by Lucy Monroe
“She doesn’t look broken to me,” Donnach observed, agreeing with Bryant’s private thoughts.
Bryant let his smile through this time. “Nay, I would say she appears more a woman ready to break something. I’ve seen the look often enough on my own mother’s countenance to know it well.”
“I’m not … I wouldn’t …” Una couldn’t seem to get out a full thought and in a strangled tone at that.
“What is it, daughter?” Fionn asked with all the appearance of a man who had no thought to how furious his words had just made the woman before him.
“My private business is mine,” she finally said in a deadly tone, all signs of her timidity hidden beneath the heat of her offense.
“Aye, it is.” Fionn’s easy agreement surprised Bryant.
Una, for her part, did not look much appeased. “Then you should not have brought it up.”
“Aye, but the fool can already see what his brethren did to me with his own two eyes, and yet he denies it.”
“I deny no truth, but your words are wrong.” Bryant rarely gainsaid his elders. His parents had taught him better, but this he would not bear.
“These men who hurt you and the woman my wolf longs for, they are not my brethren any more than they are yours. All Chrechte are brethren in spirit, but in the end each man must stand alone before his maker to have his actions judged.”
“You are a fool.”
Bryant bristled at the blatant insult. “I am a warrior who would see the division between the Éan and the Faol at an end.”
“And then see the true end of the Éan. That is your plan, is it not?” The accusation in Fionn’s tone sparked doubt in his daughter’s gaze.
“No.” Bryant was so damn frustrated. “Speaking to you is the same as conversing with a rock.”
Una’s breath escaped with a shocking sound of amusement, her fear completely in abeyance for the first time that day.
When all three men turned their regard on her in question, she blushed and then shrugged. “It is only that my mother has often said the same.”
“Hmmph.”
“Is that your answer when you have no words of denial?” Bryant asked with humor-laced annoyance of the older man.
Again that sweetly unexpected sound from Una. Though she merely shook her head when Bryant gave her a questioning look.
She utterly charmed him.
And he terrified her.
If he claimed her, introduced her to his wolf, then she would know all could be well between them. That he would never hurt her as the Donegal wolves had done.
Something of the heat the thought sparked in him must have made itself known to Una, because she blushed and let off a scent that was nothing like the acrid fear he’d come to expect in such a short time.
“Mòrag would have you and this one join us for latemeal. She wishes to know more of your family’s history,” Fionn said, with a worried look at his daughter, before indicating both Bryant and Donnach with a sweep of his walking stick, when the silence had stretched for a long moment.
Donnach looked on the irritable Éan with clear disbelief. “This was your attempt at inviting us to dinner?”
“Are ye coming, or not?” Fionn demanded.
Bryant met the lovely Una’s eyes when he answered her father. “We’d be pleased to.”
“Speak for yourself,” Donnach muttered low enough only a wolf would be able to hear.
Or a very cantankerous old man, if the renewed glare Fionn gave the other Balmoral wolf was anything to go by.
EIGHT
Una fluttered like a hummingbird around her parents’ hut, helping her mother with final preparations for the latemeal.
One benefit to the ground village was that a family could cook in their own home without grave concern for the spread of fire.
Una couldn’t believe her mother had invited the wolves to sup with them, but part of her was fiercely glad Mòrag had. Una had been terribly disappointed when she hadn’t been taken to the spirit lands to meet up with Bryant in her sleep the night before.
But perhaps that was because she barely slept for thought of him. She’d spent the day mooning over the impossible and finally flown out of the treetops for her promised visit to her parents only to find her eagle inexorably drawn to the wolf.
“Why have you invited the Balmoral soldiers? Papa isn’t happy about it.”
“Bah. Your father spends half his life complaining about one thing or another. I know how to handle him.” Mòrag stirred the stew pot, adding a sprig of rosemary. “As I told your father, I wish to hear more of the lad Bryant’s family.”
“But why?” Una could not understand her mother’s curiosity about a wolf.
Her own was based on some obscure desire within Una’s eagle, but her mother? She should have no reason to want to know more about any of the Faol.
“Because he looks at you as a man intent on claiming a mate.”
“What?” Una practically shrieked. “I’m not his mate. I’m an eagle. He’s a wolf. We aren’t mates.”
No matter how he’d listed off a host of improbable sacred matings to her father.
“As you say,” Mòrag agreed far too easily and with such calm acceptance Una knew it to be false.
“You are plotting.”
Her mother continued to stir stew that needed no further tending, pretending she had not heard.
“I know it is a disappointment for you and Father.” Like so many things about their only daughter. “But I will never mate, Mother. I cannot. Not after what happened five years ago.”
“Nonsense.” Mòrag pulled the bricks from the oven opening and carefully drew forth the long baking paddle with two loaves of heavy dark bread from within.
They smelled so good, Una’s stomach would have growled if it were not tied firmly in knots by her mother’s words. “It isn’t nonsense. Surely you’ve noticed the wide distance the men of our tribe keep from me. I am considered a poor choice for a mate.”
“What rot.” Her mother slammed the bread paddle down with more force than could possibly be needed. “You would make a fine mate, but our men keep away because you have made it clear that when any man but your father gets within ten paces of you, you panic like a rabbit in a den of wolves.”
Funny her mother should put it that way, for it was exactly how Una had felt five years ago.
Mòrag sighed, looking at Una with sadness. “They know you fear them, so they stay away.”
“I won’t take a mate, I can’t.” Una couldn’t think of a clearer way to say it to her beloved mother. “I don’t deserve a mate,” she admitted.
“Yes, you do. Oh, my dearest daughter …” Mòrag left the bread to pull Una into a hug.
“I am your only daughter.”
“And still dearest to my heart.”
“Mama …” she said, using the diminutive she’d stopped saying those years go, and for once making no effort to spurn the affection offered.
“You deserve a fine strong mate like your father was for me, and children.” Mòrag hugged her hard. “Oh, I hope you have many, many children. I shall be such a fine granddam.”
“Mother …” Una started, not sure how to get through to the other woman.
“Naught but a sacred bond could pull you from your fear, I know that, child.”
“So, you understand?” Una pressed as she gently disengaged herself, needing her mother to accept the truth.
“Oh, yes, daughter. I understand. Do you?”
Una had no chance to answer as her father came inside at that moment, the two Balmoral soldiers behind him.
Both greeted her mother with gratitude for the invitation, and proper Chrechte respect.
But Bryant’s attention was on Una from the moment he entered the hut, his wolf’s storm-grey eyes fixed on her wherever she moved.
Somehow, Una found herself seated beside Bryant on the floor near the single small table the hut boasted, while her parents took the bench and Donnach sat on th
e only three-legged stool across from them. It was a cozy gathering, not unlike those in Una’s past.
Emotion clogged her throat, making it hard to eat and impossible to converse.
The heat from the Balmoral wolf crossed the space between them, warming Una in strange places, to be sure.
“Una said you told her, when she visited you in her eagle form, that you have family among the Éan.”
Una didn’t know why her mother had to make her visiting Bryant as an eagle sound so … significant. She found him fascinating, but felt safer as a bird because she could fly away if she needed to. That was all there was to it.
“In the generations that came before, yes.”
Even though she’d been there for most of his explanation before, Una listened with rapt fascination as Bryant recounted to her mother what he had said to her father earlier.
“So, you are related to Prince Eirik and Anya Gra. Have you made them aware of this?”
“I did not realize the significance of my family’s history until Fionn pointed it out.”
“Your family could only keep so many of the stories from one generation to the next. You lost history, just as we all have.” Mòrag spoke with sad resignation. “It is ever true and why the Chrechte are charged with assigning parts of their history to each family and sharing those stories at all the major feasts.”
“The Faol do not practice this.”
Una’s father slurped noisily at his food. “Clearly, or all of the wolves would be aware of the Éan’s existence, not only those who wanted us dead.”
“Our alpha wants the races reunited for just this reason,” Bryant said.
The fervor of true belief infused his voice, and Una caught herself wondering how much of his interest was in her personally and how much was on reconnecting their people. Through a mating?
If that was his plan, he’d do well to look for an easier target. Her eagle screeched in denial at the thought, but Una ignored her bird.
“He plans to come live in the forest, does he?” Una’s father asked aggressively.
But Bryant did not rise to the bait. He merely took a bite of his stew and complimented Una’s mother’s cooking.
“I’ve taught Una all I know of preparing food,” her mother said in reply, and apropos of nothing, Una thought. “Not that she has much use for the knowledge living alone as she does in our former home.”
“Why does she live alone?” Donnach asked. “A Balmoral daughter would never be allowed to live on her own as Una does.”
“She is safer high in the trees than she would be here in the village with us,” her father said, voicing a sentiment she knew well.
And agreed with.
“Surely other families keep their children with them.” Bryant sounded confused.
“If Una had stayed in the trees, the horror of five years past would never have happened.”
Una felt the horrible weight in her stomach that truth always brought.
Bryant looked far from impressed, or convinced. “If coming out of the trees caused such hardship, your entire village would have horror stories.”
“They know better than to venture beyond the depths of the forest.”
“You went exploring?” Bryant asked her directly.
She liked the way he refused to talk around and about her. Like the heat of his wolf at her side, it warmed her. “I found the humans of the clans and their ways infinitely fascinating. I liked to watch them in my eagle form.”
Una hated admitting her failings out loud, but she would not deny them, either. No matter how much she might like to.
“But you were not caught as eagle,” Bryant guessed with far too much astuteness.
“No.” She’d been in her human form, swimming in the loch and playing in the falls that fed it as she’d seen the clan’s children do.
“What happened? Why didn’t you shift and fly away?”
Una rubbed at her wrists where the iron spikes had been driven to hold her to the tree.
Bryant noticed the small telltale gesture and put his hand out. “May I see?”
She should tell him no, absolutely not, as she would if anyone else had requested thus. But Una found herself offering her wrists.
He tugged up the sleeves of her blouse, a growl echoing in the otherwise silent hut as his eyes fell on the scars that could not be misinterpreted.
“They did this to you?”
“They found sport in hurting and terrifying me,” she admitted, not really understanding why she did so. Only that her eagle insisted on it.
Bryant lifted his head, his grey gaze boring into her father. “And did you kill them?”
“Those we caught, we killed, but not easily and not without cost.”
“There were nearly a dozen of them. They performed some strange ritual, not of the Chrechte, I don’t think.”
“Any women?” Donnach asked, his voice filled with revulsion.
“No. Only men. One of them was being initiated into the group. He drove the spikes in, to prove his commitment to their cause.”
“He is not dead,” her father said with frustrated venom. “But I have been in no condition to hunt him.”
“Would you still recognize his scent?” Bryant asked in a tone that made her shiver.
“We are not wolves, our sense of smell and hearing is only slightly better than a human’s.”
“You would recognize him.”
“I would,” Una said with certainty. “Though it is my deepest wish never to lay eyes on him again.”
“Describe him.”
“Why?” Una asked, unable to understand why he would request such a thing of her.
“That I may find and kill him.”
“What? No!”
“He was Donegal,” Donnach guessed.
“They wore no plaids. I do not know if all the men were of the same clan, though some were. I’d seen them among the Donegals before that,” she admitted in a quiet voice.
Una could not understand it when she found herself pulled into Bryant’s lap and was even more shocked when neither of her parents made a complaint.
“Describe this miscreant to me,” Bryant urged, his chest rumbling with a wolf’s growl.
It should have frightened her, but for the first time in five years, Una felt truly safe. ’Twas a conundrum she had no hope of deciphering, but gave thanks for all the same.
To have even a few moments without fear would be a blessing indeed. If the cost was describing the men who had hurt her, the ones her clansmen had not killed … then it was a price she would pay.
Later, Bryant insisted her mother accompany Una back into the treetops to see her safely in her home. She wanted his company, not that of her parent, but no words left her lips to tell him so.
NINE
Una did not see Bryant for five days after the dinner with her parents. Not at night, while she slept. Not each afternoon when she went down to visit her mother in the village. She didn’t see the other Balmoral, Donnach, either.
On the second day, she inquired in passing if her mother had seen Bryant, but Mòrag hadn’t heard the question. And Una had been too embarrassed to be asking it to repeat her words.
She noted her father was less vocal in his displeasure about the Faol soldiers staying in the village, but he didn’t mention Bryant by name.
On the third day, Una’s eagle grew restless enough for her to repeat the question to her mother, but received a simple, “I don’t know,” in reply.
Not at all helpful.
Given Una’s reticence in social situations, her mother’s astonishment could be forgiven when Una suggested they visit one of the families housing another Faol warrior, this one from the Sinclair clan.
“I did not realize you were on close terms with the daughter of the house.”
“We are of an age,” Una said noncommittally.
In truth, Una had done little to maintain any of her childhood friendships in the last five years. And for the first ti
me, she realized regret in that.
The visit proved wholly unfruitful in discovering the whereabouts of the Balmoral soldiers, but Una enjoyed reconnecting with her once bosom friend very much.
She was also quite proud of her reaction to the Sinclair soldier. As long as he stayed on the other side of the room, her fear remained controllable and no attack of panicked terror ensued.
By the fourth day, she was desperate enough to ask her father if he had seen the soldiers.
“They’ve gone hunting,” he replied.
She should have considered that possibility. Still … “Aren’t wolves very good at the hunt? I would not have thought he would be gone this long.”
“It depends on the prey they are hunting.” When her father did not follow up that statement with a diatribe about how the Faol hunted the Éan, Una was both confused and surprised.
The fifth day showed no more sign of the men’s return than the first. She returned to her home in the trees quite late, hoping if she stayed in the village with her parents, she might be there when the men returned from their hunt.
But her mother sent her home after the sun had set, saying she and her father were old people and needed their rest.
Una barely noted her father’s umbrage at once again being called old, and flew up to her home in the treetops, determined to seek out her prince the next day and ask him the whereabouts of the two soldiers.
Surely it was his responsibility to know, as he was beholden for their behavior while among the Éan.
She readied herself for bed, brushing out her hair with desultory movements, holding little hope that tonight would see her on another sojourn to the spirit realm.
A sound like claws scratching on the floor came from the other room and Una froze in her movements. While the noise could not possibly be what her senses were telling her it was, it was definitively not the sound of branches rustling in the wind, either.
She knew each nuance of that music with great mastery, as she’d spent her entire life hearing it.
The candle beside her bed cast the room in which she slept in dim golden light, but there was no mistaking the shape of the shadow in the doorway.