Jan Delima - Celtic Moon

“Not always. I worked in the public school system when he was younger. I forged his heath records. If you look for them,” she warned to discourage an investigation, “they are inaccurate.”

“You’ve become quite resourceful, haven’t you?” Dylan commented dryly.

Sophie sent him a too sweet smile. “I’ve always been resourceful. Now I’m just paranoid.”

“Any unexplained broken bones?” Elen continued her questioning without pause. “High fevers? Problems sleeping?”

Again, Sophie shook her head. “He’s always been healthy up until three weeks ago,” she hesitated, still finding it odd to speak openly, “when the changes began.”

Elen’s eyes darted to Dylan. “Thank you, that’s all I need for now. Joshua can answer the rest of my questions.” She waved him over. “Are you ready, my handsome nephew?”

“I guess so.” Joshua didn’t look exactly thrilled to be led down the strange corridor by an unfamiliar aunt.

As he turned away, Sophie forced a reassuring smile. Letting him walk down that hallway without her was beyond difficult. It was, in a sense, the first step toward letting him go. She reminded herself to be reasonable. Elen’s frosty reception was in defense of her brother and she would never harm her nephew. Joshua was almost sixteen.

Unfortunately, the heart wasn’t guided by reason.

Adding to her unease was Dylan’s looming presence—and the simple fact that they were now alone.

She was fairly certain her punishment was about to begin.

DYLAN FOUND HIMSELF AT THE RECEIVING END OF AN angry woman’s displeasure, one who should be groveling for forgiveness and not leveling him with a very astute glare.

“Joshua’s not the least bit in danger of dying, is he?”

He saw no reason to carry the untruth any further. “No, not unless vital organs are removed from his body.”

She pursed her lips at his blunt response. “But he’s different?” She exhaled softly, amending her words. “Well, different even for your kind?”

Again, very perceptive. “Not exactly.”

“Can you just give me a straight answer for once?”

“You speak to me with venom in your voice and yet I’m not the one whose actions require atonement. So choose your words wisely from now on, because your audacity has reached its limit.”

She sighed then, an anguished sound that called to his soul, if he even had a soul. With her, it seemed that he must, because he always felt tortured in her presence.

“You’re angry, and you have every right to hate me for what I’ve done.” She lifted her hand in a helpless gesture before letting it fall back to her side. “But if our situations were reversed, you would’ve done the same thing.”

“Never, Sophie. I never would’ve kept you from our son.”

Her features pinched. Whether from guilt or anger he wasn’t sure, nor did he care.

“You’re so certain,” she said. “So quick to judge. But then you never considered my position in your life. You just expected me to conform.”

“I expected you to trust me,” he ground out.

Her eyes widened. “ Trust you? How do you trust someone who’s suffocating you? I couldn’t breathe without you or someone hovering over me, watching me— following me . I was constantly guarded by people who despised me, not permitted to contact my family—”

“I was protecting you!”

“You were protecting your secret,” she snapped. “And when my father died you wouldn’t even let me go to the funeral.”

“The man had already passed on. Your presence over his dead body would not change that fact.”

She went completely still. “And how does that justify your response to my grief? You locked me in a room like . . .” Her voice shook with raw anger. “Like a dog. You made me a prisoner— ”

“You were threatening to leave me!”

“—and then you dragged me through the woods and changed into a . . . a wolf . And , if that wasn’t enough, just before your little demonstration, you gave me an option to leave, but without my child.”

When he didn’t respond she glared at him as if he were the king of idiots. “And you wonder why I left you?”

With great effort he managed to keep his voice restrained. “I would never have made that offer if I’d known how much you wanted our child.”

She scoffed, “Every mother wants their child.”

No, he thought, not every mother. “There are more lives at stake here than just yours or mine, or even our son’s.”

“I didn’t betray your secret.” She misunderstood his point. “Joshua’s the only person I told.”

“I believe you.” Unfortunately, that wasn’t the betrayal that had caused him over a decade of sleepless nights.

She sighed, pinching the bridge of her delicate nose. “Fighting will not solve our differences. Can I make a suggestion?”

“I’m listening.” He crossed his arms, leery of her sudden tone of cooperation.

“I will answer any question you have for me, truthfully—if you do the same.”

It wasn’t, Dylan decided, an unreasonable request. “What do you want to know?”

“What’s different about Joshua that you’re not telling me?”

He regarded her for a long moment before answering. It was time, he agreed, to end her ignorance. “A shifter hasn’t been born in over three hundred years. So, if our son is powerful enough to change into the wolf, it will be an incredible blessing for me and my people.”

She frowned, absorbing that information, and not, it seemed, particularly pleased with the idea of her son becoming a wolf.

Tough shit.

“ You’re a shifter.”

“Yes.” He knew where this was going.

“How old are you?”

He hesitated only a moment, but then answered with blunt honesty. Whether she believed him or not was irrelevant. The time for lies had ended the moment Sophie had reentered his territory.

She was never leaving again.

“I was born 329 years after the modern calendar lists the birth of Christ. In a place called Penllyn. You would know my country as Wales.”

She remained quiet for several moments. “I would call you a liar, or a lunatic , if I had not watched you change from a man into a wolf with my very own eyes.” She gave a soft laugh, a calming means of self-preservation when the mind was forced to accept knowledge it didn’t want or understand. “The only thing I’m sure of is how much I don’t know about this world.”

“That night in the woods was my attempt to open your eyes, to teach you, although I must admit now that I may have been overenthusiastic in my approach.”

His attempt at humor was rewarded with a slight smile.

“Wales, early fourth century,” she mused. “Celtic then? Pagan?”

He nodded, his eyes drawn to her full mouth as she worried her bottom lip, taunting him with desire that he didn’t want.

Soft brown eyes lifted to his, unguarded and without malice. “That explains a lot.”

This conversation had taken a dangerous turn. In the face of anger he could resist her, but not this—not her looking up at him with newfound understanding. It was her gentle nature that had drawn him to her in the beginning.

He could do nothing but respond. “Like what?”

“Your beliefs. The way you live. Your fortress of a home.” She lifted one delicate shoulder and let it fall, causing light to dance around her long curls. “Your dominant temperament.”

“The last is from my wolf.” The treacherous beast that wanted to reach out and snag one of those curls to explore its texture.