Fortunately, the tide was out again because he was certain she would have swum otherwise. Knew she would have risked her life in the turbulent water to get where she was determined to go. Instead, she flew over the rocks even more sure-footed than yesterday and headed up the way they had traveled before, navigating well on the newly fallen snow.
“Talk to me, lass,” he pleaded, determined not to get too upset with her when he knew she was just as overwhelmed ashim. Just as traumatized. “Tell me what happened. What you know?”
“I know that he lived.” She slowed as she neared the top. “I know he had a life.” Her voice grew softer when she finally stopped and stared into the woods with tears in her eyes. “Not the life I would’ve hoped for him, but a life regardless.” Her teary gaze met his. “With you.”
He followed her gaze when it drifted back to the trees. To her,their, great white wolf who stood a ways out. Tréan, who was there one moment, then gone the next. Liam narrowed his eyes and shook his head in disbelief when a man with white blonde hair reappeared in his place.
It felt like the ground dropped out from beneath him when they locked eyes. When he realized he had known those eyes before. Such a pale shade of brown they almost appeared gold. Unusual eyes that had caught the attention of many a lass in his time.
“His time,” Liam whispered hoarsely. “My time in another era.”
Shannon hadn’t killed her wolf in their last life like they thought butsavedhim the only way she could.
Liam became so overwhelmed by emotion, bymemories, he could barely see straight. Think straight. He had no idea he was moving until he was nearly to him. Nearly to the man who moments before had been a wolf but not anymore. Now he was as tall as Liam. While younger, just as broad-shouldered. Just as strong.
“Tréan?” he managed, wondering how he had ever forgotten the name. “Son?”
“Ta.” The man nodded, just as emotional. “’Tis me,da.”
Again, Liam didn’t know he was moving until he pulled his son into an embrace and held on tight. Tréan embraced him back just as tightly before Liam felt rather than sawhis hesitation. His need to turn his attention elsewhere. With good reason, too, considering the tears rolling down Shannon’s cheeks when they looked her way.
“I...you...” She shook her head, eyes wide on Tréan. “I...what did Ido?” She kept shaking her head as she drifted closer. “What did I....”
“Ye did all ye could.” Tréan closed the distance and embraced her. “Ye saved me both in this life and the last.”
Liam sensed Shannon’s confusion mixed with relief as she tentatively hugged him back. As she tried to acclimate to the baby she had so recently held in a dream changing from her wolf into her full-grown son.
“This is so strange,” she said sniffling. “Really crazy.” She pulled back but didn’t let him go as she blinked at him through tears. “Howoldare you?” She shook her head and glanced from Liam to him. “There can’t even be a decade between you and your...father.”
“I aged in proportion to my other half.” He looked at her with so much adoration that Liam knew he would defend her every bit as much as his wolf had. “As ye know, my wolf is three, so I am twenty-one winters in human terms.”
“In human terms.” She looked him over. “Does that mean...”
“Ta, it means I am human now...partly, anyway. Just as I was in my last life.”
“Because I cursed you,” she whispered, her voice breaking off.Thiswas what Riona had been referring to when she said Shannon needed Liam’s forgiveness for something. What could be worse than cursing their son? “I—”
“Saved me,” Tréan corrected gently. Carefully when he realized how emotional she had grown. Yet it seemed there was something he had longed to say. “Ye made it possible for me to have a life with da then to follow ye both here, ma. To finally be together as we could not be before.”
“I need to sit,” she squeaked, obviously ready to swoon. “Now.”
Tréan was faster than Liam and scooped her up before she hit the ground. Clearly knowing his way around the area, he strode for one of several small huts nearby. It wasn’t much but offered a small fire pit and shelter from the wind-driven snow.
“Here.” Tréan handed her over to Liam and stood at the entrance keeping an eye out. “Waking in yer arms will feel more natural.”
“I’m not sure anything about this feels quite natural,” she murmured, stirring awake when Liam sat in front of a newborn fire with her on his lap. Her gaze homed in on Tréan as though she still had trouble believing he was real. That he was here.
“It’s obvious you know what happened in our last life,” she finally said after Liam made sure she took a few solid swigs from a skin of whiskey he manifested, be damned the hour. Anything to calm her nerves. “So I don’t understand how you can be so forgiving.”
“Can ye not?” Tréan kept an eye to the woodland as he spoke to her, bringing those bittersweet times back. The awful heartache Liam felt after he had proposed to Shannon when she'd told him she was pregnant then vanished.
“Ye discovered shortly after ye told da ye were pregnant that a certain druid sister had overheard ye,” Tréan went on. “That she was set to tell yer coven ye were with child.” Tréan’s jaw tightened. “So ye had no choice but to take Adlin up on his offer to hide ye in that cave until I was born. In a cave no longer in yer era.”
Liam closed his eyes to the truth of it. To memories too hard to bear. He hadn’t known who Adlin was in that life. Would never have trusted her and his child with a stranger.
“I did, though,” she murmured, following his thoughts. “He was all I had.” Her gaze lingered on Tréan. “All you had onceSiobhán found out because she was, as we suspected, a fellow Unnamed One.”
“Had she had a chance to tell your coven,” Liam said softly, as if waking from a dream, “they would have sacrificed both you and our child.”
