Children of the Moon 04 - Dragon's Moon

he has returned to the hut or not? You are worried about him,” Eirik guessed.
    He had noticed that despite her attempt to keep others at a distance, Ciara showed great concern and compassion for those around her. Abigail had told him that Ciara helped so much with the twins, she was more a second mother than a sister.
    In the weeks he had lived among the Sinclairs, Eirik had noted time and again Ciara showing her natural inclination to serve her people. She had not known where that inclination came from, but as keeper of the Faolchú Chridhe she would feel the need to take care of the Faol.
    No matter how much she told herself she didn’t want to care for anyone.
    “I’m worried about Mairi,” Ciara said, showing again she could not help herself caring for others. “You know the way Lais looks at her.”
    “You do not trust my warrior to protect her?”
    “From himself? No, I do not.”
    “Lais will not hurt her.” She was safer in his presence than she could be anywhere else.
    “Define hurt. Will he bed her?” Ciara asked with asperity and genuine worry.
    Her time would be better spent in concern for his plans for the night, but he was grateful Ciara showed no concern about spending the night alone with Eirik.
    “You are very plainspoken for a clan laird’s daughter.”
    “I am also Faol. I know what happens in the night between men and women.”
    His sweetly innocent Faol princess? He did not think so. “Oh? What do you know, faolán ?”
    “Never mind,” she said, sounding flustered. “I merelymeant to say that there is more than one way for Mairi to be hurt.”
    “The first time is always uncomfortable.” But if Lais compromised the other woman’s virtue, he would stand by whatever promise he made her.
    Though Eirik doubted very much the healer would claim Mairi this night. She was still recovering from the beating her father had given her. Lais was very protective of his patients and would be doubly so of Mairi.
    “How many virgins have you talked into your bed?” Ciara demanded, her scent giving away her anger at the thought even if her tone had not.
    “None.”
    “Then how would you know?”
    “Are you jealous of the women I’ve touched intimately?” he asked, unwilling to pass up the opportunity to goad her.
    “Of course not,” she said far too quickly and with little conviction. “I have no right to be jealous.”
    “If you are attempting to mask your deceit, you are doing a poor job of it.” The acrid scent of jealousy mixed with the sour smell of a lie in the air around them.
    She gasped. “What? You can tell I lied to you?”
    She sounded far more worried about her inability to mask her true feelings than the fact she’d been caught in a lie. Contrary faolán .
    “Aye.”
    “But that’s impossible.”
    He could not help it. He laughed. She sounded so appalled.
    “It happens that way between mates sometimes,” Eirik assured her. “Barr can see through the images my sister, Sabrine, projects with her mind.”
    “I am not your mate,” Ciara claimed with no more conviction but a fair amount of horror, and doing no better a job of masking her lie than before.
    “My dragon says you are.”
    “No. Surely your raven—”
    “Wants to rub necks with you.”
    “Oh, no.” She backed away from him, her entire body tensed for flight.
    Though where she thought she was going, he could not imagine. His dragon could find her across the waters.
    “I do not want a mate.” The trembling sincerity in her voice mixed with the scent of genuine distress made his dragon want to roar.
    He would not have her terrified of what she had to know was the natural progression of things. “You have nothing to fear from me.”
    “You cannot be that naïve.”
    One thing he had never been accused of was naïveté. It startled a chuckle from him.
    “Don’t you laugh. This is not funny. I won’t do it. I will not take a mate.” Her voice rose steadily until she was shouting the last before she turned and ran.
    He gave thanks in that moment for the style of clothes Abigail had convinced Ciara to wear because she could not shift into her wolf without destroying them.
    Even so, it took him longer to catch her in his human form than he expected. Fear had given her feet wings and her wolf lent her grace and dexterity as she jumped over fallen branches and tree roots without a single stumble.
    He could not help admiring her affinity with the forest as another sign of her special Chrechte