Dragon's Moon (3 page)

“Our prince fears no one,” the oldest boy boldly proclaimed.

But the younger looked terrified.

And Ciara knew that look. She'd worn it before herself, when she had gotten into trouble by following her curiosity rather than the rules for safety laid down by parents and clan.

“They've no protector with them,” Galen said, proving he was as astute at reading these young ones as he had always been at knowing Ciara.

“Is this true? Did you two abominations sneak away from your protectors?”

“We wanted to hunt,” the littlest one claimed in a trembling voice.

She expected her brother to offer to escort the boys home, hoped for it. That would be the brother she knew and loved.

Instead, Luag laughed again, that lacing of cruelty more pronounced. “All the easier to rid the world of two more useless birds.”

No. He did not mean that.

He could not.

Despite the evidence of her wolf's senses, she refused to believe these boys were Luag and Galen's prey.

But Ciara's horror only grew as her brother's voice carried on the now still air. “We are Chrechte warriors, we don't kill children.”

Implying if these had been adult raven shifters, he would have killed without remorse? Definitely proving that he'd known they hunted shifters, not simply birds. Please, please…
please, no
. Her brother was not evil.

“These devil's spawn aren't children.”

Primal instincts roared up inside Ciara. She had never experienced the like before, but the desire to rip Luag's throat out made her wolf's body tense in preparation to spring.

Children were to be protected. Always. That they were Chrechte only made their protection that much more imperative. Their race did not reproduce easily. Her parents had been considered blessed beyond measure to have succored two children of the Faol past infancy.

“We're not spawn,” the older boy said defiantly, even as his small body shook with fear.

Luag drew his fist back and Ciara's haunches bunched a split second before leaping.

One hit from a warrior's fist could kill a child.

But before she could jump from her hiding place, a mighty roar sounded from the sky. So loud and filled with anger, it froze even Luag—who now stared above them with shock and denial.

Looking up, Ciara understood his reaction. She could no more believe her eyes than her dreams of the strangely glowing cavern. Yet, this was no nighttime fancy. A great red dragon flew against the clear blue sky, his scarlet scales so dark they looked near black, his furious roars shaking the treetops.

The boys looked unafraid though and Ciara knew this…this mythical creature of old was their ultimate protector. Perhaps even the prince the older boy had spoken of.

The dragon's head turned toward her brother and Luag, amber eyes fixed balefully on the men who had threatened the young shifters. Luag threw his dirk, not at the dragon but at the smallest boy. No doubt hoping to distract the dragon so Luag could run. The coward.

The knife missed the child's body but cut his arm as it flew past. The boy fell backward, crying out as blood welled from the cut.

The dragon roared again and then opening his great mouth even wider, orange flames shot out, devouring everything in their path.

Unable to move in her shock, Ciara stood by while her brother died with a scream that would haunt her nightmares. Luag was already running, but it was to no avail. The dragon had command of the skies and flew after the tormenter of children. Another blast of flame and Luag's screams were even more terrible than her brother's had been; he and the trees he'd tried to hide amidst turned into naught but ash.

'Twas a miracle the entire forest did not catch, but the dragon cast his flame with care.

The dragon turned and flew back, landing near the boys who clambered onto his back with more speed than sense. They were gone moments later, the sky clear as if no mythical creature had ever been.

All that remained were the ashes of her brother, Luag and some trees. And her own heart. She had stood by while Galen died a terrible death. She had done nothing for him, or for the boys.

Not that the little ones had needed her help, but she should never have stood by while they were threatened to begin with. The knowledge that she could have died with her brother no boon against the pain.

Luag's ashes she left for the wild animals to piss on, but Ciara scooped her brother's ashes into the skin she'd retrieved from her things in the cave. Tears mixed with bits
of bone and ash as she gathered the precious remains, leaving the grit of her brother's life behind on her bare hands.

She would spread his ashes in the wind from the top of
Ben Bristecrann
just as they had done their father's.

With no time for grieving, she walked through what was left of the day and the night that followed to reach the hill. It had gotten its name from the tree split by lightning that still grew by some miracle on its summit. Her da had claimed the place was blessed.

Since his ashes mixed with its soil, she thought it was sacred anyhow. Ciara spoke the words of Chrechte passing in a broken voice as the wind picked up what remained of her brother and took it to join their father.

It was late morning of the next day before she reached their cottage and could inform her mother of Galen's death.

Ciara told no one of the dragon. Only that Luag had led her brother into danger and she had come upon both of them dead in the forest. She told her clan she'd prepared and lit her own funeral pyres and they'd not doubted her.

She was her da's daughter after all and he'd been known as one of the most stubborn men in the Highlands. Luag had no family to complain of her actions or question whether she had spread his ashes as she had her brothers.

Ciara did not volunteer the truth, for the heart still burning with anger and pain in her chest said he deserved his final resting place.

Mum showed no reaction to the news, seemingly oblivious to what Ciara's words meant when told of their loss.

Ciara realized her miscalculation when she found her mum dead the next morning, the bed soaked with her life's blood and cuts too deep in her wrists for even the Faol to survive.

He is king who fears nothing; he is king who desires nothing!

—L
UCIUS
A
NNAEUS
S
ENECA

Land of the Éan, Highlands of Scotland

1149
AD

“Y
ou are certain this is the right path you take?”

At his grandmother's voice, Prince Eirik Taran Gealach Gra turned from his contemplation of the forest below. One day soon, this view would be naught but a memory for him. He refused to grieve the consequences of a choice he had made for the good of the Éan though.

He was their prince. It was his duty.

Bowing his head, he greeted the raven shifter whose hair was still more black than silver despite her many years. “Anya-Gra.”

Grandmother she might be, but she was still the spiritual leader of the Éan and the oldest member of the Triumvirate.

“I cannot help but think you give up too much for the sake of our people.” Troubled brown eyes in a face lined with concern met his.

Now was not the time to question the decision he had made and the three members of the Triumvirate (including his grandmother) had approved. They had known this day was coming since he had refused the ceremony that would declare him king of his people, sovereign over their lands.

To accept the role would have prevented the Éan from joining the clans honorably before Eirik's death. At the time, his grandmother had counseled against jeopardizing the future of their people that way, though she had insisted he take his father's name as was custom.

Anya-Gra herself had declared that the good of their people demanded sacrifice. Eirik had agreed and he had made that sacrifice, becoming the first Prince Eirik not to be named king. Now she balked at him making another forfeit they both knew to be necessary.

“You agreed the Éan need to join the clans to survive; when it was first spoken of, it was your idea.”

“Aye, but at the cost of your leadership of our people?” She shook her head.

“I do not cede leadership of the Éan; I only give up the daily running of a clan. It is the only way. I will not kill a clan chief just so that I might play political leader.”

“Why not? You are a dragon.” Eirik's younger cousin asked as he joined them on the platform outside what had been home to the Éan royalty for more than two centuries.

A home among the trees, reachable only through flight; none of the humans that lived among them had ever seen inside its walls. And in less than the passage of two full moons, he would no longer see it, either.

“Fidaich, who would you have me kill in battle for his position?” Eirik demanded of his favorite kin. “Those who have fought beside our people these past seven years, protecting us and helping us to find a way out of this secret life in the forest? The Sinclair? Buchanan? The Donegal maybe? I would have to kill my own brother by marriage to take that clan's leadership, not to mention one of our own.”

For Crispin, the laird-in-training under Barr, would surely challenge Eirik should he do the unthinkable and kill the acting laird and man married to Eirik's only sister,
Sabrine. Hell, Sabrine would probably kill Eirik before Crispin ever got the chance to put forth a challenge.

That thought, at least, came close to bringing a smile to Eirik's face.

Fidaich shrugged, showing a bloodthirsty side not often seen among the ravens. “There are other clans in the Highlands.”

“None that will guarantee our people's safety by the word of their chief and pack leader.” He had both with the Sinclair.

And those of the Éan joining the Balmoral and Donegal clans had the same.

“With a dragon as our prince, we need no other leader's assurances.” Fidaich drew himself up, trying to look older than his thirteen years.

One day, the boy would be a great warrior, but there was still too much of the child who had nearly died at the hands of a sadistic wolf now. Fidaich had more reason than most not to trust the wolves, or care that one might have to die for Eirik to take place as a clan laird.

Which did not mean Eirik shared his young cousin's attitudes. He'd killed the wolves that threatened Fidaich and Canaul in a moment of horror that would forever burn in Eirik's memories.

“I cannot be everywhere and well you know this. If we do not have the loyalty of a clan, we only trade one hunting ground where raven are the prey for another.”

“In the old days—”

“What you know of the old days is from the stories told to entertain children. They were not so filled with glory and victory as the storytellers would have you believe,” Anya-Gra gently chided the boy.

Fidaich pouted, a clear reminder he was yet to become a man. “Those stories are our history.”

“Aye.” Grandmother's eyes filled with sadness. “Part of it. The rest of our history is not shared so often.”

But it was shared and Fidaich was well told on the unhappy lessons of the Chrechte's past.

“The old ways nearly decimated all the peoples of the
Chrechte.” Eirik laid a hand on his cousin's shoulder. “Is that what you want?”

Fidaich deflated like a pig's bladder with a small leak. “No.”

“Nor, I am sure, does he wish to see the loss of our people's identity, either.” Anya-Gra spoke mildly, but the rebuke was there.

How could she think Eirik, last true prince of their people, would allow such a thing? “We do not.”

The Éan were an ancient race that by their very nature would always stand apart from the human clans and the Faol that currently lived among them. While Eirik would not be clan leader, he was still their people's prince.

His new duties removed him from the politics of running a clan but left him with responsibilities easily as far reaching, if not more so, than the ones he currently carried.

When his grandmother made no word of reply, Eirik reminded her, “Both you and I are on the new Chrechte council.”

Each of the Highland packs living among the clans had members on the council. A shifter from each group of the Éan joining the different clans had been appointed a spot on the council as well. Anya-Gra, as spiritual leader, held her position independently of which clan she chose to make her home.

Right now that clan was the Donegal, so she could be close to Eirik's sister, Sabrine. Not to mention Sabrine's son, Anya-Gra's only great-grandchild thus far.

Both the Faol and the Éan were to be represented in the council and given the opportunity to contribute to interpreting and enforcing the ancient laws governing the Chrechte.

Eirik could not be certain this would prevent the past from repeating itself, but he had faith. If he did not, he would not have agreed to the terms put forth for the Éan joining the clans.