Warrior's Moon A Love Story Read Free

was nearly impossible.
    The door of the cottage flew open and his father came in carrying the mother and took her to his parent’s bed.  As they laid her out, Peyton could see she was heavy with an unborn child and his heart pitied them even more.  
    His mother began to work over the child’s mother while his father went straight back out to find the man who was the closest the village of Navarre had to a physician and to bring in her father.  He didn’t say it, but Peyton knew they worried the wolves would be at the body if they didn’t bring it immediately.  He glanced down at the child who still gripped him convulsively while her teeth chattered and wondered how much she understood about what had happened here.  He almost hoped she didn’t understand at all.
    Wondering how to get her warm, he finally had Tristan pull a rocking chair right over to the fire.  He wrapped the child into a blanket, wet clothes and all, and sat in the chair and began to rock and then to sing to her quietly.  Maybe if she went to sleep, he could get her to let go long enough to get her dry.
     
    Peyton woke up in the rocking chair in the dim light of the stormy morning with a stiff neck.  He continued to hold the little girl.  They had finally gotten their wet clothes off, but still, she clung to him even in her sleep.  He looked over at the bed where her mother lay and knew that although the mother lived, the physician didn’t have much hope she would make it and even less hope that her unborn baby would. 
    His mother and the physician hovered nearby and from bits and pieces of their whispered conversation, he began to understand that they believed the woman would have the baby this very day, even if she didn’t wake up.  He didn’t understand any of that and was content to cuddle the little girl closer and go back to sleep here in the chair.  It had been a long, long night.
    ‘Twas the child wiggling in his arms that next woke him.  He yawned and stretched and glanced down at her to see that she was quietly watching him with big, dark eyes.  She was a pretty little thing, even bruised and banged up and he gave her a weary smile to encourage her.  He was still tired to the bone, but if he had been able to help this poor child, ‘twas worth it.
    The baby wasn’t born that day, but it came the next evening and although the mother had finally awakened, she was truly more dead than alive.  The baby was living, but it seemed incredibly sickly and Peyton saw the physician glance at Peyton’s mother and shake his head sadly as he handed her the tiny blue infant.          
    ‘Twas two days before the little girl he’d rescued said anything and then she told them her name was Chantaya and that she was three.  For most of those two days, she had clung to Peyton almost desperately.  His mother had tried to encourage him that she would eventually become more confident and so he had been willing to let the child hang on him if it would help her. 
    Those two long days, both of his parents and the physician as well, struggled to help her mother and her baby sister, but in the night of the second day, the tiny, sickly fair haired baby died a s they had feared all along it would.  From the worried looks of the others, Peyton knew the mother wasn’t far behind it, and he took his role of caring for Chantaya even more seriously while the adults worked.  It looked like she was going to be an orphan and all they knew about her was that her parents had come from the home village of their Lord Rosskeene up in the northern part of the kingdom of Monciere.  At least his own parents would gladly take the child in and care for her as their own, although with her shiny dark hair and eyes, she would definitely not look like one of their own blonde flesh and blood. 
    After the death of the baby, Chantaya either clung to Peyton, or to her partly conscious mother, and did little else, seldom even eating.  But then on the fifth