, the laird asked if I was willing to be made Vegar’s wife.”
“And you were because you didn’t want him to challenge the Sinclair.”
“Exactly.”
“Men!”
“They are very demanding, are they not?”
“Still, I think you will enjoy Vegar’s demands more than I did those of the baron.”
Audrey shuddered, remembering the haunted look in her friend’s eyes too many evenings when she said her good nights to Audrey and the children. “I am sure you are right. I enjoy his kisses very much.”
“I noticed.”
Audrey giggled, but sobered quickly enough. “I should still very much appreciate that talk you mentioned on the marriage acts.”
“After I see to my own satisfaction that your injuries have been treated and we get you into clothing that is not torn or stained with your blood.” Shona’s eyes shone with tears. “I cannot stand the evidence of your actions.”
“You have taken an abhorrence of me,” Audrey said with sinking heart.
“Nay. How dare you judge me so weak.” Shona’s frown would have melted rock. “You are my family, no matter what blood runs through our veins. Seeing you risk your life and fight with that wolf while standing back in order to protect my children was the hardest thing I have ever had to do.”
Audrey’s own eyes burned with tears. “I left you and the little ones unprotected.”
“You did what your instincts dictated, just as I had to. Neither of us could do all that we wanted.”
They hugged again before Shona helped Audrey change her clothes and checked on her bruises and abrasions. “It is a good thing you did not enter into conjugal relations this afternoon. You are hardly in a fit state.”
“That is what Vegar said when I told him I wanted to wait until after speaking my mating vows before witnesses who mattered to me.”
“He is not all bad.”
“I think he is not bad at all.”
“He is surly.”
“Yes, but under that, he is kind, I think.”
“Caelis respects him.”
“Vegar returns that respect.”
Shona nodded, looking quite annoyed.
“What is it?” Audrey asked.
“Caelis announced we are getting married.”
“And?” Audrey wasn’t sure why that would have angered her friend so. “Don’t you want to marry the father of your son?”
“He insists that he is both their father now.”
“That is good.”
“He’s arrogant.”
“Yes.” Of that there was no doubt.
“He didn’t even bother to propose.”
“He does not seem like the type of man to get down on one knee.”
“I would settle for the question without any pomp or circumstance.”
“Would you?”
“I would.”
“Would you say yes?”
“Of course.”
“Does he know that?” Caelis did not strike Audrey as the type of man to risk rejection.
“Mayhap not, but he will ask or he will not receive.”
Audrey smiled. “Stubborn, I told you.”
“Aye, but I fear Caelis had no inkling just how intransigent I can be.”
Nor how long the woman slow to anger held fury once it kindled, but Audrey did not say so. Her heart-sister and Caelis would have to find their own way to their relationship.
“You said there were things you wished to tell me before I went to my marriage bed?” she asked, embarrassed but determined to learn what she could.
“Aye.” Shona frowned, a shadow of the despair Audrey used to see in her gaze. “It can be both wonderful and terrible.”
“I do not believe Vegar is like the baron.”
“Nay, and you will not loathe his touch as I did the baron’s. That in itself will make things easier.”
“You said there was great joy in the act for a woman.”
“I found so with Caelis.”
“Not the baron though.”
“Nay, but there are ways to endure.”
“I do not believe I will need to endure with Vegar.”
“I am more grateful than I can say to agree with you.” The sincerity in Shona’s tone could not be questioned.
Audrey had known her dearest friend had found her marital duties onerous, but she saw now they had wounded Shona deep in her soul. “Does Caelis know?”
“What?”
“How awful it was for you to be married to the baron?”
“It does not matter.”
“I think it does.”
Shona just shook her head and then proceeded to tell Audrey the most improbable things about the pleasure between a man and woman. Or at least Audrey would have seen them as so before meeting Vegar.
“It was not like that with the baron.”
“Nay.”
“What was it like?”
Shona just shook her head. “God willing, you will never know and I’ll not give you thoughts to feed your nightmares or wedding-night jitters.”
“Percival would have been worse,” Audrey guessed.
“Aye. Submitting to him might well have broken me.”
Audrey privately agreed. Even the strongest woman could only bow so far before she snapped in half, never to be whole again.
* * *
Hours after Vegar had come to collect Audrey, Shona paced her bedchamber, unable to sleep. Caelis most likely knew, too. He could probably hear her every footfall. Infernal Chrechte senses.
She wasn’t a fool, no matter what her past with him might lead the man to believe. She had no questions about where he was spending his night, either.
Outside her door.
In the hall…with no bedding, or comforts.
Not that she was concerned about that. No. It was no concern of hers if a grown man chose to spend his night sleeping on a stone floor instead of using the perfectly good quarters provided by Laird Sinclair for his soldiers.
Really, it was not.
She glare
d at the door, still furious with him for his assumption she would marry him without so much as even the most rude request. Much less an actual proposal.
Did he not believe she deserved even such minimal consideration?
Mayhap he thought he had reason to make assumptions, but she’d maintained her uncertainty of her future from the beginning. Even after the folly of allowing him into her bed the night before.
Did he believe his willingness to kill for her, or shift into his conriocht put the onus of acceptance on her? According to him and everyone else, there could be no question she was his sacred mate.
That may well be, but that did not mean she would fall at his feet. Even if she could not seem to stop herself from falling into his bed.
Yes, he was father to her child, but Caelis had been that very thing when he had rejected her in favor of his alpha’s dictates six years before. Even if he had not known it.
No, she could not start thinking that way.
But neither could she make herself ignore certain truths.
The most important being: he would keep her children safe.
She stopped her pacing and took a deep breath. More than any other consideration, that one swayed her.
The world was an even more danger-filled place than she’d known on her escape from the barony, which had been her home for all of her children’s lives.
Caelis, as conriocht and eventual laird of his own clan—because she was certain he would wrest control of the MacLeod from Uven—was in a better position to protect Eadan and Marjory than most.
Marrying him, however, meant returning to the clan that had been only too willing to see the back of her and her parents. Because they were human. Though she hadn’t known that was the reason at the time.
She would still be a human in a clan with too many who had been taught to see her as inferior for her humanity as well as her gender.
It was untenable.
She hadn’t suddenly sprouted angel’s wings, nor would she. She had no great magical ability to shift into another form and that was not about to change. Or would it?
Caelis had told Maon that Mairi could now shift into wolf form. Apparently, she hadn’t been able to do so before. That’s why Uven had treated her so badly.
He had not been pleased to have a daughter who was not fully Chrechte.
Could she shift now only because her father had been a wolf? Or was it some inevitable response to being mated to a Chrechte?
Though hadn’t Caelis said her mate was an Éan? That would make her husband a man who shifted into a bird.
And Mairi now transformed into a wolf. Wasn’t that what Caelis had said?
Had Caelis destined her to become like him without telling her? Was he hiding something of great magnitude from her?
Again?
She stormed to the door and pulled the heavy bar up so she could fling it open.
“Why are you out here?” she demanded of the man who was exactly where she’d known he would be.
“Where else would I be?” he asked, sounding far too reasonable.
“In your own bed.”
“I do not sleep in a bed. Vegar and I prefer furs.”
“You sleep with Vegar?”
He rolled his eyes at the nonsensical notion. “We share a room. As Cahir, it is preferable to the soldier’s quarters.”
“Why? Do you hide secrets from even your fellow soldiers?”
“You know I do.” Caelis looked confused by her question. “Not all the soldiers in the keep are Chrechte.”
“Even the Chrechte don’t know everything about the Cahir.”
“That’s so like you.”
“What do you mean?”
She glared at the fur on the floor.
“And you sleep on the floor like a barbarian?”
“Soldiers are not afforded the luxury of a bed.”
She knew that, but she didn’t say so. It felt like giving him ground. And she could not afford to do that.
“Where did you sleep all the years you lived in our clan?” he asked, as if making a point.
In a pile of blankets near the fire in the main room of her family’s small hut. The laird before Uven had been willing to have a human as his seneschal, but that had not extended to Shona’s family being invited to live within the keep. Only now did she realize why that was.
Not only had the man been Fearghall and therefore of the mind that Chrechte were superior to those without an animal nature, but he had a secret to protect.
The Sinclair had human soldiers and servants living in his keep, but the MacLeod’s home was nothing like the Sinclair’s. Not in size and not in security.
And if she was not mistaken, Caelis expected her to return and live in that very keep.
“That is entirely beside the point.”
“If you say so.”
“Do not patronize me!”
“I would not.”
“Hah.”
“You are upset.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and glared up at him. “And you still haven’t figured out why, have you?”
His blue gaze turned wary and she noted he did not answer immediately.
Dolt.
“I dinna care for you insulting me across our mating bond.”
“I’m sorry.” She hadn’t meant him to hear that, which only made her angrier. “Even my mind is not my own.”
“Stop yelling at me inside your head and I’m sure it will be.” He sounded so reasonable, she wanted to smack him.
Sucking in air, she pushed the urge away. “Don’t tell me what to do in my own mind.”
This man brought out a side to her nature she had not even realized was there.
He sighed and rubbed his hand over his face. “I will try not to.”
“Just tell me one thing, oh great Chrechte male.”
His jaw went hard and the gentian blue of his eyes turned dark. He hadn’t liked her sarcasm and she didn’t blame him, even if she was too angry to guard her tongue.
“Aye?” he bit out.
“Have you made me into shape-changer without telling me?”
He seemed to be counting off something in his head because his lips moved silently, forming numbers in sequence. “You believe I would do that?”
“You did not tell me the truth six years ago. You did not tell me about your conriocht until you had to show me.”
Caelis’s entire demeanor went from barely contained annoyance to tired frustration in the blink of an eye. “Let us discuss this in your chamber.”
“I don’t think so.” Letting him into the room where the bed was didn’t seem to be the most intelligent move she could make this night.
“Then we will not discuss it.” He turned away from her and sank back to the fur he had placed on the floor, letting his head rest against the wall and his eyes close. “Go back to bed, Shona.”
“I wasn’t sleeping and you are well aware of that fact.”
“I cannot help that.” The weary defeat in his tone confused her.
“You will not just dismiss me.”
“We cannot have this conversation in a hallway.”
He was right, of course. What had she been thinking to speak so openly about his secret in a passageway anyone might walk down? “I apologize.”
She had no doubts, however, that he would have been aware if anyone were near enough to hear their words. She might lose sight of where they were, but she did not believe he ever did.
He nodded, though his eyes remained shut, his head turned away.
“You will not look at me?” she asked, bothered much more deeply than she wanted to be by the slight.
He must have heard the quaver in her voice she’d done her best to suppress because his eyes snapped open, their blue depths fixed on her. “You are my mate.”
“And that makes it all right to ignore me?” If so, that was an aspect to mating that would not endear the practice to her at all.
“I am not ignoring
you.”
“Really?” she asked mockingly.
He flipped back his kilt, revealing his sex, dark and swollen with need. “I want to be in that room with you under me, our bodies joined.”
“We need to talk, not copulate,” she said from a suddenly dry throat.
He wasn’t the only one affected by the strong pull between them. She wanted to touch and be touched, which was exactly why she’d refused to retire to her borrowed room to talk.
“You need to go back into the bedchamber and bar the door. Now.” His hands were curled into fists at his sides, a fine sheen of sweat gracing his upper lip and temple.
His hardness lay heavy against his thigh, the kilt outlining it lewdly. But she was not horrified as a proper lady should be.
No, she wanted to touch it, taste the clear drop of fluid pearled on the tip.
Whatever else he was feeling, there could be no doubt that Caelis wanted her with a need so fierce it was all she could do to deny him.
“I can smell your feminine desire, mo toilichte. Get you gone before I do something you will rant at me for tomorrow.”
Before she could promise she would not, she hurried back into her room and slammed the door, leaning against it as she heaved deep, near-sobbing breaths. How could she go from anger to hungry desire so quickly?
“Bar it,” he instructed in her mind.
She nodded. Yes, that was what she needed to do. But she did not move.
She could not.
The sound of his head thumping the wall made her jump, even though it was hardly loud.
“I want you,” he said in a barely understandable tone inside her mind.
The very intimacy of the mindspeak making her ache all the more for the man she was on the brink of admitting would always be her beloved. Even that knowledge was not enough to cool her ardor.
“I am touching myself and thinking of your hand on me as I do it.”
She moaned, the image in her mind near impossible to resist.
Were the sounds of pleasure he made in her mind or was she hearing them through the door? Fevered desire burned through her, making her thighs clench together, the moisture there so great she could not ignore it.
