Warrior's Moon

“I would not mind staying here for a bit,” Thomas said, sounding every bit as hopeful as the children. “The Sinclair said I could train with his Chrechte, his elite soldiers.”

Shona did not miss Thomas’s attempt to explain the Chrechte away as elite soldiers. Just as others in her former clan had done when she’d lived among them, but after last night, Shona knew exactly what Chrechte were.

Elite soldiers they might be, but ’twas because they shared their nature with a beast.

She stared at Thomas, the young man who had come to live in her home when he was still a gangly boy of fourteen. She’d been only a few years older but felt decades wiser in the ways of the world.

This boy was to train with the Chrechte. That could only mean one thing.

“You have a wolf as well,” she whispered, barely able to get the words past the tightness in her throat.

For if Thomas, honorary uncle to her children and close as a brother to Shona, was a shape-changer—that meant her dearest friend, the true sister of her heart, Audrey was as well.

And all these years, neither had said a thing.

Chapter 9

A mother, though of the softest feminine nature, will let her beast rule when protecting her child.

—SABRINE OF THE DONEGAL

“Wolf? I don’t know what you mean.” Thomas was such a poor liar, Shona had to wonder at his and Audrey’s ability to keep their secret all these years.

“Stop your fabrications. Caelis told me. He showed me,” she emphasized, so they would not think there was any room for doubt.

“You showed her?” Thomas asked, clearly shocked to the core. “But you are male and it is not the full moon.”

“We gain control of our change once we have engaged in certain acts,” Caelis said with a significant look at the children.

Shona had no idea what he meant, but Thomas seemed to understand just fine because he nodded and then turned bright red.

“You are a white wolf, are you not?” Caelis asked.

Thomas nodded his head doubtfully.

Caelis looked to Audrey, who gave a more confident affirmative. “Then you should have control of the change already. It is the way of your wolf. Others are not so lucky.”

“I can prevent it at the full moon,” Thomas said. “Mother taught us.”

“If you can prevent the change, you can initiate it as well.”

“I can?” Thomas asked, his eyes shining with delight at the thought.

“Aye.”

“Will you show me how?”

Caelis gave a short nod of his head in affirmative.

Thomas’s eyes glowed with such hero worship, in other circumstances it would have brought a smile to Shona’s features. But numbness was taking over emotions battered by one too many blows.

“Did you know about Eadan?” Shona asked Audrey, her voice strained.

Though she felt distanced from the pain of yet another betrayal slicing at her heart and the way it manifested itself.

Audrey’s face crumpled and Shona had her answer.

Not only were they both Chrechte, but they’d known her son was one as well.

For five years, Audrey and Thomas had known Shona’s most shameful secret.

They had always been aware that her husband was not father to her son, and yet they’d kept their own mystery without a hint to the truth.

They’d kept her son’s true nature from her. “How? How did you know?”

Was it something about the way her son smelled to them? He was always talking about being able to smell her sadness or a lie when she tried to protect him from the truth.

“Your father—”

“My father knew?” Shona cried, cut to the very quick of her being. “How? Why?”

She looked accusingly at Caelis. “You told him when you did not tell me?”

“No. I know not how your father came to know our secret, but ’twas not through me.”

She did not understand the look of concern on Caelis’s features. Though naught made much sense at the moment. The two people he had been certain would never knowingly deceive her had done nothing but for five years.

Revelation after revelation unfurled in her beleaguered brain. Her dearest and most trusted friends had proven beyond doubt that they did not trust her. Further, they were not so trustworthy. They had lied to her, hidden her son’s nature from her.

’Twas that fact that was most difficult to accept. Well, almost.

The fact that her father had known was as devastating but not so hard to fathom. He had proven his lack of regard for her happiness too consistently for her to continue to pretend even in her deepest heart that he had loved her, despite his harsh judgment of her actions.

He’d known of Caelis’s nature, though she did not know how. If she believed Caelis’s claim he did not tell her father of the wolf nature, then her da must have found out some other way.

As former seneschal to the clan, however, her da would have been privy to secrets others were not. The how was far less important than the result though.

Her own father had known her son’s lineage and what it meant, and he’d not thought her worthy of knowing as well.

Had thought she deserved the fate he arranged for her, marriage to a man of an age to be her own grandfather?

“He knew…” She could barely comprehend the level of betrayal pounding on her already beleaguered heart like the blacksmith’s anvil. “If he knew of the Chrechte, then he knew what my pregnancy signified. He knew I was your true mate and yet he forced me into marriage with the baron.”

Saying the words aloud made them no easier to believe or to bear.

“Your father forced you to marry?”

“You think I wanted another man’s touch? You think I wanted any man to have a hold over my life after you used and discarded me?” The grief pouring off her made her tone shrill, her Gaelic slurred.

Her son made a sound of distress and guilt poured through Shona. She’d never pretended to be perfect to her children, but she had always, always tried to protect them from her distress.

It was a mark of how great the toll the last few sennights had been on her that she’d allowed them to see her upset to this degree. Her children had no fault in the pain besetting her and she would not let them pay the price for her own folly in once again trusting unwisely.

Using every ounce of her courage and will, she pushed back her feelings of betrayal and turned with a semblance of a smile to her son. “All is well, Eadan.”

“Do you still love me, Mummy?”

“What? Of course I do.” And five years old or not, she tugged her son into a fierce hug. “I love you more than my own life and I always will, I promise you.”

“Someday, I am going to be a wolf,” he whispered against her collar bone, his little boy arms wrapped tightly around her neck. “My dreams showed me. Like my da.”

“I know.” And deep inside, where truth resided, she did. “You will be an amazing wolf.”

He pulled back, checking her face as if testing the veracity of her words.