Read Online The Wolf and the Highlander (Highland Wishes) by Jessi Gage - Free Book Online Page B

they were taking.
    “So it’ll take us a week or more, walking.” She was no stranger to traveling.
    “At least.” He could do it by himself in five days, even with a uniwheel cart laden with skins for Chroina’s market. But with the rest Anya would need, taking the time to cook meat for her, with her limp... They’d need to find horses along the way to make it in a week. But horses could only be rented in well-populated villages. Going to one would make it harder for him to keep her secret.
    The sooner they got to Chroina, the safer she would be, but to get there quickly would draw unwanted attention. Protecting a female was becoming more complicated by the minute.
    “Tell me about these Larnians who might be after us. You didna seem to lose any sleep over slaying two of them. Are they an enemy clan?”
    He huffed a humorless laugh. “‘Enemies’ is putting it mildly. Larna and Marann have hated each other for nearly the entire history of Eire.”
    “Eire? Is that what you call this land?”
    He nodded. “It is an island of two nations. Marann to the east. Larna to the west.”
    “So we’re in Marann, I take it, but not far from Larna, since you’re fashing about Larnians tracking us.”
    “I won’t let them get you,” he vowed.
    “I ken it,” she said, as if she felt completely safe with him. Her confidence made his chest swell. “But who are they? Why is Marann at odds with them? Do they steal your livestock? Pillage your stores? Rape your women?” She rattled off offenses as casually as items on a shopping list. Were these things common where she came from? These days, Maranners and Larnians lived far enough apart that such trespasses were almost unheard of.
    “Nothing like that, at least not since the last war. Their blood is corrupt.”
    “But they doona harm your people or your land?”
    “Not anymore.”
    “Then why do you pay them heed? Why hate them when you could simply ignore them? No good ever comes from hating.” Her tone turned bitter at the end, as if she spoke from experience.
    “Who have you hated, Lady Anya?”
    “Doona call me lady. And we werena talking about me.”
    “We are now. If you won’t tell me who you hated, tell my why you don’t consider yourself a lady.”
    She made that snorting noise she liked to do, like a mix between a laugh and a scoff. Why should such a brash sound make his blood heat every time he heard it?
    “Doona expect me to tell stories if you willna.”
    He smothered the chuckle that rose in his chest. “It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s just...my sire was the storyteller, not me.”
    “No’ hard to tell a story,” she said. “ You start at the beginning, pass through the middle, and stop when you reach the end. What’s the beginning? When did Marann and Larna first become enemies?”
    He thought abou t how his sire would start. He would have gone all the way back. “You can’t understand the present unless you look to the past. And our past begins...” “Long ago,” Riggs said, “legends were told of Danu, our goddess. She traveled the threads of time and searched every realm for beings with uncommon strength, loyalty, ingenuity, and beauty.”
    The words came easily. He could practically hear his sire’s voice in his head. Maybe it wasn’t so hard to tell a story. He’d just never tried it before.
    “But no one race had all these qualities to her liking. So she took the seed of a fey prince and placed it in the womb of the wolf queen to create a people superior to those of any other god.”
    He glanced down and found Anya’s eyes round with interest.
    She waved a hand at him. “Go on. You’re doing fine. ’Tis a fascinating tale.”
    Her encouragement filled him with confidence. “A Larnian king, Jilken, tried to improve on Danu’s creation. He wanted fiercer warriors for his army and tried to get them by breeding men with the most ferocious she-wolves he could find. When he couldn’t get the wolves to conceive, he