“You should have asked me to marry you six years ago.” It was not what she’d intended to say, but she would not take the words back if she could.
They were true and he had to know it.
Tension she did not think had anything to do with his sexual need emanated off of him now. “Aye.”
“I would have said yes then.”
He winced. “I ken.”
Saints above, where was she going with this? Why was she saying these things? Her physical craving for him had not diminished in the least and yet her mouth spewed forth with things completely unrelated.
Or were they?
“I am leaving for Balmoral Island tomorrow.” She made the decision as the words left her mouth.
“You are rejecting me now as I did you then?” he asked, the ever present hunger warring with anger in his blue gaze.
Shona shook her head decisively. “You may come with us and make your intentions known to my family.”
“You know I have other commitments.”
She shrugged. Yes, she knew. Just like six years ago, Caelis had duties and intentions that superseded his promises to her.
“You will not be moved on this?”
“No.” She’d compromised for this man before, and her life had been all the more unhappy for it.
Once again, his jaw appeared hewn from rock. “You know I must return to the MacLeod.”
“And
“I cannot refuse my destiny. I am
“And you believe protecting the Chrechte requires you to take over as laird of Clan MacLeod.”
“I know it does. It has been foreseen.”
Was she supposed to be impressed? She was. A little. Mayhap even a great deal more than a little, but that did not mean she would dismiss what she knew needed to happen to give a mating between them a foundation she could believe in.
“Do you know if too much or too little sand and loose rock is mixed into the soil of a motte, over time it will sink and the keep along with it?” she asked him.
He stared at her as if she’d gone mad, but she could not allow that to bother her.
“I know this because the baron told me once, rather gleefully, as he recounted the collapse of another baron’s keep. The entire structure, which had taken four entire years to build, was utterly destroyed.”
“Your marriage to the old man is something we would both do well to forget.”
“That is not possible.”
“Aye, it is.”
“No.”
He frowned down at her, clearly wanting to argue further.
She forestalled him.
“I hated every moment the baron touched me, but I love my daughter. I can no more forget her origins than I could Eadan’s.”
And if Caelis could not tolerate that, then there was truly no hope of a future between them. No matter what his Chrechte law said about sacred mates.
“She is mine,” Caelis claimed fiercely. “Just as you are, if you were not too stubborn to admit it.”
“You cannot undo her parentage just by willing it to be so.” Any more than he could simply will Shona to be his mated wife.
“He is dead. I am alive. I am her father, now and forever.” Utter conviction rang in his voice.
She shook her head in disbelief. “You’re a very possessive man.”
“I was not possessive enough six years ago, but I cannot regret that fact now.”
“You can’t?” Shona asked, shocked and more than a little dismayed.
“Marjory is meant to be ours, however she came to be. Can you regret your daughter?”
He’d asked her this once before.
She understood his motive better for doing so now. “Never.”
“Aye.”
“Making a family takes more than just claiming everyone belongs together.” It required more than mere legal documentation as well.
“Aye, it takes some cooperation on your part.”
And his, if he would but acknowledge it. “When a motte sinks, the wall joints loosen and eventually, the entire keep will come down.”
“We are back to mottes again?”
“Listen to me, Caelis. I will not be the keep that crashes under the burden of my sinking foundation.”
“You are not a building,” he said, exasperation thickly lacing each word.
“No, but our mating is like the keep that seeks to protect those who live within it.”
“You admit we are mates.”
“I have never denied it.” Not once.
He spun away, slamming his open palm against the thick stone wall. “How can our mating protect our family like this fabled keep you go on about when you live on Balmoral Island and I live with the MacLeod? Keeps do not straddle two holdings, much less an entire sea.”
“Six years ago, you denied me before my family, withdrawing your courtship formally to my father.”
“To my shame.” His proud head dropped, his shoulders sagging.
It was not her intention to make him ashamed. “That is not my point.”
“What is your point?” he asked with barely suppressed impatience as he spun to face her again.
“That our mating now needs you to recognize me before my family once again.” She put her hand on his forearm, imploring him with everything in her to understand. “If I have value in your eyes, then you will acknowledge that before others.”
“Is not a mating and wedding enough for that?”
Talk about fabled entities. He kept talking about theirs as if it were already planned, but she’d not yet even agreed to marry him.
Not that he’d asked.
Because he
“Thus far, your Chrechte ways have been naught but annoying to me, if you want the truth.
“He was a poor husband.”
“There are much worse.” Audrey’s father and the current Baron of Heronshire, to name a couple.
“Not all mates are exemplary, either,” Caelis offered as if doing so pained him.
“Knowing what I do now about the Chrechte, I am well aware of that. Uven’s first wife must have been his true mate for him to have begot a child from her.” They had been both married and mated, but that had not turned out well for the poor woman.
“Aye.”
“My father always considered the circumstances of her death suspect, though I wasn’t supposed to know.” She’d overheard her parents talking.
