“And him.” Una turned away, lest her mother see the pain filling hazel eyes just like her own. “They left him too crippled to fly.”
“Aye, but these men our prince has given leave to live among us? They were no part of that.”
“But they could have been.”
“Could they?”
Una was certain of it. All wolves had that viciousness in their nature. Not that all would give in to it. She sincerely hoped Bryant had never done so.
Mòrag sighed, the sound filled with the same old pain that plagued Una. “Daughter, you have suffered greatly, but not at the hands of these men. They will not hurt you.”
Trust her mother to see the terror Una worked so hard to hide. “I just don’t understand why Prince Eirik had to let them enter our homeland.”
“Because change must come.”
“But why?” Even as Una asked, part of her longed for change. If not among her people, then in her own heart. So she would not live in such fear any longer.
“It has been foretold.”
“And that makes it so?” she demanded.
Though, now more than ever, she had reason to trust the visions of the celi di.
“You know it does,” her mother said in a tone that showed her shock at Una’s words. “Our seers have led us since time immemorial. We cannot begin to doubt their guidance now, not if we want your children to have a hope at life as it is meant to be lived.”
“As slaves to the Faol?” Una asked, her worst worries coming to the fore.
“In secret,” Mòrag emphasized. “Hiding from the peoples who live in this land with us. It is time for the Éan to come out into the sun.”
“No,” Una said with anguish she could not hide.
“Oh, daughter.” Mòrag pulled her into a hug, but Una would not let herself relax. The tears would come then.
And she would not give any more of her tears to the wolves who had done her and her tribe such irreparable harm.
FIVE
Una’s mother had been right, Bryant smiled far more than the Éan warriors were wont to do. Especially her father.
He had a cheerful nature when they’d met in the spirit lands of Chrechte, but she’d thought again that it had been because they were in a place out of time. A place where no harm could come to them and the trials of physical life could not assail them.
But it seemed at first glance as if the man she had met while she slept was exactly like himself in the physical realm.
Right down to being more handsome than any soldier had a right to be. Even his scars, those at least he hadn’t had in the other realm, only made him look more appealing. He was no perfect man, who had not faced hardship or battle, but a real warrior who had the marks on his body to prove it.
A larger-than-life presence, he seemed every bit as big and a great deal more intimidating with it, in the flesh. The warrior braids in his mahogany hair depicted his life. He’d told her what each one was for on their last spirit-plane visit. The three on his left side commemorated important events in life as a soldier for the Balmoral pack.
The one on his right was in honor of the grandfather who had died ten years past, bequeathing Bryant both his name and his sword. Her brows drew together in confusion as she noted a second thin braid beside the first. It had not been there before. The ends of this braid were wrapped with bits of string.
If her eyes were not deceiving her, and considering her superior eagle sight, that was highly unlikely, those bits of string were the exact shades of green and brown as her hazel eyes.
She stared into eyes dancing with humor and something else she refused to name. The man near took her breath away.
And that had never happened before.
Not in this physical world where the nearness of strangers was more likely to send her into a fit of panic than passion.
“We have not met.” He put his hand out to take hers, his storm-cloud gaze telling a very different story. “I am Bryant of the Balmoral.”