by Lucy Monroe
“I dinna ken. Something has it spooked. ’Tis running without thought for direction, I’m thinking.”
“Circin and I will get ahead of it and chase it back to the rest of you.”
Earc nodded.
Shifting into his wolf form, Barr followed the boar’s scent, determined to bring down their prey. Circin, the other Chrechte who had control of his change, followed suit. The others, who did not, followed at a faster run than most humans could manage.
The scent of something besides boar teased at Barr’s wolf’s senses, demanding his attention with subtle power. Something tantalizing and different. Something his wolf could not ignore. Even more imperative than prey, it insistently drew his wolf’s attention from the hunt.
The boar all but forgotten, the wolf strained to follow the new scent, causing his canine body to twist with preternatural grace. Never breaking the pace of his running, and not waiting for approval from his conscious mind for the change in course, the wolf followed where the inner beast demandingly led.
Barr’s human mind tried to decipher what his senses were telling him, but he had never encountered a scent quite like this one. Nor had he ever reacted to smell alone with this impossible-to-deny need.
A need so basic, it found acceptance in his beast, while his human mind remained mystified.
Was the smell that of a human? He raised his snout to sniff the air more fully. Pine. Loamy earth. Sunshine. A rabbit. A squirrel. Dead leaves and dried pine needles. And the scent. Undeniably human, undeniably more.
And female. Not in heat, but with the subtle fragrance of her sex. Though no wolf’s musk mixed with the other smells.
If not a wolf, she must be human. His sense of other had to come from her unique scent.
For, if not wolf, what else was there?
Mothers told their cubs tales of other shifter tribes, but those were just fairy stories told to entertain little ones. Wolves were the only Chrechte he or anyone in the Sinclair clan had ever known. If other shifter races existed, the wolves would be aware of them. They were too territorial not to be.
He broke through the trees and came skidding to a halt, his claws scrabbling at the ground for purchase. He had been running too fast. Not since he was a cub had he approached an unknown situation with such lack of restraint. More than troubling, if his brother or his former laird could see him now, they would fall on their asses laughing.
Even that assurance of humiliation barely found purchase in his mind; his attention was too focused on the source of the scent.
She lay on the ground, her raven black hair covering one breast, but the other one completely exposed to his gaze. Though not overly generous, it was perfectly formed and tipped with a rose pink nipple that begged for his lips and tongue to wake it. From the shape of her delicate feet, to the feminine slope of her hip, to the gentle curve of her shoulder, and all bits in between, she was perfectly formed to engender carnal hunger in Barr and his beast.
The black curls gracing the juncture of her thighs glinted with a blue sheen under the sunlight just like the long tresses covering her head. ’Twas truly like the ravens of the air. Carrion birds they might be, but they had an elegance of color and form not to be ignored.
Barr spared a quick but sincere hope Muin had missed with his ill-timed arrow. The thought of loveliness such as this, even in the mere form of a bird, destroyed for mere superstition sickened him.
Barr’s naked woman continued to lie unconscious on the forest floor. Her fragile beauty called to his protective instincts, touching a part of his wolf that had never before come to the surface. Though tall for a female, she would still be puny beside his human body. He wanted to put himself between her and any potential threat.
’Twas not a feeling he usually experienced for any but those he called clan, and never had he felt it to this depth.
Her current state only made the need to protect grow, until his wolf snarled with it. Her lovely, pale skin was marred by numerous small scratches, as if she’d been running through the bushes. Perhaps another wild boar had found her bathing and she had been forced to flee?
He loped forward, sniffing at her with his enhanced senses. Perplexed in both mind and instinctual memory, the elusive sense of otherness continued to tease at him. But something else was there, too. Blood. In greater amounts than the scratches would account for. He had not perceived it before because that other scent had so confused him. But blood it was.
Her blood.
A killing rage hazed the usually sharp gray and white images his wolf’s eyes saw. The wee one was wounded, her perfect, milk pale skin obscenely marred by a hole in her upper arm, still oozing sluggish rivulets of red.
He quickly examined the area around them, but saw no sign of what had made the injury. However, it did not appear to be from a stray tree branch. The wound did not have the jagged edges of an injury inflicted while running, by something as innocent as a tree branch in the wrong place. He nudged her arm with his snout so he could see the other side.
Whatever had pierced her had gone all the way through, leaving a matching tear in the skin opposite.
Had she fled from attack, not by a wild animal but something much more dangerous? A human.
There were no clans to the north of them from this side of the Donegal holding. It was all wilderness and Barr could not decide where she, much less her attacker, had come from.
A soft moan slipped from between her small, bow-shaped lips, the hand of her uninjured arm moving restlessly as if reaching for him. He had transformed back to human by the time a set of alluring brown eyes flickered open.
Dark pools of confusion stared up at him as she blinked slowly once and then twice. A small furrow forming between her brows, she went to move, but then fell back with a gasp, pain marring her beautiful features.
“What happened?” The words came out in a whisper as if speaking was difficult.
The sense of otherness disappeared as if it had never been. He was so startled by it and by her asking him the question he burned to have her answer, he took a moment to speak. “I do not know.”
“Who are you?” Her voice was a little stronger, but not by much.
He could not dismiss the feeling she was used to having her queries answered quickly and completely though. Unless she was a queen, which he very much doubted,’twas odd for human woman in their world. Whether man’s or beast’s instincts, he did not know, but he was certain he was right, however.
“I am Barr, laird of the Donegal clan, on whose land you now find yourself.”
“Barr?” Shock dilated the pupils of her dark brown eyes, making them look almost all black, like those of an adult raven. “Laird?”
He had birds on the brain. “That is right.” Though why the news should shock her, he could not imagine. ’Twas not as if he did not look like a laird.
No man in the Donegal clan even came close to being as intimidating, but then she could not know that.
“I …” Her mouth stayed parted, as if words trembled to come out, but none did.
The sound of running footsteps nearby drew Barr’s attention, making him realize how intent on the woman he had been. He should have heard the approaching Donegal clansman much sooner.
Muin ran right up to them, stopping only when he was barely a foot from the human female. The youth’s eyes went wide and his face turned red for the second time that afternoon, but he did not look away from Barr’s mysteriously naked woman.
“Earc and the others are still hunting the boar. He sent me to join you in case you needed assistance. Do you need assistance, laird?”
Barr’s wolf growled at the other man’s obvious interest in the wounded woman’s nudity. He covered the blatantly possessive action with a barked out, “Look at your laird when you address him, Muin.”
The Donegal soldier jumped back at the sound too low for human ears, his gaze immediately moving away from the raven-tressed female.
The woman paled and flinched, filling Bar
r with immediate concern. She must be in pain.
“Laird, who is this?” Muin asked, with a furtive glance at the woman.
“Look away.” Barr’s voice rolled across the air with fury, causing a physical flinch and further stepping back of the young hunter. “Retrieve my plaid and dinna get your scent all over it.”
“Where—”
“Follow my scent if you can,” Barr instructed from between clenched teeth.
“Yes, laird.” The man ran.
In a belated show at modesty, the woman pulled her hair forward over her shoulder, so both breasts were covered, one leg coming up to block his view of her tantalizing triangle of black curls. “You must be laird; he obeyed you without argument.”
“Did you think I’d lie to you?” Humans could be odd, and though he’d known this one for mere minutes, he suspected he would find her even more incomprehensible than most.
“Maybe.”
“Why?”
Disgust flickered over her face, but it went so quickly, it could have been a trick of the afternoon light. “The Faol of the Chrechte sometimes do.”
Shock gripped him and would not let go. She knew he was a wolf? And why had she used the ancient name so few remembered even in their spoken histories?
“You are surprised.” Her head canted, birdlike, to one side. “Why?”
A ridiculous question, and yet he answered it. “Only the Chrechte and some of the humans related to them know of our wolf natures.”
“But you shifted from your wolf form in front of me.”
“You were not conscious.”
She muttered something that sounded like typical wolf. “Clearly, I was.”
“So, are you mated to a wolf?” The thought made his hackles rise, though he could not say why.
The look of utter revulsion once again stayed on her face for less than a second, but this time he had no doubts it had been there.
“You hate the Chrechte,” he said in a flat voice, shocked once again—both by that truth and by how deeply it bothered him.
Turbulent fury turned her eyes into a brown lightning storm. “I do not hate the Chrechte.”
Her vehemence was undeniable; so was the sense there was more she wanted to say, but her lips remained firmly closed, going bloodless she pressed them so tightly together.
He guessed, “You have Chrechte family, but you were born without the ability to shift into a wolf.” It was not a rare story and for some, the situation caused bitterness.
“I cannot shift into a wolf,” she said, her tone implying that was no great loss to her.
Barr would never forget how the brother of the Balmoral laird had been impacted by his inability to change. Ulf’s own father had rejected him because of it and that had twisted Ulf so he lost his sense of honor and compassion. That had eventually caused untold harm to his remaining family, laird over the Balmoral, Lachlan. Lachlan’s mate had suffered as well, but all had been brought to rights. Eventually.
Clearly, Barr’s charge felt some sort of ambivalence toward her Chrechte family as well. Though he doubted very much it would lead her down the path Ulf had taken, if for no other reason than because she was a human woman and fragile.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, wanting the answer before Muin returned.
She looked around them. “In the forest?”
“On Donegal land.” He barely restrained rolling his eyes. He had no doubt she knew exactly what he meant and had chosen to play at misunderstanding.
“I do not know.”
“What?”
She did not look like she was jesting, but she had to be. “I am hurt,” she said as if that should explain everything.
It did not. “Yes, you are.”
“How did I get that way?”
“Shouldn’t you tell me?”
“But I don’t know.”
Funny, there was no scent of a lie and yet, he hesitated to believe her. That had never happened to him before. “How can you not know?”
She merely looked at him.
“The wound in your arm looks like it came from a human weapon.” It was too isolated to be a bite or claw mark. “Were you attacked?”
“I must have been. By a violent knave with no conscience.” Her voice was filled with loathing, too much so not to know her attacker.
“Who was it?”
“I do not know him.” This rang with absolute sincerity, but did not match the near hatred in her earlier tone.
’Twas a puzzle to be sure. “Little one—”
“My name is Sabrine.”
That was something at least. “What clan are you from?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?”
She pressed her hand to her forehead, like she was trying to push thoughts inside. “I should know, but I don’t.”
“Did your fall addle your brains, I wonder?”
“It must have.” She tried again to sit up. This time she succeeded, though the pain in her expression said it cost her dearly to do so. “I do not like the idea of my brain in a muddle.”
Again there was no scent to indicate a lie, but the words did not ring with full truth all the same. It must be her confused state perplexing his wolf’s senses. “I am sure you do not.”
“What will I do?”
That was one answer he did have. “Until you remember where you are from, you will return to the Donegal holding with me.”
The urgency his wolf had felt to be near this woman had lessened since she woke, but it was not gone completely. It was as if it was still there. Only hidden from him, which made less sense than Sabrine’s inability to remember her own clan, while able to remember about the Chrechte.
He had hidden nothing from his wolf since his first change, and vice versa; they couldn’t. Man or beast, they were one and the same.
Had she been Chrechte, he would have guessed she was masking her scent and distracting his wolf’s senses, but even doing so could not completely mask the wolf nature. And she had none. Muin returned with Barr’s plaid before he could finish pondering this oddity and determine what it meant.
Keeping his body between the young Donegal clansman and Sabrine, Barr used his plaid to cover her nakedness, careful not to jostle her arm or her clearly tender body. He then gently lifted her into his arms.
And something fundamentally both wolf and human settled inside him at the rightness of it.
Chapter 2
As he carried her through the forest, Barr’s scent wrapped itself around Sabrine, demanding recognition, insisting on some sort of reaction from her raven.
He was no longer masking any of his presence, neither wolf nor human. It was a blatant warning to other predators that one more fierce than they walked in their midst. It would keep all but crazed boar from them.
More than a warning though, it also acted as a potent wine to her senses. She could smell nothing but the wolf in man’s skin that carried her.
That should have disgusted her, but instead she found herself unwillingly intrigued.
For the first time since taking on the duties as guardian for her people, Sabrine’s raven wanted to come out and play.
Despite the pain of her injured wing, she wanted to take to the sky in flight. And not as a patrol, looking for any potential threat. She longed to do dips and swirls she had not enjoyed as anything but tactical maneuvering since leaving her childhood behind.
Perhaps her fall from the sky truly had addled her mind. It was the only explanation. For her desire to frolic. For the desire building in a slow burn throughout her body.
For the inexplicable and totally unacceptable urge to cuddle closer to his altogether too impressive naked warrior’s body.
He did not smell evil, but he was wolf. He could not be anything else. And yet her bird wanted to rub itself against him, taking in his scent on a primal level none of her own people had ever made her long for. He was so different from the men of the Éan.
Even
for a wolf, Barr was huge. Taller than all of the men in his hunting party, he would also easily tower a half head above any of the Éan, even the golden eagles. Sabrine was of a height with most of her brethren, but this man called her little one and she could not gainsay him.
Not merely high in stature, his shoulders were so large he would not only have to duck, he would also have to turn sideways to enter her home. Not that she would ever lead him back to her people.
That way lay madness, death and destruction.
Still, she could not shake the feeling of safety being in his arms gave her. Every step he took made his bulging muscles ripple against her. And instead of strategizing ways to compensate for his superior strength in a battle between them, she had far too strong a desire to allow that strength to stand as shield between her and any that would do her harm.
Her mind was more than addled; she’d lost it completely.
Otherwise, she would never want to reach up and touch his wheat-colored hair so badly, she had to clasp her hands together lest one do it of its own accord.
She knew a golden eagle with hair the same color, but the eagle’s skin was not as darkened by the sun as Barr’s. Barr’s masculine allure was altogether too appealing in every way.
He knew he was magnificent among men, too; he carried her, uninhibited by his own nudity and with no regard for the curious glances cast their way by the young soldier Barr had sent back into the forest for his plaid.
As disgusted as it made her with herself, Sabrine could not help a reaction of purely feminine awe to him. None of the Éan had ever caused her to react thus. She had always been alone, a warrior among, and for, her people.
Now Sabrine fought the unfamiliar sense of connection that had been trying to form between her and the giant warrior since waking to his presence. No wolf should cause such feelings.
The Faol of the Chrechte were not to be trusted, not to be confided in and absolutely never to be mated with.
There were horrific stories of wolves using their Éan mates to lead them to the bird Chrechte only to kill the entire flock, including the grievously deceived mate. True, the stories were old ones, but that was only because the Éan had learned their lesson. They did not mate among their Faol.