Free Warrior's Moon by Lucy Monroe Page A

see.”
    He waited for her next question with a patience she did not remember from their past.
    “So your plans are to return to the MacLeod clan?” she asked with undisguised hope.
    Caelis’s expression turned very serious. “Aye.”
    “You will not take my son from me.”
    “I told you, I have no intention of separating mother from child.”
    “But?” She knew there was a caveat. Why did he have to pretend there was not?
    “I cannot live among the Balmoral. I have obligations to my people. I have to return to the MacLeod.”
    “What has that to do with me, or my children, for that matter?”
    “
Our
children,” he emphasized, finally revealing histrue colors. “If I am not living among the Balmoral, naturally you and the children will not be, either.”
    “I will not go back to that clan.” Her former laird had not been a good man, no matter what Caelis might think.
    “Not immediately, no, but once I have discharged my duty, you and our children will join me.”
    She laughed then, the sound bordering on hysterical. The man was completely daft. “You speak as if we have promises between us, plans to be together as a family. We have none.”
    Her voice rose and the hysteria edged closer. She forced air in and out of her lungs as she pushed away the overwhelming sense of panic.
    “We
will
have the future we dreamed of six years ago.” He dropped to his knees in front of her, his big hands engulfing her own. “I am no longer willing to live without my true mate for the sake of a corrupt alpha.”
    “You are not making any sense, Caelis.”
    “You belong to me. ’Tis simple as that.”
    He could not truly believe that?
    “Oh, no. It is not simple at all. I
do not
belong to you.” Though her heart called her a liar. “Mayhap I did all those years ago, but not now. Never again.”
    “Never is a long time, lass.”
    “And sometimes not long enough.” When it came to seeing Percival, new Baron of Heronshire, again, never would be too short.
    She’d thought the same about Caelis, but the heart that had gone dormant when she left Scotland began to flutter again. True that flutter brought naught but pain now.
    And yet a very tiny part of her was glad not to be so dead inside. She’d felt emotion for her children, but it was a different place in her heart that had been sleeping these past years.
    A place that at one time had given her both her greatest joy and most devastating sorrow.
    “I will change your mind.” He promised. “We are meant to be together.”
    “I used to believe that.” She’d been certain to the very depths of her soul that she and this man had a glorious future together.
    A love story to write with their hearts and their bodies so profound, their children’s grandchildren would tell it to their babes. Losing her faith in the future had hurt almost as much as losing him.
    “Believe it again.”
    “No.” She’d been hurt enough by this man and by her own dreams.
    Neither would ever be given free rein in her heart again.
    His impossibly blue gaze bored into hers. “Some things in life, we have no choice about.”
    “You mean like six years ago?” she asked sweetly.
    An expression of relief (no doubt that she’d
finally
understood) came over his features. “Exactly like six years ago.”
    “Then you are a very ineffectual man, Caelis of the MacLeod. Six years ago, you had a choice indeed.”
    “I told you—”
    “That our laird denied us the right to marry in the clan,” she interrupted. “But what does that signify? Only that your love for his regard far exceeded any small feelings you might have had for me. You denied me.
You denied our son.
All on the say-so of a despot worse than the man I am currently running from. Do not you claim you had no choice. You had a very real choice, Caelis, and you made it!”
    “You do not understand.”
    “You think not? I know this. Had the choice been mine six years ago, I would have run from the clan, abandoned my family and