laird had been impacted by his inability to change. Ulf’s own father had rejected him because of it and that had twisted Ulf so he lost his sense of honor and compassion. That had eventually caused untold harm to his remaining family, laird over the Balmoral, Lachlan. Lachlan’s mate had suffered as well, but all had been brought to rights. Eventually.
Clearly, Barr’s charge felt some sort of ambivalence toward her Chrechte family as well. Though he doubted very much it would lead her down the path Ulf had taken, if for no other reason than because she was a human woman and fragile.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, wanting the answer before Muin returned.
She looked around them. “In the forest?”
“On Donegal land.” He barely restrained rolling his eyes. He had no doubt she knew exactly what he meant and had chosen to play at misunderstanding.
“I do not know.”
“What?”
She did not look like she was jesting, but she had to be. “I am hurt,” she said as if that should explain everything.
It did not. “Yes, you are.”
“How did I get that way?”
“Shouldn’t you tell me?”
“But I don’t know.”
Funny, there was no scent of a lie and yet, he hesitated to believe her. That had never happened to him before. “How can you not know?”
She merely looked at him.
“The wound in your arm looks like it came from a human weapon.” It was too isolated to be a bite or claw mark. “Were you attacked?”
“I must have been. By a violent knave with no conscience.” Her voice was filled with loathing, too much so not to know her attacker.
“Who was it?”
“I do not know him.” This rang with absolute sincerity, but did not match the near hatred in her earlier tone.
’Twas a puzzle to be sure. “Little one—”
“My name is Sabrine.”
That was something at least. “What clan are you from?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?”
She pressed her hand to her forehead, like she was trying to push thoughts inside. “I should know, but I don’t.”
“Did your fall addle your brains, I wonder?”
“It must have.” She tried again to sit up. This time she succeeded, though the pain in her expression said it cost her dearly to do so. “I do not like the idea of my brain in a muddle.”
Again there was no scent to indicate a lie, but the words did not ring with full truth all the same. It must be her confused state perplexing his wolf’s senses. “I am sure you do not.”
“What will I do?”
That was one answer he did have. “Until you remember where you are from, you will return to the Donegal holding with me.”
The urgency his wolf had felt to be near this woman had lessened since she woke, but it was not gone completely. It was as if it was still there. Only hidden from him, which made less sense than Sabrine’s inability to remember her own clan, while able to remember about the Chrechte.
He had hidden nothing from his wolf since his first change, and vice versa; they couldn’t. Man or beast, they were one and the same.
Had she been Chrechte, he would have guessed she was masking her scent and distracting his wolf’s senses, but even doing so could not completely mask the wolf nature. And she had none. Muin returned with Barr’s plaid before he could finish pondering this oddity and determine what it meant.
Keeping his body between the young Donegal clansman and Sabrine, Barr used his plaid to cover her nakedness, careful not to jostle her arm or her clearly tender body. He then gently lifted her into his arms.
And something fundamentally both wolf and human settled inside him at the rightness of it.
Chapter 2
As he carried her through the forest, Barr’s scent wrapped itself around Sabrine, demanding recognition, insisting on some sort of reaction from her raven.
He was no longer masking any of his presence, neither wolf nor human. It was a blatant warning to other predators that one more fierce than they walked in their midst. It would keep all but crazed boar from them.
More than a warning though, it also acted as a potent wine to her senses. She could smell nothing but the wolf in man’s skin that carried her.
That should have disgusted her, but instead she found herself unwillingly intrigued.
For the first time since taking on the duties as guardian for her people, Sabrine’s raven wanted to come out and play.
Despite the pain of her injured wing, she wanted to take to the