Alaunus laid his hand against her cheek. “I love you for all the ways you are different from other women, Aveta. I would not want to change you in any way.”
While he was sincere, she did not doubt that his mind would change in the future.
“I will consider it,” she relented, knowing it was futile. In a short time, he would know of the child they conceived and she would have no choice.
“And I will share my intentions with my family,” he replied.
“Perhaps you should wait—” Aveta began.
Once again, a fierce frown darkened his face. “No, Aveta. It is time that my father understood my sincerity when I tell him I will not be ushered into marriage with Rhiannon. I have chosen my own mate. He may not like it at first, but he will learn to accept it or you and I shall leave.”
“Fin,” she whispered, once again using the endearment in an effort to make him see reason.
But he kissed her, his hands roaming over her bare body and lighting the flame that always flared between them.
Aveta abandoned her arguments, already drowning in the sensations he evoked within her.
As the loversembraced in the late afternoon sunlight, a pale figure with black hair watched from the shadows beneath the trees. Her eyes were as dark as her hair and blazed with rage and contempt.
Rhiannon clenched her fists, her nails digging into her palms and nearly drawing blood, as she bit back the fury that whipped through her.
Alaunus, and all the power he would wield, was to be hers. She once believed that his infatuation with the little witch that lived outside the village mattered not. Now, she recognized the fallacy of her logic.
Rhiannon had assumed he would carry out his duty to his family and his village. To her. Perhaps he would have continued to see the witch after he was bound to her. There were some things a wife could overlook as long as her husband remained compliant in other ways.
She had already decided that she would allow him his lust for the outcast. Until today. After hearing his words to Aveta, Rhiannon understood that this was no diversion. His heart was involved.
And Alaunus was a man who followed his heart despite what it might cost him.
Though he would be an excellent and well-liked chieftain when his father died, Alaunus did not have the thirst for power. Which was too bad, really, for his family had been blessed by the gods. Not only with strength, beauty, and intelligence, but with magic. The ambition and will to unite the clans all over the land was hers. Rhiannon knew she could convince him that her vision for the land was best for its people. It would only take a few drops of the potion she had already perfected and regularly used on her father.
It was clear that Rhiannon had misjudged Alaunus…and the witch.
Aveta had become a problem.
As she always had, Rhiannon intended to find a way to unwind the knot Aveta created in her plans. The threads of her future may have been snarled for the moment, but she had no doubt that soon they would be woven into the smooth, rich cloth she intended her life to be.
