Warrior's Moon

Three little words. They shouldn’t have mattered, and in the great expanse of life probably didn’t, but in that moment they healed wounds still bleeding in her heart.

“I am sorry I left you, but I cannot be sorry I claimed you. I wanted you from the moment your body showed itself to be fully a woman. I waited a full year to make you mine.” And then he’d let her go.

Did he expect her to cheer his supposed restraint? “You should have waited forever since you had no intention of marrying me after.”

“It was not my intentions that were at fault.”

She might begin to believe that. Might. “Merely your dedication to keeping your vows to me,” she mocked.

“Do not provoke me.” He growled, the sound just like a wolf.

“Or what? You’ll lose control?” Heavens above, what was she doing? Did she want to see his beast come out?

Mayhap, she did.

“Yes,” he ground out, stalking closer, his once again fully tumescent sex testimony to the veracity of his passions at least.

Though again she had to remind herself there was nothing to say that he would not physically desire any woman after shifting from his wolf form. It was a very primitive action and there was nothing more primal than sex.

He towered above her, the beast in his eyes so clear she wondered how she’d ever been able to miss it. “My wolf would claim you, mo toilichte.”

“Your wolf and you are the same, are you not?” It had certainly seemed so when the beast stood before her.

The wolf had shown the understanding of a man.

“We are.”

“Then you want to claim me.”

“Aye.” He closed his eyes, his head tilted back, his tone so guttural it was barely more than a whisper. “I crave you as no other.”

“Me? Or any woman’s form?”

His head jerked down, blue eyes snapping open and filled with rage-fueled desire. The sound that came from his throat was not human. He had not liked that question at all. It was as if she was casting aspersions on some intrinsic element to his nature, or maybe even something deeper.

“You. My sacred mate. I have told you, I can have no other. Six years…” His neck muscles corded, he let his words trail off.

Had he said that, or merely claimed he had not had comfort in all that time? “What do you mean?”

“As Faol—a wolf shifter. I mean—once I have had sex with my sacred mate, I cannot do so with another.”

“Explain the cannot.”

Something seemed to snap inside him and he grabbed her hand, pressing it to his hard flesh.

Her fingers curled around the erection of their own volition, squeezing before she was even aware of what she was doing.

He groaned, the sound both pained and filled with ecstasy. “This does not happen.”

“This?” she asked as she squeezed again, this time quite deliberately.

“Yes. I become aroused for none but my true mate. Six years…” he said again, his voice pained. Caelis’s eyes slid shut again, his head tipping back. “Only you, Shona.”

The urge to touch him in ways that would push that pleasure over the cliff grew with each second she held that velvet-soft hardness in her hand.

She should release him, push him away. Her brain insisted on it. But once again, instinct was taking over reason and her body refused to obey the dictates of her brain.

“I am your sacred mate?” she asked, trying to understand what that really meant.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He cupped each side of her neck, his thumbs rubbing the underside of her chin and leaned down so their foreheads touched. “Only Providence knows, but the sacred bond is a gift few among the Chrechte find.”

“Then how could you throw me away?”

“I was convinced of a lie.” She could not deny the pain in his voice.

But she could not let it dictate her responses either. “You let yourself believe a lie,” she corrected.

The sound he made was one of an animal in pain. “Aye.”

She nodded, their foreheads brushing. She’d needed to hear him admit it. Even if he did not take full responsibility for their separation, Caelis needed to acknowledge his role in it.

She would never forget.

“Believing your laird’s claim…” She would not call that man her laird. “That I was not the one, you were willing to push me away on the hope you had a sacred mate.”

“No. Maybe.” He lifted her head so their gazes met, so close she could see herself in his pupils. “I expected him to realize his error.”

“You believed I was your sacred mate?” she asked.

“No, but I didn’t think I would find mine. Uven made it clear that even if I could not, he expected me to catch another wolf with child. I hoped he would change his mind about that.”

“Or maybe you thought you could get another woman pregnant and leave her?” Shona asked, her own pain too close to the surface.

“No. If you believe nothing else about me, believe that I would not have let you go had I allowed myself to accept the possibility of a child. And there was no other woman I would have given my seed to. Chrechte or human.”

Could she accept his words as truth?

No deception shadowed his blue eyes made dark by the candlelight; but then, she’d seen no deception there six years before either.

“You want to believe.”

She could not deny it.

“Then believe,” he said, his tone cajoling and demanding at once.

Desire that had nothing to do with the words between them coursed through her, heating her blood as even he had never done before. ’Twas as if the six years apart had only increased her body’s need for him.

It should have been the opposite. After so long, even residual passion’s spark should have gone out.

But the flame burning inside her was hotter than the sun and demanded to be assuaged.

“You want me,” he said, his tone laced with wonder and undeniable joy.

“I—”

“Do not deny it.” He sniffed the air, another feral noise sounding from deep in his throat. “I can smell it. I can taste it on the air.”

“Your wolf senses…” Suddenly her son’s enhanced abilities made sense. “Eadan—”

“Is like me, though he will not shift for the first time until he is of age.”

“No. I would know if my son was more than human.” Though memory after memory flashed through her mind, reminding her of oddities she’d dismissed over and over again.

Simply because what they pointed to had made absolutely no sense.

Her son shared his nature with a wolf.

“How? When you knew nothing of our existence?”

“He is my son.”

“And mine.”

What would have happened if her son had shifted without Shona or him being aware of werewolves? “The dreams.”