Children of the Moon 04 - Dragon's Moon

kingship, he betrayedhis Chrechte brethren at a dinner, killing all of the remaining royals of their people—and forever entrenched a distrust of humans by their Chrechte counterparts.
    Despite this distrust but bitterly aware of the cost of MacAlpin’s betrayal, the Faol of the Chrechte realized that they could die out fighting an ever-increasing and encroaching race of humanity, or they could join the Celtic clans.
    They joined.
    As far as the rest of the world knew, though much existed to attest to their former existence, what had been considered the Pictish people were no more.
    Because it was not in their nature to be ruled by any but their own, within two generations the Celtic clans that had assimilated the Chrechte were ruled by shape-changing clan chiefs who shared their natures with wolves. Though most of the fully human among them did not know it, a rare few were trusted with the secrets of their kinsmen. Those that did know were aware that to betray the code of silence meant certain and immediate death.
    Stories of other shifter races, the Éan and Paindeal, were told around the campfire, or to the little ones before bed. However, since the wolves had not seen a shifter except their own in generations, they began to believe the other races only a myth.
    But myths did not take to the sky on black wings glinting an iridescent blue under the sun. Myths did not live as ghosts in the forest, but breathing air just as any other man or animal. The Éan were no myth; they were ravens with abilities beyond that of merely changing their shape.
    And they trusted the Faol of the Chrechte less than the wolves ever trusted humans. But just as the Faol before them, the time had come for the Éan to learn to deal with their mistrust and join the human clans.
    Their future as a race depended on it.

Prologue

Today I have seen the Dragon.
    —C ONFUCIUS
    Donegal Holding, Highlands of Scotland
    1142 AD , Reign of Dabíd mac Maíl Choluim, King of Scots
    “I had another dream about the wolves’ sacred stone.” Ciara had waited until their mother had eaten her porridge and returned to her tiny bedroom to once again stare at the wall as if it held the very meaning of life to share this bit of information with her brother.
    His head snapped up and his hands stilled in their sharpening of his broadsword. Wolf’s eyes the same deep green as her own focused on Ciara, silently demanding she continue.
    It used to be a game. Or at least she’d been convinced it was. Before. Before Da’s death and Mum’s decline.
    Now, Ciara knew that for whatever reason, her brother believed her dreams the salvation of their people.
    Galen said the old stories were true, that the wolves once had a magic stone used in the coming of age ceremony to make them stronger. To even turn some into conriocht …werewolves—not merely a person who could shift into a wolf, if that gift were not amazing enough for her people. No, the old stories claimed that some would shift into conriocht , half man–half wolf and larger than either. Giants that could not be bested in battle, even by other wolves.
    Certainly not by the Éan.
    She didn’t know if she believed it. And if she did, if she wanted to help such a thing come about. But Ciara loved her brother and spending the day searching for the stone with clues from her dream was yet a joy.
    Despite how Galen had changed these last two years.
    “The Faolchú Chridhe .” He whispered the ancient name given to the stone by their people in stories older than the wolves’ history with the clans in a voice laced with awe.
    The wolf’s heart…how could they have lost it as a people, if indeed it did exist?
    “What did you dream?” he demanded, his emerald eyes glowing with the shine of a zealot.
    Fear she did not understand skittered down her spine, making her hands shake as she put away their morning dishes. For one thing she never doubted was that her brother loved her.
    “It was like the others,” Ciara forced from between suddenly dry lips, her throat tight with that inexplicable fear. “I saw a stone that could have been an emerald, but for the fact it was as big as a laird’s fist.” Surely no emerald of that size existed anywhere in the world. “’Twas on a dark stone altar in a cavern that glowed with a pale green light like I’ve never seen before.”
    “The glowing, that’s new.”
    It wasn’t, but she’d thought it too fanciful to mention before. Galen’s recent press for more