Finally, the alpha nodded. “Because my cub wishes it, I will allow you to tell your story. Be sure, though, that it is the finest tale you have ever told, or you will regret it. You will also buy drinks for everyone in my pub, so they may soothe their dry throats while they listen.”
Fiona knew when to give in gracefully. She very carefully reached into her pocket for her credit card, since she hadn’t brought nearly enough cash to buy pints for a room full of thirsty shifters. Lucinda nodded, and her daughter walked over and took the card from Fiona. She hadn’t gone three steps toward her mother, however, when she gasped and whirled around.
“Fiona Campbell? The Fiona Campbell? The Forest Fairies and The Selkies Return Fiona Campbell?”
Fiona nodded, sighing. She hadn’t really expected to be recognized in a shifter pub, but of course werewolves had children, too. She fought back another wave of giggles at the thought, realizing it was simply a crazy reaction to the relief that she wasn’t going to be eaten.
At least, not for however long it took to tell her story.
“Mother, this is Fiona Campbell!”
Lucinda rolled her eyes. “Yes, I think even a deaf person would have gotten that by now. Who is Fiona Campbell?”
“Only the most famous children’s book author and illustrator in the United Kingdom!” Lucinda’s daughter was all but jumping up and down, a reaction Fiona usually only received from fans about fifteen years younger.
“Ginny, calm down,” Lucinda ordered, and Ginny immediately dropped her head submissively. “Now, slow down and explain.”
“Do you remember that book I showed you? The one with the painting of the forest in Scotland that you said was so vivid it reminded you of your childhood in the country? That’s Fiona Campbell.”
“Now that we’re all friends, perhaps you can ask your associates to let me pass?” Christophe called out.
“Not a chance, sorcerer.” Lucinda gestured to Ginny and the young shifter approached her mother and spent several minutes whispering urgently to her. Lucinda finally nodded and Ginny moved a few steps away.
“Famous author, maybe. It seems you have a fan in my daughter,” Lucinda told Fiona. “But your companion poses too great a threat. However, we have our own magic here. If he will agree to be bound, we will consider allowing you both to leave unharmed. After your story, and if it pleases, of course.”
Christophe’s face drained of all color, and Fiona realized that nothing could be worse for him than being bound. Not unless they planned to lock him in a box, and they’d only do that over her dead body.
“No,” Fiona said. “Let him go. You can bind me or whatever you need to do.”
“No!” Christophe shouted. “Leave her alone. Let her go. I’ll agree to anything you want.”
Lucinda smiled. “Most do,” she said. “You two are so touching. Ah, here is help.”
The oldest woman Fiona had ever seen in her life chose that moment to make an entrance from the back room. Fiona supposed she must be a shifter, too, considering the company, but she looked like Mother Earth or the moon goddess herself. In spite of the dire situation, Fiona’s fingers itched for her paints.
The old woman’s pale, pale eyes widened, and then she laughed. Her laughter held so much power that even Fiona could feel it. All the wolves but the alpha bowed, and even Lucinda inclined her head.
“No, child, I am no moon goddess, though you flatter me with the comparison,” the woman said, moving toward Christophe. “Now let’s see about the magic in this man. It tastes of sea and salt and ancient days, but not at all of sorcery.”
Christophe bowed his most elegant court bow. “As I have told your friends, Wise One.”
The old woman smiled and patted his cheek. “Melisande will do, Atlantean. Simply Melisande.”
He tilted his head, studying her. “How did you—”
“I know much beyond the purview of you youngsters,” she chided him. “Do you swear by your sea god to harm none here?”
Christophe scanned the room, his gaze finally coming to rest on Lucinda. “I will harm none so long as my mate is not harmed, Lady Melisande. I do so swear it by my oath to Poseidon.”
Fiona tried to mask her shock. His mate?
“Such pretty manners in this boy,” Melisande said, chuckling. She turned toward Lucinda. “You may let him go now.”
Lucinda made another gesture, and the shifters surrounding Christophe melted away, as did the ones around Fiona, although one of them took one long, last sniff of her hair before he moved off. Christophe leapt across the space separating them, so fast he was a blur, and pulled her into his arms.
“Never again,” he whispered into her hair. “If something happened to you—Never again.”
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” she murmured, as Lucinda approached.
“I loved that painting,” Lucinda admitted. “The Scottish forest. That was you? You don’t look—”
Fiona interrupted her with the simple action of pulling the red wig off her head and shaking out her own blond hair. “It’s easier to go out, sometimes, when people don’t know who I am. I’m in no way famous like an actor or TV presenter, but I do get recognized, and people—parents, especially—seem to be disturbed by the idea that the woman who writes their children’s bedtime stories might be seen in a pub.” She smiled ruefully. “I rather think they expect me to live in one of the forests from my paintings.”
Lucinda nodded. “I once did. Perhaps someday I’ll tell you about it.”
Christophe leaned forward, and Fiona squeezed his hand in warning.
“I would enjoy hearing it,” she said. “Perhaps in another venue?”
“I apologize for our lack of hospitality,” Lucinda said, handing Fiona’s credit card back to her. “Drinks on the house, while The Melting Moon’s first guest author tells us her tale,” she shouted, and a rousing cheer shook the walls of the pub.
Fiona finally, very carefully, allowed herself to breathe a sigh of relief.
Christophe, with Melisande ensconced in a chair nearby, watched as a room full of wolf shifters, among the deadliest of all predators, sat entranced and listened to Fiona tell a tale. Although, to be sure, the story was one of the finest he’d ever heard. The wolves’ own moon goddess, known for her incredible beauty and the vanity that was her greatest downfall, had apparently taken a little jaunt to Scotland one day and fallen hard for a Scottish warrior.
The warrior and the goddess. It named his own story, and he wasn’t sure his was fated to have any more of a happy ending than Fiona’s tale. A mere mortal wasn’t meant to love a goddess, and Fiona shone brighter than any mere moon. She was brilliant and brave beyond anything he had ever seen in a human. She’d faced down Lucinda’s threat with a smile and an offer of her own.
She was incredible.
He could never deserve her.
“Don’t wait too long before claiming that one for your own,” Evan said from behind him. “She is a treasure, is she not?”
Christophe turned to find the alpha’s mate, his nose healed and his face cleaned of blood, leaning against the bar next to him. Evan raised his mug to Christophe in a wry toast.
“Truce?”
Christophe nodded and raised his own mug. “Truce. Although it would have been a far different story if you’d hurt her.”
Evan shrugged. “No need for posturing now. The crisis is past. Our two alpha females worked out their own balance, I think.”
Christophe nodded, his gaze returning to Fiona, who was gesturing animatedly with her hands as she told of the warrior’s fearsome jealousy.
“It is not always easy to fall in love with the brightest star in the firmament. I know this.” Evan nodded to Lucinda, who sat with her daughter, both of them clearly enraptured with the story. “I had to kill three challengers for her hand before I won her.”