“If you had come to your senses as a youth, you would just be another dead Chrechte who dared to challenge your laird’s teachings. Now you will be the one to destroy his hold on the MacLeod.”
“I do not think Shona cares if the MacLeod find relief from Uven’s tyranny.”
“Do you blame her?” Vegar asked.
“Aye. We were her clan.”
“She left.”
“Aye, to marry another.”
“Again, I ask: Do you blame her?”
And Caelis understood his friend had intended his question to have deeper meaning. An inquiry he was not sure how to answer. It was not rational, or even right, but Caelis was jealous of the man who had called his true mate wife for five years and claimed Caelis’s son as his own.
He knew his actions had led to the circumstances he found so distasteful, but that did not make them any easier to bear.
In truth, the knowledge that his rejection after claiming her body had led directly to Shona being forced into another man’s bed gutted Caelis.
Worse, Shona had made it clear that marriage had not been an idyll for her.
Thinking of her enjoying another man’s attention was disturbing enough. To acknowledge she’d had a duty to suffer that which
The flat of Vegar’s sword landed across Caelis’s shoulders, knocking him out of his reverie. He tripped forward, regaining his footing and spinning to face his grinning friend.
“Lucky blow.”
“Luck had nothing to do with it. Your inattention, on the other hand…” Vegar let his voice trail off mockingly.
“I have much on my mind.”
They fell back to sparring.
“More to do with your mate than your upcoming challenge, I’ll wager.”
Caelis could not deny it, though he did his best to focus on their mock battle.
“My guilt is as great as my jealousy,” Caelis admitted to his fellow Cahir with unexpected candor.
A sharp prick on his arm told him his friend had scored a hit. Both men jumped back, cursing.
Caelis swiped at the thin trickle of blood coming from the shallow cut. “It is a good thing we are not on the training field with others right now.”
They were on the deserted secondary training ground separated from the keep and the other tract used by the Sinclair in preparing his soldiers for battle.
“We would not easily live this down,” Vegar said with chagrin.
Caelis realized something only his great agitation had prevented from being immediately apparent. The injury would not have occurred if Vegar was not distracted by his own mate worries as well.
“
“You think?” Vegar mocked, making no effort to deny it.
“She’s not going to forgive you easily.”
Vegar shook his head with disgust. “Which one? Your mate, who is a mama bear with the Englishwoman, or mine, whom I have managed to offend beyond redemption?”
“Both, I’d say.” Caelis lunged forward, knocking Vegar’s sword from his hand so easily, it couldn’t even be considered a victory.
This time, the other man’s curse was more colorful and vicious.
Vegar rolled and grabbed his sword as he came up into a fighting stance again. “I am a trained protector among the Ean, now Cahir. I will prevail.”
They had trained together in the secret, elite group of warriors begun centuries ago in response to the Fearghall. The last remaining Cahir lived among the Balmoral and were now busy training warriors from the clans determined to fight the Fearghall’s despicable endeavors to rid the world of all Chrechte but the Faol.
“I do not think your warrior training will do you much good when wooing a woman,” Caelis observed.
“It has taught me patience, persistence and the ability to take a wound and continue to fight.”
Put that way…“Mayhap I will rely more on my warrior’s training as well.”
“You have already marked Shona with your scent. She will not deny you now.”
“She is not Chrechte.”
“Are the humans who lived among the Ean so different than those of the clans then?” Vegar asked.
The eagle had lived with his brethren deep in the forest until a year ago when their prince led them in joining the clans dedicated to restoring the brotherhood of the Chrechte and all its races. The humans who lived among them were considered part of their tribe in a way the packs had not embraced their own clans. All humans among the Ean knew of their Chrechte natures.
While only a trusted few in each clan were aware of the animal forms the Chrechte among them could take.
But he did not understand how that would make their human brethren different in this case. “What do you mean?”
“If a human woman allows a man to take what they call
“Not if the one in question is as stubborn as she is willful.”
“Like your mate.”
“Aye, exactly like my mate.”
“The boy at the table…he smelled like you.”
“He is my son.” It gave Caelis great joy to say it, but the sorrow he felt at their time lost together immediately tempered his gratification.
“What happened?”
Caelis told Vegar the story as they continued their sparring, neither man showing the best side of their control or focus.
“Your alpha lied to you about your true mate?” Vegar’s tone was laden with horror at such an atrocity.
“Aye.” Caelis performed a running leap that ended in a forward somersault, which he leapt out of with his sword pointed at Vegar’s femoral artery. “All Uven cares about is the pack increasing its numbers.”
Vegar kicked Caelis’s arm aside and spun out of reach of the sharpened sword. “You would not be able to get another woman with child once you’d consummated a true mating, no matter what your alpha dictated.”
The fact that a Chrechte could not physically engage in sexual acts with others once a sacred mating had been consummated was one of the reasons true bonds were so revered and respected.
“I did not tell him that Shona and I had made love. Uven was particularly adamant about it and I did not want to disappoint him,” Caelis admitted bitterly.
“He’d put himself in place of your father.”
“To my detriment.”
Vegar grunted an agreement as he narrowly avoided getting dumped on his ass by Caelis’s sweeping foot. “You sent her away without knowing she carried your child.”
“I did not send her away.” Why he had to keep reminding people of that fact, he did not know.
It was Vegar’s turn to come close to sending Caelis sprawling. “You thought your alpha would change his mind, given time.”
“Exactly.” See? The other Cahir understood what Shona refused to accept.
Mayhap one had to be a warrior to think with that kind of strategy.
“But he is Fearghall. He was never going to change his mind about you having a human mate.” Vegar’s words cut down Caelis’s arrogant thinking like a sword going through the heart of a boar.
Shona did not believe Uven would have changed his mind either and clearly expected Caelis to have been equally as wise.
But he had not.
“I realized that too late.” To his shame, Caelis had not opened to the awareness of Uven’s treachery in regard to his mate until several other matters had forced his unquestioning faith in the laird to be shaken.
