Warrior's Moon

the marriage acts.”

“After I see to my own satisfaction that your injuries have been treated and we get you into clothing that is not torn or stained with your blood.” Shona’s eyes shone with tears. “I cannot stand the evidence of your actions.”

“You have taken an abhorrence of me,” Audrey said with sinking heart.

“Nay. How dare you judge me so weak.” Shona’s frown would have melted rock. “You are my family, no matter what blood runs through our veins. Seeing you risk your life and fight with that wolf while standing back in order to protect my children was the hardest thing I have ever had to do.”

Audrey’s own eyes burned with tears. “I left you and the little ones unprotected.”

“You did what your instincts dictated, just as I had to. Neither of us could do all that we wanted.”

They hugged again before Shona helped Audrey change her clothes and checked on her bruises and abrasions. “It is a good thing you did not enter into conjugal relations this afternoon. You are hardly in a fit state.”

“That is what Vegar said when I told him I wanted to wait until after speaking my mating vows before witnesses who mattered to me.”

“He is not all bad.”

“I think he is not bad at all.”

“He is surly.”

“Yes, but under that, he is kind, I think.”

“Caelis respects him.”

“Vegar returns that respect.”

Shona nodded, looking quite annoyed.

“What is it?” Audrey asked.

“Caelis announced we are getting married.”

“And?” Audrey wasn’t sure why that would have angered her friend so. “Don’t you want to marry the father of your son?”

“He insists that he is both their father now.”

“That is good.”

“He’s arrogant.”

“Yes.” Of that there was no doubt.

“He didn’t even bother to propose.”

“He does not seem like the type of man to get down on one knee.”

“I would settle for the question without any pomp or circumstance.”

“Would you?”

“I would.”

“Would you say yes?”

“Of course.”

“Does he know that?” Caelis did not strike Audrey as the type of man to risk rejection.

“Mayhap not, but he will ask or he will not receive.”

Audrey smiled. “Stubborn, I told you.”

“Aye, but I fear Caelis had no inkling just how intransigent I can be.”

Nor how long the woman slow to anger held fury once it kindled, but Audrey did not say so. Her heart-sister and Caelis would have to find their own way to their relationship.

“You said there were things you wished to tell me before I went to my marriage bed?” she asked, embarrassed but determined to learn what she could.

“Aye.” Shona frowned, a shadow of the despair Audrey used to see in her gaze. “It can be both wonderful and terrible.”

“I do not believe Vegar is like the baron.”

“Nay, and you will not loathe his touch as I did the baron’s. That in itself will make things easier.”

“You said there was great joy in the act for a woman.”

“I found so with Caelis.”

“Not the baron though.”

“Nay, but there are ways to endure.”

“I do not believe I will need to endure with Vegar.”

“I am more grateful than I can say to agree with you.” The sincerity in Shona’s tone could not be questioned.

Audrey had known her dearest friend had found her marital duties onerous, but she saw now they had wounded Shona deep in her soul. “Does Caelis know?”

“What?”

“How awful it was for you to be married to the baron?”

“It does not matter.”

“I think it does.”

Shona just shook her head and then proceeded to tell Audrey the most improbable things about the pleasure between a man and woman. Or at least Audrey would have seen them as so before meeting Vegar.

“It was not like that with the baron.”

“Nay.”

“What was it like?”

Shona just shook her head. “God willing, you will never know and I’ll not give you thoughts to feed your nightmares or wedding-night jitters.”

“Percival would have been worse,” Audrey guessed.

“Aye. Submitting to him might well have broken me.”

Audrey privately agreed. Even the strongest woman could only bow so far before she snapped in half, never to be whole again.

* * *

Hours after Vegar had come to collect Audrey, Shona paced her bedchamber, unable to sleep. Caelis most likely knew, too. He could probably hear her every footfall. Infernal Chrechte senses.

She wasn’t a fool, no matter what her past with him might lead the man to believe. She had no questions about where he was spending his night, either.

Outside her door.

In the hall…with no bedding, or comforts.

Not that she was concerned about that. No. It was no concern of hers if a grown man chose to spend his night sleeping on a stone floor instead of using the perfectly good quarters provided by Laird Sinclair for his soldiers.

Really, it was not.

She glared at the door, still furious with him for his assumption she would marry him without so much as even the most rude request. Much less an actual proposal.

Did he not believe she deserved even such minimal consideration?

Mayhap he thought he had reason to make assumptions, but she’d maintained her uncertainty of her future from the beginning. Even after the folly of allowing him into her bed the night before.

Did he believe his willingness to kill for her, or shift into his conriocht put the onus of acceptance on her? According to him and everyone else, there could be no question she was his sacred mate.

That may well be, but that did not mean she would fall at his feet. Even if she could not seem to stop herself from falling into his bed.

Yes, he was father to her child, but Caelis had been that very thing when he had rejected her in favor of his alpha’s dictates six years before. Even if he had not known it.

No, she could not start thinking that way.

But neither could she make herself ignore certain truths.