“I couldnae say, lass, other than she sounds like someone you can trust.”
However, he admitted he was familiar with the MacLeods and that they were on the right side of history. A clan to be trusted.
I rarely saw him after that initial meeting, but my sisters had seen him here and there, and they all had differing opinions of him. Some liked him, while others distrusted him because he was so cryptic and hard to get in touch with. That made sense to me, given he claimed to be from the same era as the men from our letters.
“What did the place look like in your dream?” Hazel wondered, pulling me from my thoughts. “Where was the tree you carved this symbol on?”
Throwing caution to the wind, I ran the tip of my forefinger along the spiral from the outside in, caught by the warmth that spread through me, and whispered, “It was close.”
Hazel responded, but it sounded like she spoke from down a long tunnel because her words echoed. “But wherewasthe tree? What did you see around you?”
My breath caught when my finger reached the center. The air suddenly seemed different. Sparser. Everything blurred, and my ears popped like the pressure changed before everything sharpened again, and I saw what lay beyond the tree.
“I see a castle on a cliff,” I gasped. Cold wind gusted against my face, and the scent of pine and sea salt filled my nostrils. “I see…”
That’s all I got out before the castle swirled away like the carving beneath my fingers, and everything went very, very dark.
CHAPTER TWO
Scottish Highlands
1375
–Broderick–
THE LAST THING I expected when I returned home from fighting hundreds of years in my past on behalf of my Irish friends and their fated mates was to find my cousin, Lucas, in charge of our clan when I had left that task to my brother, Tavish. Lucas’s strengths lie in fighting and daring to do things most would not rather than leading. Too impulsive by far, he often acted without thinking and made rash decisions before considering the consequences.
Something made more than clear when I entered my castle’s courtyard to find him saddling up alongside several other warriors, determined to confront the Sutherlands who were reportedly causing trouble at our northern border. I was grateful he wasn’t already gone and hadn’t shifted to his dragon along with the others. They were forbidden to shift without my orders, but Godknows how easily they might have been swayed by my cousin because he had a way with words.
He could convince anyone to do just about anything, no matter how foolish.
I had not been gone all that long, but it would have been nice to return to find things as I had left them. Even so, I greeted everyone with a warm smile before turning a grim look my cousin’s way. “Who saw the Sutherlands, and again, why is Tavish not here leading our people as I’d asked him to?”
“He and Sloan were called away by the king.”
Despite the look I shot him, Lucas hesitated on his horse as if he meant to ride off anyway, but he heeded my warning, sighed, and swung down. “It seems there is more trouble at the Sassenach border than usual.” He clasped my arm, hand to elbow in greeting, and nodded. “’Tis good to see ye again, m’laird.”
“And ye.” Although I disliked overriding my cousin’s orders in front of others, he gave me no choice. I needed more details before confronting the Sutherlands, of all people. We had found a tepid yet strained peace between our clans several years ago, so I knew better than to act rashly until I had more information. I gestured at the men Lucas nearly rode out with. “Dismount, but stand at the ready.”
“Aye, m’laird,” they replied dutifully as I started up the stairs to my castle’s front door and spoke telepathically to Lucas in the way of our inner dragons.“Come, cousin. Now.”
He undoubtedly caught the stern tone of my internal voice and knew I wasn’t pleased. His actions could have started a clan war we didn’t need, and I said as much the moment we were alone in my war chamber. Those in the future would more than likely call it a study, but we MacLeods used it to discuss strategy and battles. Also, things like how to keep our clan’s greatest secret from the rest ofScotland, outside of a select few, including our allied clans, the Hamiltons, and MacLomains.
After all, dragons like us and the Sutherlands were nothing but a myth, and for history's sake, we needed to keep it that way.
“Ye should have sent my second-in-command, and ye bloody well know it, cousin,” I said the moment the door shut behind us. Scowling at him, I poured myself a much-needed whisky. “Yer place was here, seeing after our people lest there was a raid on the castle. ‘Tis the role of a laird when all but one of us are gone.”
Byall, I meant me, my brother, and two cousins, including Lucas. Outside of my parents, who spent more time in their lair than at the castle these days, we were the most powerful MacLeod dragons, so there was a chain of command.
“I wouldnae have been gone long, and seeing me would have frightened the bloody bastards off for good,” Lucas countered, pouring himself whisky, too. “One look and—”
“What?” I narrowed my eyes at him. “Ye would have flared your dragon eyes at them and risked anyone not of dragon blood finally seeing we were bloodthirsty beasts? Seeing we were the monsters they always thought us to be?” Cocking my head, I arched my brows. “And how do ye think that would have gone?”
Before he could respond with a denial or some other excuse for his rash behavior, I gazed out the window at the vibrant swaths of autumn colors rioting across the lush forests of my homeland and continued speaking. “Tell me what ye heard about the Sutherlands.”
Though glad to be home, I remained crestfallen over what I’d left behind in Ireland. It had taken a great deal of effort to keep my emotions hidden when I departed, leaving the woman I loved with her fated mate.
“Go on, then,” I prompted, downing my whisky and trying to focus on anything but her when Lucas hesitated, clearly weighing his words to justify what he had been about to do.
