Viking's Moon (Children of the Moon Book 6)

by Lucy Monroe

  "However, this time we will take you before the Faol Chridhe and I will touch my sword's kotrondmsnkr hjarta to it, drawing your energy to join with both your mother and mine."

  And that is what they did.

  They had traveled back to the mainland with the dragon ri after he extracted necessary information from the betrayers. All three had been sentenced to death with the sentence carried out within a day of their trial before the council.

  It took several months, but all the Fearghall spies and underminers within the allied clans were routed out. This time, every single Chrechte had been required to speak a very specific pledge of loyalty to the dragon ri and their own clan and to publicly denounce the Fearghall and all they stood for.

  The old man had revealed, in fury and with accusation, that the Fearghall numbers were dwindling. He blamed the weakening of the Chrechte packs with their intermatings, but in fact, the opposite was true. By denying true mates, fewer children were born among the Fearghall sympathizers and the clan that harbored them had one of the smallest Chrechte packs known.

  The MacLeod pack had been an exception only because it was not all Fearghall, only led by a small minority of them. The intermarriage they denounced was what was actually saving the Faol and Éan from extinction.

  They had Freya's ceremony in the ancient sacred caves on the Sinclair land that used to belong to the Donegal clan.

  Ciara, celi di and mate to the dragon ri, presided over the ceremony.

  Haakon squeezed his daughter's hand when he felt her shake beside him. "You have nothing to fear from our sacred stones."

  "The power in this place presses down on me. I feel like I should be kneeling," Freya whispered back to him.

  "Then kneel," Neilina instructed her daughter.

  And the three of them approached the stone so that Freya could kneel as she placed her hands onto the stone. Neilina put her hand over Freya's and Haakon put his hand on top of both of theirs using his other to press the stone in the hilt of his sword against the bottom of the Faol Chridhe.

  Light shown around them in flashes of brilliant colors and then Freya's head fell back and she cried out, her body rigid.

  The shift came over her and moments later, a beautiful conriocht appeared, the same light covering of white fur as her mother sprouting from Freya's skin.

  There were gasps of surprise from those within the chamber.

  For, if any proof that the nonshifting Chrechte were called by the stone as their shifting brethren was needed, here it was.

  Freya, who smelled wholly human had just taken a guardian form.

  Neilina shifted to her own conriocht form and embraced their daughter, emotion swirling in the air around them.

  Love and relief.

  Haakon sheathed his sword and put his hands on the shoulders of his wife and his daughter. "My family. Protectors of all Chrechte and holders of my heart."

  A resounding cheer went up and the joy in the cavern could not be questioned.

  Another protector of their people now stood between them and any who might try to destroy any honorable Chrechte.

  Neilina joined her husband in their private chamber deep in the warren of the ancient ritual caves. "Our daughter is conriocht."

  "We are truly blessed."

  Neilina chewed on her lower lip. "But it is a heavy burden for her to carry."

  "A burden she will not have to carry alone."

  Neilina nodded. Her mate had a tendency to see the best side of things. She was trying to learn that trait from him.

  She pulled him down to their furs and placed his big hand over her stomach. "Can you sense our baby?"

  "You're pregnant?" he asked in clear awe.

  "You did not know?"

  "I thought I was imagining the subtle shift in your scent. I cannot hear the second heartbeat yet."

  "I had a vision. In the cavern, as the lights swirled around us."

  Her asmundr's eyes filled with moisture. "A baby?"

  "Our baby." She smiled. "Freya will be the best and most protective older sister ever."

  "She will."

  "But you?" Neilina said, her heart in her throat. "Will be the best father."

  "You believe that, despite what my own father was?" Haakon asked, clearly moved.

  "There is no man alive more honorable than my mate," Neilina offered him that truth without reservation.

  "And no woman more integrous and strong than my mate." He kissed her with tender passion. "Nor as beautiful. I love you, Neilina, with everything in my soul."

  Moisture burned her own eyes as she returned his kiss and then whispered against his lips. "I lied when I said I would not love you. I cannot imagine life without this powerful feeling inside me. You are the center of my world."

  He pulled her to him in a frenzy of need, as if her words had sparked unbearable passion and they made love with an urgency they had not met to this point.

  They continued to join their bodies deep into the night, whispering words of love and devotion over and over again.

  Neilina had thought she lost her chance at happiness when she failed her clan, but the joy and love that filled her belied that belief entirely.

  She would never face another daybreak alone, and though she needed no protector, she had one. For all the centuries left of her long life.

  "I love you," she said one last time as sleep came to claim her.

  His reply, "And I love you, more than life," followed her into dreams no longer filled with the dying but showing a future as glowing as the sun.

  EPILOGUE

  T

  en years later, Haakon and Neilina returned to Iceland for the first time, bringing their family of not only Freya, but a nine-year-old son named Colin for Neilina's father and a four-year-old daughter named Astrid for Haakon's mother. His son had Neilina's fierce nature, but their daughter had all the gentleness Haakon remembered of his mother.

  They had spent the last decade traveling from pack to pack, teaching Chrechte the old ways and how to draw on gifts long forgotten.

  But the time had come to introduce his family to his uncle and cousin and all those Haakon had spent his first decades of life living among and protecting.

  They were accompanied on this trip by the dreke kongr and his wife. She had seen that she was to preside over the coming of age ceremony for Einar and Artair's two children. That ceremony had been filled with power and shocking to most who attended, Einar and Artair not excluded.

  Their daughter was gifted with the power of the Seer who could call forth and banish the beast nature of her Chrechte brethren. Their son took on his second father's wolf form and then shifted almost immediately to a Tiger of the Rus like Einar. Having two forms was unheard of in a child born of parents of the same Chrechte race and/or human.

  But gifted he had been, and the entire holding rejoiced when the jarl officially named his grandson successor after Einar.

  Marie spoke as Seer for the first time with her hand on the kotrondmenskr hjart. "My brother, both Faol and kotrondmenskr will share my longevity of life. Many generations from now, he will lead the kotrondmenskr from Iceland to rejoin our Paindeal brethren."

  Chills washed over Haakon at his young cousin's words. Whatever led to that migration would be permanent, he knew, just as he knew that his place was no longer among the kotrondmenskr, but at his mate's side as they served dreke kongr together, protectors of all Chrechte, not just a single race.

  The future held challenges and joy, but through all of it, he would have his beloved kelle by his side and their children that would lead and protect the Chrechte in generations to come.

  ~ The End ~

  Watch for the next Children of the Moon, the beginning of a new series set in the Victorian Era. Maon finally finds his mate after centuries living among the Egyptians and the first Griffin is discovered in millennia.