Children of the Moon 04 - Dragon's Moon

heritage. Once he caught up with her though, he did not allow that admiration to make him hesitate.
    Sweeping her up into his arms even as they ran, he settled her against his chest. He turned direction and slowed to a walk, heading back toward the clearing.
    Ciara flailed against him, struggling for release. The fact she did not gain even the hope of it should have told her something about what her instincts were telling her to do. She struggled, but she did not fight with her Chrechte skills or strength, and that was telling.
    Even if she did not see it.
    Eirik simply hugged her tight, preventing her from hurting herself and made dragon noises that had never come from him before meeting her. His own instincts told him the sounds were meant to comfort. The way she settled against him, muttering to herself about arrogant dragonsand mates she did not want, implied her wolf recognized the dragon’s attempt to calm her.
    When they broke through the trees into the open area that was just as Artair had described, Eirik stopped. The near full moon bathed the small clearing with white light that cast shadows at the trees’ edge.
    Eirik did not release Ciara; he had no desire to spend the night chasing her through the forest. “Are you done running?”
    “I will not take a mate.” She crossed her arms and glared up at him, the green of her eyes so dark in the moonlight, they looked black.
    “You want me.”
    “I don’t.”
    He shook his head. “I can tell when you’re lying, remember.”
    Her glare went sulfuric, but the evidence of her desire for him remained just as strong. That subtle fragrance that said her body was preparing for him teased at his senses, pushing against his control over both his own desires and his different forms, and nearly taking Eirik to his knees.
    Her stubbornness would be both their undoing if he did not take matters into his own hands.
    Words were not going to convince his stubborn faolán of anything. Their mating was a primal urge and he needed to woo her at the core of her femwolf.
    He lowered his head and silenced her continuing arguments, filled as they were with deceit.
    Did she even believe herself?
    He did not think she could be that deluded, but then Gart had proven just how easily even Chrechte might blind themselves to truth.
    Just as he expected, despite all Ciara’s claims to the contrary, her lips went soft and parted immediately against his. She wanted him true enough. She might even crave his touch as much as he did touching her.
    T error pounded in Ciara’s heart, but even the fear that had so many years to grow strong could not overwhelmher natural response to her dragon shifter. Her wolf demanded the chance to touch and scent the man holding her so close to his heart.
    She broke her mouth from his in a last attempt at defiance. “I am not mating you.”
    The words sounded like the lie they were, even to her own ears. Her body strained toward the man her wolf had deemed mate, while her heart beat for the chance to join more than their bodies in mating.
    ’Twas not fair. Nor right, that she should be so at risk for loss, but the most stubborn will in the world could not deny the instincts and emotions roiling through her.
    He laughed and shook his head, as if amazed at her audacity, so clearly not deceived by her best attempts. “In the morning, you can tell me that again.”
    She could try. In the morning, Ciara could fight her wolf’s needs and instincts, and she might even win for a time. But she knew deep in her heart that by tomorrow it would be too late to hope to return to the woman with the stone-encased heart.
    Tonight, she would give in to the dragon and he would finish the work he began when the first crack happened in the granite around her once-shattered heart.
    She acknowledged aloud, “Tomorrow will be too late.”
    “Aye, it will.” His amber gaze challenged her to deny him regardless.
    Her wolf growled, not at him, but at Ciara and she knew she was lost. She tilted her head and reconnected their mouths, giving her acquiescence with desperate lips.
    He took the kiss like the prince of the Chrechte that he was, with power and possession. His mouth slanted over hers until the last vestiges of her fear drowned under his passion and she could have cried with gratitude. The dread she had lived with since the final loss of her birth family had become a burden almost too heavy to bear.
    Continuing the crooning sounds he’d used earlier to calm her,