Warrior's Moon

“Your mother died only a year later.”

“Yes. She never saw Thomas shift.” Audrey took a shuddering breath, old pain Shona understood all too well in the depths of her gaze. Her friends had both lost parents. “I always believed it was grief at her passing that brought on his first transformation to wolf.”

“And your father did not know of your nature, of your mother’s?”

“Thomas did not even know about me, or what Mother had been, not…until his first shift. I nearly lost him that night. He did not know what was happening.” Remembered horror shone in Audrey’s eyes.

“That is terrible. Why wouldn’t your mother have told him the truth? Why didn’t you?”

“It is against Chrechte law. We are taught that protecting our secret is the most important thing. Nothing else compares. Not family loyalty, not the loyalty of a friend.” Audrey’s expression begged Shona’s understanding.

Shona did not know if she could give it. “But he was her son!” And Audrey’s twin brother, though Shona did not point out that obvious fact.

“And I was her daughter. I knew nothing of what it meant to be a Chrechte, had never even heard the word before my wolf nature claimed me. My first shift was nothing I want to remember, believe me. I thought I was beset by demons.”

Shona had no words. How could a mother hide something so elemental from her children and cause them such terrible distress? How could she teach those same children to do the very same thing? ’Twas wicked, to Shona’s way of thinking.

“At least Mother knew to be looking for my first transformation. She made sure that she was nearby when the full moon came. I believed my brother would never shift and so was not watching out for him when it happened. It was horrible for him. He did not know what was happening any more than I had, but there was no one around him to reason with him, to tell him what was happening was natural. He believed he’d gone mad with grief, was terrified he would kill. Had he known how to accomplish it, he would have ended his own life that night.”

“Protecting your secret is one thing, but that is monstrous. How could your mother think such a thing acceptable?” Shona wondered almost to herself.

“It was not Mother’s responsibility. It was mine and I failed my brother that night.”

“You were but thirteen summers.”

“What has age to do with it?”

“Everything.” By the saints, how was Shona to keep her anger at a woman whose fear of discovery had led to so much personal pain already?

Audrey let out an agonized breath. “I wanted to tell you so many times.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Mother made me promise, over and over again…that I would never divulge the secret of our natures. By the time I met you, it was ingrained in me to hide the truth at all costs.”

“The cost was nearly your brother’s life. I cannot believe your mother wanted that.”

“I do not think so, but she was most adamant. She left her pack to follow my father. The pack had disowned her, but she said they would come for her, and us, if we ever revealed the truth of the Chrechte. That they would kill us without a second thought if we betrayed them.”

There was no doubt that Audrey’s mother had believed her dire warnings because she’d passed that unshakable belief onto her daughter. It was in Audrey’s tone and the way she held herself when repeating the threat.

“Do you still believe you are at risk from that pack?”

“I do not know. Mother told me so little. I look like her; what if someone from her former pack sees me and knows who I am? She thought they would rather kill me and Thomas than allow what they called half breeds to live. Her fear of them was great.”

“Where is her pack?” The words were in Shona’s head, but she hadn’t spoken them.

They’d been uttered in that deep masculine voice she’d heard only recently in the great hall.

Vegar stood inside the door, his expression dark, Caelis behind him, his blue gaze seeking Shona’s. Shona refused to lock eyes with the man set on claiming her. She wanted reassurances that he would not have acted as Audrey’s mother had done, and feared she would not find them.

“I don’t know.” Audrey was also refusing to look at Vegar, her gaze fixed on the floor in a way that upset Shona very much. “My mother was from a holding on the border, in the northeast. She spoke very little of her past.”

Vegar’s expression darkened. “There is a pack made up entirely of the Fearghall and their females in that area.”

“What are the Fearghall?” Shona asked even as she noted her friend’s face paling.

Vegar answered, “They are a secret band of Chrechte intent on destroying all but the Faol.”

Shona knew Faol as an ancient word for wolf. “You are saying other Chrechte are not wolves?”

“Some are birds. Eagles, ravens and hawks,” Caelis said as he shut the door, closing the four of them into the room.

“We are called the Ean,” Vegar added, his gaze never leaving Audrey’s bowed head.

“You cannot be Ean,” Audrey whispered. “The Ean want to destroy the Faol.”

“Your mother was Fearghall.” Vegar’s tone was not accusing, not like it had been when he’d called her English downstairs. He spoke as if his words explained Audrey’s.

Perhaps they did, but Shona was still confused. Hadn’t Vegar said that the Fearghall wanted to destroy those not of wolf nature, not the other way around?

“Women are not Fearghall.” Again Audrey spoke without looking at any of them. “If Mother had known Thomas would be a shifter, she would have sent him back to her people. She told me that once. He could have been made a Fearghall. Though she said the pack might kill him for having a human father regardless, even if he shifted. She still would have sent him and hoped,” Audrey said as if admitting a shameful secret.

It was shameful, but not on Audrey’s part. The mother she and Thomas had idolized was very different than the woman Shona had always been led to believe she was.

“Your mother did not know Thomas could shift?” Caelis asked.

“No.”

“Apparently it did not happen until after her death,” Shona added when her friend remained silent.

Caelis nodded, as if that made perfect sense to him.

“Your mother was upset you were the shifter and not him,” Vegar guessed, sounding disgusted.

Audrey’s head finally came up at that. “Yes.”

“The Fearghall are twisted in their thinking.”

“She loved me,” Audrey claimed, but with not as much conviction as Shona had heard in her voice on previous occasions.

“I am sure she did, but she was taught from early years that her value was diminished because she was born female.” Caelis sounded like he knew what he was talking about. “They would have shunned her for following her mate because he was human. The Fearghall are clearly strong among her pack and they consider it every wolf’s responsibility to breed with other Faol, no one else.”

That explained Uven’s actions most clearly, and mayhap even Caelis’s willingness to repudiate Shona. It did nothing, however, to comfort her still wounded heart.

Vegar rubbed his face, a sound of clear frustration mixed with disgust coming from him.

Caelis gave the other man a wry look. “You forget sometimes.”

“What does he forget?” Audrey asked quietly.

“That I was once Fearghall, too.”

“You were?” Shona asked, not happy with the confirmation despite her suspicions.

She did not know enough about this secret society to understand everything yet, but what she’d gleaned did not paint it in pretty light.

Caelis had said that those who called themselves by the name had believed others of their kind did not deserve to live. Even at her most angry, she had never considered Caelis ignorant or prejudiced in such a