Page 26 of Wolf Heir
She looked up at him with woeful eyes, her shoulders bent as if she carried the weight of the world on them. “We’re mating.”
“Your mother agreed?” He was so surprised, he just stared at her. Then he smiled. “I’m so glad.”
“Nay. ‘Tis worse than you might imagine. But I love you and I want to be your mate. However, if I tell you what my mother told me, you may feel differently about me.”
“Never.”
“As mated wolves, we canna keep secrets from each other. But I dinna want to hurt you with the truth.”
He couldn’t imagine what she could reveal to him that would hurt him. “I agree about no’ keeping secrets from one another. It could tear us apart.”
Then she turned to face him and took both of his hands in hers. “You canna be angry with my mother.”
He inclined his head. He still wanted to get her mother’s approval.
“You…you are no’ Magnus and Elspeth’s son.”
Coinneach just stared at her, his emotions flipping from disbelief to shock. “Nay. Whatever your mother believes isna true. Tamhas is my twin brother. Is he no’ Magnus and Elspeth’s son?”
“He is. You are no’.” Aisling held onto his hands when he wanted to pull them away.
He wanted to pace, to get rid of some of the frustration building in his blood. “And your mother knows this, how?”
“She was only sixteen and helped with birthing the bairns of the clan. Your mother died while giving birth to you. The midwife at the time ordered my mother to get rid of you.”
He parted his lips to speak, but no words came out. A jumble of thoughts was vying for his voice, but he didn’t know what to say.
Aisling wiped her face with the heel of her palm and finally spoke. Her voice was rougher than he remembered, but so steady it made his chest ache. She told him what her mother had said, every word measured, she explained about the otherwoman giving birth and losing a twin that was swapped out for him.
Coinneach scrubbed his face. “Your mother gave me to Magnus and Elspeth?” Why hadn’t his parents told him about it?
“My mother didna know what to do. She left you where crofters gathered and would find you. Magnus and Elspeth didna know who you belonged to. She must have just birthed Tamhas, and then she raised the two of you as twins.”
He thought back to his earlier years growing up. “I…I couldna change into a wolf like Tamhas did when my mother shifted.” Now, some of it was making sense.
They’d been so worried about it, but at the same time, reassuring. He knew that a mother had to shift for the baby to do so until they were older.
“Aye. I’m so sorry, Coinneach.”
“My birth mother is dead then.” Coinneach regretted that he had never met her, never had a chance to love her as he knew he would have. “What of my da?”
Aisling released his hands, turned away from him, and stared at the waterfall cascading down the rocky slope. “That is the dangerous part.”
Coinneach listened, not daring to interrupt, his hands knotted together so tightly that they turned pale. Then he finally found his voice again. “Your mother is the midwife.”
“No’ back then.”
He knew Aisling didn’t want to tell him the whole truth. “I’m glad you’ve told me what you have. I thought there was something wrong with me that I couldn’t shift when my brother did when I was younger.”
“Nay, ‘tis no’ your fault. When a mother dies before her child is around five, they canna shift. ‘Tis the natural order of things. My mother felt terrible about it. The midwife threatened to kill her if she revealed the truth.”
“I dinna understand why a bairn would be any threat to anyone. Wait, how did your mother recognize I was the baby she had abandoned?” His parents had raised him, and he felt nothing but love for them. Though he planned to work at the castle, he would return home whenever he wasn’t working to see how everyone was faring.
“Your birthmark.”
Then it all made sense. He’d been working in the fields, shirtless, and Blair had seen the wolf’s head on his shoulder. Her eyes had focused on it right before she fainted.
“So when I was born, the midwife had seen it also.”
