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Moon Burning
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Moon Craving
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Moon Awakening
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—Fresh Fiction
PRAISE FOR LUCY MONROE AND HER NOVELS
“[A] wicked and wonderful temptation…Give yourself a treat and read this book. Lucy Monroe will capture your heart.”
—Susan Wiggs, New York Times bestselling author
“Lucy Monroe’s romances sizzle!”
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“If you enjoy Linda Howard, Diana Palmer and Elizabeth Lowell, then I think you’d really love Lucy’s work.”
—Lori Foster, New York Times bestselling author
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“Lucy Monroe is an awesome talent.”
—The Best Reviews
“A fresh new voice in romance.”
—Debbie Macomber
“Romance as only Lucy Monroe does it…Joy, passion and heartfelt emotions.”
—The Road to Romance
“A perfect 10!”
—Romance Reviews Today
“An intense, compelling read from page one to the very end. With her powerful voice and vision, Lucy packs emotion into every scene…[A] sizzling story with tangible sexual tension.”
—Jane Porter, bestselling author
“Lucy has written a wonderful full-blooded hero and a beautiful, warm heroine.”
—Maggie Cox, USA Today bestselling author
“A charming tale…The delightful characters jump off the page!”
—Theresa Scott, bestselling author
Berkley Sensation titles by Lucy Monroe
TOUCH ME
TEMPT ME
TAKE ME
Children of the Moon Novels
MOON AWAKENING
MOON CRAVING
MOON BURNING
DRAGON’S MOON
Dragon’s Moon
A CHILDREN OF THE MOON NOVEL
Lucy Monroe
BERKLEY SENSATION, NEW YORK
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
DRAGON’S MOON
A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the author
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Berkley Sensation mass-market edition / September 2012
Copyright © 2012 by Lucy Monroe.
Excerpt from Warrior’s Moon by Lucy Monroe copyright © 2012 by Lucy Monroe.
Excerpt from Ecstasy Under the Moon by Lucy Monroe © 2012 by Lucy Monroe.
Cover art by Gregg Gulbronson.
Cover design by George Long.
Interior text design by Laura K. Corless.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
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ISBN: 978-1-101-58146-9
BERKLEY SENSATION®
Berkley Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
Dragon's Moon - By Lucy Monroe
THE BEGINNING
Millennia ago God created a race of people so fierce even their women were feared in battle. These people were warlike in every way, refusing to submit to the rule of any but their own…no matter how large the forces sent to subdue them. Their enemies said they fought like animals. Their vanquished foe said nothing, for they were dead.
They were considered a primitive and barbaric people because they marred their skin with tattoos of blue ink. The designs were simple at first, a single beast depicted in unadorned outline over their hearts. The leaders were marked with bands around their arms with symbols that told of their strength and prowess in battle. Mates were marked to show their bond.
And still, their enemies were never able to discover the meanings of any of the blue-tinted tattoos.
Some surmised they were symbols of their warlike nature and in that they would be partially right. For the beasts represented a part of themselves these fierce and independent people kept secret at the pain of death. It was a secret they had kept for the centuries of their existence while most migrated across the European landscape to settle in the inhospitable north of Scotland.
Their Roman enemies called them Picts, a name accepted by the other peoples of their land and lands south…they called themselves the Chrechte.
Their animallike affinity for fighting and conquest came from a part of their nature their fully human counterparts did not enjoy. For these fierce people were shape-changers.
The bluish tattoos on their skin were markings given as a right of passage when they made their first shift. Some men had control of that change. For others, the full moon controlled their change until they participated in the sacred act of sex. The females of all the races both experienced their first shift into animal form and gained control thereafter with the coming of their first menses.
Some shifted into wolves, others big cats of prey and yet others into the larger birds—the eagle, hawk and raven.
The one thing all Chrechte shared in common was that they did not reproduce as quickly or prolifically as their fully human brothers and sisters. Although they were a fearsome race and their cunning was enhanced by an understanding of nature most humans could not possess, they were not foolhardy and were not ruled by their animal natures.
One warrior could kill a hundred of his foe, but should she or he die before having offspring, the death would lead to an inevitable shrinking of the race. Some Pictish clans and those recognized by other names in other parts of the world had already died out rather than submit to the inferior but multitudinous humans around them.
The Faol of Scotland’s Highlands were too smart to face the end of their race rather than blend. These wolf shifters saw the way of the future. In the ninth century AD, Keneth MacAlpin ascended to the Scottish throne. Of Faol Chrechte descent through his mother, nevertheless, his human nature had dominated.
He was not capable of “the change,” but that did not stop him from laying claim to the Pictish throne (as it was called then) as well. In order to guarantee his kingship, he betrayed his Chrechte brethren at a dinner, killing all of the remaining royals of their people—and forever entrenched a distrust of humans by their Chrechte counterparts.
Despite this distrust but bitterly aware of the cost of MacAlpin’s betrayal, the Faol of the Chrechte realized that they could die out fighting an ever-increasing and encroaching race of humanity, or they could join the Celtic clans.
They joined.
As far as the rest of the world knew, though much existed to attest to their former existence, what had been considered the Pictish people were no more.
Because it was not in their nature to be ruled by any but their own, within two generations the Celtic clans that had assimilated the Chrechte were ruled by shape-changing clan chiefs who shared their natures with wolves. Though most of the fully human among them did not know it, a rare few were trusted with the secrets of their kinsmen. Those that did know were aware that to betray the code of silence meant certain and immediate death.
Stories of other shifter races, the Éan and Paindeal, were told around the campfire, or to the little ones before bed. However, since the wolves had not seen a shifter except their own in generations, they began to believe the other races only a myth.
But myths did not take to the sky on black wings glinting an iridescent blue under the sun. Myths did not live as ghosts in the forest, but breathing air just as any other man or animal. The Éan were no myth; they were ravens with abilities beyond that of merely changing their shape.
And they trusted the Faol of the Chrechte less than the wolves ever trusted humans. But just as the Faol before them, the time had come for the Éan to learn to deal with their mistrust and join the human clans.
Their future as a race depended on it.
Prologue
Today I have seen the Dragon.
—CONFUCIUS
Donegal Holding, Highlands of Scotland
1142 AD, Reign of Dabíd mac Maíl Choluim, King of Scots
“I had another dream about the wolves’ sacred stone.” Ciara had waited until their mother had eaten her porridge and returned to her tiny bedroom to once again stare at the wall as if it held the very meaning of life to share this bit of information with her brother.
His head snapped up and his hands stilled in their sharpening of his broadsword. Wolf’s eyes the same deep green as her own focused on Ciara, silently demanding she continue.
It used to be a game. Or at least she’d been convinced it was. Before. Before Da’s death and Mum’s decline.
Now, Ciara knew that for whatever reason, her brother believed her dreams the salvation of their people.
Galen said the old stories were true, that the wolves once had a magic stone used in the coming of age ceremony to make them stronger. To even turn some into conriocht…werewolves—not merely a person who could shift into a wolf, if that gift were not amazing enough for her people. No, the old stories claimed that some would shift into conriocht, half man–half wolf and larger than either. Giants that could not be bested in battle, even by other wolves.
Certainly not by the Éan.
She didn’t know if she believed it. And if she did, if she wanted to help such a thing come about. But Ciara loved her brother and spending the day searching for the stone with clues from her dream was yet a joy.
Despite how Galen had changed these last two years.
“The Faolchú Chridhe.” He whispered the ancient name given to the stone by their people in stories older than the wolves’ history with the clans in a voice laced with awe.
The wolf’s heart…how could they have lost it as a people, if indeed it did exist?
“What did you dream?” he demanded, his emerald eyes glowing with the shine of a zealot.
Fear she did not understand skittered down her spine, making her hands shake as she put away their morning dishes. For one thing she never doubted was that her brother loved her.
“It was like the others,” Ciara forced from between suddenly dry lips, her throat tight with that inexplicable fear. “I saw a stone that could have been an emerald, but for the fact it was as big as a laird’s fist.” Surely no emerald of that size existed anywhere in the world. “’Twas on a dark stone altar in a cavern that glowed with a pale green light like I’ve never seen before.”
“The glowing, that’s new.”
It wasn’t, but she’d thought it too fanciful to mention before. Galen’s recent press for more and more information led her to admit to it now though.
“Where was the cavern?” He asked it every time, as if by doing so would make her know.
It never did. Though she tried to tell him all she could remember that might help. “I felt as if I was deep in the earth.”
“You felt?” he asked with doubt that bothered her, though she never said so.
“Yes.”
“Could you see the entrance to the cavern?”
“No, I felt as if it was behind me, but I could not turn away from the Faolchú Chridhe in my dream.”
“So no proof you were deep in the earth?”
“No,” she had to admit.
“’Tis more likely in the hills. Birds would not bury our stone deep in the earth. ’Tis not in their nature.”
Galen’s belief the Éan had stolen the Faolchú Chridhe had been birthed two winters past, after Da’s death and her brother started spending more time with Wirp. Their da had never had a good word to say about the other Chrechte the old stories claimed had once existed, either.
But Wirp was worse; he’d acted as if the Faol were better than everyone and male wolves the most superior of all. The old man had made her that uncomfortable. No one was happier than Ciara that Wirp had fallen afoul of their new laird, Barr. Though she was careful not to let her brother know it.
“It felt like deep in the earth,” she repeated stubbornly.
“I told you under the ground is not the Éan’s playground.”
“And if it was not the bird shifters that stole the wolves’ stone?”
“It was.”
“You are so certain, but all you have are old men’s stories to prove it.”
“And your dreams.”
“My dreams only say the Faolchú Chridhe exists, not that anyone stole it from us. Besides, they could be no more than night fancies.”
“Nay. They are prophecy and we must pay heed.”
Then why not heed that the cavern was underground? She did not ask because she did not want to argue with her brother. He might decide not to go looking for the stone. She saw little enough of him as it was now; she would not give up this day.
Galen did want to search for the stone, but he insisted on taking another warrior with them, saying three sets of wolf senses were better than two.
Ciara did not agree. She did not like this warrior any better than she had liked Wirp. Worse, she worried her brother would give her to Luag in marriage.
Her menses had started early. Though she was but twelve summers. He would wait at least two more before pressing her to wed, but then she was done for. The fear that thought caused was fully realized, making her sick to her stomach, even as she tried to hide her revulsion.
It would do no good. Luag was with them now and would not be going anywhere until they exhausted themselves searching or by some miracle found the Faolchú Chridhe this day.
They had been searching for hours and were deep in the forest when Luag lifted his head and sniffed the air. “I smell raven.”
Ciara could not understand the disgust so evident in his voice. She knew their clan’s healer was both raven and wolf, though Ciara had never told anyone. She rarely revealed what her dreams told her, except to her brother. And she never told him dreams that had anything to do with the Éan.
“Let’s go hunting,” Luag said with a smile that was more snarl than anything.
Galen shook his head. “We have things of more import to do here.”
“It’s all part of the same goal,” Luag argued.
“I’ll not hunt when we have Ciara with us.”
Was her brother saying he would hunt the raven if she were not with him? Ciara could not let herself believe his unreasoning prejudices went that deep. And how did they plan to hunt a bird? Would they make wings out of tree branches and fly then? They hadn’t brought bows with them and their wolf forms would hardly be helpful.
She shook her head. Sometimes warriors made no sense to her. Everyone knew that a wolf’s prey was grounded animals, not birds of the air.
“Is she so weak then?” Luag asked with disdain.
Normally Ciara would have balked at being called weak, but she welcomed any opportunity to be seen as deficient in this wolf’s eyes.
“My sister is not weak, but she is too young.”
“She’s seen twelve summers.”
“A girl still.”
“On the cusp of womanhood.”
For a terrifying moment, Ciara thought they were perhaps arguing about more than whether the wolves should hunt with her present. And the argument nauseated her. She’d heard rumors that English nobility gave their children in marriage that young, but it didn’t happen in the Highlands.
Not even if she’d been a laird’s daughter. And she was not. Galen wouldn’t give her into marriage for at least a couple of years and if he followed the usual traditions, she’d be older than that still.
’Twas not as if she had a great dowry already accumulated. She’d barely started embroidery on the linens for her own home.
“No.” Galen’s tone said he would not be moved despite the years of seniority the other warrior had on him. No matter what the topic of the argument, he was not giving in.
Relief shuddered through her and Ciara took a breath into lungs burning for oxygen.
Luag did not look pleased. “She can stay here then.”
“It is not safe.”
“We are on our own hunting grounds.”
Which was not strictly true; they were at least two hours north of their pack’s territory. Galen’s look said as much to the other wolf.
“She can stay in the cave,” Luag offered as if making a great concession.
Ciara expected Galen to argue once again, but he nodded instead and her heart clenched. “Fine.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but one look from Galen and she knew it was useless. Betrayal burning in her breast, she turned without a single acknowledgment to either of them and went back into the cave they had just been exploring. There had been no secret passages they could find, but they had spent a goodly amount of time looking. So she knew it was not inhabited by other predators…or prey.
Galen followed her. “Stay here until we return. We are not in our own hunting grounds.”
She gave her brother a look of disdain rather than words. She knew that as well as he did. It was his friend who made the stupid claim otherwise, not her.
Galen threw Luag a glare showing he appreciated that truth, and then looked back at Ciara. “I do not want you harmed.”
“I will be fine.”
“Aye. I know.”
A year ago, she might have made the claim, but Galen would not have believed it. Then her menses had come and her first shift. Now Galen had more faith in her ability to protect herself.
Ciara loved her wolf and liked nothing better than to go hunting with her brother, but she saw no point in hunting birds in their wolf form. Besides, she had absolutely no desire to hunt with Luag. She didn’t trust him not to try to mate with her in the fur.
Which was not to say that she would not follow the male wolves when they left. She was ever curious and since Da’s death Galen had become so overprotective, it was like to smother her worse than an Englishman’s feather-stuffed pillow.
Ciara quickly removed her plaid and then the chemise she wore under it, allowing the shift to take her as soon as she was unencumbered by clothing.
Taking pains to mask her own scent, she lifted her wolf’s snout and sniffed the air. Guided by the ever-helpful wind, she took off at a lope after the other wolves, who at least showed the practicality of hunting flying prey in their human skin. Though what they expected to do without bow and arrow, she did not know.
She trailed them for a short quarter of an hour before she heard the sound of Luag’s voice lifted in cruel laughter.
Why would they laugh at their prey? Chrechte did not do that. All life was precious, even that which they had to take in order to eat and survive.
Ciara peeked through the leaves concealing her, blinking at what she saw. Her brother and Galen faced two young boys who wore skin loincloths rather than plaids.
Surely this was not who they hunted. Luag said he smelled ravens. Birds. Not bird shifters. That was too wicked to contemplate. Chrechte did not hunt their own.
They just didn’t.
But the scent of raven was strong on the wind and there were no birds evident to her keen wolf’s eyes.
A band of pain constricted around her heart as she fought the proof of her senses. Her brother could be no party to what her eyes insisted they saw.
Chrechte children as prey.
“Where is your protector?” Luag taunted loudly, his voice filled with ugly gloating. “Has he turned coward and run away?”
“Our prince fears no one,” the oldest boy boldly proclaimed.
But the younger looked terrified.
And Ciara knew that look. She’d worn it before herself, when she had gotten into trouble by following her curiosity rather than the rules for safety laid down by parents and clan.
“They’ve no protector with them,” Galen said, proving he was as astute at reading these young ones as he had always been at knowing Ciara.
“Is this true? Did you two abominations sneak away from your protectors?”
“We wanted to hunt,” the littlest one claimed in a trembling voice.
She expected her brother to offer to escort the boys home, hoped for it. That would be the brother she knew and loved.
Instead, Luag laughed again, that lacing of cruelty more pronounced. “All the easier to rid the world of two more useless birds.”
No. He did not mean that.
He could not.
Despite the evidence of her wolf’s senses, she refused to believe these boys were Luag and Galen’s prey.
But Ciara’s horror only grew as her brother’s voice carried on the now still air. “We are Chrechte warriors, we don’t kill children.”
Implying if these had been adult raven shifters, he would have killed without remorse? Definitely proving that he’d known they hunted shifters, not simply birds. Please, please…please, no. Her brother was not evil.
“These devil’s spawn aren’t children.”
Primal instincts roared up inside Ciara. She had never experienced the like before, but the desire to rip Luag’s throat out made her wolf’s body tense in preparation to spring.
Children were to be protected. Always. That they were Chrechte only made their protection that much more imperative. Their race did not reproduce easily. Her parents had been considered blessed beyond measure to have succored two children of the Faol past infancy.
“We’re not spawn,” the older boy said defiantly, even as his small body shook with fear.
Luag drew his fist back and Ciara’s haunches bunched a split second before leaping.
One hit from a warrior’s fist could kill a child.
But before she could jump from her hiding place, a mighty roar sounded from the sky. So loud and filled with anger, it froze even Luag—who now stared above them with shock and denial.
Looking up, Ciara understood his reaction. She could no more believe her eyes than her dreams of the strangely glowing cavern. Yet, this was no nighttime fancy. A great red dragon flew against the clear blue sky, his scarlet scales so dark they looked near black, his furious roars shaking the treetops.
The boys looked unafraid though and Ciara knew this…this mythical creature of old was their ultimate protector. Perhaps even the prince the older boy had spoken of.
The dragon’s head turned toward her brother and Luag, amber eyes fixed balefully on the men who had threatened the young shifters. Luag threw his dirk, not at the dragon but at the smallest boy. No doubt hoping to distract the dragon so Luag could run. The coward.
The knife missed the child’s body but cut his arm as it flew past. The boy fell backward, crying out as blood welled from the cut.
The dragon roared again and then opening his great mouth even wider, orange flames shot out, devouring everything in their path.
Unable to move in her shock, Ciara stood by while her brother died with a scream that would haunt her nightmares. Luag was already running, but it was to no avail. The dragon had command of the skies and flew after the tormenter of children. Another blast of flame and Luag’s screams were even more terrible than her brother’s had been; he and the trees he’d tried to hide amidst turned into naught but ash.
’Twas a miracle the entire forest did not catch, but the dragon cast his flame with care.
The dragon turned and flew back, landing near the boys who clambered onto his back with more speed than sense. They were gone moments later, the sky clear as if no mythical creature had ever been.
All that remained were the ashes of her brother, Luag and some trees. And her own heart. She had stood by while Galen died a terrible death. She had done nothing for him, or for the boys.
Not that the little ones had needed her help, but she should never have stood by while they were threatened to begin with. The knowledge that she could have died with her brother no boon against the pain.
Luag’s ashes she left for the wild animals to piss on, but Ciara scooped her brother’s ashes into the skin she’d retrieved from her things in the cave. Tears mixed with bits of bone and ash as she gathered the precious remains, leaving the grit of her brother’s life behind on her bare hands.
She would spread his ashes in the wind from the top of Ben Bristecrann just as they had done their father’s.
With no time for grieving, she walked through what was left of the day and the night that followed to reach the hill. It had gotten its name from the tree split by lightning that still grew by some miracle on its summit. Her da had claimed the place was blessed.
Since his ashes mixed with its soil, she thought it was sacred anyhow. Ciara spoke the words of Chrechte passing in a broken voice as the wind picked up what remained of her brother and took it to join their father.
It was late morning of the next day before she reached their cottage and could inform her mother of Galen’s death.
Ciara told no one of the dragon. Only that Luag had led her brother into danger and she had come upon both of them dead in the forest. She told her clan she’d prepared and lit her own funeral pyres and they’d not doubted her.
She was her da’s daughter after all and he’d been known as one of the most stubborn men in the Highlands. Luag had no family to complain of her actions or question whether she had spread his ashes as she had her brothers.
Ciara did not volunteer the truth, for the heart still burning with anger and pain in her chest said he deserved his final resting place.
Mum showed no reaction to the news, seemingly oblivious to what Ciara’s words meant when told of their loss.
Ciara realized her miscalculation when she found her mum dead the next morning, the bed soaked with her life’s blood and cuts too deep in her wrists for even the Faol to survive.