Lucy Monroe - Moon Craving

“When will the baby come?”

“If my calculations are correct, early spring.”

“That is such wonderful news.”

“Thank you. I did not expect to have two babies so close together. Gail is only eight months old.”

“They will be playmates.”

“I imagine they will, but I sense this one is a boy.”

“I’m sure that will not stop them.”

“Oh, Abigail, I am so happy to have you back in my life,” Emily said with a hiccupping sigh.

“Me, too.” Abigail gave her sister a spontaneous hug. “I wish you could stay longer.”

Emily nodded. “But you will come to Balmoral Island for a visit soon, Talorc has promised.”

“Yes, and he keeps his promises.”

“It is good to be able to trust your husband in such things.”

“It is.” Abigail let her gaze slide to the sleeping baby and then back to her sister. “Um . . . there is something I have been wishing to discuss with you.” The one worry she desperately needed her sister’s wisdom in dealing with.

They had already briefly discussed the Una problem and Emily had made no bones about the fact that she thought the other woman should be sent away. Abigail should have been prepared for the protective stance and realized Emily would be no more unbiased than she was, just in a different direction.

She’d brought it up to Guaire and he had suggested she discuss it with her husband, since as laird he had a right to know Una was once again flaunting his directive to accept Abigail as lady of the Sinclairs.

But as frustrating as Una was, she was not Abigail’s most pressing concern.

Emily cocked her head at Abigail’s prolonged silence. “What is it?”

“You remember what the English priests taught about deafness?”

“The demon thing?” Emily frowned. “Pshaw. We know that isn’t true. You haven’t been worrying about that old tale, have you?”

“I’ve been hearing voices in my head,” she bluntly admitted.

“Voices? In your head?” Emily asked, not sounding overly concerned. In fact, if it was not stretching the bounds of belief too far, Abigail would have said her sister sounded almost excited. “What do you mean?”

“When Talorc and I are making love, I imagine I hear his voice and once I heard the howling of a wolf. Sometimes I think it is just my imagination, because I so desperately want to hear his voice when I can hear nothing else. Only it is so real and, Emily . . . I don’t remember what other things sound like. Not the chirping of a bird, the gurgling of a brook, the sound of wind in the trees or even your voice. Yet, I hear his so clearly. And from what I can remember, it is unlike any voice I heard before losing sound.”

Emily’s brilliant smile made no sense. “You need to tell Talorc, though I’m surprised he has not already noted the situation.”

“I did tell him.”

Emily’s brows furrowed. “What did he say?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” She shook her head. “That idiot.”

“My husband is not an idiot. He did not judge me. He did confirm he was not worried about it.” Which at first had fed her fears Talorc planned to banish her, but then she had seen his acceptance for the gift it was.

“Of course he isn’t worried. He knows exactly why you are hearing his voice and that of his wolf in your head.” Emily’s pansy eyes snapped with annoyance.

“His wolf?” Abigail was more than a little confused. “You mean the big gray wolf that is friend to the clan?”

“That gray wolf is more than friend.” Emily jumped up and began pacing the floor.

“You’ve seen it, too?”

“Only from a distance.”

“I’ve seen it up close twice.” She told her sister about the walk in the woods with Niall and then about her near miss with the boar. “The wolf saved my life.”

“Of course he did. He is your husband, your mate.”

“Emily . . . I am not married to a wolf.” She went right from worrying about her own sanity to that of her sister’s.

Perhaps Emily’s pregnancy was causing her mind to play tricks on her.

But Emily did not look like she was fantasizing when she said, “Yes, you are.”

“Emily—”

“They are werewolves, Abigail.”

“Don’t tease me. I know I believed Anna’s stories of werewolves in the Highlands as if they were gospel and they scared me, but I am no longer a child. And I’m really worried about these voices.”

“I’m not teasing you.” Emily’s violet eyes mirrored her frustration. “Have I ever lied to you?”

“No.”

“I am not lying now. There is a special race who live among the clans here in the Highlands.”

“The Chrechte.”

“So, Talorc told you about them.”

“Yes.”

“He didn’t tell you everything if you do not know they are werewolves.”

“Werewolves are only a story,” Abigail reminded her sister stubbornly.

“No, they aren’t. They are real and Talorc is one. I think it is time I told you the story of how I came to be wed to Lachlan.”

Abigail’s astonishment grew as her sister told her the story. So did the growing realization that Emily believed every word she said, and if she believed them, they were probably true, which meant so were Anna’s stories. Werewolves were real.

If anyone else had claimed such, Abigail would have demanded proof, but this was her sister. The one person in the world who had always loved her and had never lied to her. In addition to her absolute trust in her sister, Abigail couldn’t help noticing how details of her sister’s story made sense of things that had confused her since meeting Talorc.

“When a werewolf finds his or her true mate, some of them are able to talk to each other in their heads,” Emily said. “Lachlan and I can do it.”

“Talorc called me his true mate, I thought he meant I was his friend.”

Emily didn’t laugh, but Abigail would have. What a dolt she had been. Misunderstanding words that explained so much.

“Wolves mate for life and his wolf has mated with you,” Emily said with complete assurance. “While it is rare for a Chrechte to mate with a human, it can happen. I’m evidence of that. Our child’s presence and my current condition is further evidence that mine and Lachlan’s is a true mating. I do not understand how I was so blessed, nor how you should share the blessing with Talorc, but it is possible.”

Abigail remembered the possessive look of the wolf, both in the forest and then after he had killed for her, and felt faint. “This cannot be true.” Though her doubts were more voice than substance now.

“It is. I would never lie to you or tease you about something so important. You know that.”

Abigail remembered the way the voice had yelled at her when the wild boar had been coming. “He can talk to me like that all the time or only in moments of great emotion?”

“Lachlan talks to me that way all the time, as I do him. Cait and her husband are true-mated with the gift as well. As far as I know, it is possible to communicate that way all the time for the sacred mates blessed by mindspeak.”

“Why didn’t Talorc tell me?” Why would he not use their ability to talk in such a special way? How could he deprive her of the sound of his voice when her entire world was silent without it?

“I don’t know. He never told me either, when I was here as his intended. Lachlan wasn’t the one that told me about the Chrechte’s true nature either. Cait did.”

“But why hide it?”

Emily gave her a pointed look. “You of all people should know the answer to that.”

“Because differences are often seen as threatening.”

“Exactly. If their secrets were to be discovered, it is likely the Chrechte would be hunted and destroyed like animals. You know what could have happened to you if people had known of your deafness; how much worse if they discovered someone was capable of turning into a wolf? The Chrechte are mighty warriors but small in number in comparison to their full-human counterparts.”

“That does not explain Talorc not telling me.”

“No, it doesn’t. I do know that the Chrechte protect the secrets of their people very closely. If they are discovered to have betrayed the secret, or someone they tell is found doing so, the sentence is death.”

“But you told me,” Abigail said, worried for her sister.

“Of course I did. You are my sister and you are mated to a Chrechte warrior. You are no security risk to the people.”

“Clearly Talorc disagrees.”

“He’s not an easily trusting man.”

If he loved her, he would trust her, but that wasn’t something Abigail was going to mention to her sister. “And I deceived him.”

“Yes. Though just as you should understand the Chrechte’s need to keep their secrets, he should have understood your need to hide your affliction and not judged you untrustworthy because of it.”

“He gets very angry when I call my deafness an affliction,” Abigail said, realizing that if she did not change the subject soon, she would break down in grief over the implications of what she had just learned.

“He does?”

“Yes. He says it is not an affliction, just an infirmity and not much of one the way I compensate for it.”

“He can be a smart man.”

“Yes.” It was all Abigail could do to maintain her façade of normalcy for her sister. Her heart was shriveling in her chest at all the conclusions to be drawn from Talorc keeping the secret of the Chrechte from her.

Why was she delivered such demeaning blows each time she thought she had found happiness?

“Are you all right, sister?”

For the first time in her life, Abigail lied to Emily. “Yes. Of course.”