Warrior's Moon

by Lucy Monroe

  “You assume you can dismiss our laws, murder all who oppose you and lie to any who will believe you without compunction or accountability.” Caelis drew his sword and held the hilt in front of his heart. “I challenge you.”

  “You believe you can beat me, boy? You are a fool.” Uven looked around him, but even his inner circle did not step up to deny the right of Caelis to challenge for the position of alpha.

  The fact that he had strong warriors standing as a living wall at his back may well have impacted that.

  “You would kill me over this little human slut?” Uven barked.

  “I am no slut and I am not ashamed to be human,” Shona enunciated, righteous indignation lacing her every word.

  Caelis knew what Uven was trying to do.

  He thought he would get under Caelis’s emotions and cause him to act hastily, but Caelis didn’t question his mate’s strength or her ability to stand firm against Uven’s stupidity.

  She cared nothing for her former laird’s opinion. His words could not hurt her even if they made Caelis burn with the need to feed them back down the laird’s throat.

  “You threatened him,” Shona accused Uven, but Caelis did not know what she was talking about.

  Thus far, the laird had done little but puff and posture. His assertion that Caelis was not strong enough to beat him hardly constituted a threat.

  She turned to Caelis. “Uven threatened my father. He told him that if you and I mated, he would kill me to give you your freedom.”

  Fury washed through Caelis, but he did not understand how she knew.

  “I can hear his thoughts,” she said with awe. “I…I think it’s my Chrechte gift.”

  “That’s impossible. You are human,” Uven disparaged.

  Shona glared at him, loathing in her eyes. “You killed your own true mate because you believed Chrechte should never mate humans. You saw my father as an abomination because he was a human born of a Chrechte-human pairing. You raped my mother to teach both my parents some twisted lesson. That is when she changed.”

  Shona turned to Caelis, her eyes wet with tears. “It wasn’t me. It was Uven and what he did to her. She didn’t hate me; she wanted me away from him at any cost.”

  She loved me, but he broke her. The words came across their mate bond. His actions nearly broke me, but they didn’t.

  Even the fierce pride in his mate’s voice could not control the the fierce rage gripping Caelis, but then his wife sent him an image that pulled him back from the brink of disregarding Chrechte law just as Uven had done.

  It was a memory so beautiful it touched him to his very soul: the sight of his son drinking at his mother’s breast for the first time.

  Caelis pushed back his conriocht and reined in his wolf. “Accept my challenge, or concede and leave this holding never to return,” he bit out to Uven.

  Uven paled and flinched, but then rallied and boasted self-importantly, “You will die this night, upstart.”

  Caelis laughed and did not even bother to reply.

  Uven shifted and attacked without warning or waiting for the formal challenge to begin.

  Caelis did not bother to shift. He had been trained by the best to fight a Faol in his Chrechte form without shifting himself.

  Avoiding the snapping jaws aimed at his jugular, he spun away and then turned back, landing in a fighting stance just as Talorc had taught him to do.

  Uven snarled, saliva dripping from his fangs, his eyes yellow with madness Caelis used to mistake for Chrechte power. The beast lunged again, but this time Caelis was ready for him. He feinted and then lunged, taking hold of the huge wolf by its scruff and one foreleg.

  Caelis twisted into a spin, waiting until he had built up enough momentum to release. Uven’s beast sailed through the air to hit the wall so hard, the crack of a beam could be heard.

  Clansmen shouted, but none came to the corrupt laird’s aid.

  The wolf slipped the first time it tried to stand. Caelis let Uven find his feet, though.

  He would kill the old bastard with honor and take pride in his strength to do it.

  Rallying, the beast growled, gnashing its teeth as it stalked toward Caelis, only veering at the last second to lunge at Shona.

  Caelis roared and leapt, his warrior’s hands closing around the neck of the beast before once again tossing it into the wall.

  This time, Caelis gave the bastard no chance to regroup, but simply crossed the hall in a few long leaps to land against the wolf’s chest with his knee.

  He grabbed the wolf’s head and looked into Uven’s eyes. “For your sins against our people, you have been judged guilty and will die at the hands of the Cahir.”

  The spark of recognition in Uven’s eyes lasted only as long as it took for Caelis to snap the wolf’s neck.

  He stood, one foot pressed against the neck of the dead Chrechte. “I am your laird. I am your alpha. Accept it, or leave.”

  “What if we want to challenge you?” one of Uven’s inner circle asked.

  Caelis laughed just as he had at Uven’s overweening confidence. “Then challenge me.”

  Two did and two more Chrechte lost their lives. Caelis had given each the option to submit or die. Both had chosen death.

  Three dead Faol lay on the floor of the great hall and Caelis turned to those remaining. “Are there any others who would challenge my right to lead?”

  “You haven’t even shifted into your wolf,” the young sentry who had been guarding the door said.

  “Humans are not weak like Uven always claimed.”

  “But you are not human.”

  “And yet as a man, I defeated three Chrechte wolves.”

  One man dropped to his knee, put his hand over his heart and swore fealty to Caelis. Over the next few minutes, every male in the room followed the first Faol’s example. But the women remained standing.

  Shona came to stand beside Caelis and looked around them. “I am human. I am your lady. Do you swear fealty to me?”

  It took a moment, but one by one, the men bowed their heads to Shona. All but one.

  Uven’s nephew glared at Shona. “I swear loyalty to no woman.”

  Caelis moved so fast that when he reached the man and smacked him to his face on the floor, the other Faol wore a shocked expression. “You will leave this holding if you do not both apologize to my wife, but also promise personal fealty to her.”

  He was unsurprised when the man refused. Caelis looked to Vegar. “See him off our land.”

  Vegar nodded, grabbing the man by the scruff of his neck.

  “You’re Éan,” Uven’s nephew spat.

  Vegar grinned. “Good of you to notice, but I cannot claim to be impressed by how long it took you to realize that fact.”

  They left the great hall with the stupid Faol still sputtering about inferior Éan, even as Vegar yanked him along like a naughty pup.

  Caelis looked around the room at the women and then to Shona. She smiled and nodded, understanding.

  She addressed the female Chrechte. “Do you refuse to pledge allegiance to your new laird?”

  “Women do not do that. Our pledges are given no value,” an older Chrechte female claimed.

  “But a woman’s loyalty is every bit as powerful as a man’s,” Shona argued. “Why would you seek to have a weak clan?”

  “We do not,” Uven’s own wife said.

  “You don’t,” Shona affirmed, looking surprised and then sickened for a moment. “I know what it is to be wed to a man not your mate. Uven is dead. The man who freed you asks for your fealty. Will you give it?”

  The woman nodded and dropped to her knees, bowing her head and swearing a sincere oath of support for Caelis as pack alpha and laird and Shona as his lady. Soon the other women followed and the room echoed with the feminine voices.

  “This clan will change. To survive and thrive, we must return to the true ways of the Chrechte. Uven has lied to all of us about what they are, but we will find our way back to honor, t
o a strong clan that respects and appreciates all of its members.”

  A cheer went up that turned into deafening roars as Caelis allowed his conriocht to take form.

  He stood before his people and promised them that life would be different if they would let go of the deceptions of the past.

  Filled with joy, Shona surveyed the room until her eyes rested on a man sneaking furtively toward the great hall’s door to the great hall. He had an arrogance about him that she was much too familiar with. “Percy!”

  “Where?” Caelis growled.

  Shona’s hand did not shake as she pointed to Percival, fear no longer plaguing her in the presence of the vile would-be child murderer.

  “Stop and face your accuser, cur!” Caelis ordered.

  Percival turned slowly, his expression filled with more disdain than terror. “I have no accuser.”

  “You tried to murder my son,” Caelis ground out.

  The baron opened his mouth to refute the statement, but Thomas was there, boxing his ears and knocking him to the ground before he could.

  “He came here looking for her,” Uven’s wife said, pointing to Shona. “You used to be part of the clan. He believed you would seek refuge among us again. The English baron paid Uven handsomely to find you and bring you back to him.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything at first?” Caelis demanded, fury lacing the conriocht’s tone.

  “I did not know it was this woman he sought until she recognized him,” Uven’s wife said, pleading in her voice and demeanor.

  Shona waited for her husband to prove he valued the women of his clan and pack enough to believe. She knew the truth from the thoughts in the woman’s head, but he needed to believe Uven’s wife without Shona’s interference.

  Caelis sniffed the air and then nodded. “Thank you for speaking up now.”

  The woman sagged, her relief at being believed visible. The clan had a long way to go to heal, but they would get there with her husband as alpha and laird.

  Percival was standing again, showing he had a lot more pride than sense as he glared at them all. “I will leave you to live among these horrors,” he spat at Shona. “I’ll not have a woman who has lain with a dog in my bed.”

  Caelis stalked forward until he towered over the man, who only now showed enough intelligence to exhibit fear. “You tried to murder my son. You will die.”

  “No, you can’t kill an English baron.”

  Suddenly a white wolf was there and Shona knew it was Thomas.

  Caelis indicated the man with a single pointing claw. “Kill it.”

  Thomas attacked, tearing the man’s throat out and ending his threat to her children once and for all.

  Caelis called two of his soldiers forward. “Return the body to the barony. Death by animal misadventure.”

  The soldiers nodded and wrapped the body in a cloth before taking him outside. Ciara stepped forward, her expression gentle. “We have a mating ceremony to perform.”

  Shona opened her mouth, but no sound came out. A mating ceremony? Now?

  “When better?” her mate asked, proving she’d been shouting her thoughts again.

  “Four are dead.”

  “And because of that, many more will live.”

  Hope unfurled inside her. It was true. The reign of terror exercised by Uven was over. Percival’s evil had ended this night as well.

  But a mating ceremony?

  Looking around at the hopeful faces of the clan, she realized they all needed this symbol of hope, but still Shona hesitated.

  Caelis dropped to one knee before Shona, his big body still towering over her as a conriocht. “I love you, mate, with all that I am and can ever hope to be. Will you speak the ancient vows with me before the people who have promised us their fealty?”

  “I believe you.” She did. She believed he loved her. Believed he would never again leave her. Incandescent joy sparkled through her, lightening a heart that had seen too much grief. “You do love me. You have always loved me.”

  Finally, she understood. His mistakes had not been made out of a lack of love, but a lack of understanding of what the cost of his would be. He would never again ignore the potential cost to his mate for any decision he might make.

  “I do. As wolf, as conriocht, as man, my heart and my life belong to you.”

  She nodded, her tears spilling over, her happiness the scent of spring flowers around them. “I will.”

  The mating ceremony was all Caelis had ever dreamed it would be, on the many nights he lay in a lonely pile of furs wishing for the mate he thought lost to him. She promised him everything in the language of his people, her emerald gaze fully cognizant of each word’s meaning as he once again used their bond to remind her.

  And they shared their joy with the MacLeod pack, accepting their brethren’s oaths to support and protect their mating as was right and just.

  They followed the ceremony, which took the pack from death to life in a few short hours, by rounding up all the human members of the clan and announcing Caelis’s new position as their laird.

  Each clan member was given the option of swearing loyalty or leaving with the option of being welcomed into either the Donegal, Sinclair or Balmoral clans. All chose to stay.

  The heaviness of that trust weighed profoundly in the most joyous of ways on Caelis.

  But nothing was more important than the new life Caelis began with Shona that night, as she accepted his love and reaffirmed her own, proving to the whole clan how important matters of the heart were to even the most powerful Chrechte warrior.

  Epilogue

  The same group that had traveled with them from the Sinclair all stood in the secret caves of the ancient Chrechte the next day. Caelis, Shona, their children, Audrey, Vegar, Thomas, Prince Eirik, Ciara, Maon and the other MacLeod soldiers who had first sworn fealty to a new alpha.

  Ciara led them all down into the chamber of the Faolchú Chridhe and now instructed Shona and Caelis to lay their hands on the sacred stone.

  The mating ceremony the night before had been a public affirmation of their relationship, but today the celi di wanted to bless their union with the sacred stone.

  The moment Shona’s fingertips touched the giant glowing emerald, she felt the most amazing connection. The thoughts and feelings that bombarded her were not her own, and she realized from their content that they belonged to those around her.

  “I can hear the thoughts of others,” she said in awe. She’d heard Uven’s contemplations in the great hall before the laird’s death, but they had been muffled and disjointed.

  Now, it was as if she could enter another’s mind like walking into a room.

  “It is the gift of your nature,” Ciara said softly.

  “But I am human.”

  “With Chrechte ancestry.”

  “You will help identify the Fearghall and aid the celi di for both the Éan and Faol to serve our people the way we are meant to.”

  “But I am no celi di.”

  Ciara smiled. “You are. You have been chosen.”

  “But…” Shona looked up at Caelis.

  He returned the look with blue eyes filled with love. “Your destiny is yours to embrace or deny. I stand by you either way.”

  Happiness suffused her. “With your example, how can I do any less than embrace it?”

  Then each one in the chamber laid his hand on the Faolchú Chridhe to varying effect. When Maon touched it, though, a great light exploded around them and when Shona could see again, a conriocht who was not her mate stood among them.

  It was Maon.

  “You must find the Paindeal,” Ciara intoned. “Your fate lies in reuniting our races.”

  Maon did not speak, his expression one of stupefied shock.

  Caelis laid his human hand on the conriocht’s arm. “You do not feel worthy. You never will, but you have been chosen as protector of our people. What you do with that great gift is up to you.”

  Caelis turned back to Shona and
reiterated, “Just as you must choose how much of yourself to give to our people.”

  “So long as you are by my side, I will serve the Chrechte of all clans and the humans of our own to the best of my abilities.”

  “I will always be with you. I love you more than my life, more than my duty.”

  And she believed him.

  To the very smallest tendrils of her spirit.

  GLOSSARY OF TERMS

  bairn—baby

  beguines—self-running nunnery without vows to the church, not supported by the official church as related to Rome (historically accurate term in the British Isles)

  ben—hill

  Ben Bristecrann—broken tree hill (a sacred spot to Ciara’s family)

  brae—hillside or slope

  Cahir—warriors who fight the Fearghall

  celi di—Scottish Highland priest practicing Catholicism with no official ties to the church in Rome (historically accurate term in relation to Scotland and Ireland)

  Chrechte—shifters who share their souls with wolves, birds or cats of prey

  Clach Gealach Gra—(moon’s heart stone) the bird shifter’s sacred stone

  conriocht—werewolf (protector of the Faol, shifts into giant half wolf/half man–type creature)

  Éan—bird shifters (ravens, eagles and hawks)

  Faol—wolf shifters

  faolán—little wolf (Gaelic term of endearment)

  Faolchú Chridhe—(wolf’s heart) the wolf shifter’s sacred stone

  Fearghall—secret supremacist society of the Faol intent on wiping out/subjugating other races of the Chrechte

  femwolf—female wolf shifter

  keeper of the stone—a Chrechte who has a special link to the sacred stone and can utilize its full potential for healing, gifting and bringing forth the protectors of the races (conriocht, dragon and griffin)

  kelle—warrior priestess (mentioned in Celtic mythology)

  Kyle Kirksonas—River of the Healing Church

  loch—lake

  mate—a Chrechte’s chosen partner (if it is a mixed mating—Chrechte of different races, or a human mate—children can only result if the bond is a true/sacred one)