anger at the thought even if her tone had not.
“None.”
“Then how would you know?”
“Are you jealous of the women I’ve touched intimately?” he asked, unwilling to pass up the opportunity to goad her.
“Of course not,” she said far too quickly and with little conviction. “I have no right to be jealous.”
“If you are attempting to mask your deceit, you are doing a poor job of it.” The acrid scent of jealousy mixed with the sour smell of a lie in the air around them.
She gasped. “What? You can tell I lied to you?”
She sounded far more worried about her inability to mask her true feelings than the fact she’d been caught in a lie. Contrary faolán.
“Aye.”
“But that’s impossible.”
He could not help it. He laughed. She sounded so appalled.
“It happens that way between mates sometimes,” Eirik assured her. “Barr can see through the images my sister, Sabrine, projects with her mind.”
“I am not your mate,” Ciara claimed with no more conviction but a fair amount of horror, and doing no better a job of masking her lie than before.
“My dragon says you are.”
“No. Surely your raven—”
“Wants to rub necks with you.”
“Oh, no.” She backed away from him, her entire body tensed for flight.
Though where she thought she was going, he could not imagine. His dragon could find her across the waters.
“I do not want a mate.” The trembling sincerity in her voice mixed with the scent of genuine distress made his dragon want to roar.
He would not have her terrified of what she had to know was the natural progression of things. “You have nothing to fear from me.”
“You cannot be that naïve.”
One thing he had never been accused of was naïveté. It startled a chuckle from him.
“Don’t you laugh. This is not funny. I won’t do it. I will not take a mate.” Her voice rose steadily until she was shouting the last before she turned and ran.
He gave thanks in that moment for the style of clothes Abigail had convinced Ciara to wear because she could not shift into her wolf without destroying them.
Even so, it took him longer to catch her in his human form than he expected. Fear had given her feet wings and her wolf lent her grace and dexterity as she jumped over fallen branches and tree roots without a single stumble.
He could not help admiring her affinity with the forest as another sign of her special Chrechte heritage. Once he caught up with her though, he did not allow that admiration to make him hesitate.
Sweeping her up into his arms even as they ran, he settled her against his chest. He turned direction and slowed to a walk, heading back toward the clearing.
Ciara flailed against him, struggling for release. The fact she did not gain even the hope of it should have told her something about what her instincts were telling her to do. She struggled, but she did not fight with her Chrechte skills or strength, and that was telling.
Even if she did not see it.
Eirik simply hugged her tight, preventing her from hurting herself and made dragon noises that had never come from him before meeting her. His own instincts told him the sounds were meant to comfort. The way she settled against him, muttering to herself about arrogant dragons and mates she did not want, implied her wolf recognized the dragon’s attempt to calm her.
When they broke through the trees into the open area that was just as Artair had described, Eirik stopped. The near full moon bathed the small clearing with white light that cast shadows at the trees’ edge.
Eirik did not release Ciara; he had no desire to spend the night chasing her through the forest. “Are you done running?”
“I will not take a mate.” She crossed her arms and glared up at him, the green of her eyes so dark in the moonlight, they looked black.
“You want me.”
“I don’t.”
He shook his head. “I can tell when you’re lying, remember.”
Her glare went sulfuric, but the evidence of her desire for him remained just as strong. That subtle fragrance that said her body was preparing for him teased at his senses, pushing against his control over both his own desires and his different forms, and nearly taking Eirik to his knees.
Her stubbornness would be both their undoing if he did not take matters into his own hands.
Words were not going to convince his stubborn faolán of anything. Their mating was a primal urge and he needed to woo her at