Una’s eagle fought for control, the desperate need to get away growing with each of her rapid heartbeats.
“In the future, we will have no choice,” Anya Gra said, as if reading Una’s mind. “But for this moment in time, we must only make these few trustworthy wolves welcome among us.”
Only? There was no only about it. This thing the royal family asked, it was monumental. Beyond terrifying.
It was impossible.
“You ask too much.” The sound of Una’s father’s voice brought a mixture of emotions, as it always did.
Guilt. Grief. Relief. Safety.
Stooped from the grievous wound he had received at the hands of the Faol when rescuing Una from their clutches, he nevertheless made an imposing figure as he pushed his way toward the prince and priestess.
The leather patch covering the eye he’d lost in the same battle gave her father a sinister air she knew to be false. He was the best of men.
And forever marred by wounds that would never allow him to take to the skies again . . . because of her.
“You ask us to make welcome those who did this,” he gestured toward himself in a way he would never usually do.
He ignored his disfigurements and expected others to do the same.
“Nay.” The prince’s arrogant stance was far beyond his years, but entirely fitting his station as the leader of their people. “I demand you make welcome wolves who would die to protect you from anything like that happening again.”
“Die, for the likes of me?” her father scoffed. “That would be a fine day, indeed, would it not? When a wolf would die to protect a bird.”
“Do you doubt my desire to protect you and all of my people?” the prince demanded, with a flicker of vulnerability quickly gone from his amber eyes.
“Nay. My prince, you love us as your father did before you, but this? This risk you would take with all our safety, it is foolishness.”
Suddenly Anya Gra was standing right in front of Una’s father, her expression livid, no desire for conciliation in evidence at all. “Fionn, son of Micael, You dare call me foolish?”
Oh, the woman was beyond angry. Even more furious than Una’s father had a wont to get.
“Nay, Priestess. Your wisdom has guided our people for many long years.”
“Then, it is my visions you doubt,” the celi di accused with no less fury in her tone.
Una’s father shook his head vigorously. “Your visions have always been right and true.”
“Then you, and all those who stand before me today,” she said, including everyone at the feast with her sharp raven’s stare. “All of my people will give these wolves a chance to prove that not every Faol would murder us in our sleep.”
“And if you are wrong? If they turn on us?” her father dared to question.
Una’s respect for her parent grew. It took great strength to stand up to Anya Gra, spiritual leader and one of the oldest among them.
“Then I will cast my fire and destroy their clans without mercy,” the prince promised in a tone no one, not even her stalwart father, could deny.
Her father nodded, though he looked no happier by the assurance. “Aye, that’s the right of it then.”
Prince Eirik let his gaze encompass the whole of their community, his expression one of unequivocal certainty. “I will always protect my people to the best of my ability. Welcoming these honorable men is part of that.”
Una noted how he continued to push forth the message that these wolves were good men, trustworthy and honorable.
He was her prince and she should believe him.
But she couldn’t.
She knew the truth. Not that she hated all wolves. That would make her like the Faol who had taken her and done the horrible things they had done with every intention of killing her in the end, as they would kill any Éan they came across.
No, she would not share the unreasoning prejudices of her enemy and hate an entire race, making no distinctions between individuals.
But she could not trust them, either.
TWO
Bryant and his companions rode into the clearing deep in the forest. Their guide, Circin of the Donegal clan, pulled his horse to a stop without a sound.
The six Faol soldiers also pulled their horses to a stop.
“Now what?” Donnach, the other Balmoral wolf sent by their laird to act as diplomat to the Éan, asked.
“We wait,” Circin said, his youth belied by his confidence.
In line to be the next leader of the Donegal clan once the acting laird, Barr, had trained him to his station as both laird and pack alpha, the youth was an extremely rare shifter with two animals. Not that Circin’s triple nature was common knowledge, but Bryant and the others, if they were looking, had witnessed the other man shift into his raven the night before.
Since Circin’s clan believed him to be wolf, that meant the Chrechte had a dual animal nature: both Faol and Éan.
“Why aren’t you one of the emissaries?” Bryant asked him.
He would think a man who shared his nature with both a raven and a wolf would make a better bridge for the gap between the two races than a pure wolf.
“I lived among the Éan for a year after Barr married Sabrine, but I told no one except the prince and Anya Gra of my wolf. We all felt it best at the time.”
Considering the shared past between the two races of Chrechte, Bryant had no trouble understanding why that decision had been made. “Just as your clan isn’t aware you are a raven?”
“Some in my clan know,” Circin admitted easily.
And then something became clear to Bryant. Circin had shifted where Bryant and the others could see him because he trusted them. “You are acting as a bridge even if others do not know it.”
A faint blush darkened the laird-in-training’s cheeks. “The trust between the Chrechte brethren must start with the individual man.”
“And woman,” one of the Sinclair warriors added solemnly.
They all nodded. Highland Chrechte understood the value of all their people. Among the clans, human women were often seen as chattel, but the Chrechte were not like that.
Ancient laws dictated that all had their place before the Creator. Man was nothing without woman and woman was nothing without man. Just as the Éan were not complete without the Faol and the Faol were not complete without the Éan.
The different races of Chrechte had been created for a reason and it was not the role of any individual to try to change that. No matter how misguided and downright evil the actions of some of the Faol.
He still found it hard to believe that in only a few generations the memory of the other races of the Chrechte had been taken from the Faol, leaving the wolves to believe they were the only shape-changers in existence.
Now, others besides just Bryant’s family knew and believed their ancient stories were more than simply that. They were a history of people that had indeed lived and still did live, if in secret deep in the forest for the past centuries.
One day, wolves and the birds would unite with the Paindeal, their cat-shifting brothers and sisters, again as well. It had to be so.
Bryant had not been chosen as emissary by accident. He passionately desired the reconnection of their races.
Had been raised since he was a whelp to believe the time would come when the Éan would be accepted once again among the Faol. Must be accepted.
The desire to make it so was imbedded deep inside him and he would see it to its conclusion.