Claimed by the Wolf Prince

Marguerite Kaye

Scottish Highlands, 1700

Legend tells of a clan of fierce warriors, the Faol, who have mastered the spirit of the wolf living inside of them. They are famed for their skill in battle—and for their irresistible allure to mortal women…

It is an attraction fiery Iona McKinley experiences firsthand when she is taken by Prince Struan Tolmach, Lead Alpha of the Faol. His touch is thrilling and arousing…but she’s destined to be claimed by another warrior. Will Struan risk losing his clan to keep Iona for himself?

When my editor first suggested that I write a paranormal Historical Undone! trilogy, I must admit I was a bit daunted. Though I’d dabbled with Regency vampires in Bitten by Desire, and a little bit of shape-shifting in The Highlander and the Sea Siren, the paranormal element of each of these stories was really quite subtle.

Thinking about it though, I began to get excited at the prospect of juxtaposing a real historical world with one which existed only in my imagination. Not only was it a brilliant creative challenge, but the inherent tension of two worlds colliding offered some amazing romantic possibilities. What would it be like to have a hero from one world and a heroine from another? How would they reconcile their differences, and how would those differences enhance the sensual tension and allure burgeoning between them?

Encouraged by my amazingly supportive editor, I let my imagination run wild and created the world of the Faol, or Clan Wolf. These Highland shape-shifters live on the darkly seductive island of Kentarra off the west coast of Scotland. The trilogy is set in the early seventeen hundreds when the feudal clan system still ruled the Highlands.

I hope you enjoy this first story in the trilogy which features a feisty heroine whose circumstances make her ripe for rebellion and a dangerous hero who thinks himself immune to love and who is, as he says himself, more, much more than a man. And as if that isn’t enough, the heroine is thrust into a completely alien world that is both fascinating and threatening in equal measure.

Creating the world of the Faol stretched my creative juices far beyond anything I’ve ever done before, but it was a brilliant experience. I loved writing these stories. I really hope you love reading them.

For my editor Flo, who has been with me every step of this journey into the fantastical world of the Faol

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Prologue

Legend has it that one dark, stormy night many centuries ago, a small wooden craft got into difficulties off the West Highland coast, and broke its hull on the vicious outcrop of rocks called the Beathach, or the Beast. All aboard that storm-tossed night were lost save for one, a babe in arms and only child of the mythical Highland warrior known as The Fearless One. Still tucked up in the woven reed basket in which he had been sleeping, the child was miraculously washed ashore on the remote, uninhabited Isle of Kentarra.

Here, he was found by a wolf pack who, instead of tearing out his throat, suckled him and reared him as one of their own, initiating him into their ways, imbuing him with their qualities. He survived and grew to be a man. A man with the spirit of the wolf residing inside him. He eventually learned how to master his inner beast. And he learned how—and when—to unleash its terrifying power.

From this extraordinary individual evolved a race of fierce warriors, the Faol, with their chilling clan motto: Faiceallach! Tha mise an seo! Beware! For I am come!

The Faol are feared and revered in equal measure throughout Scotland. Famed for their consummate skills in battle and reputed to be irresistible to mortal women, they live in uneasy symbiosis with their Highland neighbours. Their home is the remote island kingdom of Kentarra, where their unique culture is fiercely protected. The Faol rarely walk among humans, except on those occasions when a laird commissions them to deploy their prowess in battle to aid his cause. Such requests are often rejected, for the Faol are no mere mercenaries. Their code dictates that they offer their services only to just causes, and utilise the proceeds for the good of the pack.

Though the price demanded is high, those privileged few granted their services can have no doubt of victory. But woe betide the Highland laird who fails to honour his side of the bargain, for the Faol will take the thing most precious to him.

Whatever, or whoever that is.

Chapter 1

Scottish Highlands, 1700

The rain turned to smirr as Iona McKinley set out from the castle with her basket, intending to gather the last of the wild brambles. Taking the familiar path to the woods, she pulled her arisaidh, the thick plaid shawl she wore pinned to her gown, more tightly around her. The air seemed unnaturally still, not even the sound of birdsong disturbing the silence. Her skin prickled, as if someone had walked over her grave. Or the way it does when a shadow falls across the moon.

She cast a nervous glance over her shoulder, but there was no one there. The cotters were all out in the fields for the annual tattie howking. Her father, the laird, was supervising them, determined as usual to make sure that no one slacked, or tried to sneak one potato more than their strict entitlement into their own basket. Laird McKinley liked to think himself a stern but fair patriarch. The villagers who were his serfs utilised other, rather stronger words to describe him. Iona, his only child, who had lived alone with him in the draughty castle since her mother’s death, knew that the sad truth was that her father cared for nothing but his own comfort, his own coffers and his position as laird. He was a man who valued loyalty over love.

“Which is just as well,” Iona said to herself rebelliously, recalling the abrupt way he had announced she was to be wed to Kenneth McIver, a neighbouring laird at least thirty years her senior. “Wheesht girl, it is a grand match,” she muttered, in a fair imitation of her sire. “Kenneth is not yet so decrepit that he’ll have any problem planting a bairn on ye, so he assures me.” The very idea of it made her shudder. She had refused outright, though she knew that duty dictated she eventually accede.

A twig snapped with a sharp retort. Iona jumped and cast another anxious glance around. Still nothing, but the feeling persisted that someone was watching her. Or something.

“Stop being such a big bairn!” she chided herself, “you’re letting your imagination run away with you.” She was the laird’s daughter, on McKinley land. No one would dare harm her here.

But just as she reached the fork in the woods, there it was, standing in the middle of the path, gazing intently at her. Fierce grey eyes, long silky black hair, a vicious snarling mouth. A huge wolf, the biggest she’d ever seen in her life. As it crouched down on its massive haunches, readying itself to spring, Iona drew in her breath to scream. The sound had barely formed in her throat when the beast pounced.

She seemed to be moving. The air had a distinct feral tang to it. She was on the back of something large, her arms around its neck. Fur brushed her cheek. Not a horse then. The animal, whatever it was, moved with a powerful loping stride. Her heart was pounding in time to the beast’s sinuous, rhythmic movement. She could see the steam of its breath bloom in the cold air. It was exhilarating, the sheer speed at which they were travelling, effortlessly leaping the criss-cross of streams swollen with the melting of the first snow, which had fallen unseasonably early.

Gnarled branches of ancient trees snatched at her hair like the twisted, arthritic hands of an old fey wife. There were no pine forests near McKinley lands. She must be dreaming. Iona closed her eyes and surrendered to the liberating sensation, imagining herself fleeing from the life her father had decreed for her.

When she came to, she was sitting on the ground. Though the rain had stopped, she was wet through, her long copper-coloured hair hanging down her back in damp tendrils. “Cold,” she murmured, wrapping her arms around herself, not sure that she really was awake.

“Take this.”

Iona jumped. The voice, its timbre deep and throaty, its tone imperious, came from behind her. A soft fur cloak was wrapped around her. Her back arched against the luxurious dry warmth of it. At her feet, there was sand. She was on a beach. McKinley lands were landlocked, but she could definitely smell the sea. She screwed her eyes tightly shut, then opened them again. Awake. She was not dreaming now.

Completely disoriented, she stumbled to her feet. A hand steadied her. A muscular arm, a studded leather band at the wrist. Bare legs, no hose nor even shoes. She tried to twist round, but his grip held her firm. “Who are you? Let me go!” Rough chest hair on her cheek. A musky scent. Bittersweet. “I was attacked by a wolf. What happened?”

She felt, rather than heard, his laugh vibrating through his broad chest. “I subdued him.”

Such a strange turn of phrase. The accent, too, was unusual, not local. Iona wrenched herself free. “Where am I?” She looked around in astonishment at the beach, the sea, the forest. “How did I get here?”

“That matters less than where you are going.”

She saw him clearly for the first time, then. Tall. Powerful, but sinewy. Intimidating rather than frightening. Dangerous. She could see each well-defined muscle in the broad sweep of his shoulders, his arms, his chest, the dip down into his belly. He wore nothing save a rough filleadh beg held with a thick leather belt at his waist. Around his neck was an amulet on a leather thong, an ornate piece of gold inlaid with what looked like emeralds. His skin was tanned all over. His strong jaw was bluish with bristle. His hair fell to his shoulders, pushed back from his high brow. There was a sprinkling of dark hair on his chest and forearms, too. His handsome face was all hard planes and sharp lines, like the rugged granite landscape of the Highlands. Grey, his eyes were. There was something hypnotic about his piercing, impassive gaze as it caught and held hers. Something dark and deeply unsettling, too. Unknowable.

It was painful to breathe. She was afraid to move, yet afraid not to. Transfixed, just as she had been when she encountered the wolf. Such a magnificent beast. Such a magnificent man. An aura redolent of barely contained power hung like a haar around him. Intoxicating. With enormous difficulty, she dragged her eyes away from his. “Who are you?” she demanded. “I am Laird McKinley’s daughter, my father will…”

“I know exactly who you are.” Struan Tolmach eyed the maid with mild interest. She was a slight thing, typical of her kind, but much more attractive than she had a right to be, from what he remembered of her father. Presumably that copper hair and those big green eyes were inherited from her mother. Though that look, all defiance and belligerent pride, was definitely her sire’s.

“I demand that you take me home. This instant!”

“You’re in no position to make demands. You belong to us now,” Struan said dismissively, taking her roughly by the shoulder and pointing her in the direction of the sea.

The maid struggled, digging her feet deep into the shingle for purchase, but he held her easily. He was not used to human females displaying resistance—quite the opposite, though he had never once been tempted. Seductive as some of those Highland women had been, Struan preferred to hunt much closer to home. Whatever it was about his kind that made him so irresistible to mortal females, he had no interest in taking advantage of it. He sated his desires within his own tribe.

“Let me go!” She was panting with the effort to get free. “If you agree to take me back now, I’ll explain that you saved me from danger, from the wolf.”

Her scent was intensely female, but exotic, more delicate than a Faol woman’s. Under his plaid, Struan’s body stirred most inconveniently into life. “Safe from the wolf perhaps, but not necessarily out of danger.”

She stilled. “What do you mean?”

Struan turned her around in his arms, pulling her into the lee of his body. She felt good there. Too good. His erection hardened. He tried to close his mind to the rousing scent of her, but could not. What was wrong with him? He tilted her face up. Green eyes, determined to show no fear. He couldn’t help but admire her courage. That surprised him, too. “Iona…”

She struggled free. “How do you know my name?”

“Your father told me.”

“How do you come to know him?”

“He engaged my services some months ago.”

“In what capacity?”

“To help him defeat the MacEwans. Which I duly did.”

It was true, Iona recalled, the McKinleys had recently finally retaken the borderland illegally wrested from them by the MacEwans decades ago. Her father had been so overjoyed he had even thrown a celebratory ceilidh. “My father paid you to help him?”

“We agreed a fee. Twice now, your father has been reminded, and twice he has failed to honour his debt. He knew the price for defaulting.”

Iona frowned. “What price?”

He hadn’t told her, his own kin. It didn’t surprise Struan, but it disgusted him. “The terms were clear,” he said grimly. “He was to surrender that which is most precious to him.”

“You mean me?” Iona laughed bitterly. “Aye, that would be right enough. A prize asset to be married off to a neighbour as a brood mare, or now, it appears, used as a bargaining tool in some contract dispute.”

He had expected tears. Pleading. Not this. “I don’t think you fully grasp your situation. Your father reneged on his bargain with the Faol. Unfortunately, you must pay the price for his treachery.”

“Faol? You mean you’re a Faol?” Iona shrank back, her eyes wide with shock. “I’ve heard the stories, but I thought they were just tales of bogeymen, invented to frighten bairns.”

Struan took her hand and placed it on his chest. “Do I not feel real to you? As to our powers, they are real enough, too. Those who dishonour us have every reason to be afraid.”

Iona snatched her hand away as if she had been scalded. “You don’t frighten me,” she declared, and it was true. He was so formidable she doubted not what he said, but his air of danger excited rather than scared her. She could scarcely believe she was actually in the presence of a wolf-clan warrior. “My father would surely have told me if he had employed you to fight for him.”

“And risk alerting his enemy?” Struan mused with a curl of his lip. “Not even he would be so foolish.”

“And what about the MacEwans? If they had offered you more, would you have fought for them?”

Struan threw back his head contemptuously. “We do not sell our prowess to the highest bidder. We fight only for those who have just cause. Faol warriors are supreme. Why should we not use our talents for the benefit of our clan? How dare you presume to judge us!”

As his anger flared, the savage life-force contained within the man showed fleetingly, and Iona felt it again. A sort of edgy elation. All her senses were on alert. The world seemed to shrink, leaving just the two of them, cloaked in his all-pervasive aura. Her head swam. She prided herself on her intuition, but as she stared at the imposing Faol warrior she realised she had no clue at all as to his intentions. The instinct to flee was sudden and irresistible.

Wrenching herself free from his grip, she made for the protection of the forest. She was fast, but not fast enough. She didn’t see him move, she didn’t hear him come after her, but she sensed him, a dark lunging presence behind her. He caught her, picked her up effortlessly and carried her back down the beach.

It was pointless to resist. She almost didn’t want to. Of a surety, he was taking her to Kentarra. Iona had heard talk of the strange mythical island, its wild beauty, its savage customs, and a part of her longed to see for herself if the rumours were true. Back home, her father would be waiting, no doubt furious at her for being captured. Back home, too, awaited her future husband, the very thought of whom made her shiver with disgust. Kenneth McIver could not carry her as if she were as light as a feather. His touch would not give her butterflies, make her skin heat and tingle with anticipation as if she were about to hurl herself from some impossible height. Kenneth McIver would not make her feel like this man did. This man? This Faol. This…“What is your name?”

“You may call me Struan.”

He set her onto her feet by a small wooden boat. Determined not to let him see the effect he was having on her senses, Iona concentrated on righting her sodden clothing. “What will happen to me?”

“You’ll come to no harm, providing you comply.” Struan watched her as she shook out her petticoats, straightened the sleeves of her sark. Her eyes were the colour of the emerald on his amulet. Her skin was like rich buttermilk. A sprinkling of freckles across that tilted nose. And she had curves, despite her slimness. She was really quite beautiful, for a mere human. She would not be easily tamed, for she seemed quite impervious to the Faol in him. He ran a finger over the soft downy skin of her cheek.

Iona jerked her head away. She’d overheard the women talk while doing the washing at the lochside once, giggling while they described the Faols’ legendary skills as lovers. Their reputed size. And potency. She blushed at the memory. “You’re wasting your time,” she said, meeting his fierce grey eyes defiantly. “Your Faol tricks won’t work on me.”

Struan laughed softly. She did seem strangely immune. “So it appears, but I relish a challenge.” He was aroused now, aroused enough to forget all about the fact that he had no right to claim her.

“You’re not interested in me,” Iona said breathlessly. “The only attraction I have is as payment for a debt.”

Struan touched the fluttering pulse at her throat with his thumb. “You do yourself an injustice, Iona McKinley,” he said huskily.

Iona couldn’t seem to move. His eyes glittered like flint. No one had looked at her quite like that before, as if he saw deep inside her. He was close now. Breast-to-breast, thigh-to-thigh, they stood. Heat emanated from him in waves. Her own heat, too, tightening in her belly, pooling between her thighs. She ached for him to touch her. A myth come to life. Unreal. And yet deeply, viscerally real. She wanted him to kiss her, just so she could discover for herself what danger tasted like. “You don’t want me. You want revenge.”

“Not revenge—justice. On Kentarra you will be claimed. You will become one of us, bound to the clan. If,” Struan added, “you are willing.” He stroked the soft skin of her neck.

“I will never be willing.” Iona’s breath was coming in shallow, sharp gasps. His touch was beguiling. Thrilling. Arousing. Everything it should not be. Everything she wanted it to be. “I have no wish to become Faol,” she said raggedly.

Struan lowered his head, his lips lingering where his fingers had caressed. She tasted of fresh air and summer flowers. She tasted of rain. And human female…a strange, not to say illicit, spice. He nipped the lobe of her ear, his breath warm on the shell of it. “It is an honour granted to few,” he whispered.

Iona’s hand curled onto his shoulder. Her nipples were hard against her stays. “I am content as I am,” she said, unable to stop herself from nuzzling his throat, grazing her teeth on the salty skin.

“That is because you don’t know any better.” He stroked the soft outer curve of her breast. “Once you have experienced the Faol, everything else pales by comparison.” Then he put his arms around her, moulding her to him, and his lips claimed hers.

Chapter 2

He tasted just exactly as she had imagined—of man, of myth and danger, and something more elemental. His tongue touched hers, and Iona gasped, for no man had taken such liberties with her in all her one and twenty years. Sweetness flooded her, heated her. Her lips parted wider. Of their own accord, her arms wrapped themselves around him. The solid, sinewy length of his body threw her senses into wild disarray. His kiss deepened, and she moaned.

With a harsh cry, Struan pushed her away. His chest heaved. The air was heavy with the scent of their arousal. He was stunned by how close he had come to losing control. The urge to lay her down on the sand and thrust into her, claiming her for his own without finesse, was almost too much to resist. He had no right to claim her, but she felt so good it was difficult to even remember that fact, let alone act upon it.

Breathing heavily, he pushed back the fall of hair over his brow, lifting his head to test the wind direction. “We must make haste. The tide is on the turn, and there is a storm brewing,” he said, focusing on the need to make sail, determinedly ignoring the siren call of this vulnerable, bewitching female.

Iona shivered violently. What was happening to her? So contrary to her perilous situation, her body’s response was, and yet so fierce. Behind her, the forest looked impenetrable. Even if she could escape—which she severely doubted—she had no idea how to get home, nor any means of transport. She really was a prisoner, at the mercy of the legendary Faol—for the time-being, at least. Until her father paid up, as surely he would, when he realised she had been taken. And then she would be released. Surely.

She eyed the broiling sea nervously. The McKinleys were not fisher-folk. “I take it there is no point throwing myself upon your mercy and begging you to release me?”

“None whatsoever. Your foolish father broke faith with us, and all the Highlands must see that he is duly punished.” Looking at her, holding herself tight as if she would break if she let go, Struan felt a foolish urge to do as she asked. This was not her doing. The laird deserved to pay the price, not his innocent daughter.

He straightened his shoulders and touched his fingers to his amulet. It wasn’t the first time he’d had cause to question the ancient ways, but for now he must be content to uphold them. It was too soon after his election as Alpha to contemplate change, nor to allow emotion to interfere with duty. He would not tolerate such weakness in the members of his pack. Of a certainty he must not display it himself. “Come,” he said curtly, holding out his hand, “there is no more to be said. With luck, we’ll be on Kentarra by nightfall.”

White horses foamed on the crest of a heavy swell as Struan pushed the little clinker-built sgoth out to sea, leaping lithely aboard as the water lifted the hull from the sand. The wind tugged the sail as soon as he released it, making the boat surge forward.

Iona, who had only ever sailed in the calm of a summer’s day, clutched the wooden seat as the little craft dipped and climbed in the ever-deepening swell. Across from her, Struan, perched casually in the stern, seemed quite unconcerned, holding the tiller straight, gazing off into the distance. “Where is Kentarra, I can’t see it?” she asked nervously, looking at the empty ocean.

“It is there, if you know where to look,” he replied with an enigmatic smile. An icy spray arched over them. “Pull the fur around you, it will keep you warm.”

As she did as he bid her, Iona allowed her gaze to linger on her captor’s half-naked body. His long black hair streamed out behind him, his muscles rippling as he fought to hold course. He looked like part of the landscape, a force of nature. His raw animal power, though constrained, was there nonetheless. He made her feel as if she should hold her breath. Waiting. Watching. Wondering all the time, if he would unleash it. Looking out at the fast-diminishing land, down at the deep, dark ocean, she realised she was in every way completely out of her depth. Her patent vulnerability disturbed her, but not as much as it should. She should be frightened but she didn’t know quite how to describe how she felt. Nervous. Tense. Reckless. A little wild. And excited, too, there was no denying it. The boat rocked as it crested a particularly high wave, and she clutched anxiously at the sides.

“Try to get some rest,” Struan said.

“Rest! How can I rest when I’ve been kidnapped and am being taken to some Godforsaken island against my will, to suffer who knows what barbaric indignities?” Iona muttered. But she dropped down into the hull and curled up, pulling the furs tight around her.

“Go to sleep, Iona,” Struan said, “I am many things but I am no barbarian.”

His voice was like his fur cloak—warm and comforting. It made no sense, given the circumstances, but she believed him, though she saw no need to tell him so. A man less in need of reassurance she had never met. Not a man, a Faol, she reminded herself as her lids grew heavy. She should be on her guard. And she would be, as soon as they landed. She would be. Iona dozed off.

Struan watched over her as she slept. Her hair was like burnished copper now that it had dried. Her mouth tilted up naturally, as if she smiled often. Such a slight thing she was, but she had a strength of will most unusual in mortals. Taming her would be an interesting challenge, for unlike the rest of her kind, she did indeed seem to be quite impervious to the Faol in him. It would be a delight, pleasuring her. A delight, the dance she would lead him. It would make her final surrender all the sweeter.

His manhood stirred into life again. The wolf in him whispered seductively. Take her. Take her now. She is yours to do with as you please. But as ever, the man in him prevailed. She was not his. She belonged to the clan.

He touched his amulet. It should be enough, knowing he had successfully avenged the betrayal. Enough, knowing he had passed his first major test following the recent and hard-fought battle for power. Simply handing over the female slumbering under his cloak should be a straightforward task, after all he had endured of late.

But it was not proving to be so.

“Wake up, we’re almost there.”

Iona sat up, momentarily confused as to her whereabouts until the rocking of the boat and the slap of the waves confirmed the unpalatable reality. She looked around her in the gathering gloom at the empty sea. “I can’t see any island. I can’t see anything.”

As she spoke, a huge bank of fog rolled ominously in, completely enveloping the boat. Just as suddenly as it had arrived, the fog cleared.

“Kentarra,” Struan said solemnly, “sovereign kingdom of the Faol.”

Iona caught her breath. A vast wall of sheer cliffs, so tall they seemed to touch the sky, rose dramatically from the sea, above which seabirds soared and swooped, their plaintive cries like the wailing of the damned. The rock was scarred with deep fissures reflecting the dying embers of the sun, so that the whole cliff seemed to be on fire, a myriad of colours, crimson and carmine, flaming gold and bright vermillion, edged with ochre and umber, beneath which a darker, glittering jet leant an ominous hue. The reflected rays danced and sparkled on the surface of the water. Behind the cliffs, the island sloped gradually down to the sea, the moorland on the plateau heavily wooded, the lower slopes vibrant green and impossibly lush, the white sandy shores inviting. “It’s magnificent,” she said softly, quite awestruck by Kentarra’s captivating beauty.

Struan nodded proudly. “It is indeed a special place. Be warned though, you will find it quite unlike what you are accustomed to.”

As he spoke, the sun dipped below the foaming sea, causing an eerie gloom to descend like a cloak on the isle. The air felt portentous. Iona shuddered involuntarily. Her homeland, her kin, all that she was familiar with, seemed impossibly distant, another world entirely. What fate awaited her at the hands of the fabled wolf-clan?

Now, she truly was afraid. Another shudder wracked her body. It hit her then, hard, as it had not when first he had revealed himself. Struan was not just a formidable, forbiddingly attractive man. He was a Faol. Oh, dear heavens, what was to become of her?

Struan was considering that very question as he steered the sgoth straight at the towering cliffs. It was the way of things, but still it didn’t seem right to give her no choice in the matter, any more than it seemed right that he could not choose to claim her for his own. He was being contrary. And contradictory. He knew that, but the feeling persisted. A rogue wave lifted the boat and threw it forward.

“You’re going to put us onto the rocks,” Iona cried out as the little boat hurtled straight at the jagged outcrop of volcanic reefs directly in front of them. “Struan!”

Even as she called his name, he steered the boat through a tiny gap. A cleft in the rock appeared directly ahead, and Struan deftly guided them into a natural harbour. “They’re called the Beast for good reason, those rocks,” Struan said, tying the rope onto an iron hoop that hung on the stone jetty before setting about taking down the sail.

“I thought we were going to drown.”

“I told you, you’re safe enough with me,” Struan said, helping her ashore, trying not to think about what would happen to her when she was no longer in his care.

Iona scrambled onto the jetty and gazed around, dizzied by the sheer scale of the cliffs that surrounded the harbour like a natural amphitheatre, confused by the unnatural calm of the azure water, which lapped harmlessly onto the dazzling white beach, so at odds with the choppy sea beyond the Beast.

A scrabbling of claws on stone and a blood-curdling howl made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Peering into the gloom she saw two wolves, teeth bared, heads low and tails straight out, bounding towards her, slavering and snarling. She screamed, instinctively huddling into Struan’s side.

“Graifgh! Thalon Kree!” Struan called, the alien words sounding both guttural and vicious. The wolves stopped in their tracks and dropped down onto their haunches before, to Iona’s astonishment, crawling forward on their bellies, whimpering and letting out little ingratiating yelps.

“You need not fear,” Struan said, putting an arm around her. “They’ll not harm you.”

“I thought they were going to tear my throat out.”

“They have come to welcome me home, that is all.”

“Oh! Are they…”

“Faol?” Struan laughed. “No, they are wolves but they are our little cousins and like to be around us.”

“They obey your commands?”

“I was born to be obeyed,” Struan said haughtily.

Halfway up the cliff, a snake of light suddenly appeared. As the dusk fell, the light grew stronger, revealing a procession of shadowy figures carrying burning torches, zigzagging down the narrow path to the harbour.

“Your welcoming committee,” Struan said, his face a grim mask. “Prepare to meet the Faol.”

Iona’s mouth was completely dry. She swallowed repeatedly. “You are a laird’s daughter,” she whispered to herself, “behave like one.”

Struan sensed her fear. He could taste it, acrid in his mouth. The first time she had wavered. Her eyes were huge in her heart-shaped face. He had to force himself to take his fur cloak from her, to pin it back around his own shoulders. Her own sweet scent had permeated it. The urge to cast caution to the winds and break all the rules grew stronger. What was wrong with him?

“What will happen to me?”

Struan’s hackles rose. “At the full moon, all being well, there will be a Binding,” he said tersely.

“I—I have heard tell of this ceremony.” Iona’s voice shook.

“Then you will know it is our way of accepting you, making you one of us,” Struan said, his eyes fixed firmly on the rapidly approaching procession. She would become Faol, if she agreed. Which, he was beginning to think, was highly unlikely. He turned to her, catching her chin in his hand. “Iona, it is best if you try to see the Binding as the privilege it is.”

“And if I do not?”

If she rejected the Binding then she would undergo Marking, the ritual that Struan loathed above all. The ritual that he knew, deep in his bones, dishonoured his people. He could not bear to contemplate it happening to Iona. If it came down to it— He clenched his fists. It would not.

“Struan? If I refuse to be accepted?”

“You will not refuse,” he said through gritted teeth. His guts twisted. Part of him didn’t want her to comply, for it would inevitably affect what made her uniquely herself—the part that deeply attracted him even though he had known her only briefly. He knew that the transformation would enhance her but somehow that didn’t seem to matter.

Duty and desire. Normally they were intertwined. Struan cursed under his breath. What right had he to challenge the ancient ways? And for the sake of a mere woman, too! “Come,” he said, holding out his hand imperiously, “your escort has arrived.”

He would have to leave her. The next time he saw her— No, he wouldn’t think about that. “Iona, you know that this is not of my choosing,” he said impulsively. “If I had my way…” Struan broke off, realising he had been perilously close to heresy.

The wolves, which had hunkered at his feet, set up a howl. The women who would form Iona’s escort were detaching themselves from the procession. The remaining Faol stood impassively, torches flaring, a respectful distance behind them.

“Struan!” The anguish in Iona’s voice made him flinch. Her fingers clutched at his arm. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to detach her from him. He had no reason at all to feel guilty.

Iona watched with growing terror as the women made their way remorselessly towards her. Struan, flanked by the wolves, was standing just a few feet away, but it felt like a hundred miles. Even in the gloom she could see that the women were stunningly beautiful. They moved with an animal grace. Their eyes glittered like the wolves. The urge to flee warred with her pride, keeping her rooted to the spot. As they circled her, Iona threw back her head defiantly and garnered all her courage. The scent of them was sweet, heady, alluring as belladonna. As she was swept away, she cast a last, pleading glance back at Struan. For a second, she thought she saw him surrender to her unspoken request. He took an involuntary step forward. Then he turned away, and she was lost among the silent, pitiless throng of Faol women.

Dark. It was pitch-black, darker even than the night now, for she had been blindfolded. Struan had abandoned her. She had only herself to rely on. “I am a McKinley,” Iona muttered. “I am a McKinley.”

The women hurried her on, nudging and pushing her up the path until the air changed and Iona sensed that she was in an enclosed space. Her boots rang on stone. Stairs, endless amounts of narrow stairs. To her immense relief there was a rope to cling to. At the top, she was guided along a passageway. A heavy door clanged shut behind her, and light dazzled her eyes as the blindfold was removed.

She was in a room like no other. A chamber with a vast vaulted ceiling of bare rock, the rock walls hung with heavy tapestries. It was warm, a huge fire burned in a hearth, which seemed to be hewn into the rock itself. Was she in some sort of cave, or grotto? “What is this place?” she asked, her eyes darting from one woman to the other.

One of them, older than the others, with rich chestnut hair, reached out to touch Iona’s own copper tresses. “You are in the kingdom of the Faol, Highlander,” she said softly. “Your new home.”

Iona hugged her arms tightly around herself and tried to back away, but the women drew closer. Their scent was stronger now, overpowering. Hands reached out to touch her, rubbing the rough cotton of her sark, the wool of her petticoats, between long, delicate fingers. “Such coarse material,” a dusky, almond-eyed beauty declared with a curl of her lip. “I wonder you can bear it next to your skin.”

The gowns of the Faol women were of a downy silklike material in vibrant, jewel-like colours. Ruby red, sapphire blue, emerald green. “Feels nice, doesn’t it?” the chestnut-haired woman said, capturing Iona’s hand and placing it on her bodice, laughing when Iona blushed wildly, snatched her fingers away in shock at the contact with the woman’s bare flesh.

“Let her be, Lillias.” The dusky beauty’s smile was cruel. “Poor little Highland creature, you’re not like us, are you?”

“Yes, let us see what mortal woman look like under their clothes,” one of the other women said, descending upon Iona purposely. “I have heard that their skin is as hard as a stag’s horn.”

“Unlike their Highland men,” one said maliciously.

“It is no wonder then, that they find our warriors so irresistible,” a statuesque blonde said, with a sultry smile. “As well for us, that we have more than enough allure to keep our men in thrall,” she added, running her hands down her full breasts.

Distracted and intimidated by the shocking sensuality of the women, Iona was stripped down to her undergarments. The women cooed their surprise at her body, looking at her unblemished skin, her unmistakably feminine curves, with something more than admiration. When they made to remove her sark and corsets, she tried to cover herself, and found that her modesty only provoked gales of laughter. Too proud to protest further, Iona surrendered to the women’s ministrations. As they bathed her and washed her hair, anointed her in oils and rubbed sweet-smelling lotions into her skin, their touches, which were almost caresses, both soothed and stimulated her. She had never before experienced such intimacy. It shocked her, a clandestine pleasure. It made her think of other intimacies. Other pleasures. It made her think of Struan. Who had abandoned her.

They dressed her in a rich silk sark, plain white, with satin ribbons at the neck and cuffs. It was her only garment. A bell began to toll. Clang. Clang. Clang. A summoning. Or a death knell. It stopped abruptly. The women, who had been whispering together, got to their feet. Lillias cast an eye over Iona, nodded her satisfaction to the other women, and they once more encircled her. The mood changed, no longer playful but sombre. No longer sensual, no longer intimate, but ominous. Lillias opened the door. No blindfold this time. The circle of women led her out to a long corridor. On shaky legs, her bare feet icy on the rock floor, her heart beating wildly, Iona was led inexorably towards her fate.

Chapter 3

They must be deep inside the cliffs beneath which they had landed. The place was a honeycomb of chambers and passageways, like a vast beehive. Glimpses from inside her escort cordon showed rock walls glittering with semiprecious stone rising steeply up and up. They were in a corridor tunnelled into the rock, with solid oak doors set at regular intervals. Down a level, then out onto a wide open ledge, the cliff on one side, a dizzying drop down on the other. On, the women led her, until they reached a huge curving staircase, at the top of which they paused.

The chamber below was enormous, a cathedral-like cavern with a vaulted ceiling hundreds of feet high. Huge fingers of rock hung from the ceiling and thrust up from the perimeter of the cavern floor. The striated rock, glistening with quartz and mineral deposits, glittered and gleamed as if streaked with diamonds in the flickering light of the hundreds of braziers. It was warm and dry. Beneath her feet, there was a carpet, soft and bright, in the same jewel colours as the Faol women’s dresses. Her heart was pounding so hard she felt nauseous.

They started to descend slowly to the chamber where the Faol people were gathered. There looked to be about two hundred of them, standing in silence, forming a circle. A uniformly striking people they were, and all had about them that same quality Iona had first noticed in Struan. Nature in its most primitive and beautiful form. The kind of beauty that makes you catch your breath. A stillness. A sense of danger, and with it a pull of excitement. Elemental. The word could have been created for them.

A gap opened in the circle for them. Directly in the centre of the cavern stood a throne. Suspended above it, on a thick silver cord that descended from the highest point in the cavern’s roof, was a huge globe. Lit from the inside, its ghostly light cast a myriad of shadows across the glittering surfaces of the cavern. The moon, Iona realised. The full moon.

The throne was a massive wooden construction with red velvet hangings. The carpet upon which she stood led directly towards the steps at its foot. A bell pealed once. The Faol people, all save the cordon of women, dropped to their knees as a tall figure, flanked by two wolves, entered the cavern from a fissure in the rock.

Her guard obscured the man’s face from Iona as he took his seat. A circle of gold sat on his black mane of hair like a crown. Gold there was, too, on the buckle of his broad belt, from which hung a claymore with a jewelled hilt. And on the amulet that hung around his neck. An amulet that looked horribly familiar. The Faol women stepped back, giving Iona an unobstructed view of the throne and the man upon it. A man who looked just as familiar as the amulet.

It could not be him. It could not possibly be him. “Struan?” Iona took a faltering step forward.

“Make obeisance to the prince.” A hand forced Iona to her knees, pushing her head down.

“Struan?”

“Prince Struan Tolmach. Lead Alpha of the Faol. Make obeisance.”

She could see his feet, still bare, his ankles clad in more gold amulets, making his way towards her. It was Struan, but he seemed utterly different. Remote. His expression more forbidding. His stance prouder. More—less?—human. Oh, God.

“Get up.”

Still he did not look at her. Iona scrabbled to her feet, tripping over the long silken sark. “What is happening, Struan?”

“Highness, you will address me as Highness.” Struan’s tone was clipped, stripped of emotion. He sensed Iona’s hurt. Saw her recoil. He could see her slender body, her curves, clearly outlined under the silken claiming gown. He willed himself not to be aroused. Her hair fell in a long straight swathe down her back. It made her look younger, more vulnerable. As if she were not already vulnerable enough!

Struan stood behind her, turning her to face his people. Internally, a battle raged between his twin spirits. Externally, he was the implacable, formidable pack leader they expected. He addressed them now. “As you know, we were betrayed by the Highlander, Laird McKinley. Custom decrees that he pay with the thing most precious to him. I present his daughter.”

A low growling sound emanated from the assembled crowd, which chilled Iona’s blood. Only Struan’s grip on her shoulders and her pride held her upright. She gazed out at the banks of Faol staring at her. The warriors among them were, like Struan—Prince Struan—bare-chested, their fearsome claymores strapped across their shoulders. The women were richly dressed, alluring, like highly groomed animals. There could be no mistaking the Faol for ordinary human beings. The pelts they wore gave to each a disconcerting feral quality.

“My father will come for me,” Iona declared, relieved that her voice held only the faintest waver as it echoed eerily. “He will pay in full, and you will have to let me go.”

“It is too late for that.”

The voice came from the left. A man, almost as striking as Struan, detached himself from the crowd. His hair was a rich auburn, his eyes almost the same green as her own. The same aura of danger and excitement clung to him. He was younger than Struan, but he was nonetheless a man who commanded attention.

“On behalf of your people, I thank you, Prince Struan,” he said, bowing low. “You have served us well, as ever. You may now surrender your burden.” He fixed Struan with a smile. “Welcome back, brother,” he whispered.

Iona shrank against Struan as the other man made to take her by the arm. Instinctively, Struan shielded her from his brother’s grasp. “Tell me Eoin, who has been selected?”

“Lulach,” Eoin replied, giving him a puzzled look. “It is a year since his mate died.”

“Lulach. One of our finest warriors,” Struan said. It was a sound choice, and a fair one. He would have expected no less from his people. So Lulach was to lay claim to her.

“Brother?”

Struan’s arm had curled protectively around Iona’s waist. She was trembling against him. He had to let her go, but he could not. It felt wrong for her to belong to anyone but him. Which was very wrong. He closed his eyes, trying desperately to control his wildly conflicting emotions. Pack loyalty warred with another, more insistent voice.

“No!” His voice thundered out, reverberating forcefully round the cavern, causing his people to stare in astonishment. He almost laughed. How much more astonished they would be were they privy to his own chaotic thoughts. “I have decided. She will not be claimed by anyone before the Binding. In the meantime, the female stays with me.”

A hiss and a few snarls greeted this outrageous statement. Struan’s grip on Iona tightened. “Since I came to power, have I not always done my duty?” he demanded. “Have I ever before asked for reward?” He looked at each of the Faol in turn. It would not do to show any hesitation, for the pack were still capable of turning on him. “I am not asking now, I am demanding that you accede to my wishes.”

“No!” A giant of a man stepped forward. “She is mine by right, as is the custom. I will not accede.”

“Lulach! Would you dare challenge my authority?”

Quivering with anger, Lulach was already shifting between warrior and beast. His inner wolf was chocolate-brown in colour, like the man’s long mane of hair. “You are my prince, but you are not in your right mind,” he snarled. “She is to blame, she must have turned your head with mortal witchcraft! She will not hex me. I will teach her the ways of the Faol.”

Iona watched, torn between fascination and terror as Lulach’s body blurred, his masculine shape reforming into a large, snarling wolf that dropped onto all fours. Menace turned to blatant threat as he advanced, fangs bared, the fur along his back standing straight up in a ruff. The low growling noise from the gathered Faol grew louder. The air had the sparking tension of an approaching storm. She could hardly believe what she was seeing.

Lulach hunkered down. Iona’s blood ran cold. She was the focus of the brutal intent in his eyes. The wolf was about to attack her. His powerful thighs bulged as he prepared to spring. Run! Run! Run! But she was frozen to the spot.

“Enough, Lulach!” Struan’s voice was cold, furious. The force with which he pushed her aside almost threw her to the floor. She staggered, turning just in time to see the enormous wolf leap forward. The wolf from the home woods. The wolf that had carried her through the forest. Struan’s wolf.

The two huge beasts fought furiously, a blur of fur and snapping fangs and low growls, but it was obvious from the start that, mighty warrior as Lulach may be, he was no match for Struan, who was more powerful, more relentless, possessed of a fearsome, dominant life-force that would not be denied. His jaws clamped around the neck of the brown wolf, dragging the beast to the ground, where it lay cowering and trembling. Iona screwed her eyes tight shut, unable to watch what must surely follow, the savage tearing of Lulach’s throat.

“Are there others among you who wish to challenge my authority?”

She peeked out through her lashes. Struan, fists clenched, was standing over the prostrate warrior. Struan. Not the wolf. Struan, his chest heaving, his gaze stern, victorious, triumphant.

“Well?” he demanded. Silence reigned, though he could sense the unrest in the pack. Was he being a complete fool? Too late to worry about that. “Then it is agreed.” Reluctant nods, but it was enough. He hauled Lulach, who was licking a long, bloody tear on his forearm, to his feet. “You are a brave and skilled warrior. I bear you no grudge. Do you now accept my decision?”

Lulach nodded. “You bested me, Prince Struan. So be it.” As he resumed his place in the circle, Iona saw that his wound had already begun to heal.

“It is ten days until the full moon,” Struan declared. “We will meet then for the ritual. Until then, let us adjourn.” He took the throne for the formal farewells, but he kept his hand on his claymore and his eye on Iona until just the two of them and his brother were left.

“Struan, what are you thinking?” Eoin said angrily. “This is madness. You’re playing with fire. By the gods, you nearly lost control of the pack there.”

“But I did not. I retain their loyalty. And yours, too, I hope, little brother. It is not for you to question my actions, either.”

Eoin raised a brow at the harsh tone. “I see,” he said. “Very well then, take her. Enjoy her. But make sure you do not enjoy her too much. We Alpha Faol can only take another Faol to mate, you know that.”

“As the head of the clan, I know that better even than you.”

“Then why…”

“Because it occurred to me, brother, that there is something unworthy in our custom. Bad enough that I had to bring her here against her will. If she stays, let her at least choose her own mate.”

“Struan, our rules are set in stone. You cannot…”

“I will not discuss it anymore, Eoin. Not even with you.”

“Then I must leave you,” Eoin said pointedly. “I have other business to attend to.”

His steps rang out as he crossed the vaulted cavern and exited through the same fissure in the rock through which Struan had entered.

“What just happened?” Iona asked.

Struan shook his head. “I’m not quite sure,” he admitted with a crooked smile, surprising them both.

“You stopped them giving me to Lulach. Why?”

“Because I thought you deserved the right to choose.”

“So you intend to send me home instead,” Iona said, surprised by the sinking feeling in her stomach. It was what she wanted, wasn’t it?

“No. You must stay, at least until the full moon. Tomorrow I’ll show you my kingdom. When you see for yourself the life we have here, you might choose to stay.”

Iona shook her head mutinously. “This is not my home, I don’t belong here.”

Struan touched her cheek, blocking out the unwelcome alternative. It might not come to that, though it seemed unlikely that such a rebellious mind could be tamed. “You remind me of myself, Iona McKinley. I was never one who took to being told what to do.”

“You are a prince. You can do as you please.”

“Would that were so. It is difficult to question what I must uphold.”

“That is a poor excuse, worthy of my father. It is the way of things, he says, when it suits his purpose,” Iona said bitterly. “What kind of ruler cannot change the rules?”

“How dare you criticise things you know nothing of! You have no idea of how hard it has been, the battles that have been fought—what we need is stability, not change.”

His expression was fiery, his tone angry, but Iona refused to be intimidated. Right now, if Struan had not intervened, she would be with Lulach. Relief, a feeling of having nothing to lose, combined with the reckless excitement Struan seemed always to rouse in her, made her defiant. “Then why did you not just hand me over to Lulach?”

“I should have. I know I should have. But I did not. If you must have it, I saved you from Lulach because I wanted you for myself. Are you satisfied now?”

“Oh!” The unexpected admission deprived her of words. Such raw desire in his voice, it grated on her skin. The memory of their kiss lay between them, simmering, seductive. “I am not so beautiful as the Faol women.”

Struan let his palm follow the river of copper down her neck, the curve of her back, to the base of her spine. “You are not in any way like any Faol woman. None of them make me feel as you do.”

She couldn’t move. His touch kindled a fire in her belly. She was unable to resist touching his hair, it felt like a swathe of silk running through her fingers.

“There is something in you that draws me to you,” Struan said. “You feel it, too, I know you do.”

She could not deny it, but she was not yet prepared to admit it. Through the thin silk of the sark, she could feel her nipples pucker, the hard buds brazenly visible through the material. “You are descended from wolves,” she whispered. “Why should I be drawn to you? You are less than a man.”

Struan’s laugh was more like a low growl. He leaned towards her, to nuzzle the pulse at her throat, and felt the direct connection between her scent and his shaft. He was immediately hard. Full. Potent. “I think you will find that I am much, much more than a man.”

She knew she was playing with fire, but she could not resist fanning the flames. She could see, from the way his pupils were dilated, that he felt the same. Her skin was all goose bumps. Her lips tingled with the memory of his kiss. He was as intoxicating as a fine malt. “A proud boast,” Iona said, “but I doubt you can back it up.”

Too late, she heard the implied challenge in her words. Had she meant it? She didn’t stop to think, but fled, up the stairs, along a corridor, aware all the time of him behind her, so close his breath was warm on her neck. Faster she ran. Heart pounding, chest heaving with effort, she threw herself at the door of an unknown chamber, trying to slam it shut before he could reach her, knowing she would fail.

Struan leant against the inside of the door, his eyes glittering against the black oak. Iona backed across the cavern—a bed chamber—until her knees hit the edge of the bed. He followed her slowly, matching her step for step, their eyes locked. She was burning hot and icy cold, shivering with anticipation and desire. She tossed back her hair, unwittingly throwing her breasts into silhouette through the sark.

His breath was warm on her ear. Her skin prickled in response. Her legs started to buckle and she fell back onto the bed. He fell on top of her. She could feel his erection pressing into her belly. Heat engulfed her. And then his mouth took hers.

Chapter 4

She was on her back, Struan beside her, his lithe body pressed against hers. She panted for air, little gasps, but still he kissed her, and still she kissed him back.

He rolled on top of her. Skin. Heat. Man. She arched up against him. Softness yielding to hardness. Her stomach clenched. Still kissing her, he moulded her breast with his hand, his thumb grazing the nipple through the silk sark, making her moan with pleasure.

The claiming gown was rucked up around her knees and one of her legs was jammed between his. She could feel the rough, masculine skin rasp on the smooth feminine skin of her calf. She was feverish. His thumb on her nipple was too much and yet not enough. She resented the barrier, however flimsy, of the fine silk garment between them.

Struan’s hand tightened on her breast. Impatient now, for the taste of her, he ripped the sark from the neck to the hem and laid her bare, catching his breath at her utter perfection. Her breasts were small but full. Dark pink nipples thrusting for his attention. He suckled one and stroked the other, relishing the way she writhed beneath him. His tongue flicked over and round, circling. He nipped her playfully with his teeth, first one nipple then the other.

A rush of shocking pleasure, like a dousing in an icy mountain stream, made Iona cry out. She was shaking with delight, aching with anticipation. A yearning, a longing, gripped her. Her body thrust itself shamelessly at him, her hands roamed feverishly over his skin, his sinewy arms, the tensely knotted muscles of his back.

“Struan,” she gasped, as his mouth tugged, warm and supple, on her nipple, and another rush of pleasure shivered through her. A trail of kisses down her body, lingering on the soft skin on the inside of her thighs. She cried out when his mouth finally sank into the damp heat between her legs.

He parted the soft folds. She was wet for him, and he was hard for her. He licked her, growling with satisfaction as she arched under his ministrations, teasing her by avoiding that most sensitive part, swollen, ripe, ready for his caress. She tasted as exotic as she smelled. He suspected he would be her first. The realisation thrilled him.

He licked her again, a long, languorous stroke of his tongue that made her squirm with pleasure. He slipped his finger inside and found her as tight and welcoming as he had imagined. He was just as ready as she. His shaft was pulsing. He licked again, and thrust a little higher inside her. Again, touching the swollen nub of her at the same time, and again.

She came with a force which ripped an animal-like cry from her throat. Panting hard, she was tossed up into some sort of crimsoning sky of rapture, which cocooned her pulsing, throbbing body, until he stroked her again, and she was thrust higher still, so high that she thought she would tear apart. Carnal need made her cling to him, rub herself against him, licking the salt from his chest, his throat, nipping at the pulse there, thrusting her body wantonly at him in the demand for completion.

Struan held her through the storm of her climax, relishing the sheer masculine satisfaction of knowing that he had brought her to this. The urge to thrust into her, to pour his seed into her, was so overwhelming that it terrified him. Once he had given himself to her, he would be lost forever. He knew it with a terrible certainty.

He was Prince of the Faol. She was not meant for him, though he felt that no one could ever be more right for him. If he took her now, he could ruin them both. With a hoarse cry, Struan tore himself free from her embrace, from her intoxicating scent, from her intoxicating presence.

Iona sat up, clutching her tattered sark around her. “Struan?” He was looking at her strangely. The scarlet flag of shame replaced the flush of desire that coloured her throat. “Did I do something wrong?”

He looked at her, smudged lips, tangled hair, eyes dark with the remnants of desire. He touched the emerald on his amulet. Duty and desire. Who would have thought they could wage such vicious war? “You did nothing wrong. It is I who— I would be taking advantage. Iona, you heard what Eoin said. You cannot be mine.” He touched her hair, kissed the tip of her tilted-up nose. “If I cannot have you I would not spoil you, nor take your innocence.”

Exhaustion hit Struan with the force of a hammer. He wanted nothing more than to curl up by her side, to hold her against his heart and sleep. This, more even than his desire to claim her, disturbed him deeply. What he would do if she refused to be bound, he didn’t want to think about. What he would do if she were bound and claimed by another, he didn’t want to think about either. “In the morning I will show you my kingdom.” Struan touched her fiery crown of hair. “Then it will be up to you, to decide whether or not to fall under Kentarra’s spell. Till morning, Iona.”

As the door closed behind him, Iona pulled the bedclothes tightly around her and curled up under them. Struan was an honourable man, that much was clear. She valued him for it, but she couldn’t help wishing that he wasn’t quite so noble. She could not help wishing he had spoiled her well and truly for Kenneth McIver.

The mattress was feather-soft. The sheets were crisp, scalloped with lace, not a darn nor a sign of wear on them. The blankets were lamb’s wool. The bed seemed to wrap itself around her, cocooning her. As the events of the last twenty-four hours finally caught up with her, Iona fell into a deep sleep.

She awoke at dawn and, wrapping a blanket around her, wandered round the chamber, admiring the tapestries. Scenes of battle mostly, but in one there was a tempest, a bairn in a rush basket. She wondered what her father was making of her absence. What kind of hue and cry would it have caused? Would anyone have seen her, carried off by a wolf?

I subdued him, Struan had said. Struan Tolmach. Man. Prince. And wolf. All in one. The full extent of the differences between them yawned like a great chasm. Not just a man. More than a man, he had said.

Images of herself, surrendering all modesty as she laid herself open to Struan’s caress, made her cheeks burn. Ten days until the moon was full and she would be sent home. She closed her eyes tightly shut and pictured Castle McKinley, the village, her father. Already it all seemed so distant. She was having trouble imagining herself back there, constantly having to bite her tongue, running after her father’s incessant demands. Or her husband’s.

She would not marry Kenneth McIver, whatever her father said! If she could stand up to a Faol Prince, she could surely stand up to a mere Highland laird. She would be the mistress of her own fate, from now on. A knock on the door informed her that the prince required her presence below. She was still getting used to the fact that Struan was a prince, never mind a wolf-prince!

Struan received her in the royal breakfast chamber. She was wearing new clothes provided by the women. An olive-green gown over moss-green petticoats, a fine linen sark, silk stockings and soft leather slippers. He had noticed yesterday how chilly she found the cavern’s rock floors. Though he had seen her only a few hours previously, he had already forgotten how beautiful she was. He wished she was not. He wished he had not noticed the dark circles under her eyes, either, nor felt so guilty at the sight of them. Nor wondered what she had thought, the long night long, after he had left her bedchamber.

“Help yourself to breakfast, you must be hungry,” he said brusquely.

The table was groaning with food, which made Iona’s mouth water. Eggs. White bread, not black as she was used to. Thick porridge and cream. A bowl of summer fruits, though it was nigh on November. There was even a ham. “It looks quite delicious,” she said enthusiastically.

“I suppose you’d heard that we live off raw meat?”

She blushed. “I supposed you’d heard we live off cold porridge and kale.” She picked up a raspberry. “Actually,” she said, “a lot of my father’s cotters do, in the winter. ’Tis a sin.” The fruit was sweet and tart as it burst in her mouth. “Where do you get these from?”

“On Kentarra there is no winter. There are hot volcanic springs that keep the climate temperate.”

“In the Highlands, sometimes it feels like there is no summer.” Iona cut herself a thick slice of ham, and took another spoonful of raspberries. “Even at Castle McKinley we don’t ever eat as well as this, not even at Christmas,” she said, smiling at Struan. He smiled back. He had a nice smile. It made him much less formidable. Alone with her, he was much less the prince, too. He was dressed differently today. A plain white shirt, a black leather waistcoat, a filleadh beg. She could almost forget he was a Faol. Almost forget what had transpired between them last night. Almost.

She covered a piece of bread in heather honey. “That other man, Eoin. He’s your brother?”

“He is.”

“And have you any other family?”

“A sister, Sorcha. She is away from Kentarra at present. And the tribe, of course. You could say they are my family.”

Iona’s eyes widened. “You mean you…”

Struan laughed. “There are nigh on two hundred of us, and to my knowledge I have not sired any of them. I mean I am responsible for their welfare, in the same way as your father is, as laird of his clan. No matter what is said of us by the Highlanders, we are not savages. We are the same as men, more or less.”

Iona took a sip of buttermilk. “I recall you leaned towards more rather than less, yesterday.”

Struan chuckled. “You have a quick wit. These last few months, I feel as if I have not laughed near enough.”

“Why not?”

“Power is a sobering weight to bear.”

“Why bear it then?”

For a moment, she thought she had gone too far. His eyes darkened. His posture stiffened. She could not see, but she could sense his hackles rising. She waited, holding his gaze, willing herself not to back down.

Finally, Struan shrugged. “You make a habit of asking impertinent questions, Iona. Have a care that you do not overstep the mark, I will not tolerate such insubordination in public. I bear it because I was the one who managed to pull the clan together when we could easily have been torn asunder. Our last Alpha was killed, murdered by one of our own who craved the throne. It was a dark episode in our history.”

“What happened?”

Struan frowned heavily. “I fought him for control of the clan and won. With him out of the way I managed to convince the opposing factions that our strength was in unity. I believe in the bond of the pack but there are aspects of our life here that I have always questioned.”

“Then change them.”

This time, she was in no doubt that she had gone too far. Struan thumped his fist on the table so hard that the heavy bowl of exotic fruits jumped. “Enough! What I do or do not do is none of your concern. If you wish to be granted the honour of a Binding, you would do well to remember that.”

“I have no intentions of becoming a Faol, I’m perfectly happy being myself, thank you very much,” Iona said, gripping the table to stop herself from flinching from his angry glare.

She had guts. He couldn’t help admiring her, and what he most admired he would not change in her, though it left them both with a sword hanging over them. It was nine days hence. He would not think about it now. “You have a temper to match your hair. Your kin must be enjoying the respite.”

Iona smiled raggedly. “My mother died when I was a babe. There is only my father, and he takes no heed of me.”

“You’ve no husband in waiting?”

“Aye, but he’s going to have a very long wait. That’s something I decided last night. I’ll choose my own husband. Or choose not to have one at all.”

“My people choose their own mates, too, but we Alphas can only choose an Alpha female. It is the way of things here. Another of our ways.” Struan picked up the spoon he used for his porridge, a sturdy thing made of horn, and tapped it on the table. “Our rituals have been in existence for hundreds of years.”

“Like the Binding?”

Struan nodded. As was the alternative. If she refused to be bound she must undergo Marking, which involved a special silver bracelet being placed around a human wrist and permanently branded into the flesh, marking out the wearer as discarded property of the Faol. Such poor creatures were consigned to a shadowy existence as outcasts, forever tainted. Shunned by superstitious Highlanders and rejected by the Faol, they were consigned to life on the margins of both worlds, where they frequently went quite mad. He didn’t want to think about what that would do to Iona. Struan’s spoon snapped in two. “If you are finished your breakfast, I will show you round the island.”

“What is it you’re not telling me?”

Struan threw back his shoulders. His imperious look, she had named it. She countered with a glare of her own.

Struan sighed. “Iona, nothing will be decided until the full moon. Let us wait until then.” Though what he was waiting for, he had no idea. Inspiration to strike, some alternative solution to suddenly present itself…? “Come,” he said, holding out his hand, “I would have you see my kingdom.”

Chapter 5

The women were sitting in the morning sunshine, drinking in the gentle warmth of its rays. As Struan and Iona approached, the gurgle of their laughter faded, but their smiles grew as they got gracefully to their feet and made their curtsies to their prince.

“Highness.”

“Prince Struan.”

“Kirstin, Lillias, ladies. This is Iona, Laird McKinley’s daughter, as you know.”

The women eyed Iona with fresh interest. Kirstin looked even more striking in the light of day, her hair night-black, her skin alabaster, her cherry-red lips set in a seductive smile. “Poor Lulach is still licking his wounds. It must be a fine feeling to have a prince fight for your favours,” she said, her voice husky. Her long fingers trailed possessively over Struan’s arm, white as milk against his tan. Her figure was voluptuous, the soft swell of her full breasts rising and falling gently at the low neckline of her gown.

A gust of something horribly like jealousy assailed Iona. Looking up at Struan, she was pleased to see that he wasn’t eyeing Kirstin’s quivering breasts, nor even her lusciously pouted lips. He was looking at Iona.

As were the other women, she noticed nervously. Ten pairs of beautiful Faol eyes, their expressions speculative. Iona could feel the blush stealing up her neck. Bad enough, to be so intimidated by the sheer power of their beauty, their easy grace, but the Faol women were a little too knowing.

“So, our prince has decided to keep you for himself,” Lillias said with a sly smile at Struan. “Lucky you. He’s a potent one, is our Prince Struan. Any one of us would have grabbed the chance to be in your skin last night.”

Her remark provoked a gale of laughter.

“Come, Highlander,” another of the Faol women said, “we are all desperate to know what you possess that we don’t. Prince Struan was ever picky, even before he took the crown. Kirstin here has grown tired of waiting on him claiming her.”

“Then Kirstin will grow more weary still,” Struan snapped. “When I take a mate, the choice will be mine. I will do the claiming.” His gaze swept over the group. “Enough of this foolishness. Stop now before you incur my wrath.”

“Yes, Highness.” Kirstin, visibly chastened, threw Iona a malicious look. As Struan nodded curtly and turned away, Iona looked back, just in time to see the beautiful face blur into that of a small, snarling wolf. She gasped with shock, but as Struan looked down at her enquiringly, the wolf disappeared. Kirstin smiled malevolently. Iona shuddered. There was one Faol, at least, who would never accept her. Attractive as they were, tactile and sensuous, the Faol women were also more than capable of ensuring that outsiders remained just that.

“It’s as well…I’ve no intentions of staying here,” she said as they made their way down to the jetty, for they were going to sail round the island. “Those women would never accept me as one of their own.”

“They will, if I decree it should be so.”

“Oh, aye, they will be all smiles to your face, Prince Struan, but I doubt they’ll be so pleasant when your back is turned. That one—that Kirstin—she hates me.”

“She would come to accept you in time.”

Iona shook her head. “No. You’re wrong,” she said decisively.

She hadn’t meant to, but once again it seemed she had unwittingly overstepped the mark. Struan’s brows snapped together. “You must never contradict me in public. On this island my word is law. Do I make myself clear?”

It was the haughty way he looked at her. That combination of power and authority. Truth be told, it made her want to prostate herself, but it also had the contrary effect of making her want to challenge him. But Iona had learnt, in the short period of their acquaintance, that she could challenge the man but not the prince. “Yes, Highness,” she said, curtsying in imitation of the women.

She didn’t know how he managed it, but he was standing too close. She could feel the heat emanating from his body. Her skin felt tight, as if it were stretching towards him.

“I have another command for you,” he said, his voice managing to be both beguiling and harsh.

It was there again, that tingle of excitement mixed with a fear of the unknown. Her breathing was erratic. “Yes, Highness?”

“Kiss me,” he said, pulling her roughly to him. His arms went around her, and his mouth took hers in a hard, hot kiss.

Their bodies were afire in a moment, their tongues clashing, their hands frantic as they sought to be closer and closer still. Iona was braced against the cliff into which the path was cut. She could feel the solid heft of Struan’s erection pressing into her. She moaned as he brushed the sides of her breasts through her gown, her nipples budding hard in response, her sex throbbing. He kissed her mouth, her eyes, her cheeks, then her mouth again. His lips were warm against the pulse of her throat. The scent of their arousal made her senses swim. She clutched at his hair, his shoulders, his buttocks, brazenly arching her sex against his.

She didn’t hear the men approaching in the distance, but Struan obviously did. With a curse, he put her from him, hastily tucking his shirt back into his belt. She barely registered their surprised glances, not-quite-hidden smiles, as she tried to adjust her own clothing, to calm her jumping pulses and throbbing senses.

“Maybe you are a witch after all as Lulach claimed, Iona McKinley,” Struan said with a lopsided smile.

“And you’re not the only one falling under a spell, Struan Tolmach,” Iona thought shakily.

Kentarra proved to be as beautiful and seductive as its inhabitants. And as wild, and dangerous, too. The vibrant flowers were not all poisonous, but some were. The wolves that lurked in the forest shadows seemed harmless only in Struan’s presence. Beyond the harbour, beyond some invisible line that circled the sea around the isle, the waters seemed perpetually stormy. Though the climate was balmy, there was often the oppressive feel of thunder in the air. Over the next few days, as Struan showed her his domain, Iona was in turns enchanted and unsettled.

But it was not really the island that enchanted her. It was its prince. Or at least, it was the man Struan became when he cast off his princely responsibilities, as he increasingly did, to spend time alone with her. He made her laugh. He had an eye for the foibles of man, which matched her own wry—and rarely expressed—sense of the ridiculous. He made her feel special, listening to her as if her every word was important. He made her happy, that was it. She had never been so happy, so free to be herself in the company of another. Struan saw things in her she hadn’t even known were there. And it seemed to be the same for him. His eyes sought hers, even in company. She saw reflected in his face, what she felt. Wanting, made stronger for its continual denial. Becoming, through that denial, a yearning so intense it was almost impossible not to surrender to it.

Iona had never come close to falling in love, but she knew she was dangerously so now. The days were not long enough for all they had to say to each other. Every moment not spent together felt wasted. Each night, as they returned to the palace carved out of the rock, she looked up at the moon with a sense of dread as it tracked its way across the night sky, growing slowly but surely fatter, eating into the time they had left, marking out the limits of the idyll that was their time together. Only four days left. Only two.

“Struan.”

“Iona. You have that ominous look about you.”

“What look?” They were sitting on the edge of the hot springs, which formed a series of pools on the northern side of Kentarra. Tall, lush trees and ferns, huge orchids and blowsy roses bloomed along the banks.

Struan touched her cheek. As ever, she shivered in response. As ever, he drew quickly away. It was like this all the time now. Touch. Respond. Retreat. Touch. Respond. Retreat. Until they kissed, and their passion exploded. Until Struan wrenched himself free once again.

“The look that says you’re about to ask something you shouldn’t, but are going to ask anyway.”

Iona chuckled. “Well, I am. It’s just…can you all change into a wolf, even the women?”

Struan nodded. “All true Faol.”

“What about those who have been bound?”

“Yes. They become like us, share our powers.”

Iona lifted up a fistful of sand and let it fall through her fingers. “What does it feel like?”

“It’s not a separate being, it’s part of us. Some can control their wolf more easily than others. For some it happens when they are angry, or tired, or when they are aroused.”

“And you?”

Struan leant back on his hands. He wore no shirt today, just his plaid and his belt. As ever, when she allowed herself to dwell on him, Iona felt a rush of pleasure. She wanted to rub her cheek against the soft hair on his chest. She wanted him to kiss her. She was always wanting him to kiss her.

“I have mastered my wolf,” Struan said.

“I subdued him, you said. I didn’t understand what you meant at the time.”

“Do you remember me carrying you through the forest?”

“I thought I was dreaming.”

“Did it frighten you?”

Iona bit her lip. “No. I—the truth is, I find it— I would like to know what it’s like.”

“You find it exciting?”

“Is that shocking?”

“No. Surprising. But then, everything about you is surprising.”

“Struan, would you— Can you show me…”

He found the idea deeply arousing. He found Iona’s obvious fascination even more so. Her eyes were shining. He got to his feet, pulling her with him, and unbelted his plaid.

Iona’s heart bumped, skipped a beat, then hammered furiously in her breast as she looked at him, magnificently naked. Long legs, powerful thighs, the same tanned biscuit colour all over. He was erect. Hugely erect, his shaft jutting up towards his stomach. He pulled her tight to him. Silken heat. Potent.

“Touch me,” he said, placing her hand on his chest. “Feel me.”

She smoothed her palms over his skin, closing skimming over his shoulders, his rolling muscles, feeling them bunch under her. Struan groaned. She felt him arch his back. Under her hands, his skin grew silky soft hairs. A faint stretching noise, like a rope being pulled taut. His thighs bulged. His neck thickened. The sinews in his arms stood out like thick cords, straining with effort. With a huge roar, it was completed, the transformation of man to wolf. The massive beast dropped onto all fours in front of her. Silky ears, the gleam of fangs, but the eyes were the same, fierce and grey and intelligent. Struan.

She touched his silken coat. She stroked him, breathing deep of his familiar scent, which was feral but also man.

Struan.

Wolf.

Struan.

It excited her. She ran her hand down his knotted spine, up to his mighty neck, and as she did so, he transformed beneath her touch. Wolf became man. Naked man. She did not want to, but Iona averted her eyes, and Struan hurriedly belted his plaid back into place. “Does it hurt, when it happens?” she asked, fascinated by what she had just witnessed.

“It feels like your skin is too tight. There’s a second or two when you feel your bones might shatter, and then you feel all that raw animal power surge through you. You’re still yourself, but enhanced.”

More than a man, Iona remembered. She believed him now.

Struan scanned the sky, where the moon was already beginning to rise. A moon much fatter than he cared to see. Less than twenty-four hours before it had completed its inexorable progress to fullness. “Tomorrow will be our last day,” he said abruptly. “It is probably for the best.”

“Yes,” Iona said bravely, though she felt her heart was being squeezed tight in a mighty fist. She didn’t want to go back. She couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing him again. Five minutes apart was hard enough. What would it be like, the rest of her life stretching out in front of her with no hope of being with him? Iona cast a resentful glance at the moon. She didn’t want to go, but she could not possibly stay. Could she?

Chapter 6

Out walking in the forest the next day, Struan suddenly stopped in his tracks. “What is it?” Iona asked.

“A deer, a big stag by the look of it,” he said, pointing at the ground.

Iona looked but could see nothing.

“The signs are there if you know how to look for them.”

“Can you teach me?”

“Perhaps.”

Iona’s eyes gleamed. “I’d love that. What do I do?”

“Breathe.” Struan held her tight against him. “Breathe, drink in every sound, every smallest movement, every scent and taste each as I do.”

She did as he told her, breathing deep, and to her amazement there was the woody scent of pine and sodden bracken, the distinctively sharp tang of shrew and vole, the sweeter, almost rotten stench of a pine marten. All her senses seemed magnified, and it was exhilarating. She had never felt more alive. She sensed, too, Struan’s growing visceral need to hunt.

They stalked the stag for miles through the forest and then across the moorland. She could see farther than she had ever seen before. She could hear everything, every creature in the undergrowth, the flutter of wings overhead. It was magical. She never wanted it to end, but it did, when the stag trapped its front forelock on a fallen tree. Struan leapt upon his quarry, transforming in an instant to a mighty wolf in order to deliver the traditional coup de grâce by tearing out its throat.

The stag lay panting, its haunches drenched in sweat, its big chocolate-brown eyes defiant but already resigned to death, but at the last instant, Struan hesitated. Iona had made no sound, no move to stop him, but he sensed it. Not horror, nor fear, but pity. Regaining his human form, he released the stag, watched it get shakily to its feet. Hunter and hunted exchanged a long meaningful glance before the stag bounded off over the moor.

“Thank you,” Iona said, kissing his cheek.

“What for?”

“You know fine well.”

It was late in the day as they made their way back. The sun was setting, the moon was rising. Almost full. Struan eyed it furiously, wishing there was some way of delaying the inevitable. He needed more time, but it had run out.

Beside him, Iona had tried not to think about what lay ahead so as not to spoil their last moments together but she could not sustain it.

“If I went through the Binding, would the Faol accept me, then?” Was she really contemplating surrendering herself to the Faol just to be with him?

Though they tried to hide it, his people—especially the women—had remained hostile to Iona. A product of his having taken her from Lulach, Struan suspected. “In time, perhaps. If you took another as a mate,” he said, though very idea of it made him wince.

Iona shuddered. “I don’t want another mate.”

Struan frowned. Why could not things be more straightforward? “You know that I cannot take any but a pure-born Alpha Faol for a life-mate.” Struan broke off abruptly. He wanted to howl at the Fates, which had so cruelly conspired to separate them, trap them in different worlds. “It’s not possible.”

She knew he was right, but it seemed so wrong. She would be unhappy on Kentarra, but how much more unhappy would she be back in her old life? “It’s so unfair!” Tears, the first she had allowed herself to shed, glittered on her lashes.

“Iona. My brave Iona, don’t cry. It is for the best that you go back to the Highlands, you know that. Let us not talk about it anymore.” He would find a way to avoid the Marking. He must! Struan pulled her close, wrapping his arms so tightly around her she could scarcely breathe. He kissed her. Her lips were cold, but he warmed them. She tasted so sweet. She tasted of all that he could never have, and everything that he had every wanted. When he would have torn himself away, she clung to him. He kissed her again and again, desperate kisses.

Above them, the moon rose, and the rain began to fall. Clouds gathered ominously, black and smoky grey, like great hulking beasts waiting to pounce.

“There’s going to be a storm. It’s common enough at the full moon here,” Struan said, looking at the sky with a frown. Even as he spoke, a fork of lightning lit up the sky, followed just a few seconds later by the first ominous rumbling of thunder and big fat drops of rain. “We need to find shelter, quickly,” he said, taking her by the hand and leading her back to the forest.

Iona stumbled. Already, the rain had plastered her hair to her head. Another fork of lightning tore across the sky. This time the thunder sounded closer. Struan picked her up, holding her high against his chest. They gained the forest as the next fork of lightning struck. The air buzzed and crackled, the rain and the thunder crashed. Deeper they went, where the trees were so closely packed and the canopy of foliage so dense that the rain barely penetrated.

Struan set Iona on her feet. “We can wait it out here,” he said, putting his pelt cloak on the ground, and pulling her down on to it with him.

She clung to him, shivering. “I would have us wait here forever,” she whispered. “secure in our own private world.”

Her breath was warm on his ear. “For tonight, at least,” Struan said, stroking her cheek. Her face was damp with tears and rain. He wiped them tenderly away, and then he kissed her. His tongue thrust against hers, and she arched up, with a moaning cry that heated his blood. He was hard, and she was so soft, and he wanted her so much, he doubted he’d be able to stop if he kissed her again. “Iona,” he said urgently, “I don’t think…”

“Struan, I am done with thinking. It achieves nothing. I want you. You want me. I will be gone tomorrow. Surely that is enough.”

It would never be enough. He knew it, even as he kissed her again, stroking her face, her neck, the swell of her breasts. He would want her for eternity, but tonight was all they had. Honour, scruples, all concern for the future, he cast to the winds for the moment. She was right. They had but one chance. They must grasp it.

Lightning illuminated the sky above, silhouetting the pair of them, their faces stark with desire, their eyes dark pools of need. As the thunder followed almost instantaneously, they fell upon each other without restraint, kissing, touching, stroking, tearing at clothes. Struan’s filleadh beg fell to the ground as he undid his belt. He tore his shirt over his head, and as he did so, the sky lit up again, and Iona drew in her breath at his masculine beauty, the hard planes of him, the muscled contours, the solid length of his manhood.

She reached out to touch, to stroke, made bold by desperation. Silky, the skin was, heavy he was as she cupped him, felt the weight of him fill her hands. Her belly clenched in anticipation. Struan’s groan as she caressed him left her in no doubt of the depth of his desire.

Struan knelt down beside her again and removed the rest of her clothing, kissing her breasts, her belly, her thighs, her knees, as her petticoats, her sark and finally her stockings were stripped gently from her. He pulled her to him, crushing her breast against the hair on his chest, his erection pressing insistently against her belly.

He murmured her name as he kissed her slowly, lingeringly, on the mouth, on her neck, working his way down. Too slow. This was no time for languor, she was on fire. “Struan,” she said, a harsh plea, as she nipped the skin at his shoulder with her teeth. “Struan.” She writhed under him, digging her nails into his back.

He stroked her breasts. Her nipples were hard. His mouth was warm on them, his tongue hot, his touch exquisite, but it was not what she wanted, needed, would die without. Above them, the elements raged as lightning once more arced across the night sky. Between them a tempest of feeling. Iona skimmed her fingers over the tip of Struan’s shaft, drawing another wild moan of delight from him.

Raging need, like the raging storm, made her shameless. She touched him again, arching up to rub her sex against him. His mouth found hers, ravaged hers, as his fingers dipped into her, sank inside, high inside, stroking and thrusting, his tongue tangling with hers, his thumb caressing the swelling mound at the centre of her heat, until she dug her heels into the ground, her entire body tense, tight, taut, and cried out her release.

He thrust into her then, slowly and deliberately, easing his way past her maidenhood, which the pulsing of her climax made painless. Higher he pushed, desperately fighting the urge to thrust harshly into the hot, wet tightness of her, which was so much more delightful than he had imagined.

Sheathed in her now, he kissed her again, relishing the way she clung to him, raking her nails on his back, his buttocks, relishing the way she was marking him for her own.

He withdrew slowly, then plunged into her, possessing her, tilting her up to fill her more, his own harsh panting cries merging and mingling with her higher-pitched ones, melding with the crash of the thunder, higher inside and higher yet, until she cried out, until he could hold back no more, and poured himself into her, saying her name over and over like a talisman. All the pent-up passion of the last ten days exploded. The fullness of the moon meant this was no time for holding back. Something truly elemental had occurred between them.

Hot tears seared Iona’s cheeks. She was complete, and soon she would be split asunder. She had never been so happy, soon she would never be so devastated. He had claimed her, and she was his forever, and yet she could never be his. The truth slammed into her with the force of an avalanche. She was in love with Struan Tolmach. She was deeply, irrevocably, eternally in love. She had been falling in love with him right from the moment she met him, and nothing could have prevented it. She loved him, and tomorrow she would leave him forever. She loved him. Tomorrow would be the end. But tonight was theirs.

“Whether we are together or no,” she said, running her fingers through his hair, “I will be yours always, Struan.”

He swallowed hard, knowing he should deny her, but he could not. “Iona, I can’t…”

“I love you, Struan. Don’t let’s talk about what we can’t do, not now. I love you. I just needed you to know.”

“Iona. If I could change things…”

“But you cannot. I love you. For tonight, let it be enough.”

Though the storm eventually passed they did not leave the forest, but spent this, their first and only night together, talking, touching, joining. Languorously now that the first sating had passed, they supped on each other, licking and tasting every part of their bodies, savouring every crease, every dip and swell, as if the taste would be forever preserved. The sweetness of her sex filled Struan’s mouth as Iona came. The sweetness of her cries filled his heart. When she took him in her mouth, he felt as if his life-force were being drawn into her, and he came with an explosive force that cast him into another dimension of feeling. Their coupling had about it a primordial rightness, as if it were ordained. Rocking her gently to another climax as she sat astride him, Struan could have sworn that the world stopped for them.

Iona shuddered, crying out her pleasure, throwing back her head to the sky in ecstasy, the pulsing and throbbing of her sex causing Struan to cry out his own completion as she collapsed on top of him, her nipples hard against his chest, her mouth soft against his lips.

They lay thus, listening to the night creatures rustling in the undergrowth around them. They slept entwined, cocooned in Struan’s cloak, as the moon gave way to the sun and the dawn broke. They joined again, for the last time, as the dew settled around them, as the tawny owl returned to its perch in the tree and the capercaillie roused itself for the daily forage. By the time they made their slow, desolate way back to the caverns, the day was well advanced.

Eoin was there to meet them. “Where have you been?” He clutched at his brother’s arm. “Struan, is she to undergo a Binding?”

Struan shook his head.

“Then Marking it must be. You know there is no other way.”

Struan cast his mind back, over the brief period of his reign. It had brought the clan together, but it had torn him apart. He realised it then. He had been deeply unhappy. And lonely. The years ahead would be lonelier still, now he had had a taste of what it would be like not to be so alone. He looked at Iona, her beautiful face distraught at their impending parting, the scent of their coupling still on them both. There must be another way. There must!

“Come,” Eoin said briskly, “We must prepare for the ceremony, we have little time.”

Alone in her chamber, Iona was tended by the Faol women, who were silent and grave, remote, on edge, no longer softly beautiful but glittering, like the hard awesome beauty of the cathedral cavern.

“What is happening?” Iona asked them, trying desperately to keep the quiver from her voice.

“Don’t you know?” Kirstin looked surprised. “Has not Struan…”

“Hush now,” Lillias said to her. “It is for the prince to know and us to find out.”

They bathed Iona. They braided her hair. She tried not to think about the coming ordeal. She couldn’t bear to contemplate what would follow. Her departure from Kentarra. She would leave her heart behind, even if she kept her soul. The gown they dressed her in was a rich velvet affair, black, braided with silver, the hem adorned with tiny silver bells.

“You know it ends tonight, don’t you?” Kirstin said maliciously. “You know the spell you have cast on Struan is broken? He was always meant for me.” Her inner wolf, small but lithe, with silky black hair, appeared suddenly before Iona, its eyes menacing, but she refused to shrink from its gaze.

“Kirstin!” Lillias said sharply, and the transformation was reversed.

The bell began to toll. The women led Iona out along the echoing tunnels and passageways of the caverns, past the throne room where the silver moon suspended over the chair cast a surreally bright light, out through the rock fissure that formed the main entrance, and into the night.

The moon was full. The skies had cleared to a midnight blue with the ghostly lunar presence suspended almost exactly above the top of the cliffs. It illuminated the path that wound down to a crescent beach. The waves were white-crested, foaming onto the steeply shelving shore, the sand rattling with the force of them as they ebbed and flowed, ebbed and flowed.

The Faol stood silent and ominous in a circle. At their centre, a fire. Beside the fire, Struan, dressed as he had been that first day, wearing a gold coronet, his wolves flanking him. Iona’s heart leapt at the sight of him, though she had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, too, for here was Prince Struan of the Faol in all his glory. Intimidating, forbidding, powerful. She only just managed to stop herself calling his name. He gave no sign of recognition as the circle opened to let her through, and her female escorts fell back, leaving her alone before him.

Struan touched his amulet. He looked at the moon. He surveyed the circle of his pack, waiting tensely for his decision. He looked at Iona, hiding her fear, holding herself proud as ever. She loved him. Only now that she was about to leave him forever, did he allow the full import of her declaration to sink in. She loved him. This brave, indomitable woman had the true spirit of the wolf, though she was no Faol. She loved him, and she had been true to herself in telling him. She loved him enough to change for him. Enough to contemplate staying, though it would make her unhappy, though he could promise her nothing in return. She loved him.

His heart swelled. Was there any gift more precious than such love? He was a fool not to have realised it earlier, because he loved her, too. He loved her with all his heart and his very soul. She was his mate, the one he had been waiting for all his life. He loved her. Nothing—not duty nor tradition nor even the greater good of the pack he reigned over—was worth more than such a love.

It came to him then, so blindingly obvious, so terrifyingly dangerous. There was another way. The path he had always wanted to take. The path Iona, his brave, lovely Iona, would give him the strength and support to take. With her by his side, he could do anything.

His heart pounding, Struan began to speak. “My people, you are gathered here on the night of the full moon to celebrate an ancient ritual. Iona McKinley, who came to us in reparation, by tradition is now to be bound or marked.”

He surveyed his clan. Nods from some. Apprehension, too. He could smell its acrid odour. He straightened his shoulders, threw back his head, looked calmly and proudly around the circle, the man in him supreme, the prince. “My people, what I have to say will shock some of you, upset others. Of a certainty, you will all of you be disturbed by it, because it signals a great change.”

He held up his hand as the murmurs grew louder. “Silence. Hear me out, then you may have your say. Iona McKinley came to us payment for her father’s folly. By rights she belonged to the pack, but from the first, I have been reluctant to surrender her. That feeling has grown stronger as I have come to know her. Though she is not of our kind, I am certain that she is my life’s mate.”

A gasp, a look of stark disbelief on the faces of his people. If they were going to turn on him it would be now. Struan grasped Iona’s hand and pulled her to him. He would not resort to menace. “I know that this is against all custom and tradition. I know what you’re all thinking. She is not pure-born Faol and can never be Alpha. But the fact remains…I love her. Without her, I am not the man I was, nor can ever again be the Faol I ought to be.”

Behind him, he could sense Eoin, utterly confused, yet ready to leap to his defence. His brother, whose unquestioning loyalty was about to be tested to the limit. Struan beckoned him forward. “I do not expect you to accept my decision. I know that some of you will find it bewildering, for did I not fight with tooth and claw to keep us together, to hold us as a pack to the old ways? It’s true, I still believe that united is better than divided. For you. But not for me. For Iona and I, there has to be another way. I am leaving you tonight to form my own pack. A new pack, with Iona by my side. As my mate. As my other half, my twin soul. A melding of two races. We will create our own traditions, our own destiny.”

Iona could bear it no longer, but threw herself into his arms. “Struan! Oh, Struan…”

“Iona, I love you. You have given me the courage and the strength to be true to myself. I love you.”

“Oh, Struan, I love you so much.” He felt her shudder against him. He placed a brief kiss on the top of her head.

It was almost over. Struan turned to his people one last time. “My brother Eoin will be your prince now. I leave you in the safest of hands. He is young, but he is an Alpha like me, and a most formidable warrior as you know. I bid you welcome him.”

Struan placed the crown on Eoin’s head. The brothers embraced. Eoin gripped Struan’s hand tightly. “Struan, by the gods, do you know what you’re doing?”

“No, but I know it has to be done,” Struan replied with a wry smile. “Keep the pack safe, brother. I wish you the very best of luck, but I doubt you’ll need it. There is no one more fit to rule Kentarra than you. You will pass on my regrets to our sister when she returns?”

“Sorcha. I had not thought— She will be devastated not to have been able to say goodbye. But you are not going forever, Struan. You’ll come back and visit us?”

“Perhaps. We will see. Now go and greet your people.” Struan touched the noses of his wolves, and bid them sit by their new master. Eoin, the new Alpha prince, was soon surrounded by his cheering pack.

Watching him, Struan felt euphoric with relief. This unfamiliar feeling, it must be true happiness. He wanted to whoop with joy. The same happiness reflected in Iona’s face as he turned to her. “Come, my love, it is time for us to leave this place.”

They slipped away, almost unnoticed, into a waiting sgoth. Struan lifted Iona into the boat and pushed it out onto the sea as Iona struggled out of the Binding gown, and threw it to the shore. The waves pulled them quickly from the beach. As he let loose the sail, Struan raised an arm to Kentarra in farewell, and to his brother, a rapidly diminishing figure on the beach. Eoin waved back. After a moment, so too did most of Clan Wolf. There would be a time for reflection and sadness. A time for remembering, but it was not now. Struan turned his back on the Isle of Kentarra. Pulling Iona into the shelter of his arms, he wrapped his pelt cloak around them both.

“I can’t believe you’ve sacrificed so much for me. I would never have asked…never have expected. Oh, my darling, are you sure?” Iona asked, cupping his jaw in her hand.

“I have never been surer or anything in my life,” Struan said. “You have claimed my heart. Feel how it beats for you.” He took her hand and laid it on his chest. “It always will, for you and you alone. I love you, Iona. Gràdh mo chrìidh.”

“Love of my heart, you are to me, too, Struan. I would move the sun and moon and stars for you.”

He laughed. “You already have, my love. You already have.”

Look for the second installment in the Legend of the Faol series, Bound to the Wolf Prince, available April 2011 wherever ebooks are sold.

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Born and educated in Scotland, Marguerite Kay originally qualified as a lawyer but chose not to practice, a decision which was a relief, both to her and the Scottish legal Establishment. While carving out a successful career in IT, she occupied herself with her twin passions of studying history and reading, picking up a first class honours and a Masters degree along the way.

The course of her life changed dramatically when she found her soul mate. After an idyllic year out, spent travelling round the Mediterranean, Marguerite decided to take the plunge and pursue her life-long ambition to write for a living, a dream she had cherished ever since winning a national poetry competition at the age of nine.

Just like one of her fictional heroines, Marguerite’s fantasy has become reality. She has published history and travel articles, as well as short stories, but romances are her passion. Marguerite describes Georgette Heyer and Doris Day as her biggest early influences, and her partner as her inspiration.

ISBN: 978-1-4268-8876-2

Claimed by the Wolf Prince

Copyright © 2011 by Marguerite Kaye

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