Children of the Moon 04 - Dragon's Moon

touched Ciara’s shoulder. “I thought that was the result of your Chrechte senses becoming aware of something and making it known through your dreams. Are you certain that is not the case?”
    “Yes.” Ciara’s hands twisted together in her lap. “It is not the first time. And they aren’t all happy like that one.”
    “Have you seen something that concerns us?” Talorc sounded more curious than convinced.
    Were the Faol of the Chrechte so far removed from the ancient ways that they did not know about the seers among them?
    Perhaps the Éan joining the clans would save more than their race.
    When Ciara bit a lip obviously already swollen from such abuse, Eirik wanted to pull her into his arms and promise all would be well. “I believe so, yes.”
    “Tell me about the dreams,” Talorc instructed far more gently than was the irascible laird’s wont.
    She flicked a glance up to Eirik and then over to Abigail, before settling her attention back on the laird, her discomfort with the topic obvious. “I’ve had them since I was a small girl.”
    The laird nodded encouragingly.
    “I saw members of my old clan in their Chrechte forms, but not always the ones they showed to the rest of Donegal pack.”
    “What do you mean?”
    Ciara turned a concerned gaze on Eirik.
    Certain he knew what she worried about revealing, he nodded. “He knows already.”
    The shoulder under his hand relaxed infinitesimally. “In my dreams, I saw Circin and his sister as ravens, flying in the sky.”
    Talorc’s shock could not have been greater. “How?” He shook his head. “You must have seen them when awake at some point.”
    “No. I knew Lais was an eagle, though he denied it to the whole clan.”
    “Not even Wirp knew,” Lais said in a voice soft with awe.
    “You are not convinced,” Ciara accused her adopted father.
    The Sinclair winced. “I want to be, but ’tis so fantastic.”
    Ciara drooped, but then squared her shoulders and looked directly at the laird. “There is a secret you hold, one that your father died for.”
    “Others in our pack know as much,” Talorc said almost apologetically.
    “But they cannot tell you the details of that secret. I can.”
    She lifted her right hand and examined it as if her delicate fingers might hold the answers of the universe. “Were my hand that of a saint, I would not have made the many mistakes I have, I think.”
    Color drained from the Sinclair’s face. “How did you…”
    “She’s told you how and now you need to stop your doubting,” Abigail said with such an expression of angry exasperation, Eirik didn’t like his friend’s chances of finding joy in his marital bed that night.
    “Aye. I am sorry for doubting you, Ciara.”
    “I have never lied to you, but you know I have hidden much. It makes you distrustful, I understand.”
    Talorc looked pained and Abigail on the verge of tears.
    “Enough of this,” Niall said in his gruff voice. “We all believe you, Ciara.”
    She nodded, but her gaze was far away. “I dreamed of my father’s death, and then my mothers. Hers years before it happened, and ’twas so bloody I dismissed the dream as nightmare. I wasn’t prepared.” Her voice had turned hollow. “I still see her in dreams.”
    “Oh, Ciara.” Abigail looked like she wanted to hug the younger woman, but she must have seen what Eirik did.
    Ciara was barely holding her emotions in check and it didn’t take a Chrechte’s senses to discern that.
    Ciara began to speak again, her tone void of the emotion swirling in her emerald eyes. “I began dreaming of the Faolchú Chridhe when I was barely out of leading strings. I did not know what it was at first, but then I told Galen about my dreams. I thought he would make fun of me.”
    “He didn’t,” Eirik interjected with certainty.
    She looked up at him briefly and shook her head. “He believed my dreams were prophetic, that I would lead him to the wolves’ sacred stone. At first, he made it a game, taking me into the forest to search. Those were such happy days, but then our da died and Galen changed.”
    “It was no game for him.” And never had been, of that Eirik was certain. Particularly in light of the fact that if his sister was the keeper of the stone as her new friend Mairi claimed, Galen would have had the bloodline to call on the power of the stone as well.
    “Or the friends who shared his hatred of the Éan.” His voice came out harsher than he meant it to be, but the thought of