The admission was hard to make.
Ciara frowned. “Unless he had the gift, an alpha has no more hope of divining one’s mate than any other member of the pack.”
“I know that. Now.” It would have been a great benefit to have known this truth of their heritage six years ago.
There were too many things Uven of the MacLeod had kept from his people in his quest to control the clan and the pack so completely.
“You made one hell of a mistake,” Niall observed without rancor but without pity either.
“I did.” But Shona would forgive him once she understood.
His sweet mate’s forgiving nature was every bit as ingrained in her as her stubbornness.
He turned his attention toward getting to know his children while the woman he and his wolf ached to claim slept upstairs.
Shona woke to the absolute dark of the wee hours on a moonless night.
It had been so long since she had slept well and deeply, comfortable in a bed she knew would not be disturbed.
She wasn’t sure why she knew this bed was an absolutely safe one, but she did, in that place in her brain not too influenced by waking. So why the urge to get up?
The next question her brain always conjured upon waking answered the first.
The sensation of something not being right pushed her into full wakefulness when her body wanted to settle back into sleep.
Where were her children? She remembered coming to the guest room in the Sinclair keep for a much-needed nap, but that had to have been hours ago.
She must have slept through the evening meal, her children’s bedtime and into the night. Though Shona could not be sure of how late it was without seeing the stars position in the sky, how refreshed she felt indicated she’d slept away all of the afternoon and a good deal of the night.
She reached out to feel around for the edge of the bed and realized two things at once. The first was that she was in the center and the second that Audrey was no longer in the room.
This concerned her nearly as much as not knowing where her children were. Though Audrey was no fool, at nineteen she had a less jaundiced view of the world than Shona.
This made her vulnerable to those who might deceive and use her, as Shona had been six years ago.
With increasingly urgent moves, Shona used her hands to find her way around the room. On a shelf that jutted out from the wall near the head of the bed, fingers encountered a candle and flint for striking. ’Twas an unexpected extravagance, but she quickly made use of it and lit the candle.
The glow from the single candle dispelled the darkness, though the corners of the room remained in shadow. Shona spied a dark shape that she assumed was clothing Audrey had pulled for her from the small bundle of possessions taken on the flight from Heronshire barony. She grabbed the fabric, only to realize that Audrey had pulled out Shona’s green velvet dress.
Shaking her head at Audrey’s silliness, Shona donned the garment free of dust and the detritus of travel, unlike the dress she’d arrived in. It took precious time to secure the sleeves, but running about the keep in nothing but her shift was not an option.
Especially after the last months at the barony, when the most innocent of gestures had been taken as invitations she’d never had any intention of offering.
She didn’t take the time to brush or pull her hair back. Neither did she search for her shoes.
Shona needed to find her children and hoped she would not wake the entire keep doing it. But if that was what it took, wake them she would.
She rushed out the door and nearly tripped over Caelis’s form. He was sitting directly in front of her door, looking around as if trying to figure out where the danger was coming from. His big body rippled with muscle, even in his low position on the floor.
“What are you doing outside my room?” she demanded in a whisper, wishing she had not noticed anything appealing about his physical appearance.
He stood with the fluid grace she’d worked hard to forget. “What are you doing rushing around in the wee hours of the morning?” he asked instead of replying.
“Looking for my children.”
“They are sleeping in the room beside yours. Your champions are in there as well, guarding the lad’s and lass’s sleep.” Caelis’s disgruntled tone implied he wasn’t as pleased about that as Shona was.
Her own heart, which had been beating near out of her chest, settled into a more normal rhythm. “Which one?”
He indicated a door to the right with an incline of his head in that direction.
She immediately headed toward it, but Caelis’s arm shot out, his hand closing over her wrist. “Where are you going?”
“To see them.” She spoke slowly as if to a not very bright child.
“You will wake them.”
She didn’t intend to, but ’twas not her greatest consideration at the moment. “I will be quiet.”
“Eadan will hear you.” The certainty in Caelis’s tone implied he somehow already knew about their son’s acute ability to detect sound.
“Nevertheless, I will see them.”
“Why? I have told you they are resting with your friends. Do you not trust Thomas and Audrey to watch over the children?”
“Of course I do, but I only have your word that Eadan and Marjory are behind that door, safe and sleeping peacefully.”
Caelis’s head snapped back as if she’d slapped him with all the fury she’d wanted to six years ago. Back then, she’d been too much in love to do him harm, despite his betrayal.
Now, she would not hesitate.
“You do not trust my word?” he asked with shock too real to be feigned.
She was hit by her own sense of unreality. “You expect me to?”
“Aye.”
“Then you are a bigger fool than I was six years ago.”
“I have told you there were reasons for what happened between us.” And he sounded like he fully expected her to listen to him list them.
“What happened was that you made promises that had no more substance than the morning mist.” And no amount of explaining could change that.
“I meant my words to you when I spoke them.”
That was supposed to matter to her? She jerked her wrist from his hold. “But not later.”
He’d broken his vows and she’d ended up married to an old man whose touch had near to driven her insane. If she had not had her children, Shona would not have survived the last years.
She was sure of it.
She moved away, intent on finding Eadan and Marjory. He did not try to stop her again.
She pushed against the door, but it did not give. If Caelis were indeed telling the truth, then Audrey or Thomas must have dropped the bar into place on the other side. She appreciated her friends’ dedication to safety, but Shona would not return to the guest room without confirming her children’s well-being.
She knocked softly on the door, knowing the siblings slept more lightly than even her son.
Only a few seconds passed before the door swung inward, revealing Thomas’s sleepy countenance.
“You wish to see the little ones,” he guessed.
She nodded.
Thomas stepped back and Shona moved into the room. The candle she carried casting a soft glow over the space, revealing the bedding on the floor where Thomas had obviously been resting. Beyond that was a bed similar to the one Shona had been sleeping in, but this one was a lot more crowded with Audrey in the middle and Eadan and Marjory on either side of her.
Audrey’s eyes were open, but she did not move. Obviously not wanting to disturb the children, she sent Shona a small smile of reassurance. Eadan shifted, making a soft noise, but he didn’t wake, proving just how exhausting the past sennights had been for him.