Children of the Moon 04 - Dragon's Moon

as comfortably as he could make her with furs, a skin of watered wine and some food.
    She nibbled in silence on some cheese, looking at him, then the water, then the sky where Ciara and Eirik were but a dot and then back at Lais.
    He could see a question in her eyes, but fearing he knew what it was, he did not prompt her to ask it.
    She offered him the cheese. “Would you like some?”
    “Nay.” He was hungry, but he would not have her feed him.
    She needed her rest and the act would be too intimate, it would give more than his body sustenance. It would give nourishment to his eagle’s desires for her as a mate as well.
    She sighed and wrapped the cheese in cloth before putting it in the satchel Lais had brought with him on this journey. She adjusted the Sinclair plaid their laird had gifted her with before they left the keep, smoothing her hands along the pleats, clearly pleased to be wearing different colors than the MacLeod.
    She settled again, but this time maintained a steady regard on him. “Is it because I am not a wolf?”
    He should have known that his Mairi would need no prompting. But that was not the question he expected, though he supposed it could be considered a form of it.
    “Nay. While humans are more fragile than shifting Chrechte, you have proven yourself to be strong of mind and spirit.”
    “You are attracted to me.” She sounded very confident, but then she had reason to be on that particular front. “It is not just your eagle that wants me.”
    “No.”
    “Then why?”
    He could have lied and said that he simply did not want a mate, but while there was a place for deceit, this was not it.
    “I do not deserve a mate.” There. He had said it.
    “How can you say so? You are an amazing man.”
    “Because I healed you.”
    “No, because I can trust you not to hurt me.”
    “I am not the only man who can give you pleasure.”
    “You are the only one I want to do so.”
    He should not be so fiercely happy to hear such a vow, but he was. “You are young. That will change.”
    “It won’t. I may not shift into a wolf, but I am Chrechte and there is no other for a Chrechte once they have mated.” Her chin set at a mulish angle and she let him see her glare.
    “We have not mated.”
    “Close enough.”
    “No.” He’d been damn careful to make sure it was not close enough.
    “Tell me why.”
    “I was a member of the Donegal clan, before I went to live with the Éan.”
    “You mean when you came to the Sinclairs?”
    “No, that is more recent.” He considered stopping there. He had not spilled his people’s secrets yet, but he knew he could trust them with her. And he owed her his secrets, if he could give her nothing else.
    “The Éan lived in the forest, as a separate tribe. We were hunted by a secret society of the Faol.”
    “The Fearghall. My father and his cronies belong. He thinks any shifter that isn’t a wolf doesn’t deserve to live.”
    Lais should feel no shock at her words, but his breath froze in his chest nonetheless. “Your father belongs to this society…the Fearghall?”
    A misnomer if ever there was one as it meant superior in valor and from what Lais knew of these Faol, they had not true valor to them. He had never heard the society named before though, since he had not been in the inner circle. He wondered if Galen had ever let it slip to Ciara.
    “Yes. Some of the Fearghall believe only the ravens should die because they are not birds of prey, but others, like my father, believe all who shift into an animal different than his have no right to life.”
    “He’s an idiot.” But a dangerous one.
    She nodded sadly. “He is.”
    “I, too, was an idiot.” The time had come for the full truth of his past.
    “How?”
    “There were members of the Donegal pack that believed like your father. They hated the Éan simply because we are different.”
    “I am sorry.”
    “I am the one who should be sorry. I believed Rowland’s lies, that the ravens killed my parents.”
    “But your parents must have been of the Éan for you to be an eagle.”
    “One was, the other human. Rowland was convinced I was human as well. He killed my parents, but convinced me ravens had done it and fed my hatred of the ravens.”
    “You never told him you were an eagle.”
    “No.”
    “Because you knew that you could not trust him.” She sounded so sure and once again her trust in Lais touched him deeply.
    “I think so, now, yes. Then, I was just ashamed of being