She opened her mouth to argue, but one look from Galen and she knew it was useless. Betrayal burning in her breast, she turned without a single acknowledgment to either of them and went back into the cave they had just been exploring. There had been no secret passages they could find, but they had spent a goodly amount of time looking. So she knew it was not inhabited by other predators…or prey.
Galen followed her. “Stay here until we return. We are not in our own hunting grounds.”
She gave her brother a look of disdain rather than words. She knew that as well as he did. It was his friend who made the stupid claim otherwise, not her.
Galen threw Luag a glare showing he appreciated that truth, and then looked back at Ciara. “I do not want you harmed.”
“I will be fine.”
“Aye. I know.”
A year ago, she might have made the claim, but Galen would not have believed it. Then her menses had come and her first shift. Now Galen had more faith in her ability to protect herself.
Ciara loved her wolf and liked nothing better than to go hunting with her brother, but she saw no point in hunting birds in their wolf form. Besides, she had absolutely no desire to hunt with Luag. She didn’t trust him not to try to mate with her in the fur.
Which was not to say that she would not follow the male wolves when they left. She was ever curious and since Da’s death Galen had become so overprotective, it was like to smother her worse than an Englishman’s feather-stuffed pillow.
Ciara quickly removed her plaid and then the chemise she wore under it, allowing the shift to take her as soon as she was unencumbered by clothing.
Taking pains to mask her own scent, she lifted her wolf’s snout and sniffed the air. Guided by the ever-helpful wind, she took off at a lope after the other wolves, who at least showed the practicality of hunting flying prey in their human skin. Though what they expected to do without bow and arrow, she did not know.
She trailed them for a short quarter of an hour before she heard the sound of Luag’s voice lifted in cruel laughter.
Why would they laugh at their prey? Chrechte did not do that. All life was precious, even that which they had to take in order to eat and survive.
Ciara peeked through the leaves concealing her, blinking at what she saw. Her brother and Galen faced two young boys who wore skin loincloths rather than plaids.
Surely this was not who they hunted. Luag said he smelled ravens. Birds. Not bird shifters. That was too wicked to contemplate. Chrechte did not hunt their own.
They just didn’t.
But the scent of raven was strong on the wind and there were no birds evident to her keen wolf’s eyes.
A band of pain constricted around her heart as she fought the proof of her senses. Her brother could be no party to what her eyes insisted they saw.
Chrechte children as prey.
“Where is your protector?” Luag taunted loudly, his voice filled with ugly gloating. “Has he turned coward and run away?”
“Our prince fears no one,” the oldest boy boldly proclaimed.
But the younger looked terrified.
And Ciara knew that look. She’d worn it before herself, when she had gotten into trouble by following her curiosity rather than the rules for safety laid down by parents and clan.
“They’ve no protector with them,” Galen said, proving he was as astute at reading these young ones as he had always been at knowing Ciara.
“Is this true? Did you two abominations sneak away from your protectors?”
“We wanted to hunt,” the littlest one claimed in a trembling voice.
She expected her brother to offer to escort the boys home, hoped for it. That would be the brother she knew and loved.
Instead, Luag laughed again, that lacing of cruelty more pronounced. “All the easier to rid the world of two more useless birds.”
No. He did not mean that.
He could not.
Despite the evidence of her wolf’s senses, she refused to believe these boys were Luag and Galen’s prey.
But Ciara’s horror only grew as her brother’s voice carried on the now still air. “We are Chrechte warriors, we don’t kill children.”
Implying if these had been adult raven shifters, he would have killed without remorse? Definitely proving that he’d known they hunted shifters, not simply birds. Please, please…please, no. Her brother was not evil.