by Lucy Monroe
“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.
Chapter 11
The secrets of the Chrechte must be kept until the day comes when all peoples of humanity are considered one and equal in the sight of all others.
—THE WORDS OF THE CELI DI
Shona 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 brothe
r 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.”
“Where is her pack?” The words were in Shona’s head, but she hadn’t spoken them.
They’d been uttered in that deep masculine voice she’d heard only recently in the great hall.
Vegar stood inside the door, his expression dark, Caelis behind him, his blue gaze seeking Shona’s. Shona refused to lock eyes with the man set on claiming her. She wanted reassurances that he would not have acted as Audrey’s mother had done, and feared she would not find them.
“I don’t know.” Audrey was also refusing to look at Vegar, her gaze fixed on the floor in a way that upset Shona very much. “My mother was from a holding on the border, in the northeast. She spoke very little of her past.”
Vegar’s expression darkened. “There is a pack made up entirely of the Fearghall and their females in that area.”
“What are the Fearghall?” Shona asked even as she noted her friend’s face paling.
Vegar answered, “They are a secret band of Chrechte intent on destroying all but the Faol.”
Shona knew Faol as an ancient word for wolf. “You are saying other Chrechte are not wolves?”
“Some are birds. Eagles, ravens and hawks,” Caelis said as he shut the door, closing the four of them into the room.
“We are called the Éan,” Vegar added, his gaze never leaving Audrey’s bowed head.
“You cannot be Éan,” Audrey whispered. “The Éan want to destroy the Faol.”
“Your mother was Fearghall.” Vegar’s tone was not accusing, not like it had been when he’d called her English downstairs. He spoke as if his words explained Audrey’s.
Perhaps they did, but Shona was still confused. Hadn’t Vegar said that the Fearghall wanted to destroy those not of wolf nature, not the other way around?
“Women are not Fearghall.” Again Audrey spoke without looking at any of them. “If Mother had known Thomas would be a shifter, she would have sent him back to her people. She told me that once. He could have been made a Fearghall. Though she said the pack might kill him for having a human father regardless, even if he shifted. She still would have sent him and hoped,” Audrey said as if admitting a shameful secret.
It was shameful, but not on Audrey’s part. The mother she and Thomas had idolized was very different than the woman Shona had always been led to believe she was.
“Your mother did not know Thomas could shift?” Caelis asked.
“No.”
“Apparently it did not happen until after her death,” Shona added when her friend remained silent.
Caelis nodded, as if that made perfect sense to him.
“Your mother was upset you were the shifter and not him,” Vegar guessed, sounding disgusted.
Audrey’s head finally came up at that. “Yes.”
“The Fearghall are twisted in their thinking.”
“She loved me,” Audrey claimed, but with not as much conviction as Shona had heard in her voice on previous occasions.
“I am sure she did, but she was taught from early years that her value was diminished because she was born female.” Caelis sounded like he knew what he was talking about. “They would have shunned her for following her mate because he was human. The Fearghall are clearly strong among her pack and they consider it every wolf’s responsibility to breed with other Faol, no one else.”
That explained Uven’s actions most clearly, and mayhap even Caelis’s willingness to repudiate Shona. It did nothing, however, to comfort her still wounded heart.
Vegar rubbed his face, a sound of clear frustration mixed with disgust coming from him.
Caelis gave the other man a wry look. “You forget sometimes.”
“What does he forget?” Audrey asked quietly.
“That I was once Fearghall, too.”
“You were?” Shona asked, not happy with the confirmation despite her suspicions.
She did not know enough about this secret society to understand everything yet, but what she’d gleaned did not paint it in pretty light.
Caelis had said that those who called themselves by the name had believed others of their kind did not deserve to live. Even at her most angry, she had never considered Caelis ignorant or prejudiced in such a deplorable way.
“You are disappointed in me,” he said to Shona.
She nodded, seeing no reason to deny it. “Vegar said he knew of a pack made up entirely of Fearghall.” And their females, but she did not see the need to repeat that distinction at that moment. “Which would imply that others are not.”
“That is right.”
“So you chose to align yourself with Uven’s twisted thinking.”
“’Twas not merely Uven. He believed what he had been taught, as did generations before him.”
“But you are mistaken in believing Caelis was given the option of not following the Fearghall’s ways,” Vegar inserted. “Had he rejected their teachings, he would have been killed as other Chrechte were before and after him.”
A cold chill settled in Shona’s chest. “But you said—”
“The MacLeod are like that English pack. The men are Fearghall, the women Chrechte breeders, supporting the men at the risk of shunning and much worse. Audrey’s mother was very lucky she was not killed by her former pack for deserting them.”
Audrey gasped.
Shona nodded her understanding, if not her acceptance and turned to Caelis. “You broke away.”
“I did.” He did not sound proud, merely determined about that fact.
“I am glad.”
Caelis nodded.
“It makes sense, though, knowing how easily you were convinced to send me away,” Shona mused.
“I did not send you away.”
“It amounted to the same thing.”
“But that was not my intent.”
“Oh, so you intended me to remain with the clan and marry another MacLeod?” she asked, finding that difficult to believe in the face of his possessiveness.
“
No.”
“You thought I should remain alone?”
“Why not? I have been.” He sounded put out, like a cantankerous child.
“By your choice.”
It was Caelis’s turn to make that warrior’s sound of frustration. “Yes, by my choice.”
“Finally, you admit it.”
“Is that what you need? Or will only the spilling of my blood do to assuage your anger at me?”
“I am no god to demand a blood sacrifice.”
“I do not know what you want then.”
That was easy enough. “Your admission that you chose the path you took.”
“I already admitted to error.”
And for Caelis, that had been hard. But for Shona, it wasn’t enough.
“You weren’t merely deceived. You were open to the deception because you believed yourself superior to me.” His jaw clenched, Caelis nodded. There was no doubt he was no happier to make this admission than the previous one.
She could but hope that meant he no longer held such unacceptable views. “Your ability to transform into a wolf ’tis a magical thing to be sure, but it does not make you, or Uven for that matter, gods among men.”
“I never said it did.” Frustration-laced shame surrounded her big warrior like a cloud.
He had never said it, but he’d believed it. And mayhap Shona could forgive that, if he believed it no longer, but she would not pretend the blight on his thinking had never been there.
Audrey looked at Shona then, apology in her gray eyes. “My mother did. She thought herself above her mate just as he believed himself of greater value than her. Mother called his wife and the children of his legitimate marriage ‘wretched.’ When I was small, I believed it was her own jealousy and pain showing because she was only his lehman, but once I learned the truth of our natures, I realized she truly believed them beneath her.”
Clearly, her mother’s beliefs hurt Audrey.
“You never showed her prejudices,” Shona soothed.