“Had our laird’s father been more appreciative of his duty and less focused on his obsessive love for the Englishwoman, he might yet be alive and many in our clan besides him.”
“There is that,” Niall agreed.
Eirik just handed Ciara an apple. “Eat.”
Clearly he was not worried if others agreed with his reasoning, or not.
She ate the apple, an oatcake and some roasted rabbit Guaire had prepared the night before while she slept. It was wonderful. After she’d drunk from the water skein, she took her clothes away from the light cast by the torch and dressed in the shadows.
“Why are we in a cave?” she asked Eirik, not sure if the search for the Faolchú Chridhe had already begun.
“You needed to sleep.” Eirik said it like that should answer her question.
It didn’t. “So? I don’t understand how that ended up with you, myself and two of my father’s most trusted warriors in a cavern.”
“Eirik claimed his dragon could guard your dreams,” Niall replied.
She would have scoffed, but the blond warrior’s earlier words made more sense now. Hope and pragmatism warred in her heart. If the dragon could guard her dreams, she could sleep. Only, she did not believe her father would allow her to spend her nights in a cave in the forest.
Ciara finished dressing and then went to stand before Eirik, who was tightening the strap holding his sword’s scabbard in place. “Thank you.”
“You were of no use in a discussion when you could not keep your eyes open well enough to even retain your seat in the chair.”
She remembered almost falling over and feeling like maybe it didn’t matter. “I was so tired.”
“Aye.”
“I feel much better now.”
“I am glad.” He didn’t seem happy. He just seemed…like Eirik, prince of the Éan, untouchable.
“I’m sorry I was such a bother.”
“It was no bother. My dragon likes you.” But the man couldn’t care less.
Ciara got the message loud and clear, even if it was disheartening and confusing. She and her wolf were one in the same, though she could distinguish between the feelings and thoughts most related to the wolf rather than her humanity.
Even so, it was her wolf that craved the presence of the Éan and made no attempt to deny it. Logic told her there could be no future in the feelings the other Chrechte elicited in her. Her human mind fought Eirik’s effect on her, but it was hard.
It seemed as if Eirik had no such conflict of spirit. His dragon might like her, but the man could barely stand her.
“Well, please tell your dragon thank you.”
Eirik’s amber gaze narrowed, but he didn’t reply.
Ciara rode behind Niall on his great warhorse for the return to the keep. They were a few yards from the cave entrance when Eirik maneuvered his horse alongside them.
Niall said something she didn’t catch because she was too busy trying not to scream as Eirik grabbed her right off the back of the other warrior’s horse.
She landed on the dragon shifter’s lap, his arm like a steel band around her.
“What do you think you are doing?” she demanded.
“You will ride with me.”
“If your dragon objects to her riding with Niall, she can ride my horse while I double up with him,” Guaire offered from behind them.
Eirik didn’t bother to answer, he just nudged his horse into a gallop.
“That was rude,” she chided, but the wind swallowed her words.
She doubted he would answer even if he heard her. The Éan prince might not have designs on Talorc’s position as laird, but he was arrogant enough for any royal Chrechte.
He didn’t need clan chief status to believe he had the right to dictate the circumstances of others. And after her first truly deep and long-lasting sleep in months, she wasn’t going to complain too loudly at Eirik’s high-handed methods.
If he was not the kind of man he was, Eirik would never have convinced her father to let her sleep in the dragon’s arms in a cavern in the forest.
Of this she was certain.
Apparently, it was not just Eirik’s dragon that made her feel safe and secure, either. She found she enjoyed riding with him nearly as much as she had riding his dragon through the sky.
Accepting her feelings as unstoppable and her plight as inevitable, when faced with the arrogance of a prince who was also a dragon, she relaxed against him. She trusted him not to let her fall and simply enjoyed the smells and sounds of the forest as