by Lucy Monroe
“It was not like that with the baron.”
“Nay.”
“What was it like?”
Shona just shook her head. “God willing, you will never know and I’ll not give you thoughts to feed your nightmares or wedding-night jitters.”
“Percival would have been worse,” Audrey guessed.
“Aye. Submitting to him might well have broken me.”
Audrey privately agreed. Even the strongest woman could only bow so far before she snapped in half, never to be whole again.
* * *
Hours after Vegar had come to collect Audrey, Shona paced her bedchamber, unable to sleep. Caelis most likely knew, too. He could probably hear her every footfall. Infernal Chrechte senses.
She wasn’t a fool, no matter what her past with him might lead the man to believe. She had no questions about where he was spending his night, either.
Outside her door.
In the hall…with no bedding, or comforts.
Not that she was concerned about that. No. It was no concern of hers if a grown man chose to spend his night sleeping on a stone floor instead of using the perfectly good quarters provided by Laird Sinclair for his soldiers.
Really, it was not.
She glared at the door, still furious with him for his assumption she would marry him without so much as even the most rude request. Much less an actual proposal.
Did he not believe she deserved even such minimal consideration?
Mayhap he thought he had reason to make assumptions, but she’d maintained her uncertainty of her future from the beginning. Even after the folly of allowing him into her bed the night before.
Did he believe his willingness to kill for her, or shift into his conriocht put the onus of acceptance on her? According to him and everyone else, there could be no question she was his sacred mate.
That may well be, but that did not mean she would fall at his feet. Even if she could not seem to stop herself from falling into his bed.
Yes, he was father to her child, but Caelis had been that very thing when he had rejected her in favor of his alpha’s dictates six years before. Even if he had not known it.
No, she could not start thinking that way.
But neither could she make herself ignore certain truths.
The most important being: he would keep her children safe.
She stopped her pacing and took a deep breath. More than any other consideration, that one swayed her.
The world was an even more danger-filled place than she’d known on her escape from the barony, which had been her home for all of her children’s lives.
Caelis, as conriocht and eventual laird of his own clan—because she was certain he would wrest control of the MacLeod from Uven—was in a better position to protect Eadan and Marjory than most.
Marrying him, however, meant returning to the clan that had been only too willing to see the back of her and her parents. Because they were human. Though she hadn’t known that was the reason at the time.
She would still be a human in a clan with too many who had been taught to see her as inferior for her humanity as well as her gender.
It was untenable.
She hadn’t suddenly sprouted angel’s wings, nor would she. She had no great magical ability to shift into another form and that was not about to change. Or would it?
Caelis had told Maon that Mairi could now shift into wolf form. Apparently, she hadn’t been able to do so before. That’s why Uven had treated her so badly.
He had not been pleased to have a daughter who was not fully Chrechte.
Could she shift now only because her father had been a wolf? Or was it some inevitable response to being mated to a Chrechte?
Though hadn’t Caelis said her mate was an Éan? That would make her husband a man who shifted into a bird.
And Mairi now transformed into a wolf. Wasn’t that what Caelis had said?
Had Caelis destined her to become like him without telling her? Was he hiding something of great magnitude from her?
Again?
She stormed to the door and pulled the heavy bar up so she could fling it open.
“Why are you out here?” she demanded of the man who was exactly where she’d known he would be.
“Where else would I be?” he asked, sounding far too reasonable.
“In your own bed.”
“I do not sleep in a bed. Vegar and I prefer furs.”
“You sleep with Vegar?”
He rolled his eyes at the nonsensical notion. “We share a room. As Cahir, it is preferable to the soldier’s quarters.”
“Why? Do you hide secrets from even your fellow soldiers?”
“You know I do.” Caelis looked confused by her question. “Not all the soldiers in the keep are Chrechte.”
“Even the Chrechte don’t know everything about the Cahir.”
“That’s so like you.”
“What do you mean?”
She glared at the fur on the floor.
“And you sleep on the floor like a barbarian?”
“Soldiers are not afforded the luxury of a bed.”
She knew that, but she didn’t say so. It felt like giving him ground. And she could not afford to do that.
“Where did you sleep all the years you lived in our clan?” he asked, as if making a point.
In a pile of blankets near the fire in the main room of her family’s small hut. The laird before Uven had been willing to have a human as his seneschal, but that had not extended to Shona’s family being invited to live within the keep. Only now did she realize why that was.
Not only had the man been Fearghall and therefore of the mind that Chrechte were superior to those without an animal nature, but he had a secret to protect.
The Sinclair had human soldiers and servants living in his keep, but the MacLeod’s home was nothing like the Sinclair’s. Not in size and not in security.
And if she was not mistaken, Caelis expected her to return and live in that very keep.
“That is entirely beside the point.”
“If you say so.”
“Do not patronize me!”
“I would not.”
“Hah.”
“You are upset.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and glared up at him. “And you still haven’t figured out why, have you?”
His blue gaze turned wary and she noted he did not answer immediately.
Dolt.
“I dinna care for you insulting me across our mating bond.”
“I’m sorry.” She hadn’t meant him to hear that, which only made her angrier. “Even my mind is not my own.”
“Stop yelling at me inside your head and I’m sure it will be.” He sounded so reasonable, she wanted to smack him.
Sucking in air, she pushed the urge away. “Don’t tell me what to do in my own mind.”
This man brought out a side to her nature she had not even realized was there.
He sighed and rubbed his hand over his face. “I will try not to.”
“Just tell me one thing, oh great Chrechte male.”
His jaw went hard and the gentian blue of his eyes turned dark. He hadn’t liked her sarcasm and she didn’t blame him, even if she was too angry to guard her tongue.
“Aye?” he bit out.
“Have you made me into shape-changer without telling me?”
He seemed to be counting off something in his head because his lips moved silently, forming numbers in sequence. “You believe I would do that?”
“You did not tell me the truth six years ago. You did not tell me about your conriocht until you had to show me.”
Caelis’s entire demeanor went from barely contained annoyance to tired frustration in the blink of an eye. “Let us discuss this in your chamber.”
“I don’t think so.” Letting him into the room where the bed was didn’t seem to be the most intelligent move she could make this night.
“Then we will not discuss it.”
He turned away from her and sank back to the fur he had placed on the floor, letting his head rest against the wall and his eyes close. “Go back to bed, Shona.”
“I wasn’t sleeping and you are well aware of that fact.”
“I cannot help that.” The weary defeat in his tone confused her.
“You will not just dismiss me.”
“We cannot have this conversation in a hallway.”
He was right, of course. What had she been thinking to speak so openly about his secret in a passageway anyone might walk down? “I apologize.”
She had no doubts, however, that he would have been aware if anyone were near enough to hear their words. She might lose sight of where they were, but she did not believe he ever did.
He nodded, though his eyes remained shut, his head turned away.
“You will not look at me?” she asked, bothered much more deeply than she wanted to be by the slight.
He must have heard the quaver in her voice she’d done her best to suppress because his eyes snapped open, their blue depths fixed on her. “You are my mate.”
“And that makes it all right to ignore me?” If so, that was an aspect to mating that would not endear the practice to her at all.
“I am not ignoring you.”
“Really?” she asked mockingly.
He flipped back his kilt, revealing his sex, dark and swollen with need. “I want to be in that room with you under me, our bodies joined.”
“We need to talk, not copulate,” she said from a suddenly dry throat.
He wasn’t the only one affected by the strong pull between them. She wanted to touch and be touched, which was exactly why she’d refused to retire to her borrowed room to talk.
“You need to go back into the bedchamber and bar the door. Now.” His hands were curled into fists at his sides, a fine sheen of sweat gracing his upper lip and temple.
His hardness lay heavy against his thigh, the kilt outlining it lewdly. But she was not horrified as a proper lady should be.
No, she wanted to touch it, taste the clear drop of fluid pearled on the tip.
Whatever else he was feeling, there could be no doubt that Caelis wanted her with a need so fierce it was all she could do to deny him.
“I can smell your feminine desire, mo toilichte. Get you gone before I do something you will rant at me for tomorrow.”
Before she could promise she would not, she hurried back into her room and slammed the door, leaning against it as she heaved deep, near-sobbing breaths. How could she go from anger to hungry desire so quickly?
“Bar it,” he instructed in her mind.
She nodded. Yes, that was what she needed to do. But she did not move.
She could not.
The sound of his head thumping the wall made her jump, even though it was hardly loud.
“I want you,” he said in a barely understandable tone inside her mind.
The very intimacy of the mindspeak making her ache all the more for the man she was on the brink of admitting would always be her beloved. Even that knowledge was not enough to cool her ardor.
“I am touching myself and thinking of your hand on me as I do it.”
She moaned, the image in her mind near impossible to resist.
Were the sounds of pleasure he made in her mind or was she hearing them through the door? Fevered desire burned through her, making her thighs clench together, the moisture there so great she could not ignore it.
Could he smell her need through the barriers of stone and wood even? She turned to face the door, but made no move to drop the bar into place.
Shona leaned forward, her hands pressed into the wood. “Tell me. Am I like you now?”
The sigh that came across their mental link filled with vexation, but was it because he was angry with her or frustrated by his sexual need? “Nay.”
“You are telling the truth?” She was not one of them; she could not smell a lie.
Oh. “I cannot smell a lie.”
“Nay.”
“I am still as human as I ever was.”
“Aye.”
Relief poured through her—not that she was not Chrechte, but that he had not hidden anything else from her.
Or at least she thought he hadn’t. How would she know? So much had been withheld from her to this point.
“Are there any more secrets?”
He said something in her mind that sounded like a curse, but she did not know. It had been in that ancient language he spoke with the other Chrechte.
“What?” she asked.
“Every word you speak increases my arousal.”
“But that’s not possible.”
The sound of his groan definitely came through the door. “I assure you, it is.”
“You are still touching yourself.”
“Aye. But I would rather be touching you.”
There was something wrong with her. She should be scandalized, but the knowledge excited her.
“You should stop.”
“You should keep talking to me so intimately.”
“I am not saying anything of an intimate nature.”
“Every word inside my head is confirmation of our bond.” His voice was replete with satisfaction and sexual urgency.
He was going to climax from the stimulation of their mental bond. Again, she should be appalled, but she could feel nothing but gratified by the possibility.
“Secrets,” she said in a desperate bid to turn the tide of her own thoughts and desires. “Are there any further secrets?”
She could feel the pain of unfulfilled desire so strongly, it felt like her own, but she knew it was his. Was this another effect of the true mate bond?
“You have worked out for yourself that I plan to return to the MacLeod and take over the clan, have you not?”
She nodded against the door, her heart contracting at the thought of Caelis fighting Uven for the right to lead the clan. Even in a marginally fair fight, there was no way that Uven could come out victorious.
But the man was a weasel and no fight with him would be without treachery.
“Shona?” Caelis asked in her head, his voice strained.
She knew the source of that strain and did her best to ignore it.
“I am here,” she said aloud, knowing he would hear her through the door.
“I must do this thing.”
“I know.” And she did.
Uven had to be stopped, for the sake of their clan, but also for the good of all Chrechte. He was an evil man who would do untold damage if he was left to continue his current path. She was not sure how she knew that to be true, but it was a certainty inside her she could not shake.
“You have not dropped the bar.”
“No.”
“If you wish me to remain out here, do so.” His desire reached out to her through the thick wood and found a corresponding need in her heart.
She could not admit to it, but neither could she make herself drop the thick plank of wood that would keep Caelis on the other side. She didn’t want him touching himself. She wanted to be the one giving him pleasure.
The door began to move inward and Shona stepped back, her heart in her throat.
Chapter 19
The Faol do well not to underestimate the cunning and resourcefulness of humans.
—EMILY OF THE BALMORAL
Caelis stepped inside, his big warrior’s body vibrating with the desire darkening his gentian gaze and the fur he’d been resting on dangling from one big fist. “You should have barred the door, mate.”
“You should have asked me to marry you six years ago.” It was not what she’d intended to say, but she would not take the words back if she could.
They were true and he had to know it.
Tension she did not think had anything to do with his sexual need emanated off of him now. “Aye.”
“I would have said yes then.”
He winced. “I ken.”
Saints above, where was she going
with this? Why was she saying these things? Her physical craving for him had not diminished in the least and yet her mouth spewed forth with things completely unrelated.
Or were they?
“I am leaving for Balmoral Island tomorrow.” She made the decision as the words left her mouth.
“You are rejecting me now as I did you then?” he asked, the ever present hunger warring with anger in his blue gaze.
Shona shook her head decisively. “You may come with us and make your intentions known to my family.”
“You know I have other commitments.”
She shrugged. Yes, she knew. Just like six years ago, Caelis had duties and intentions that superseded his promises to her.
“You will not be moved on this?”
“No.” She’d compromised for this man before, and her life had been all the more unhappy for it.
Once again, his jaw appeared hewn from rock. “You know I must return to the MacLeod.”
“And you are fully aware that is the last thing I want to do.” Part of her knew that she might well end up living among her former clan again, but she would not do so on a whim. Nor would she return there as anything less than his fully legal wife.
“I cannot refuse my destiny. I am conriocht. That means I am protector for my people.”
“And you believe protecting the Chrechte requires you to take over as laird of Clan MacLeod.”
“I know it does. It has been foreseen.”
Was she supposed to be impressed? She was. A little. Mayhap even a great deal more than a little, but that did not mean she would dismiss what she knew needed to happen to give a mating between them a foundation she could believe in.
“Do you know if too much or too little sand and loose rock is mixed into the soil of a motte, over time it will sink and the keep along with it?” she asked him.
He stared at her as if she’d gone mad, but she could not allow that to bother her.
“I know this because the baron told me once, rather gleefully, as he recounted the collapse of another baron’s keep. The entire structure, which had taken four entire years to build, was utterly destroyed.”
“Your marriage to the old man is something we would both do well to forget.”