Children of the Moon 04 - Dragon's Moon

plans, fears and reflects on everything that can happen to him, but in the moment of action is bold.
    —H ERODOTUS
    E irik landed in the area behind the keep that the Sinclair used to train his elite soldiers. He had waited to approach until the wall and tower guards were looking elsewhere and would have waited for a cloud to cover the moon as well, but the human woman in his arms was too wounded for such a delay.
    Even so, he had been tempted to stay in the air longer just to experience the joy pouring off Ciara in delicious waves.
    She had not wanted to fly but had loved it once they were in the air. A fearless Chrechte if he had ever met one.
    ’Twas why he had not been willing to tell Talorc about Ciara sneaking from the fortress at night. Eirik was too impressed by her sneakiness and courage.
    By happenstance, he had been there the first time she’d made the jump from her window to the wall. She could not have known it would work. He had not believed it would and had shifted to his dragon with no hope of catching her this time before she landed gracefully on the wall walk. The leap should have not been possible, even for a wolf.
    But she’d made it and he had to respect that.
    Besides, his raven had enjoyed watching over her as Ciara ran through the forest, a sense of possessive protectiveness usually reserved for family filling him as he flew above her.
    Ciara had not liked finding out she’d been watched over, however. Independent faolán .
    If he were not in his dragon form, he would be smiling as he gently laid the human woman, Mairi, onto the ground. Dragons did not smile though and any attempt to do so would be more frightening than reassuring.
    He was unsurprised when Lais stepped out of the shadows. Eirik had called to the healer through the mental link he shared with all the Éan before he ever took flight. As a direct descendant of the first keeper of the Clach Gealach Gra , Eirik could communicate with his people at will. He could also hear them when they needed him to, but had been trained to block the attempts as well.
    “She has not regained her senses?” Lais asked, already examining Mairi’s bruises and scowling over them.
    “No,” Ciara answered, probably assuming Lais had been talking to her. She squirmed in her perch on Eirik’s neck. “I need to get down.”
    Having her naked body astride him, even in his dragon form, had been a challenge to Eirik’s self-control. He could smell her scent, taste her on the air around them and the feel of her thighs against his neck only made him think of what they would feel like wrapped around his body when he was a man.
    The desire to shift right now, while she was still astride his beast burned inside him. He forced himself to ignore it; this was not the time to give in to his carnal lusts.
    He flicked his tail up to give her something to hold on to as she climbed down while folding his wings back to create a protective shield for her—both so she would not fall and to hide her nakedness from Lais. Were he to look up from his patient, which he showed no signs of doing.
    Fortunately for Eirik’s temper, she dismounted from the opposite side to where Lais knelt by Mairi. For whateverreason, Eirik’s dragon was ready to cast fire at the thought of Lais witnessing Ciara’s nudity.
    They were Chrechte, damn it. Not the tamed humans among the clans. Eirik was in no way influenced by civilized conventions, but if Lais were to lay eyes on Ciara in all her nude beauty, Eirik was not entirely sure he would be able to control the instincts of the beast.
    Lais nodded his head toward a pile of cloth on the ground. “I brought covering for Ciara as you asked.”
    Eirik hadn’t asked, he’d ordered. Nevertheless, he said, Thank you, through the mental link before calling forth his human form.
    As soon as he had completed the shift, he grabbed light fabric he knew to be one of his shirts and tossed it to Ciara. “Cover yourself.”
    “Bossy dragon.” But her beautiful green eyes still glowed with the happiness she’d experienced in flight and her mouth curved in a sweet smile he wanted to kiss.
    She pulled the shirt on quickly. The hem hung down past her knees and in the moonlight it did an adequate job of preserving her feminine modesty. But if he looked closely, he could see her nipples, still hard from the cold air, poking against the thin material.
    He was looking closely. Very, very closely. So intently in fact, that he could just make out the