“Is that your answer when you have no words of denial?” Bryant asked with humor-laced annoyance of the older man.
Again that sweetly unexpected sound from Una. Though she merely shook her head when Bryant gave her a questioning look.
She utterly charmed him.
And he terrified her.
If he claimed her, introduced her to his wolf, then she would know all could be well between them. That he would never hurt her as the Donegal wolves had done.
Something of the heat the thought sparked in him must have made itself known to Una, because she blushed and let off a scent that was nothing like the acrid fear he’d come to expect in such a short time.
“Mòrag would have you and this one join us for latemeal. She wishes to know more of your family’s history,” Fionn said, with a worried look at his daughter, before indicating both Bryant and Donnach with a sweep of his walking stick, when the silence had stretched for a long moment.
Donnach looked on the irritable Éan with clear disbelief. “This was your attempt at inviting us to dinner?”
“Are ye coming, or not?” Fionn demanded.
Bryant met the lovely Una’s eyes when he answered her father. “We’d be pleased to.”
“Speak for yourself,” Donnach muttered low enough only a wolf would be able to hear.
Or a very cantankerous old man, if the renewed glare Fionn gave the other Balmoral wolf was anything to go by.
EIGHT
Una fluttered like a hummingbird around her parents’ hut, helping her mother with final preparations for the latemeal.
One benefit to the ground village was that a family could cook in their own home without grave concern for the spread of fire.
Una couldn’t believe her mother had invited the wolves to sup with them, but part of her was fiercely glad Mòrag had. Una had been terribly disappointed when she hadn’t been taken to the spirit lands to meet up with Bryant in her sleep the night before.
But perhaps that was because she barely slept for thought of him. She’d spent the day mooning over the impossible and finally flown out of the treetops for her promised visit to her parents only to find her eagle inexorably drawn to the wolf.
“Why have you invited the Balmoral soldiers? Papa isn’t happy about it.”
“Bah. Your father spends half his life complaining about one thing or another. I know how to handle him.” Mòrag stirred the stew pot, adding a sprig of rosemary. “As I told your father, I wish to hear more of the lad Bryant’s family.”
“But why?” Una could not understand her mother’s curiosity about a wolf.
Her own was based on some obscure desire within Una’s eagle, but her mother? She should have no reason to want to know more about any of the Faol.
“Because he looks at you as a man intent on claiming a mate.”
“What?” Una practically shrieked. “I’m not his mate. I’m an eagle. He’s a wolf. We aren’t mates.”
No matter how he’d listed off a host of improbable sacred matings to her father.
“As you say,” Mòrag agreed far too easily and with such calm acceptance Una knew it to be false.
“You are plotting.”
Her mother continued to stir stew that needed no further tending, pretending she had not heard.
“I know it is a disappointment for you and Father.” Like so many things about their only daughter. “But I will never mate, Mother. I cannot. Not after what happened five years ago.”
“Nonsense.” Mòrag pulled the bricks from the oven opening and carefully drew forth the long baking paddle with two loaves of heavy dark bread from within.
They smelled so good, Una’s stomach would have growled if it were not tied firmly in knots by her mother’s words. “It isn’t nonsense. Surely you’ve noticed the wide distance the men of our tribe keep from me. I am considered a poor choice for a mate.”