Lucy Monroe - Moon Awakening

"But I'm not!" Cait exclaimed.

"Aren't you?" Talorc asked. "Did you come to this island of your own free will as Susannah came to our hunting lands?"

Drustan stepped in front of Cait. "I acknowledge that she was brought against her will, but she has not been mistreated and she is now my wife and content to be so."

"I don't want to leave," she added from behind him. "I am a Balmoral now."

"So you said." Talorc's voice gave no hint as to how he felt about that. "I will not apologize for not observing ancient pack law. Susannah acted on your brother's word, Balmoral, and you retaliated without all the facts. You should have realized he was a threat to the pack. You are at fault."

Cait gasped, her face going pale. Drustan looked ready to go for Talorc's throat.

But Lachlan merely sighed. It was a sad, rather weary sound, and Emily laid her hand on his back in comfort.

He looked over his shoulder at her, his dark eyes searching for something, but she had no idea what. Then he turned back to face Talorc and the others. "I should have seen his discontent, his greed for power. He hid it well, but there were clues if I had been willing to see them."

Emily was proud of Lachlan's ability to admit he was in the wrong. It showed a strength of character few men in his position possessed. Nevertheless, the reason he had been wrong was of grave concern to her. For if he did not acknowledge it and change his thinking, Ulf's threat could be renewed from a different source. Perhaps the next time it would go unnoticed until it was too late to change the outcome… like it had been with MacAlpin.

"You dismissed the threat Ulf represented because he is fully human. You did not think he was as powerful as a Chrechte, or capable of deceiving you, but you were wrong."

"Thank you for pointing that out, Emily," Lachlan said dryly.

"In believing so fully in your superiority, you put yourself and your clan at risk," she pressed.

Talorc laughed. "She's sharp-tongued, isn't she?"

"Plain-spoken, but she is right." Lachlan sighed. "She often is."

Emily was gratified that he had corrected Talorc's description of her. She was also warm with pleasure at the fact that Lachlan thought she was often right, but that did not make up for the fact that he had accused her of being unchaste because of the passion he had quite deliberately provoked in her. The two lairds might accept a cessation of hostilities without an apology, but she wasn't going to. Lachlan was going to tell her he was sorry, and that was that.

"She said she'd rather be married to a goat than me. Are you the goat?" Talorc asked, his voice still laced heavily with amusement.

"I will be."

"No!"

"I am glad to hear you say so," Talorc said, ignoring Emily's denial. "Since she was sent to Scotland to wed me, she is my responsibility. I had no desire to marry her, but I could not allow her to be compromised without demanding suitable reparation either."

Unbelievably, Lachlan nodded his understanding, just as if Talorc wasn't talking drivel.

"I'm wanting to witness the marriage before returning to my holding." This time there was no humor in the daft man's voice and she wished there had been.

Emily rushed around Lachlan so she could look Talorc in the face when she shouted at him. "I will not marry him and that's that!"

"You want to marry me then?"

"You know I don't, and neither will you marry me."

"You would rather I declared war on the Balmorals?"

"Don't be ridiculous. You aren't going to war over me. I'm English, remember?"

"You are under my protection while you are in the Highlands. My honor is worth going to war over."

"No, Talorc," Cait said, sounding desperate. "They haven't mated."

"I saw him naked with her in the water."

"But that doesn't mean anything," Emily assured him. "You're naked now, but I'm not mating you."

Lachlan growled, the sound inhuman and frightening.

Talorc ignored it as he had ignored her protest a moment before. "I do not believe your father would feel the same."

"You aren't going to tell him?" Emily asked, horrified.

"I'm going to see you wed, or I'm going to war."

Emily looked wildly around her, but no one appeared ready to step in and aid her in dismissing Talorc's daft notion. Cait's worried and faintly sick expression said she knew he meant it and she was worried that Lachlan was going to refuse. Emily was more afraid he wouldn't.

"You don't want to marry me," she cried, facing him.

"Would you rather see our clans go to war?" he asked with interest.

"Of course not."

"Then you will marry me, English."

"No."

Emily was standing in front of a priest an hour later. She was still reeling from Lachlan's confrontation with Ulf upon their return to the keep, which was her excuse for getting this far in a wedding ceremony she was sure should not take place.

Talorc and his soldiers (there were four) had accompanied them back to the castle because he insisted on seeing Emily wed, and Lachlan, for reasons she could not fathom, had agreed to accommodate him. Her continued vehement denials and arguments about why the wedding should not take place were ignored by the two lairds walking side by side.

If she were Chrechte, she would turn into a wolf and bite someone. It was a lucky thing for them all she was ladylike enough not to do it anyway.

Thankfully, Talorc had plaids hidden on the island for him and his soldiers and they were now decently covered. Though Emily had to wonder if the Highland women would have been nearly as shocked by their nakedness as she had been.

Ulf's roar of fury from high on the wall walk splintered her thoughts in that moment and sent a chill skittering down Emily's spine. But when she looked up, she did not see him. She peeked sideways at Lachlan. He acted as if he hadn't even heard the war cry.

But she knew he had and her heart went out to him even though she doubted he would thank her for the concern. Learning his brother was a traitor and a murderer could not have been easy, but he had revealed no emotion at Talorc's revelations. And he didn't expose any now either.

Ulf was not so circumspect. His face twisted with rage, he was waiting for them in the lower bailey with several other soldiers when their parry crossed the bridge. "What the hell is this? You have brought our enemy inside our very gates.'"

Lachlan motioned for the rest of them to halt and approached his brother alone. He glared at the other soldiers until the men stepped back from Ulf.

"The only enemy to the Balmoral clan stands before me," Lachlan said when he stood less than two feet from his brother. "In your lust for power, you killed one of our soldiers in hopes of luring me into a trap. You do not even have the courage to fight your own battles."

"I have the courage," Ulf snarled, "but I promised our father I would not challenge you for the position of laird. He did not think I could lead the clan because I have no beast inside me to cloud my thinking. He believed you were his true son, but I am more like him than you ever will be!"

"You have his temper, but you lack his strength and his intelligence."

"That's a lie! I'm everything he could have wanted in a son, but he judged me on the way my body reacts to a full moon."

"Go to the great hall," Lachlan commanded. "You will explain your treachery to me there."

Ulf just sneered.

Moving so quickly, she almost missed it, Lachlan hit his brother straight on the chin, knocking him backward into the dirt and into an unnatural sleep in the process.

"Carry him to the great hall," he instructed two of the warriors that had been hidden in the trees with Drustan when Lachlan confronted Talorc by the lake.

When they moved to obey, he asked the other soldiers if they stood with Ulf or with him. The men went to their knees and knelt before him, one going so far as to explain they had just been called from their duties by Ulf to help protect their laird. As a strong, chilling wind, portent of things to come, whipped around them, the soldier's story was confirmed by others and they were dismissed.