chapter 5
If you ignore the dragon, it will eat you. If you try to confront the dragon, it will overpower you. If you ride the dragon, you will take advantage of its might and power.
—CHINESE PROVERB
Ciara turned and trotted around the tree so she could shift. When she came back, Mairi was leaning against the tree, her face set in misery.
But it transformed with anticipation when she saw Ciara. “You are the one. You’re the princess of our people who can gift me with the ability to be a wolf, with strength to protect myself.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” She had never heard of such a thing. Not even in the ancient stories. “Besides, I’m not a princess. I’m an orphan.”
“Oh, no, my dreams do not lie. They led me here, to you. Only a princess of our people would dare roam the woods alone at night, unafraid of what might be lurking in the shadows.”
“You are alone.”
“But I’m scared spitless.” Mairi nodded as if to reinforce the claim, though her scent did that well enough, fear and fatigue coming off her in waves. “If I had any choice, I would not be out here; you can be assured of that.”
“You need help. You will find sanctuary with my clan.”
“If your clan takes me in, my father will consider it an act of war. He will insist on my return.”
“This same father whose fists have driven you into the forest alone and unprotected?”
Shame tinted Mairi’s cheeks. “Yes.”
“Your father’s dishonor is not yours.”
“If I could shift—”
“He would find another reason to hurt you. Men like him always do.” She thought of Luag and what kind of man he would be now if he had lived. Her reflection sent a shiver of old dread down her spine.
Ciara would help Mairi, whatever it took.
But the talkative yet frightened woman was shaking her head as if reading Ciara’s thoughts. “I…it wouldn’t be right…I can’t put your clan at risk.”
“Our laird will not fear the wrath of a man who takes his anger out on his own daughter.”
“He says I am stupid, that it’s my fault,” Mairi admitted as if telling a horrible secret about herself, not her abominable father. “My father says I make him too angry to hold back his fists.”
“He can’t be much of a Chrechte if he cannot control himself any better than that. And you cannot be so stupid if you made it all the way to this part of the Sinclair lands without being discovered before now.” They were only an hour’s walk from the keep, much too close for any but a truly clever woman to have traveled without detection.
Mairi shook her head, wincing as she did so. “I think perhaps your father was a very special man.”
“Yes, he is.”
“You said you were an orphan.”
“The Sinclair and his lady adopted me when the last of my family was lost to me.”
“He won’t want to make an enemy of my father.” Mairi’s voice was heavy with defeat. “Father is a laird and very powerful.”
Ciara would have none of it. “You do not know Talorc of the Sinclairs. There is no laird in the Highlands that he fears.”
Laird Talorc respected the Balmoral and his old second-in-command Barr, currently acting laird of the Donegals, but he feared no man, wolf or even dragon. It went without saying that no English baron or Lowland Scotland laird would intimidate him, either.
“I have heard of the Sinclair. ’Tis why I came to his holding and not another.” Mairi’s expression showed awe and a desperate hope Ciara understood too well. “Many fear him and his brother by marriage, the Balmoral.”
“And rightly they should.”
“You do not fear him though?” Mairi asked warily.
“No. He does not prey on those weaker than him.”
“That is good.” Though Mairi still didn’t sound entirely convinced and Ciara could not blame her. To be hurt by the one who was supposed to protect you had to have destroyed her trust in all who would have authority over her.
She whispered, “I wish I did not fear my father. My brother is not afraid of him.”
“Your father has broken the ancient laws of our people. Chrechte do not beat their children.” Though clearly some did. It made Ciara’s stomach knot with tension.
Mairi frowned. “I have heard my father say that the old laws don’t matter any longer, that the Faol have to make a new way.”
Laird Talorc and the secret council Ciara was not supposed to know existed would want to hear that. A pack leader who dismissed their oldest tenets to live by was a danger to them all, Faol and Éan alike.
Grief now mixed with pain and fear in Mairi’s scent and Ciara felt empathy for her. She knew the pain of accepting that the one you looked up to most in the world lacked what all Chrechte deemed of greatest importance—honor.
“Your father is part of the secret group determined to eradicate the Éan, isn’t he?” Ciara was guessing, but it just made sense.
A Chrechte so twisted he would hurt his only daughter was a man who would entertain unreasonable prejudices as well. And that new way for the Faol business just sounded too much like something Luag would have said to Galen.
“How did you know?”
“I didn’t, but I suspected.” She reached out and touched the other woman in comfort. “I have known others of like mind.”
“They want to kill all the Éan and say that the Faol cannot thrive until they are the only Chrechte left. My father hunts often, but once a month, he and others go hunting and it is not for game to feed the clan.”
Memories made Ciara clench her jaw so words would not come out.
“He wants the Faolchú Chridhe,” Mairi whispered.
“No,” Ciara practically shouted. “The sacred stone would not be safe in his foul hands.”
“You are right.” Mairi’s expression turned even more miserable. “He wants its power to overthrow Scotland’s king.”
“How does he know of the sacred stone’s existence?”
Mairi’s eyes glistened with tears. “My mother had the sight. She told him everything she saw, including her dreams of the Faolchú Chridhe and the power that can be drawn through it.”
Mairi’s voice softened when she mentioned her dam, but it was evident that she did not approve her mother’s choice to share such sacred things with a man like her father.
“She was deceived by her loyalty to her husband,” Ciara comforted the other woman.
Mairi nodded. “But he had no loyalty to her.”
“I am sorry.” The words felt inadequate, but Ciara had no others.
“He wanted more children, a son, but my mother miscarried with her two pregnancies after me. The last one when I was six summers. She drowned in the loch she did our washing in two months later.”
Was Mairi saying her father had killed her mother?
“He knew.” Mairi said it like she’d had too much drink and Ciara realized the woman’s condition was worsening.
“What did he know?” she asked as she tried to ease the human woman to the ground.
But Mairi fought Ciara’s efforts, remaining standing against the tree. “He knew that to have more children, he had to bed another and he could not do that while my mother lived. She was his true mate.”
Ciara’s stomach roiled at the implications. For a Chrechte to kill his mate was anathema to even the worst among their people. “You realized this so young?”
“No, but later, I knew and I hated him for it, even before he learned of my deficiency, that I am not wolf.”
Ciara had no words of comfort for something so evil.
“I have it, too, the sight, but I never told him.” Mairi sounded pleased by her deception.
And well she should be.
Ciara asked, “Not even to stop the beatings though?”
“No. It would not have been worth it. I would not help him in any of his plans.”
“You are strong of mind and spirit.” Ciara’s voice was warm with approval and she hoped the other woman heard it.
“For a human, you mean.”
“For anyone. I told my brother about my dreams and he would have misused the Faolchú Chridhe for his own gain.” And that was Ciara’s own shame to bear.
It was Mairi’s turn to extend comfort and she did. “It was not wrong of you, to trust the one you loved.”
Ciara wished she could believe that. “His ignorance cost him his life.” It was the first time she’d admitted it aloud.
“I’m glad you can finally acknowledge that.”
Both women jumped at the sound of Eirik’s deep masculine voice, but Ciara felt more than shock. A lot more.
Even the gravity of her talk with Mairi could not diminish Ciara’s instant reaction to the prince’s presence.
Ciara spun to face him. He stood as naked as she in the moonlight, both having left their clothes behind to shift into their animal forms apparently. She could not help letting her gaze slide down his body where it snagged on the quite impressive protuberance from between his legs.
He was physically prepared to mate and against all logic and her will, her body throbbed in response.
“As flattering as your interest is, faolán, now is not the time to pursue it.”
He called her little wolf? Arrogant warrior! She might be smaller than he, but she was no babe in arms. However, her wolf preened at the endearment, snapping for a chance to come forth and scent the dragon.
Ciara gritted her teeth and fought her feral nature with all her considerable will. “Do not mistake curiosity for interest.”
Even if her own wolf wanted to do so.
He laughed, his head thrown back, his body showing no signs of losing its own interest. “You are a spitfire, but I am no fool. Say what you like, your body tells the truth.”
Why did she find it so difficult to mask her scent around this man? What had become ingrained habit for her flew the way of the sparrow seeking warmer climes for the winter when he came near. Her body betrayed her in ways it never did with others, not since she’d taken to hiding her thoughts and emotions so long ago behind a façade of unperturbed calm.
It was the only way to allay Abigail’s potent concern and Laird Talorc’s rough brand of compassion.
“What are you doing here?” Ciara demanded, ignoring Eirik’s claim and hoping he would let the matter drop.
“You run at night, alone in the woods.” The censure in his tone would have done their laird proud. “It is not safe.”
“So, you’ve been watching over me?” Why would the dragon do such a thing?
She did not need a protector, nor did she need to know he saw himself as such. Her wolf and feminine instincts both found that possibility far too appealing.
“Aye.”
“I don’t believe you.” His appearance tonight had to be happenstance. “I would have noticed.”
It was not as if a dragon flying overhead in the sky could be so easily overlooked.
He rolled his eyes as if reading her thoughts. “A raven is not so easy to detect.”
Oh, of course. Her mind was too muddled with lack of sleep and meeting up with injured women in the forest.
Still, the raven watching her rather than the dragon did not explain everything. “Why not expose my behavior if you disapproved of it so much?”
“Who is this?” he asked, indicating Mairi and ignoring Ciara’s query altogether.
For some reason, Ciara found herself moving between the two to block Mairi’s view of the Éan shifter in all his naked glory. “A human woman seeking sanctuary.”
Mairi made a sound that could be taken for disagreement.
“You do not want sanctuary from the Sinclair?” Eirik asked, sounding nonplussed.
Ciara would have hugged Mairi for confusing the bossy dragon except to do so would probably cause pain for the other woman.
“I do not wish to cause war between the two clans, but there are facts I must make your laird aware of. When the Sinclair realizes the likely consequences of taking me in, I’m sure he won’t offer sanctuary. But perhaps I could see my hurts tended to?”
“I told you, Laird Talorc will not fear your father.” And Ciara wasn’t letting Mairi go back to the evil Chrechte, not ever.
That settled in her own mind at least, she turned on Eirik. “You should leave.”
“You need my help if you hope to get the human woman into the keep this night to have her injuries tended to.”
Ciara opened her mouth to deny it, but then snapped it shut. She could go to the gatehouse and call for the bridge to be let down. Only if she did that, everyone would know she’d been outside the walls at night against the laird’s orders. The night guards would be punished for her actions.
Laird Talorc would look a fool to the clan because others would see the situation as Ciara successfully defying him…once again, when that had not been her intention at all. She never would have left the keep if she’d thought there was even a remote chance she would be caught outside the walls.
It was just that her dreams drove her beyond endurance.
Regardless, Ciara could not ignore Mairi’s plight. The other woman was in far too fragile a state to risk waiting for morning to sneak back inside the keep.
“How are you going to help us?” Even as Ciara asked the question, she realized the answer and was shaking her head in absolute denial. “No. No. No. We are not two small children to ride the back of your dragon.”
Had wolves been meant to fly, God would have given them wings. Yes, he would.
She remembered her reaction when the dragon had snatched her right out of the air and from certain death. She’d fainted.
“Do you have a better idea?”
She was trying to think of one when Mairi crumpled to the ground. Ciara dropped to her knees beside the injured woman, grateful when she felt the rise and fall of Mairi’s chest against her hand. But the other woman’s breathing was shallow and the mottling of bruises around her neck and face hinted she could be injured far worse where her plaid covered her.
What kind of man did this to his daughter?
Ciara brushed Mairi’s pale hair back from her face. “We have to get her back to the keep. Now.”
“Yes.”
There was no help for it, but that didn’t mean Ciara had to like it. Wolves ran. They jumped, even great distances. But they did not fly.
She, however, was about to. Again. She could only hope this time that she kept her wits about her.
Ciara turned her head toward Eirik. “Shift into your dragon. I’ll lift her onto your back and then climb on behind her to keep her from falling.”
Was she really going to ride the dragon that had cast fire and killed her brother?
Looking down at the unconscious woman beside her, Ciara could only find one answer inside her heart.
Yes.
Eirik shifted right there, with a flash of crimson light and a low dragon’s growl. At least as fast as any wolf shifter Ciara had ever seen, and quicker than most, the transformation from man to dragon was over in seconds.
Eirik’s beast was magnificent and huge. Much bigger close-up than he had seemed in the sky (and he’d been plenty imposing then), the red dragon stood half again as tall as a laird’s warhorse and easily twice as long. His wings spread out with a whoosh of air that sent Ciara’s hair flying around her face as he stood on his back legs.
And, if it were possible, he looked even more massive like this.
Familiar amber eyes surveyed Ciara and the unconscious Mairi. Were dragons as cognizant of their human counterparts as wolves?
There was no reason to believe otherwise, but the sense of feral strength coming from Eirik the dragon was immense. And still, Ciara felt no fear. Far from it.
She should be terrified; she knew what destruction this beast could do, but all she felt was awe and this ridiculous inescapable enchantment to be in his presence.
’Twas not right. Mythical creature of magic or not, this beast had killed her brother, even if it had not been murder.
However, her wolf refused to see Eirik as enemy. She wanted to roll on her back and show belly, but not out of mere recognition of the more powerful predator. Oh, no. That would be too simple and easy to ignore. Her wolf craved the dragon’s touch, it wanted to be nuzzled, scented and accepted.
That was never going to happen.
Ciara fought her wolf’s urges even as she considered the problem at hand. “How am I going to get Mairi onto your back?”
He moved, his body shockingly agile for so great a beast, and simply picked Mairi up in his forearms.
As much as Ciara knew the other woman needed his help, the sight of Mairi in Eirik’s arms made Ciara’s wolf howl inside her. The wolf insisted this was not right. Another woman should not be held so carefully against Eirik’s massive crimson-scaled chest.
Ciara ignored her Faol instincts and took a step back. “I’ll shift into my wolf and run back to the keep then.”
Eirik shook his great head and gave a growl that couldn’t be taken as anything but a very adamant negative. If she was still in doubt, the way his tail whipped out, wrapped around her waist and tugged her toward him was enough to make his thoughts on the subject known.
She pushed at the living rope surrounding her to no avail. “We don’t have time to argue. I don’t know how injured Mairi is. We’ve got to get her to Abigail.”
Ciara had to fight both the urge to simply caress his tail and learn the feel of the dragon’s scales close-up, and the overwhelming sense of safety this odd embrace gave her.
Eirik nodded, his determined amber gaze telling her he agreed, but that they were going to do things his way.
Stubborn dragon prince.
“I know you think I need you watching over me, but I am perfectly safe in the forest.”
He growled and shook his head, his tail tightening its hold on her. His warmth surrounded her like a shield and she wanted to relax, rest here where she felt safe enough to sleep, when she never felt that safe anymore.
Could the dragon protect her dreams? ’Twas a whimsical if very tempting thought. And she dismissed it.
“You are bossy, you know that, right?”
A dragon’s shrug moved its wings and once again a soft wind caressed her face. Ciara found it so ridiculously endearing, an unwilling smile curved her lips when really, she wanted to frown. “Arrogant beast.”
The chuff that came from his mouth could be naught but laughter.
“How am I to get on your back then? I am not a bird. I cannot fly.” And the thought of scrambling up his huge body as the boys had done that day so long ago in the forest was not in the least appealing.
Eirik shook his head and chuffed again. And then, without warning, she found herself being lifted off the ground.
An embarrassing squeak came out of her mouth before she clamped it shut. And the tip of his tail caressed her back as if to soothe her. Darn it if she did not indeed feel soothed.
Annoying dragon know-it-all.
He set her standing on his massive thigh, his legs bent to make a step of sorts. And she found herself doing exactly what she’d sworn not to, climbing up his back like a child in a tree. He positioned his wings so she could use one to hold onto as she moved up his back.
His scales were warm and not exactly slick, but they were smooth. Still, with his tail against her back and his wings nearly closed around her, she was in no danger of slipping. When she settled against his neck, she draped her legs on either side, resting them against where his wings joined his shoulders. She curled her arms around his neck, her fingers locked but careful not to choke him.
It was as secure a spot as she could hope for in order to ride the mythical beast.
Ciara felt the muscles under her thighs bunch and knew Eirik was getting ready to leap into the sky.
’Twas just like riding a horse. She nodded to herself. Yes. That was it.
So, she was a great deal farther from the ground than when she rode even the biggest horse in the stable. It did not matter. It would not be so bad.
Eirik took a couple of running steps and then leapt upward.
“A horse. Just like a horse,” she muttered over and over to herself.
But horses did not fly, no more than wolves.
And Eirik was still rising in the sky with Mairi in his arms and Ciara on his back, his great wings creating a powerful draft below them. Ciara peeked around his neck to look down. Her grip on the dragon’s neck tightened. They flew well above the tops of the trees…trees so tall she could barely see their tops from the ground.
But the terror that had sparked in her at the thought of flight did not show itself now that she was high in the sky on a dragon’s back. Exhilarated rather, the sense of enchantment returned.
She was flying and it was magnificent! She wanted to shout her glee, but worried she might draw attention to them and then decided they were too far from the ground for her voice to carry to anyone below.
She threw her head back and laughed. Thoroughly captivated, she laughed as she had not since she was a small child. The dragon’s head came up and he bugled, a sound that was like bubbled happiness exploding around her.
“It is magical,” she shouted, hoping he could hear her through the rushing wind around them. “Wonderful!”
She’d ever believed there could be no greater gift than the ability to share her life with the wolf that shared her soul. But to fly? To see the world from above, to feel the cold wind on her face and the amazing body of a dragon below her? This was a gift beyond measure.
She hugged the dragon’s neck and whispered, not sure she wanted him to hear, but certain the words had to be said. “Thank you for this. Thank you.”