Bryant chose instead to focus on the latter part of the man’s statement. “Perhaps if we Chrechte were better at looking outside our immediate circle for mates, we would find our true bonds more often.”
“Hmmph.”
“It’s true.” Donnach put the leather aside and began cleansing his hands in the bucket of water beside the door. “Our own laird is mated to an Englishwoman.”
“She used to be English,” Bryant emphasized. “And I told Fionn of Lachlan and Emily yestereve.”
“So, one man mated to a human.” Fionn made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “What does that prove?”
“Our lady’s own sister, Abigail, is also true mate to the laird of the Sinclairs. His blacksmith shares a sacred bond with a sister to our laird’s second. And Lachlan’s second is mated to the Sinclair’s own sister.” Bryant listed off the sacred bonds he’d learned of or witnessed in the past few years.
“Hmmph.”
Bryant was coming to dislike that noncommittal utterance, but the expression of interest in Una’s keen hazel eyes was enough to keep him talking.
“Had they not looked outside their clans, much less their packs, none of these Chrechte would have found their true mate.” Couldn’t the old man see what this proved? Did the one Bryant’s wolf wanted to mate? “The Chrechte were never meant to live apart, but to live with one another and the humans.”
“That is not the ancient way,” Fionn claimed with the air of a man having made an unassailable point.
“Says who? We have lost many of the ancient ways, no matter how hard we have tried to keep true to them.”
“That is not the way of the Highlander, either.”
Bryant could hardly argue that point. The clans kept to themselves, developing ties with only a few others for the purposes of trade and waging war. But he knew he was right.
“If our people want to find their true mates, they must be open to mating outside their pack,” he reiterated.
“A man does not need his true mate to live a life blessed by the Creator.”
Bryant opened his mouth to argue, but realized that doing so might be seen as denigrating the life of the man he hoped to make his father-by-marriage. He snapped his mouth shut.
“Aye, what you say is true, but if we are to continue into the future, we must have more children,” Donnach inserted. “Too many matings are not blessed by children.”
It was Fionn’s turn to open his mouth and then close it without uttering a word of argument. For Donnach’s words were true as well.
While the clans around them grew, the Chrechte’s numbers fluctuated, but did not increase. Some packs had undeniably shrunk. There were rumors that a pack to the south had grown to numbers unprecedented, but none could confirm the MacLeod pack’s true size, nor that of their clan in actual fact.
“There must be more children among the Éan than the Faol,” Fionn said disagreeably.
Bryant did not believe him and the way Una shook her head said she denied the words as well. “Your numbers are not so great.”
“Because we lose our brethren every year to the murderous Faol.”
“And we all lose to war.”
“We are not at war with the Faol.”
“I am glad to hear you say that,” Bryant said with a smile.
Fionn met the smile with his customary scowl. “Ye are still at war with us and have been for generation after generation.”
“We are not at war, but there are the murderous among us. I will not deny it.”
“Ye hardly can if you would speak the truth.”
“But not all wolves are filled with the hate that spurs these men.”
“So you say.”
“So I say since I am one of the Faol who would die to protect the Éan.” Bryant had been raised to believe it was his calling to somehow bring his feathered brethren back into the Chrechte fold.
The discovery of the Éan’s tribe had been the confirmation he and his family needed that the time to do so had come.
“Neither I, nor any of the soldiers who traveled here with me, would kill our Chrechte brethren for no more reason than that their animal takes a different form from our own.”
“If that is true, you are an exception.”
“Nay. These blackguards who work in secret to destroy, they are the anomaly among the Faol.”
“You would have me believe your nature is not violent?” Fionn sneered at the deer hide Bryant had continued to work on.
“We are predators. We hunt. As do your people, but we hunt with a purpose, not for sport.”
“The purpose of the Faol is to see the eradication of the Éan.”
“Nay!” Bryant’s usual good nature slipped and the warrior in him came to the fore. “You accuse what you do not know and without cause.”
“You dare say I have no cause?” Fionn’s fury burned like a lightning fire in the summer’s driest forest.
The old man’s walking stick came up with speed, and had Bryant not moved just so, it would have struck his head rather than his shoulder. He did not move completely out of the way, because he’d been taught by his father to always preserve the dignity of his elders.
“Papa . . .” Una’s soft, horrified tones interrupted, her eyes filled with fear as she insinuated herself between Bryant and Fionn. “You must not!”
Bryant laid a hand on the smaller curve of her feminine shoulder. “Let him speak his piece. If he does not, it will only continue to fester.”
Una spun on him, her expression still tinged with fear, but filled with a bigger portion of disbelief. “You do not think my father has spoken his piece? When does he not rail against the wolf, against what happened to him because of me?”
“Daughter . . . ’twas not you. My loss is at the hands of the evil Faol who hurt you so grievously.” The brokenness in the old warrior’s voice was hard to hear.
“And it is a Faol you need to rail against,” Bryant reiterated. “So, do your railing, old man.”
Like the blow to his shoulder, Bryant could take it easily.
“Old man? Whom do you call old?” Fionn demanded with genuine affront.
Bryant kept back his humor with effort, but he did it. “You claim to have cause to dye every wolf with the same bubbling vat of vitriol. So, let me hear it.”
“Your people took my daughter. They did unspeakable things to her. She has not been the same since we got her back. Her spirit is broken.”
Una stood there, her face suffused with color, her expression equal parts horrified embarrassment and remembered pain. But in her eyes?
In that beautiful hazel gaze, Bryant saw nothing but anger. Anger at the Faol? Anger at her father? Anger at Bryant? He did not know, but ’twas not the muted light of a broken spirit.
“She doesn’t look broken to me,” Donnach observed, agreeing with Bryant’s private thoughts.
Bryant let his smile through this time. “Nay, I would say she appears more a woman ready to break something. I’ve seen the look often enough on my own mother’s countenance to know it well.”
“I’m not . . . I wouldn’t . . .” Una couldn’t seem to get out a full thought and in a strangled tone at that.
“What is it, daughter?” Fionn asked with all the appearance of a man who had no thought to how furious his words had just made the woman before him.
“My private business is mine,” she finally said in a deadly tone, all signs of her timidity hidden beneath the heat of her offense.
“Aye, it is.” Fionn’s easy agreement surprised Bryant.
Una, for her part, did not look much appeased. “Then you should not have brought it up.”