Children of the Moon 04 - Dragon's Moon

his dragon that made Eirik’s different. Ciara thought it was beautiful, not that she would ever tell the prince any such thing.
    “All Éan are trained to travel in the forest like a wraith with no scent or sound.” That he, as their prince, would be better at it than anyone else went without saying, though his tone implied she should realize this truth.
    “Because the Faol hunted your people.” She hated that knowledge, but not nearly so much as the proof that pointed to her brother being one of those misguided wolves.
    “Only some of the wolves wanted us dead,” he said as if reading her mind. “Those few are enough to be a risk for all my people though.”
    “The pack alphas have been working on cutting this malignancy from their clans.”
    “Aye, though how you are aware of this begs question.”
    “I live in the keep. I hear things.”
    “The Sinclair must trust you despite your brother’s past.”
    “He does not know it.”
    “You have never even told him the truth of what you saw in the forest?”
    “Lais said Laird Talorc already knows of your dragon.”
    “He does. His former second-in-command witnessed my first transformation.”
    “How?”
    “He was married to my sister and attended my coming-of-age ceremony.”
    That was not the full story, she was sure, but Ciara did not expect Eirik to share confidences with her. She was sister to one who had proven himself enemy.
    “Did you know you were a dragon?” Were there more among the Éan?
    Perhaps, as misguided as her brother and his friends were, they had reason to be worried about the Éan’s power. Though such worries still would not justify hunting other Chrechte and killing them like animals in the forest.
    “Until I shifted into a dragon for the first time seven years ago, the Éan believed the dragon to be myth.”
    “When you killed my br…when you saved your cousin?” she amended, a sick feeling sending chills over her and then she shook her head. No, he’d said he discovered his dragon at his coming-of-age ceremony.
    Eirik looked oddly at her.
    “Never mind. My mind is muddled. I am tired.” So very tired, but sleep eluded her night after night.
    He turned away, looking toward the near-full moon that pulled her toward the change. “That was the first time I killed as a dragon.”
    “You didn’t know what your fire would do.” She did not know how she was so certain, but she was.
    “I had an idea.” His tone mocked her.
    “Yes, but you had not yet learned to control it,” she guessed.
    “I cast fire only when I want to,” he said, affronted.
    Warriors . They could be so sensitive. “No doubt, but you had to learn how to cast less and more depending on what was needed in defense of your people.”
    He turned back to face her again, a strange expression in his dragon’s eyes. “You think the fire is so easily manipulated, that a mere man might only cast a little if he wants to?”
    “No, but a man who is a dragon also? Yes.” Chrechte had to learn to control other gifts, why not fire?
    “You know nothing.”
    “Or you do not know as much as you think you do.” He might be prince of his people, but he was only eight years older than her nineteen years. She’d heard Niall saying so to Guaire.
    “I am the dragon. I know.”
    “You controlled your fire enough not to set the forest ablaze,” she pointed out.
    He didn’t reply and she wondered if he’d even been aware of exerting such precise control at the time.
    “I may be merely a wolf, but I had to learn to mask my scent, to control my urge to shift, to hunt and to stifle my desire to kill when the wolf rules my form. It took a lot of practice to catch prey and not kill it.” And she was beginningto suspect that no matter how well trained a warrior and raven, Eirik’s dragon was still wild.
    “Why would you practice such a thing?”
    “Because a wolf must know the power of her jaw and fangs if she is to be safe around cubs.” Perhaps the ravens did not understand this, not being birds of prey, but surely the eagles among them had to train for such control.
    “The children of the Éan are safe with me.”
    “You don’t cast fire around them, but what if you did? Could you stop them from being hurt?”
    “I didn’t hurt Fidaich or Canaul that day, did I?”
    “No. The only one that hurt a child that day was Luag.” How she hated to say the foul man’s name, even if he was dead.
    “If your brother had given you to him in marriage, this Luag