by Lucy Monroe
She was contemplating whether she should actually attempt to get out of the bed when a knock sounded on the door. It was too early for the noon meal, but late enough that she would be embarrassed to be caught lazing in bed. She was usually up with the sun and it had risen hours ago.
"Do you have duties today?" she asked, trying to work up a little guilt for keeping him from them and not succeeding.
It had been his idea to make love yet again, after all. Not hers.
"Nay. It is probably my mother come by to find out what we discovered of Susannah's plight. She showed great restraint not asking a dozen questions last night."
That woke Cait up as a bucket of frigid water would not have and she sat straight up in bed. "Your mother?"
"Yes."
She jumped off the bed and started scrabbling for clothes. "Susannah is not in a plight, she's in a marriage and she's happy. I can't believe your mother is here to visit and we're naked in bed." She sniffed herself. "I smell like you… I smell like sex. She's going to know what we've been doing."
"Even those members of my clan who do not come visiting this morning are going to know what we did. We are married and last night was the claiming, although the humans would call it the wedding night."
She glared at him. "That general knowledge is not the same as being caught in bed by your mother."
Drustan got out of the bed and tugged her plaid from her hands. "You are to wear Balmoral colors from this point forward," he said with gentle censure, indicating a plaid folded neatly on top of the small chest beside the bed. He leaned down and kissed her. "Take time to wash and compose yourself. I will let Mum in and talk to her while you do."
Cait threw him a grateful glance before he walked out of the bedroom carrying his plaid, which she sincerely hoped he planned to don before letting his mother inside. He shut the door behind him, but it wasn't as thick as the door to their quarters and she could hear him letting his mother inside a few moments later.
Cait did wash, not because she thought she could rid herself of his scent—she didn't want to—but because she was sticky with dried sweat and wetness between her legs.
It felt good to be clean, but she would have preferred a swim. Her muscles and the tender flesh between her legs ached. She felt marked by Drustan inside and out.
It was a new sensation, but not unpleasurable.
She hurried through her ablution, listening with only half an ear to Moira and Drustan's conversation. His mother asked about Susannah and if Drustan had seen her. He told her he hadn't, but that he'd heard her and she sounded happy. It gave Cait chills to think the Balmoral soldiers had gotten that close without being detected by the Sinclair werewolves.
She supposed there were wolves in her pack that adept at hiding their scent, but she'd never had occasion to know about it. She certainly wasn't. Her brother might be. Did that mean he would be able to breach the security of the Balmoral fortress? If he did, would he take her away?
Unfamiliar fear washed over her.
As a femwolf prevented from the change by her pregnancy, she had few options to protect herself. The babe had to be kept safe at any cost. She'd almost forgotten that yesterday when she had fought like a madwoman for her freedom, but she would not forget again. The responsibility to reproduce was a sacred one the Chrechte continued to honor.
No matter how difficult the task.
She could only hope Drustan was as good at protecting her as he had been at taking her… and that he did not kill her brother in the process. As surly as Talorc might get, she loved him. He would not come for her, but for her baby. He lived by the old ways and that meant he would respect her bond to Drustan; however, he would not tolerate the loss of a future Chrechte warrior to his clan, nor would he tolerate the insult of her kidnapping without redress.
He and Lachlan were very much alike in that way.
In all likelihood, he would demand the babe's return to the Sinclair holding. If she chose to come with it and live as a widow, he would allow that, but she had little hope he would allow the Balmoral clan to keep her child. Especially if she gave birth to a son. There was also the very real possibility he would declare war over the insult of her kidnapping well before the babe's birth.
Her heart heavy and her mind spinning with possible outcomes to her situation, she finished dressing. She brushed her hair with several quick strokes before going into the outer room.
"Susannah is happy with Magnus," she said by way of a greeting, wishing that truth could make a difference but afraid it would not. "She has found many friends among the Sinclairs."
Both Drustan and her new mother by marriage looked toward her. Moira sat on one bench and he sat on the other. He beckoned her to come and sit beside him. She did, but it felt odd. Sean had never been this possessive.
"You have seen her?" Moira asked, hope alight in green eyes so like her son's.
"Yes." Cait reached out and squeezed the older woman's hand. "Magnus lives in a cottage in the bailey. He is the blacksmith for our clan and very good at it, too. My brother relies on him. You would like him, I'm sure of it."
"Why did he take my daughter?"
Cait knew her answers were going to anger Drustan, but she could not lie. "Magnus did not take her. Not exactly. He mated with her in the fur and then, according to the custom of our pack, insisted she return to our clan as his wife. It happened on Sinclair land."
That was the part she knew Drustan would not like. She herself didn't understand why Susannah had been on their land, but she knew her brother's blacksmith had not lied. "Susannah told him that she had her laird's permission to hunt off the island during the full moon. She said she was not yet ready to take a permanent mate."
Moira's gaze clouded. "She wasn't. She'd gone into heat and she knew that if she ran with the pack during the full moon she would end up mating in the fur."
Cait could imagine the girl's thoughts. Every werewolf and femwolf knew that if an unmated female ran with the males of the pack when she was in heat, their wolf natures would take over. The unmated males would fight for the privilege of mating her, even if they didn't like each other as humans. The winner would then woo the femwolf and they would end up mating. It was inevitable. What the femwolf's mind told her in her human form would not hold sway in her animal form, and most were smart enough to realize it and take action accordingly.
Susannah had thought she was protecting her independence by hunting alone. Though in ancient days, she would not have been allowed to do so, no matter what her personal desires. Not all femwolves went into heat, but most did. And when they did, they were expected to mate and have children to increase the numbers in the packs.
Most packs still adhered to that tradition, much as human fathers insisted their daughters marry when they came of age. She'd already been mated the first time she went into heat, but she knew her brother would have insisted she take a mate at the time if she hadn't been.
"I thought the wolves among the Balmoral do not consider physical mating a life commitment." That attitude had caused Susannah and Magnus some conflict in the beginning and Cait had wondered why the girl had chosen to hunt alone if it were the case.
Wouldn't she have been safer running with her own pack?
Moira sighed. "Mating in the fur when a femwolf is in heat usually results in pregnancy. Susannah knew this. In our pack, making a cub together means a lifelong bond that cannot be broken under any circumstances."
That made sense. The Balmoral wasn't the only clan who had a pack that practiced physical mating outside of life bonding. Since the act of physical intercourse was the trigger for so many werewolves gaining control of their change after their coming of age, some packs believed it should be practiced without lifelong consequences. To Cait's way of thinking, that was giving in too fully to their wolf natures.
But she wasn't about to get into a morality argument with her new husband and mother-in-law right now. But woe betide any werewolf who mated a daughter of hers withou
t promising a lifetime commitment. She would rip his throat out and Drustan would have to learn to live with it.
She wasn't going to allow any barbaric custom like that to hurt a child of hers.
"Why was Susannah encouraged to hunt on Sinclair land?" Cait asked, still confused on that point.
It made no sense in light of what Susannah had been trying to do… remain unmarried. Whether the wolf was Sinclair or Balmoral, the femwolf was going to end up mated once her scent in heat was caught. Which was exactly what had happened.
"She wasn't," Drustan said harshly.
She turned to her new husband, unsure how to take this change in his demeanor, but not about to back down. "Your sister told Magnus she was instructed where to hunt during the full moon. She did not know it was Sinclair hunting ground, but you cannot tell me the males of your pack were as ignorant. It is a thing the lairds take care to learn about each other."
It was supposed to be a secret, but the packs spied on each other and knew much more than they admitted about one another. There had been a time when all Chrechte were one pack under a common king, but that was not the way they lived now. Not since MacAlpin's betrayal. Even so, they did not war as much with each other as they did with the wholly human clans or with those to the south. There were unspoken laws they all lived by, and those governing mating with a femwolf from another pack were some of the most sacred. But they had not been breached for the reasons Drustan thought.
Cait's brother respected ancient tradition, very much. He would never have allowed Magnus to keep Susannah without a formal request of the Balmoral laird. If the request was denied, he would not have ordered his blacksmith to return her to her former clan. That was governed by the even more ancient law of true-bond matings, but none of that mattered.
Talorc had not made the formal request because he considered Susannah's presence on Sinclair hunting lands the result of shameful neglect for the femwolf's safety by her laird and family. Soldiers as adept at hiding their scent as the Balmoral werewolves would know more than most. They would have known the land they sent Susannah to was hunting ground for the pack within the Sinclair clan. It was inconceivable that they would not.
"Of course we know where the Sinclair pack hunts," Drustan growled, confirming her thoughts. "Neither Lachlan nor I would have instructed her to hunt there alone, or otherwise."
"But she said you did."
"Susannah did not say I gave her these instructions," Drustan said in a voice that dared her to disagree… at her peril.
"I don't know who she claimed instructed her in this matter. I never asked. I just assumed it was your laird."
"Your assumption would have been right… if she had spoken to anyone. She would have sought permission for such a thing from me or from Lachlan." Anger sizzled in the air around Drustan, and Cait would never have known they had spent so many hours locked together in passion from the way he looked at her now if she did not have her own memories to go by. "She came to neither of us and if she had, we damn well would not have instructed her to hunt where she was likely to end up mated against her will."
Cait laid her hand on his forearm in entreaty. "She did not mate against her will. It doesn't work that way and you know it."
He shook off her touch, wounding her. "But she did not want to mate yet," he gritted out.
"But she is happy to be married to Magnus now. Truly. She is. You say you heard her… you know she is content to be his wife. They are good together. He's very tender with her," she said wistfully, thinking how gentle-spoken Magnus was with Susannah, while Drustan was practically yelling at her. "They love each other now."
"Is she pregnant?" Moira asked.
"Yes. And they are both very happy about the coming baby." She rubbed her own protruding tummy as her babe kicked. "It is a blessed event."
Moira's eyes filled with tears. "I will never see my grandchild."
"Talorc will give you permission to visit. I'm certain he will. But if you are worried, I could ask him for you."
"You will not be seeing your brother."
She tried to dismiss the biting tone of her husband's voice, but it was hard. He was obviously not as content as Magnus in their marriage born of the disaster of Susannah hunting alone during the last full moon.
"You must see that there is a misunderstanding that needs to be addressed. My brother did not dismiss ancient law on a whim. He and Magnus believed your clan had failed in its duty to protect Susannah. That is why the formal request for het hand was never made to you or Lachlan. I'm sure if I talk to him and explain, the situation can be resolved."
"You are going nowhere near Sinclair land."
Cait had known he would take that stand, but it still hurt. He didn't even act like he believed she'd told the truth about Susannah, and she didn't know how to convince him. Presumably, Susannah was not known as a liar and thus, he thought Cait was lying about what his sister had said.
After the night and morning they had spent together, she needed him to trust her. She had given him more of herself than she had ever done with Sean, but apparently that was not enough to merit belief in her integrity. What had been cataclysmically emotional for her had been nothing but physical lust for Drustan… and perhaps the fulfillment of his duty to his clan.
She was his wife by edict of his laird. He had not chosen her and she had best remember that before giving her heart away to be trampled. She was nothing more than the captive he had married, not a wife he valued or trusted.
She stood up. "Would you like some refreshment?" she asked Moira. "A cup of water, some wine?" Her eyes took inventory of what was on the shelves by the table as she spoke.
"No, thank you, child."
Cait nodded. "Drustan?"
"Water."
She poured him a cup and one for herself. She handed him his before sitting at the table and taking a long drink of her own. Her throat was suddenly very dry and tight. "I would like to see Emily."
He frowned. "She is in confinement in the tower. I do not know if Lachlan will permit her to have visitors."
"I do not think our laird considers her a prisoner," Moira offered, a worried expression on her kind features as she looked at Cait, but she spoke to her son.
"Why?" Drustan asked.
"He took her swimming in the loch and personally escorted her back to her room not thirty minutes past."
"He took her swimming?" Cait demanded, fear for her friend clawing at her insides. Emily was terrified of water. Had the laird been torturing her?
She had not thought Lachlan that cruel, but Emily would never have willingly gone swimming. After the boat crossing the day before, Cait was absolutely certain of that. Then another thought hit her with the force of an anvil. Emily could not have gone into the water in her gown.
She jumped up from the table as the implication of that truth seared her mind. "I am going to see Emily right now."
She rushed out the door and was halfway down the stairs to the great hall, using one of the few wolf strengths left to her in her pregnancy (her speed), when Drustan's big hand clamped onto her elbow.
He dragged her to a halt. "What do you think you are doing?"
"I told you. I am going to see my friend." She yanked her arm, but there was no give in his hold.
"You did not ask my permission, nor did you even have the courtesy to say good-bye to my mother or thank her for her visit. On top of that, you are running at speeds guaranteed to harm you or the babe if you were to fall. Have you no sense at all?"
"I was in no risk of falling." Moira was right behind them and Cait turned her body toward her, wishing she could dismiss her husband's presence as easily as she did the sight of him. But his hold on her elbow made such a thing impossible. "I am sorry. Thank you for visiting. I would love to talk more some other time."
Moira nodded, her expression showing concern, not annoyance. "I'm sure we will find the time."
To Cait's sensitive ears, the words were more threat than courtesy,
though she was sure her mother-in-law had not meant them that way. They reminded Cait that she was stuck with the Balmorals. She had thought she had accepted her fate the night before when she spoke her vows, but that was before she realized her husband meant to keep her from her brother entirely.
She knew some clans were that way. Indeed, Talorc had become increasingly wary of outside contact since the betrayal of their clan by their English stepmother. However, she had not expected the Balmorals to be so isolated from others. A rather shortsighted conclusion she realized now. After all, they lived on an island and had a castle that would keep out all intruders. She'd never seen anything like it.
Despite standing on a stairway and the crush of her thoughts, Cait managed a credible curtsy toward Moira. "I look forward to many more visits."
It was not a lie. She did look forward to getting to know the older woman better and she knew Moira would want more details about Susannah's life. Especially if her laird refused to allow her to visit her daughter. But that would have to wait. Right now, Cait needed to assure herself that Emily was all right. She did not know what she would do if she found out the contrary, but she would help the sweet Englishwoman somehow.
Moira nodded her head and then reached up to kiss Drustan's cheek. "I will be leaving now. Bring Cait for the nooning meal tomorrow."
Cait saw Drustan nod out of the corner of her eye. Moira left, skirting nimbly around them.
Cait turned to her husband, removing all warmth from her expression. She did not feel even remotely charitable toward him at the moment. "Will you release me now? I wish to go to Emily."
"You have yet to ask my permission to do so."
"May I please go to visit Emily now?" she gritted out.
"I will ask Lachlan. If he agrees, then you may go."
Cait wanted to scream, but instead, she asked, "Will you ask him now?"
"I would prefer to return to our quarters."
"I would prefer you find your laird and ask permission for me to see Emily," she said stubbornly.
"You defy me at your peril."
"Do I? What more can you do to me, Drustan of the Balmorals? You have taken me from my clan, forced me to marriage and decreed I must remain estranged from my family for the rest of my life. I do not see how you can hurt me further, unless you wish to beat me… but we both know you will not do that while I am pregnant with a Chrechte child."
