Agravain was lost in his thoughts, letting the horse lead them, when he received a hard knock in the ribs.
He gave Lura’s plait a tug. “What was that for?”
“You aren’t paying attention.” She frowned at him over her shoulder. “I asked how much farther we have to travel.”
He might as well be honest with her. “When we come to the old Roman wall, we’ll be halfway there.”
“Halfway!”
“Aye.”
Her frown deepened to a scowl, and he tried not to smile.
He glanced ahead to where Cai was scouting the track. “I’ve something that may cheer you.”
“What,” she asked with no trace of enthusiasm.
“Remember when we talked about how well we got along, just the two of us?”
“Aye.”
“Well, I’ve changed my mind. I think we could be three.”
Perhaps these long days of travel were to blame, for they gave him nothing to do but think. Lately his thoughts centered themselves on the idea—the image, really—of Cai and Lura and him. Together, every day, even after their current journey ended. Maybe he was a fool to entertain the notion. He knew only what they’d fled, not what lay ahead for them. He possessed one horse and a few weapons. Nothing to tempt someone as extraordinary as Cai.
He found Lura studying him as he worked through his thoughts, and gave her a smile. She smiled back, then turned to look for Cai.
Who was loping toward them at speed.
Agravain cursed and drew his sword. They were in the middle of an exposed stretch of road. His heart pounded over the lack of tree cover. When he thought Cai would stop and shift, he instead ran past and halted in the road behind them, hackles high, growling.
Two men were walking down the slope of the road toward them. Agravain braced his boots against the horse’s sides and pulled his cloak forward to hide Lura. They might mean no harm. If they did, at least there were only two of them. He hoped.
“Be ready to ride.”
“I am.” She pulled on his cloak, and he looked down to find her peeking out.
“Stay out of sight—”
Her frown transformed into a broad smile. “It’s my uncles!”
“What?”
But it was true. Gareth and Gahers were waving their arms now. He could see their grins from where he sat. He glanced back up the road behind them and hated the instinct that made him do so. But if they’d been sent by his mother…
It seemed Cai had the same thought, for he took off in a wide arc around them and up the slope to scout the rise.
Quick as a skink, Lura wriggled free and jumped down to run to her uncles.
“Lura!”
She ignored him, too intent on reaching them. Unwilling to chase her by horse, he dismounted and followed on foot. By the time he caught up, Gareth was swinging her around in the way he always did.
Gahers grinned at Agravain. “Thought you could leave without us, did you?
“Not likely, big brother.” Gareth took hold of Lura’s ankles and held her upside down. She shrieked in delight.
“Lura, quiet!” He glared at Gareth. “We’re trying not to attract attention.”
Gareth set her on her feet again. “So you’re traveling with a pet wolf? Very discreet.”
“Practically invisible,” Gahers added.
Evidently, Cai hadn’t seen any others over the rise. He’d come halfway back to them but sat in the road, watching.
“Aren’t you glad to see us?” Gahers, usually all smiles, looked uncertain.
It hurt to ask. “Did mother send you?”
But his brothers took no offense, and shared a laugh that brimmed with secrets.
“She most definitely did not.”
As Cai watched the reunion, relief battled with dread in his gut.
Of the good: Agravain had two more allies for his journey south, and they obviously cared for Lura. They were resourceful enough to have gotten this far and to have tracked their brother. With any hope, they knew how to use a weapon.
Of the less good: He didn’t know them as well, and what he did know was that they idolized Arthur. And unless Agravain was telling them so right now, they didn’t know Cai was a shifter.
This probably signaled the end of fireside kisses.
Or any need at all for him, from Agravain’s vantage point.
His gut twisted on the thought, and that was even more alarming. He had always intended to leave man and daughter when they came within a safe distance of Rhys’s settlement. Agravain would eventually seek a wife to help raise Lura. Sooner than later, most likely. At any rate, he’d have no use for Cai once he reached friends and family.
So it shouldn’t matter now that there wouldn’t be any more desperate caresses. That was all they’d been, really. A release of tension. A balm to ease the uncertainty of trekking through unfamiliar lands, and with winter overtaking them. Agravain had simply misplaced his lust, and Cai wished only to serve him.
Which, now that he thought on it, seemed like a disaster waiting to happen.
If he’d learned anything in his life, it was that disasters were best avoided.
Agravain found him watching and signaled they would continue walking. Cai trotted past them in a wide arc, opening his senses once again. He would drown these silly pangs with scents and sounds of their surroundings, and do the work he’d promised to do.
It was late, and the moon a great silver coin, when Agravain found him on patrol. Cai shifted, then donned Agravain’s cloak when he held it out.
“Did Morgawse send them?”
“No. Well, yes, but not here. She sent them after Jorri when he didn’t return. They towed him back but then left on their own.”
Cai glanced toward the camp. He couldn’t see it for the forest, but they must have been asleep. He couldn’t smell them up and about.
“I trust them, Cai. They’re my brothers.”
“Brotherhood isn’t a sure measure for trust. Ask Arthur.”
“It is for me. For them and Gawain.”
“Will they go south with you then?”
“They will come south,” Agravain said, “with us.”
Cai pulled the cloak tighter around him. “Do they know about me?”
“I haven’t told them, and they haven’t hinted that they do.”
“Are you going to tell them?”
“Do you want me to?”
“Do I have a choice?”
Agravain’s dark brows cinched. “Your hide, your choice.”
Well, that was one way to put it. The clearest, really.
Agravain stepped closer. “Will you sleep by the fire tonight?”
“I should keep watch.”
“We have four men now. The lads are already expecting me to wake them for their turns.”
“They can’t sense what I can.”
“And you won’t be able to travel tomorrow if you don’t sleep.”
“I sleep.”
“Cai.” Agravain gripped his arm. In the moonlight, his eyes looked like burnished bronze. “They are allies. For Lura and me, and for you if you’ll accept them. We’ve doubled our strength in one lucky stroke.” One side of his mouth quirked up. “It took two more of us islanders just to balance you.”
He wouldn’t smile back. He wouldn’t.
Agravain leaned close, and his scent rose up to Cai, warm and spiced with the day’s efforts. “I’ll take the first watch, so you can rest a couple of hours. If you like, I’ll wake you when I wake Gareth. All right?”
Cai was holding his breath against the disorienting comfort of the man’s scent, but he had to exhale eventually. And the thought of the fire was tempting. “All right.”
Agravain’s teeth flashed briefly, as if he’d won an argument.
Cai gave him back his cloak and shifted. Their camp was quiet when they returned, the two brothers snoring, one then the other, as if they were singing a song to each other. It made Agravain chuckle. “They’ve done that since they were boys.”
They weren’t boys anymore. Cai padded over to where Lura slept and curled up on top of the furs. He checked on Agravain one more time, found him sitting against a tree, watching him.
Cai wrapped his tail over his nose and closed his eyes. The sooner he slept, the sooner Agravain would keep watch the way he was supposed to do.
They trekked onward, south, south, always south. Their route brought them down from the highlands into rolling hills whose undulations gradually flattened into broad plains of forest and meadow.
During the day, Cai kept to his wolf form.
So Agravain sought him at night.
“Let me tell them.”
Cai’s throat moved under Agravain’s lips as he swallowed. “No.”
“They’ll accept you.”
“You don’t know that.”
He didn’t, but Lura seemed to know it. When her uncles had appeared, he took her aside to tell her she must keep Cai’s secret.
She had studied Cai, and then his brothers, and said, “They won’t mind.”
“It’s for Cai to reveal, not us. Understand?”
She had agreed, and as far as he could tell, she’d kept her promise. How she wasn’t bursting to tell them, though…
Because he wanted to. He wanted Gareth and Gahers to know this man the way he’d come to know him. And he wanted it to happen before they reached Arthur.
Cai would need all the allies he could get if that reunion went awry.
“Lura misses you.”
Cai’s teeth found his lower lip and bit down, hard. “Arsehole.”
He was, to use guilt against the man. But the farther they trekked, the more hours Cai spent as a wolf, the heavier the worry grew. Agravain pulled his lip free. “I want to see you in sunlight.”
“There is no sun.”
“This isn’t sparring practice. You don’t have to knock aside everything I say.”
Cai lowered his head, pushing his face into Agravain’s shoulder, his neck. “Can’t we just do this?”
Obviously they could. They had been. Cai had given him no other option.
He shoved his fingers into Cai’s hair and claimed his mouth.
The moon shone down on them, but it wasn’t enough.
Some nights later, Gareth woke him to relieve his watch. Only, Gahers was awake as well.
“You should sleep,” Agravain told him.
“We need to tell you something,” Gareth said.
“And show you,” Gahers added.
Agravain checked on Lura. Cai was sleeping at her feet. “We don’t go far.”
His brothers agreed, and they walked a short distance away from the campsite.
“We’re nearly to the Roman wall,” Gareth said.
Agravain looked from one to the other. “How do you know that? Do you have a map you’re keeping from me?”
“We’ve seen it,” Gareth said, just as Gahers said, “We’re shifters.”
Agravain flinched. “You’re what?”
“It’s when a man can transform—”
“I know what the fuck it is.” He glared at them. “Are you having me on?”
They looked at each other. But when they began to strip their clothing, he knew they were telling the truth. Cai always did the same.
It happened quickly, so quickly he lost sight of them. Then a rush of air swept his face and there they were, hovering before him.
A pair of hawks.
A pair he suspected he’d seen before.
They shifted back and began to dress again. “We’ve ranged south on our watches,” Gareth said. “We’re only a few leagues from the wall. Half a day’s walk.”
He held up a hand. “How are you shifters?”
“Mother turned us,” Gareth said.
“She spoke a spell,” Gahers added, answering his next query before he could ask it.
She knew how… Her time with the Myrddin. “When?”
“At summer’s end.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“She swore us to secrecy,” Gareth said. “Said it could put Lura in danger.”
Agravain ground his teeth. Morgawse always went for the throat.
“We know about Lura’s wolf,” Gahers said softly. “That he’s a shifter.”
He should have been surprised, but the pieces were notching together. “You tracked us, by air.”
They nodded. “We told mother we couldn’t find you. Three times she sent us over the water, and three times we lied. She bound us up in the rookery for a time, but eventually we freed ourselves. That’s when we left. We were late catching up to you because you’d found the horse.”
“It found us,” he muttered.
“We saw the wolf shift soon after that.”
“There’s more,” Gareth said. “We aren’t the only party nearing the wall.”
Gods’ blood. “Saxons?”
The relief when they shook their heads and Gahers grinned. “The Bear!”
Gareth took hold of Agravain’s arm. “Gawain’s with him. Arthur’s whole band is. We don’t know why.”
Agravain had a theory.
And an idea. Cai wouldn’t like it, but Cai wasn’t precisely acting in his own best interests right now.
Sometimes a man had to take hold of matters himself.
“Are you two up for a diplomatic mission?”