Highland Wolf Pact: Blood Reign: A Scottish Werewolf Shifter Romance by Selena Kitt Page A

now, but he saw the way Bridget glared at them, how Aleesa’s eyes grew wide as she looked between the two men, and so he held back. They had information he wanted—needed. Mayhaps if he could convince them of the prophecy, and that he was the wulver who fulfilled it, they would be more forthcoming with that information.
    “Alaric, t’Gray Ghost.” Griff held his hand out to the other man, who took it, and they shook. “Yer reputation proceeds ye. M’father talked overmuch of yer swordsmanship and yer bravery. Now I know where t’lass learned it.”
    That broke the tension and they all sat down again to eat. He was surprised by the girl beside him, whose anger seemed to have ebbed away entirely. She just watched and listened as they talked around the table.
    “So ye’re really Raife’s son?” Alaric asked, studying him. Both the wulvers looked at him quite differently now that they knew his parentage. That both pleased and annoyed him.
    “Aye.” Griff reached for the last leg of chicken at the same time as the woman beside him.
    “Ye look like ’im.” Aleesa nodded over her mug.
    “More’s the pity.” Griff snorted, struggling with Bridget briefly over the leg of chicken. Another test of wills. He glanced at her, smiling, and she rolled her eyes and gave up, letting him have it.
    “Except t’eyes,” Alaric noted.
    “How’d ye come t’be ’ere, in this temple?” Griff asked, leaning over and depositing the last chicken leg in his hand on Bridget’s plate. “Story tells that yer wife went out t’gather herbs and ne’er returned?”
    “Aye.” Alaric nodded. “Aleesa had a dream ’bout this place. She was called ’ere, y’ken?”
    “By... who?” Griff blinking, glancing around, as if another presence might suddenly appear and make themselves known, although he knew that was unlikely.
    “I do’na know,” Aleesa said softly, her gaze dropped to her plate. “T’was a voice from… far ’way, ’cross t’sea. I had t’follow.”
    “So ye left yer husband an’ young pup?” Griff looked over at Bridget as she tossed the chicken leg back onto his plate.
    “Pup?” Bridget asked, looking at her mother, clearly surprised.
    “A daughter...” Aleesa did not lift her lowered eyes, and her voice dropped to something so soft it was hard to hear her. “Kirstin...”
    “An’ ye followed ’er?” Griff asked. He picked up the chicken leg, studying it. He no longer wanted it, would have let the girl have it, but she refused. That irked him.
    “Aye,” Alaric agreed, sliding a hand over his mate’s on the table. “I followed, and I found ’er.”
    “How?” he asked. “How could ye know where she’d gone?”
    “I did’na know,” Alaric admitted, looking at his mate with the kind of love Griff was used to seeing pass between couples he knew—like his parents, like Laina and Darrow, Kirstin and Donal. He knew that kind of love when he saw it, even if it continued to baffle him. “I followed ’er trail at first. Then, later, I discovered a woman’d sought passage t’Skara Brae from t’place where her trail ended, and I knew’t mus’ be ’er. I challenged the guardian of this temple—an’ I slew ’im.”
    “There was a guardian ’ere?” Griff stared at him in surprise as he quietly snuck the chicken leg onto Bridget’s plate. The girl noticed and glanced at him, but she didn’t say anything.
    “Aye, but no priestess.” Alaric patted his wife’s hand. “Aleesa knew… t’was ’er callin’.”
    The dark-haired woman lifted her eyes to meet his and Griff saw tears there. It pained him. He knew the woman who was her daughter, who had been without her mother for years, who thought the woman was likely dead—and her father, as well.
    “Ye know m’Kirstin?” Aleesa asked him softly. Her lower lip quivered. “She’s well?”
    “Aye,” he replied, nodding. “Her son, Rory, is one of me truest friends.”
    “She has a son...” Aleesa looked over at her husband