Shona wanted to accept without caveat, but she did not know these people, no matter what she thought she knew of them. There was also Caelis to consider and his undeniable desire to now claim Eadan as his son.
Could Shona trust the Sinclairs to stop him from leaving the keep with the boy?
“Do not worry, I will stay with them,” Thomas offered. “Brian and Drost are bound to like the game of sticks I taught Eadan this past winter.”
“We like games very much,” Drost agreed, so obviously trying to comfort the adult woman falling to pieces in his father’s great hall, Shona wanted to cry.
She managed a very forced smile instead. “Thank you.”
“I will go with you,” Audrey said, proving her friend’s staunch support and ability to see correctly that Shona had reached the very end of her tether.
After she slept, she would again be strong, but right now, Shona had naught left to give to the circumstances so overwhelming her.
“I would have your word,” she said to Niall, falling back on instincts when reason was too difficult to employ. “You will not allow Caelis to take my son. Eadan and Marjory will be safe under the protection of you and Thomas.”
The young man’s loyalty had no equal in that room, but he was an untried youth of nineteen. No true match for the hardened warrior Caelis had become.
“I would not,” Caelis claimed, trying to make it sound like a promise.
But his promises were long past being trusted by her. So, Shona ignored him, demanding with the fierceness of her expression that Niall give her his vow.
The scarred warrior nodded. “Aye. You have my word.”
“Let us pray it has more value than the last time a Scotsman gave me his pledge.”
Niall placed his fist over his heart and bowed his head to her. “On my honor and that of my clan, I will keep those you hold dear safe.”
A small and genuine smile touched her lips at that promise. He was assuring her he would keep Thomas safe as well and she was grateful to the point of tears. A weak and foolish reaction to be sure, but she was tired.
With a nod of acknowledgment, she turned away before anyone could see the evidence of her emotions.
Eadan, Marjory, Thomas and Audrey were all that was dear left to Shona in the entire world.
She would not only die to protect them but kill as well. And so that blackguard Percival, new Baron of Heronshire, would discover if he had the impudence and stupidity to pursue her and her own into the Highlands of Scotland.
Chapter 4
There is no colder bed than the one without your mate.
—BARR OF THE DONEGAL
Caelis watched his sacred mate leaving the great hall, his wolf howling with the need to follow the petite female form, his body itching with the desire to shift.
But like he’d done so many times in the past six years, Caelis forced his beast to heel.
Their beautiful mate wanted nothing of them.
Shona’s scent used to be the most delectable of fragrances to both him and his wolf, though she’d never met the beast. All wild heather and summer rain, he would sit outside her parent’s hut in his wolf form, inhaling it for hours.
Now the acrid scent of bitterness came off her in waves when he was near.
’Twas no easy thing to accept, that change in his mate’s regard, no matter that his own actions had brought it on.
He’d survived the last six years holding her promises of eternal love inside where none could see, question or condemn. He’d known he didn’t deserve her love after letting her down as he had, but he’d been without choices.
Though she did not know it, he’d taken the blame on himself. He hadn’t wanted to add to her resentment of their laird, realizing too late what a mistake that had been. Not least because when her parents decided to move away from the clan, showing no hesitation, Shona had gone with them.
Caelis had never considered she might leave their people, or him. He’d thought he would have time to change his alpha’s mind about the mating, to make up to Shona the hurt he’d caused her.
Caelis had believed in their future even as he told her they had none. Her father’s leaving the clan had been an unforeseen circumstance. The fact that Shona went with him had shocked Caelis to the core. She had a life among her clan, friends if no family left.
The clan was her family. It was what they’d been taught since infancy.
And Caelis had believed her love stronger than even his alpha’s will.
There was no love in her pretty green eyes now when they fell on Caelis. At worst they swam with pain filled fury, at best with distrust so sharp it cut him to the core of his soul.
Not even the briefest flicker of joy had shown in the emerald depths since he’d first spied her in the courtyard, none of the relief or happiness he felt at this chance reunion. She did not share his delight that they had made a child together.
She would deny Eadan’s paternity if she could. Caelis had seen it in her eyes, but the boy looked too much like Caelis to be mistaken for anything but his own.
In Shona, Caelis could sense only resentment toward him.
While it might be well-earned, he hated it—almost as much as he had loathed every moment of their time apart.
He had spent six years craving nothing more than to be reunited with her. She had spent those same years despising him completely.
Even when he’d believed his laird that she was not his true mate and the later lies (when word had come of her death, which he’d later come to question but could never be certain about), Caelis had never stopped aching for her.
Not one day had gone by in six years that he had not wished to have the mate of his heart by his side.
But ’twas clear she’d rather be in the presence of a diseased rat than him.
She trusted the two English wolves and even Niall more than she did Caelis.
Shona worried that he would take their son away. His promise to the contrary had had no impact on her at all. She denigrated his vows as of having less value than the border treaties signed by an English king.
But he was not the only one who had broken promises.
She had sworn she would never stop loving him and that she would always belong to him.
Mayhap he had no reason or right to expect her to keep such a promise, but he and his wolf shared a sense of betrayal that would not simply be shaken away.
’Twas clear that Shona did not understand Caelis’s determination to make them all a family, either.
His duty to his people would prevent them being together for a time. But now that he knew where she was, that she was indeed his true mate, nothing would keep them apart permanently.
Caelis had begun to doubt his laird’s claim that Uven alone could identify a pack member’s true mate within a year of Shona leaving their clan. Caelis’s wolf had grown increasingly difficult to control after she left and only Caelis’s dedication to his pack and his duty kept him among the MacLeod instead of chasing after her.
But Caelis had believed Uven, laird of the MacLeod and pack alpha, to be a great man. Caelis had accepted the other man’s words as truth when they’d been nothing more than vicious lies.
It had been hard to admit he was so wrong about the other man and too easy to doubt himself after the laird told him Shona had died.