Children of the Moon 04 - Dragon's Moon

like me. My mother. Please be the wolf I dreamed about. Father took a Chrechte for his second wife. He and my brother don’t think much of me, and neither does his new wife for that matter. I don’t have a wolf. They call me weak. Defective. Useless.”
    The human woman’s voice broke on the last words and Ciara had to suppress the urge to growl. The anger growing inside her was not directed at Mairi and Ciara would not have the other woman frightened because of it.
    Mairi clearly knew about their people and her scent said her story was true. But Ciara knew from her own experience, deceit could be masked.
    Still she nudged the woman to stand. Mairi did, wincing as she gained her feet and Ciara’s determination to stay in her wolf’s skin faltered.
    The scent of dried blood was strong, but so was that of desperation and fear. This human needed help.

Chapter 5

If you ignore the dragon, it will eat you. If you try to confront the dragon, it will overpower you. If you ride the dragon, you will take advantage of its might and power.
    —C HINESE P ROVERB
    C iara turned and trotted around the tree so she could shift. When she came back, Mairi was leaning against the tree, her face set in misery.
    But it transformed with anticipation when she saw Ciara. “You are the one. You’re the princess of our people who can gift me with the ability to be a wolf, with strength to protect myself.”
    “I don’t know what you mean.” She had never heard of such a thing. Not even in the ancient stories. “Besides, I’m not a princess. I’m an orphan.”
    “Oh, no, my dreams do not lie. They led me here, to you. Only a princess of our people would dare roam the woods alone at night, unafraid of what might be lurking in the shadows.”
    “You are alone.”
    “But I’m scared spitless.” Mairi nodded as if to reinforce the claim, though her scent did that well enough, fear and fatigue coming off her in waves. “If I had any choice, I would not be out here; you can be assured of that.”
    “You need help. You will find sanctuary with my clan.”
    “If your clan takes me in, my father will consider it an act of war. He will insist on my return.”
    “This same father whose fists have driven you into the forest alone and unprotected?”
    Shame tinted Mairi’s cheeks. “Yes.”
    “Your father’s dishonor is not yours.”
    “If I could shift—”
    “He would find another reason to hurt you. Men like him always do.” She thought of Luag and what kind of man he would be now if he had lived. Her reflection sent a shiver of old dread down her spine.
    Ciara would help Mairi, whatever it took.
    But the talkative yet frightened woman was shaking her head as if reading Ciara’s thoughts. “I…it wouldn’t be right…I can’t put your clan at risk.”
    “Our laird will not fear the wrath of a man who takes his anger out on his own daughter.”
    “He says I am stupid, that it’s my fault,” Mairi admitted as if telling a horrible secret about herself, not her abominable father. “My father says I make him too angry to hold back his fists.”
    “He can’t be much of a Chrechte if he cannot control himself any better than that. And you cannot be so stupid if you made it all the way to this part of the Sinclair lands without being discovered before now.” They were only an hour’s walk from the keep, much too close for any but a truly clever woman to have traveled without detection.
    Mairi shook her head, wincing as she did so. “I think perhaps your father was a very special man.”
    “Yes, he is.”
    “You said you were an orphan.”
    “The Sinclair and his lady adopted me when the last of my family was lost to me.”
    “He won’t want to make an enemy of my father.” Mairi’s voice was heavy with defeat. “Father is a laird and very powerful.”
    Ciara would have none of it. “You do not know Talorc of the Sinclairs. There is no laird in the Highlands that he fears.”
    Laird Talorc respected the Balmoral and his old second-in-command Barr, currently acting laird of the Donegals, but he feared no man, wolf or even dragon. It went without saying that no English baron or Lowland Scotland laird would intimidate him, either.
    “I have heard of the Sinclair. ’Tis why I came to his holding and not another.” Mairi’s expression showed awe and a desperate hope Ciara understood too well. “Many fear him and his brother by marriage, the Balmoral.”
    “And rightly they should.”
    “You do not fear