Warrior's Moon (17 page)

“She would stand between me and my mate.”

Caelis wasn’t moved in the least by the other man’s words. “If she does, than so will I.”

“You are my friend, our bonds forged this past year as we trained to be Cahir.”

“She is my true mate.”

“As that Englishwoman is mine.” There was slightly less disdain in his tone when he uttered the word
English
than there had been before.

But only slightly.

“You are Chrechte,” Shona said. There was no longer in any doubt about what this man and Audrey meant when they used that word,
mate
.

The man did not bother to reply.

Caelis growled.

“I am,” Vegar ground out between clenched teeth.

“And you believe on the strength of such a brief meeting that she is your mate.”

“She is mine. English or Lowlander, Audrey belongs to me.”

“Perhaps you should have come to that conclusion
before insulting the sweet woman to the point of tears,” Abigail said scathingly.

“So you do remember her name,” Shona added, making no effort to hide her own disgust at Vegar’s reaction to meeting a woman he claimed to be his true mate.

And Shona was still uncertain what that meant in the face of Caelis’s explanations the night before. If the rest of her morning was what to go by, it was nothing good.

Thomas stood then, his expression both fascinated and worried. A strange combination, Shona thought, considering that his sister was the subject of this particular debate. “Shona, would you still trust your children in my care?”

“Of course,” she said before she thought about it and then frowned, but she would not take the words back.

Thomas and Audrey had not trusted Shona, had lacerated the small parts of her heart unwounded by life already with their lies, but did she trust him with her children? Yes.

She believed he would give his life to protect Eadan and Marjory, but that was something to contemplate on later.

“Do not change your mind now,” Thomas said, as if reading Shona’s thoughts. “Audrey and I have hurt you grievously. I only ask for the opportunity to explain.”

Talorc barked, “Not here,” showing he was not half as oblivious as he liked to pretend.

“Nay. And not now,” Thomas agreed.

The laird nodded his acceptance of the promise, for promise it was, said in a tone far more serious than Shona usually heard from the young man. Even during their flight from England.

“You have a point, I assume, in asking if I trusted you with Eadan and Marjory.”

Thomas nodded vigorously. “I did. Audrey needs you at present. Her mate has just rejected her.”

“I did not reject her,” Vegar growled.

“That’s certainly what it sounded like to me,” Abigail said with a frown for good measure.

Whatever favor she’d held the soldier in before, he’d
certainly slipped in the Sinclair lady’s estimation with his behavior toward Audrey.

Vegar had gone from powerful, barbaric warrior to beleaguered man in the space of moments. His expression now was belligerent, but underneath Shona could see the worry in his color-changing eyes as they shifted from pale brown to green in his agitation.

“’Twas not my intent.”

Thomas dismissed the bigger man with a shrug of one shoulder and met Shona’s gaze, his own eyes, which were the same ash gray as his sister’s, filled with worry. “She needs you and if you will go to her I would count it a great favor—not that I deserve one from you.”

“It is not a favor to comfort a friend.”

The look of relief on Thomas’s features was hard to see. He was both so young and all adult protective male in that instant, it hurt Shona’s heart in a good way.

She’d watched him grow from boy to man, and despite his deceptions about his true nature, she was pleased with the outcome.

“I will watch over Eadan and Marjory,” he explained in case Shona had any doubts what his earlier question had been leading up to.

“I as well,” Caelis said, his bad humor seeming to have taken another turn for the worse.

Though, once again, Shona had no idea why. The man’s moods were as mercurial as spring weather.

Shona nodded to Thomas, including Caelis in with a short glance, and then turned to curtsy and take her leave from the laird and his lady.

“I will be up to check on you both after I have settled Emma.” Abigail’s clear concern relieved Shona more than it would have a day ago.

When she’d believed she knew Audrey better than any other. Now, Shona knew that Audrey’s life was dictated by circumstances she still found fancifully hard to believe.

Presumably Abigail had more experience of this world
of mates and Chrechte, seeing as how she was married to one.

Before Shona could leave, however, Caelis’s hand clamped onto her wrist like a manacle. He glared at Vegar. “Apologize.”

Vegar sighed and dipped his head slightly. “I did not intend to upset you, Lady Heronshire.”

Caelis growled again.

Shona sighed, vexed beyond reasoning at this point.
“What now?”

“What would you have me call her?
Shona?
” Vegar demanded of Caelis.

“Aye.”

Shona smacked Caelis’s arm, wincing when it hurt her hand far more than she was sure it had his stonelike muscles. “That liberty is only mine to give.”

“I’ll not have you called by that bastard’s name.”

“I assure you, the baron was unquestionably legitimate.”

“You did not belong to him.”

Without any warning, bile rose in Shona’s throat at the memory of how very much she had indeed belonged to the old man.

Abigail gasped as if she knew and Caelis reached for Shona, but she stepped away, turning to face Vegar.

She forced the sickness away to allow words to travel past her tight throat.

“I forgive you the small slight, but do not expect things to be so easy with Audrey. She’s learned too well in her past how damaging a man’s regard can be when he believes himself above the woman nature has ordained as his mate.”

She didn’t know the whole story of Audrey’s and Thomas’s lives, but she could assume their mother, not the baron, was the Chrechte. One thing Shona was certain of, if only in the possessive, superior way that drove Uven, no Chrechte man would willingly release his shifter children to serve a human master.

As their mother had been dead by the time they were sold into servitude, she had to have been the parent to share
her nature with a wolf. The decision to do so had been entirely their father’s.

A father who had no doubt been drawn to his mate as Shona was to Caelis, but who had treated the woman with little concern and even less respect as his
lehman
.

Thomas sucked in his breath as if Shona’s understanding shocked him. Perhaps he
should
be surprised. He and his sister were nowhere near professional liars and they had managed to maintain their secret from Shona for five years.

They must consider her an idiot of the first order.

“How did my father realize you were shifters?”

“He said it was the way we moved,” Thomas replied. “He knew the first time he saw us.”

How strange to think of her father being so very adept at perceiving the animal-like grace of the Chrechte when he had been so blind to his own daughter’s misery.

S
hona didn’t bother to knock before pushing open the
door to the room she’d found Audrey in with the children the night before.

Her friend stood silent and still, staring into space. Audrey’s expression bleak; her eyes were wet and tracks for tears showed on her pale cheeks, but she was not crying. At least, not right now.

Shona sighed, her own anger and pain sliding into the background as she observed the younger woman. “He’s an idiot.”

Perhaps they were not the most politic words to speak, but verily, they were no lie.

Audrey started, as if she had not realized Shona had come into the room.

That was quite unusual and Shona now understood why. Her English friend shared her nature with a wolf and had the keener hearing of the beast because of it.

“Are you truly so distressed about the opinion of a man
you have barely made an acquaintance of?” Shona asked when Audrey remained silent, her head averted.

The younger woman turned abruptly, her long, pale blond hair flying around her. “He is not the only one whose regard I have lost this morning.”

Shona sighed, not sure if she was ready to go into that particular imbroglio. “You did not lose his regard. He was simply surprised you are English is all. He’s already lamenting his stupidity.”

“And your regard?” Audrey’s ash gray gaze implored her. “Shona…you are the sister my mother could not bear.”

“So I have felt these five years past.” She truly had, which made the betrayal at her friends’ hands that much harder to bear.

“And now?” Audrey asked, her voice trembling with emotion.

“You hid the truth of yourself…the truth of my son’s nature…from me for all of those years.”

“We could not be certain he would shift. Mother told me that not all children born of a mixed mating would have a Chrechte nature. She was not even sure both Thomas and I would shift into a wolf. She died believing Thomas’s nature was fully human.”

“How can that be?”

“My first shift happened a full year before Thomas’s.”

“When was that?”

“With the coming of my menses. It started early and I shifted to a wolf the first full moon after. I was but twelve summers.”

“Your mother died only a year later.”

“Yes. She never saw Thomas shift.” Audrey took a shuddering breath, old pain Shona understood all too well in the depths of her gaze. Her friends had both lost parents. “I always believed it was grief at her passing that brought on his first transformation to wolf.”

“And your father did not know of your nature, of your mother’s?”

“Thomas did not even know about me, or what Mother had been, not…until his first shift. I nearly lost him that night. He did not know what was happening.” Remembered horror shone in Audrey’s eyes.

“That is terrible. Why wouldn’t your mother have told him the truth? Why didn’t you?”

“It is against Chrechte law. We are taught that protecting our secret is the most important thing. Nothing else compares. Not family loyalty, not the loyalty of a friend.” Audrey’s expression begged Shona’s understanding.

Shona did not know if she could give it. “But he was her son!” And Audrey’s twin brother, though Shona did not point out that obvious fact.

“And I was her daughter. I knew nothing of what it meant to be a Chrechte, had never even heard the word before my wolf nature claimed me. My first shift was nothing I want to remember, believe me. I thought I was beset by demons.”

Shona had no words. How could a mother hide something so elemental from her children and cause them such terrible distress? How could she teach those same children to do the very same thing? ’Twas wicked, to Shona’s way of thinking.

“At least Mother knew to be looking for my first transformation. She made sure that she was nearby when the full moon came. I believed my brother would never shift and so was not watching out for him when it happened. It was horrible for him. He did not know what was happening any more than I had, but there was no one around him to reason with him, to tell him what was happening was natural. He believed he’d gone mad with grief, was terrified he would kill. Had he known how to accomplish it, he would have ended his own life that night.”

“Protecting your secret is one thing, but that is monstrous. How could your mother think such a thing acceptable?” Shona wondered almost to herself.

“It was not Mother’s responsibility. It was mine and I failed my brother that night.”

“You were but thirteen summers.”

“What has age to do with it?”

“Everything.” By the saints, how was Shona to keep her anger at a woman whose fear of discovery had led to so much personal pain already?

Audrey let out an agonized breath. “I wanted to tell you so many times.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Mother made me promise, over and over again…that I would never divulge the secret of our natures. By the time I met you, it was ingrained in me to hide the truth at all costs.”

“The cost was nearly your brother’s life. I cannot believe your mother wanted that.”

“I do not think so, but she was most adamant. She left her pack to follow my father. The pack had disowned her, but she said they would come for her, and us, if we ever revealed the truth of the Chrechte. That they would kill us without a second thought if we betrayed them.”

There was no doubt that Audrey’s mother had believed her dire warnings because she’d passed that unshakable belief onto her daughter. It was in Audrey’s tone and the way she held herself when repeating the threat.

“Do you still believe you are at risk from that pack?”

“I do not know. Mother told me so little. I look like her; what if someone from her former pack sees me and knows who I am? She thought they would rather kill me and Thomas than allow what they called
half breeds
to live. Her fear of them was great.”