chapter 3
Dreaming of a tomorrow, which tomorrow, will be as distant then as ’tis today.
—LOPE DE VEGA
The Sinclair dismissed his guard with instructions to do better in future or risk losing his ability to procreate.
The wolf’s clear acceptance of the threat as truth and fear because of it left a sour stench in the air after he was gone.
Talorc grasped forearms with Eirik. “Thank you for saving my daughter.”
“She is clan now.”
“Aye.”
The object of their discussion chose that moment to come up to them. Ciara looked up at the man who called himself her father. “Laird Talorc, I am sorry for the trouble I caused.”
Eirik was shocked to note the Sinclair mask his fury and his demeanor turn gentle. “It is all right, Ciara. I know you did not mean to cause grief.”
“I didn’t. I thought I would return to the keep and no one would be the wiser.”
This was supposed to placate her laird? Her belief she could get away with it and thus cause no worry to others?
“I saw you,” Eirik corrected her. “Others could have as well.”
“No, they could not,” she disagreed in a soft but firm voice, her tone far too certain.
“You cannot know that.”
She just shrugged, the movement so like her adopted father that the corner of Eirik’s mouth curved in an almost smile. But then, the truth hit him. She could only be so certain in one circumstance.
“You’ve been up there before. Many times. And never been caught.”
She glared at him, this time her expression leaving no doubt she had not expected that truth to be revealed. The anxious glance she slid toward Talorc said as much as well.
The laird frowned, some of his fury leaking through to scent the air around them as his demeanor lost a bit of its patient calm. “Is this true?”
Ciara bit her lip, clearly deciding whether or not to tell the truth. How interesting that she even considering lying to her pack alpha, much less laird. Did she think she could get away with it? Could she mask more than her scent?
Finally, she nodded. “It’s peaceful. Quiet.”
“Ciara.” The exasperation in Talorc’s voice was laced with weariness. “I’m going to have to tell Abigail. She will wring her hands with worry. She will cry.”
The laird made it sound like such an eventuality was the worst possible outcome.
From Ciara’s expression, she agreed with that assessment. “No, please. You cannot tell her. She already worries too much.”
“She loves you.”
Ciara shook her head. And like before, Eirik got the distinct impression she wasn’t arguing her laird’s words, but trying to negate their impact.
“Please, laird.”
“Promise me you will not do it again and I won’t tell her. I’ll know the problem is no longer there for her to worry about.”
Eirik wondered how Talorc intended to keep anyone else from telling his wife and then realized, he probably had no intention of doing so. In fact, he was probably counting on someone letting the information slip.
“I promise.”
“What do you promise?” Eirik asked, when Talorc did not press for clarification.
Again, Ciara glared at him.
He simply stared back, waiting for her answer.
The Sinclair gave Eirik a look of respect and then turned one of expectation on Ciara.
She frowned, but then said, “Not to climb up on top of the west tower again.”
Talorc smiled and nodded, looking pleased.
Eirik simply shook his head. It was clear that while Talorc was a smart man when dealing with his strong-headed females, he had not lived his life with a sister like Sabrine.
Eirik commanded, “Promise you won’t go on top of the other towers, either.”
“Who are you to dictate to me?” Ciara demanded, her voice husky with anger.
It went straight to his groin and he was so damn surprised, he nearly answered. He was no virgin, but never before had a female affected him so strongly that she could elicit arousal on the sound of her voice alone.
And to be excited by this woman who had called him murderer? ’Twas completely unacceptable.
And yet he’d barely bitten back the words proclaiming himself prince of his people and worthy of demanding anything he wanted of her, when Talorc spoke. “I’m sure you meant your promise to include all the towers, Ciara, but it will do us both good to hear you say so. For Abigail’s sake, of course.”
Ciara turned her glare on her adopted father and his eyes flared briefly in surprise, and then a smile came over his features that Eirik could not understand the reason for.
“Of course,” Ciara grumbled. “I promise not to climb up on any of the towers.”
Niall chuckled and when Ciara turned her frown on him, it turned into a full guffaw. “I think I’m going to like having Eirik in our clan,” the laird’s second-in-command said.
Ciara did not look like she agreed. Not one little bit, but then that was no surprise. Was it?
She blamed him for not only her treacherous brother’s death, but that of her mother as well.
Ciara moved her goblet of ale a bit to the left and then back to its original place beside her bowl. A gentle feminine hand rested on her arm and Ciara stilled, looking up.
Abigail frowned thoughtfully, her light brown eyes darkened by worry. “Are you all right?”
“Of course.” Though Ciara wasn’t. She hadn’t been since the dragon showed up to join their clan.
Not only did he cause excitations in her body that she was unused to experiencing, but she was worried about his future plans as a member of the clan.
He and Laird Talorc seemed to be great friends, but Ciara could not banish her fears Eirik would try to wrest power over the clan from her laird. He was a dragon after all, much more powerful than a wolf—even one of Laird Talorc’s superiority.
In the sennight since his people had joined the clan, Eirik seemed to play an increasingly important role in the running of things. And Laird Talorc, in his arrogance, showed not the least sign of worry at this event.
Even Guaire consulted Eirik before going to his laird when assigning duties and crofter’s huts to the Éan and the humans that had come with them. Ciara had asked Niall about it, but he’d just given one of his rare smiles and told her not to worry herself, that all was as it should be. Niall claimed that his mate’s loyalty would always be first and foremost to the Sinclair.
Which Ciara believed, but it wouldn’t matter if Laird Talorc died in a challenge with a dragon, would it? So Ciara worried. Though she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to care.
“You are fidgeting,” Abigail said in that soft voice that seemed to only carry one tone.
Ciara made sure Abigail could see her speak to read her lips when she said, “I am not very hungry.”
“You are never hungry, but you must eat.” The stern expression on Abigail’s kind face brooked no argument.
Ciara didn’t give one. She’d avoided as many mealtimes as possible since the dragon had moved into the keep and begun sharing their table. This latemeal she’d been thwarted though. Talorc himself had found her in the great hall earlier and told her not to eat with the children as she often pretended to.
He wanted her presence at the table at latemeal. After seven years living with his family as one of them, Ciara could hardly refuse.
“I’m not eating for two,” she said to Abigail, letting the other woman know that Ciara was aware of her joyous secret.
Pure happiness suffused Abigail’s features. “I am with child? I had hoped, but it was too soon to be sure.”
“You mean Talorc does not know?”
Abigail shook her head. “He didn’t know with the boys, either. Niall figured it out first. I thought he and his twin, Barr, were the only wolves with such a strong sense of smell.”
“There is very little change in your body’s scent yet.”
“Then how?”
Ciara weighed continuing to hide her secrets against the need to tell someone about the Faolchú Chridhe. Perhaps she could start with this small revelation and build toward the visions that stole her rest and demanded her action. “I had a dream.”
Abigail assessed Ciara for a long, silent moment and then asked, “Do you dream of things that come to pass?”
“Sometimes.” She’d dreamed of her mother’s death long before it happened, so long that she’d made herself forget until she walked into the bedroom that stank with spilled blood. “The dreams are different, special and I wake up knowing they are real.”
Abigail’s eyes burned with curiosity. “What did you dream about me?”
“I saw you in the chair by the great fireplace. You suckled a babe in your arms while the boys played a game with their sticks Niall whittled for them on the bearskin near the hearth.”
Far from looking like she doubted Ciara’s words, Abigail’s expression was naught but excited hopefulness. “Was the babe a boy or girl?”
“Girl.”
Abigail reached out and hugged her so tight, Ciara squeaked. “Thank you, daughter. Thank you.”
Abigail released her and Ciara could not help it. She laughed. To be believed was gift enough, but to have her knowledge received with such joy was fantastic.
The conversations around them stopped, quietness descending like a blanket over the head table.
Confused, Ciara looked around her, finally meeting Guaire’s eyes and asking a question with her own. Had Talorc said something important and she missed it?
Guaire was smiling and he shook his head in silent answer to her unasked question. “You laughed,” he mouthed to her.
Frowning in confusion, she looked at Laird Talorc, but he was busy kissing his mate. Ciara’s gaze shifted beyond the happy couple only to snag on the fierce amber gaze of the dragon. Unlike the rest of the room, his attention had not shifted to the laird and his lady.
It was fixed firmly on Ciara. He said nothing, but his eyes burned with a message that found an answer deep inside her. Desire, hot and bright, burned through her body.
And she had no idea what to do about it.
“What did you tell her?” Niall asked.
Forcing herself to look away from Eirik, Ciara shook her head. It was not her secret to share, though she was sure once they stopped kissing, Laird Talorc would do so.
Niall’s face showed a sudden comprehension. “Our lady is carrying again.”
Ciara nodded just slightly.
“How did you know?” Eirik asked, his voice drawing her gaze back to him and his eyes trapping it once again.
“By scent,” Niall answered for her.
But the dragon shook his head. “No. You just realized the truth. If Ciara shared this Chrechte gift of yours, you would have known by now.”
Ciara almost laughed again, the assumption that her new clan would have learned all her secrets by now morbidly funny to her. Eirik knew more of her secrets because he’d shared in one of them.
“She spends more time with our lady,” Guaire argued on Niall’s behalf.
But Eirik’s expression said he did not accept the argument. “It is something more.”
Ciara refused to answer the implied question. “If you did not know the news, why did everyone go silent?” she asked instead.
“You laughed,” Guaire repeated.
“So?”
“You never laugh.”
“Not unless you are entertaining the children and then it is rare enough,” Niall added.
Heat suffused Ciara’s cheeks. “I laugh.”
But she didn’t. She knew it. Laughter came from joy and joy came from allowing herself to feel.
“My wife carrying is reason enough to laugh,” Laird Talorc said, deep satisfaction lacing his voice.
“Indeed it is,” Eirik acknowledged with an unreadable look at Ciara, before turning to bang their laird on the back in congratulations.
Within moments the simple latemeal had turned into a celebration. One of the soldiers pulled out a flute and began playing. Another joined in with a bladder pipe and another with a drum. Noisy laughter filled the hall as some jumped up from their tables to engage in a spontaneous dance.
Eirik and three of his Éan joined the other soldiers and began dancing a warrior’s entertainment unlike anything she had ever seen before. It was a dance, but a mock fight as well, dirks sharpened to such an edge they could have split a baby’s hair were thrust and tossed and caught with such assurance, Ciara could not help clapping along with the rest of the clan.
The sound of the Éan soldiers’ hardened leather soles stomping on the wooden floor blended with the music, the synchronized movements of their feet adding to the amazing intricacy of the warrior’s dance.
Ciara had never seen the like and was sure none of the other Sinclairs had, either.
Abigail’s toneless laughter joined the others and Ciara smiled, an unfamiliar feeling settling in her belly.
She was happy.
Unable to remember the last time she had felt this carefree, terror filled her. Like love, happiness came at a cost and in her life that cost had always been pain.
Terrified at the realization of how close she had allowed herself to grow to the Sinclairs, Ciara jumped to her feet, intent on escape. Those around her misunderstood and thought she meant to join the dancing, the men moving into the formation of a jig.
Ciara looked wildly around her, but upon seeing the terrible joy on the faces of her adopted family knew she could not leave. She let herself be pulled onto the floor and danced for the first time since her mother’s death.
It was another hour before she was able to slip out of the great hall unnoticed by the other revelers. Sneaking outside the stone building, Ciara hurried to Abigail’s garden.
She stopped in front of the patch of rosemary that she and the laird’s wife had planted not long after Ciara arrived at the Sinclair holding. Abigail had told her it was for remembrance, so that Ciara’s memories of her mother could be associated with a fragrant herb rather than blood and death.
Ciara had been too polite to tell the gentle woman who used to be English that she was mad if she thought it would work, but over the years…this patch of rosemary had helped.
“We had no gardens like this in the forest. It was not safe to do so.”
Ciara jumped and spun around at the sound of Eirik’s voice. “I did not hear you arrive.”
Moonlight glistened off long black hair that shimmered with crimson when the sun shone while his amber eyes glowed with that look that made her feel weak at the knees. Other ravens’ hair glinted blue; it must be his dragon that made Eirik’s different. Ciara thought it was beautiful, not that she would ever tell the prince any such thing.
“All Éan are trained to travel in the forest like a wraith with no scent or sound.” That he, as their prince, would be better at it than anyone else went without saying, though his tone implied she should realize this truth.
“Because the Faol hunted your people.” She hated that knowledge, but not nearly so much as the proof that pointed to her brother being one of those misguided wolves.
“Only some of the wolves wanted us dead,” he said as if reading her mind. “Those few are enough to be a risk for all my people though.”
“The pack alphas have been working on cutting this malignancy from their clans.”
“Aye, though how you are aware of this begs question.”
“I live in the keep. I hear things.”
“The Sinclair must trust you despite your brother’s past.”
“He does not know it.”
“You have never even told him the truth of what you saw in the forest?”
“Lais said Laird Talorc already knows of your dragon.”
“He does. His former second-in-command witnessed my first transformation.”
“How?”
“He was married to my sister and attended my coming-of-age ceremony.”
That was not the full story, she was sure, but Ciara did not expect Eirik to share confidences with her. She was sister to one who had proven himself enemy.
“Did you know you were a dragon?” Were there more among the Éan?
Perhaps, as misguided as her brother and his friends were, they had reason to be worried about the Éan’s power. Though such worries still would not justify hunting other Chrechte and killing them like animals in the forest.
“Until I shifted into a dragon for the first time seven years ago, the Éan believed the dragon to be myth.”
“When you killed my br…when you saved your cousin?” she amended, a sick feeling sending chills over her and then she shook her head. No, he’d said he discovered his dragon at his coming-of-age ceremony.
Eirik looked oddly at her.
“Never mind. My mind is muddled. I am tired.” So very tired, but sleep eluded her night after night.
He turned away, looking toward the near-full moon that pulled her toward the change. “That was the first time I killed as a dragon.”
“You didn’t know what your fire would do.” She did not know how she was so certain, but she was.
“I had an idea.” His tone mocked her.
“Yes, but you had not yet learned to control it,” she guessed.
“I cast fire only when I want to,” he said, affronted.
Warriors. They could be so sensitive. “No doubt, but you had to learn how to cast less and more depending on what was needed in defense of your people.”
He turned back to face her again, a strange expression in his dragon’s eyes. “You think the fire is so easily manipulated, that a mere man might only cast a little if he wants to?”
“No, but a man who is a dragon also? Yes.” Chrechte had to learn to control other gifts, why not fire?
“You know nothing.”
“Or you do not know as much as you think you do.” He might be prince of his people, but he was only eight years older than her nineteen years. She’d heard Niall saying so to Guaire.
“I am the dragon. I know.”
“You controlled your fire enough not to set the forest ablaze,” she pointed out.
He didn’t reply and she wondered if he’d even been aware of exerting such precise control at the time.
“I may be merely a wolf, but I had to learn to mask my scent, to control my urge to shift, to hunt and to stifle my desire to kill when the wolf rules my form. It took a lot of practice to catch prey and not kill it.” And she was beginning to suspect that no matter how well trained a warrior and raven, Eirik’s dragon was still wild.
“Why would you practice such a thing?”
“Because a wolf must know the power of her jaw and fangs if she is to be safe around cubs.” Perhaps the ravens did not understand this, not being birds of prey, but surely the eagles among them had to train for such control.
“The children of the Éan are safe with me.”
“You don’t cast fire around them, but what if you did? Could you stop them from being hurt?”
“I didn’t hurt Fidaich or Canaul that day, did I?”
“No. The only one that hurt a child that day was Luag.” How she hated to say the foul man’s name, even if he was dead.
“If your brother had given you to him in marriage, this Luag would have hurt you, too.”
By the sacred stone. And they accused women of gossiping. Warriors were worse than grandmothers for sharing everyone’s business. “You’ve been speaking to Lais.”
“He remembers you and your brother. He said Galen changed after your father died, though he thought your father might have shared Rowland and Wirp’s beliefs.”
“He did.”
Memories of her father were not comforting ones in light of her brother’s death and how it came to pass.
And Galen had meant to give her to Luag. She’d known it as a frightened girl and she could not erase that knowledge now, no matter how much she might wish to. She reminded herself that her adopted family seemed content for her to remain unwed, never pressing her to take a mate. Still a film of sweat broke out between her breasts and down her back as old fears assailed her.
Refusing to give in to them, Ciara moved toward the rosebushes, Abigail’s favorite part of the garden. Ciara inhaled deeply of their fragrance to calm herself, to remind herself the past was just that. Done and over.
“I am sorry.”
There was no deceit in Eirik’s scent. The only thing was, she didn’t know what the dragon regretted…her brother’s change or his death.
“Me, too,” Ciara said, meaning both.
Eirik moved closer, his big body coming between her and the rosebushes. “You left the party early.”
“So did you.” Ciara found herself not only unable to back away but fighting a near-uncontrollable urge to step closer.
“I followed you.”
“Why?” But she knew.
His spicy Chrechte scent and arousal eclipsed even the strong aroma of the roses.
His eyes burned with a desire unlike anything that had ever been directed at her. “You know why.”
“No.”
“Yes.” His big hands cupped her face. “There is something about you, Ciara of the Sinclairs. Something I cannot deny.”
“I am nothing special.” Just a shell of a femwolf, her heart as good as dead inside her.
“I do not agree.”
“Even though I did not protect your cousin and his friend?”
“You meant to.”
“But you said…”
“You were barely more than a child yourself. It was seven years ago, but sometimes I forget that.”
“I do as well.”
“Let me help you forget all of it, for a little while.”
She had never believed anyone could help her, but this Chrechte dragon?
He could make her forget how to shift into a wolf.
“Yes.”