“Your what?”
He supposed the two-word question was better than the one word she’d kept uttering. “My fated mate. The other half of my soul. Together, we make a complete being.” He downed his whisky and set his cup aside. “Can ye not feel the pull, my lady? The yearning to be whole again?”
“I feel…confusion.” She stretched to slide her goblet onto the table next to his.
“More?”
“No, thank you.” She hugged herself, shivering as if cold again. “I’ve had enough.” She squinted at him as if seeing him for the very first time. “I’m dead, aren’t I?”
“Ye are not dead. I promise.”
“Then, I’ve gone off the deep end, and they’re keeping me over-medicated.” The blanket sagged off one of her shoulders, revealing the tempting creaminess of her skin.
Magnus swallowed hard and wet his lips. How could she not feel it? “I dinna ken what it means to go off the deep end. The waters brought ye through the portal. The sacred waters and the storm. Both are powerful forces controlled by the Veil.”
She scrubbed her face with both hands, then rocked back and forth like a grieving widow keening her sorrows to the winds. “Nothing you’re saying can possibly be true.” She dropped her hands to her lap and leveled another hard glare on him. “I need to get back to Seven Cairns. Now. Tonight. Not tomorrow.”
This was not going well at all. Desperation raked its claws across each of his worn and ragged nerves. “Grant me a fortnight to prove that all I say is true. A fortnight for ye to believe in the mate bond that ye must surely feel but are too frightened, too confused to acknowledge at the current time.” She had to stay. Had to give the realm a fighting chance. Not only did his heart and soul depend on her acceptance, but the lives of all who had fallen ill with the sickness depended on her, too. She was the one of the prophecy. He felt it more surely with each passing moment. He had sensed the powerful magic in the melody she’d hummed, even though her voice was hoarse and broken. He hadn’t planned to tell her everything so quickly, but the need for her had caused the words to freely tumble from him. “I beg ye, Lady Lyla. Grant the Thirteenth Realm—and myself—fourteen days of yer presence. Please.”
“No—and I am notLadyLyla. I am Lyla Ibrams.” She shook her head slowly at first, then jerked it harder. “I don’t knowwhat’s going on with you, but I’m done. Take me back to Seven Cairns. Now. This very minute.”
While she possessed the power of choice, he possessed the power ofchance. His soul deserved the right to be made whole again, even if it meant keeping her here against her will for a wee bit of time. As the Grand Master of the Thirteenth Realm’s Defenders of the Highland Veil, he knew he was well within his rights to keep her here for fourteen days. By no means could he or would he ever force himself or the binding upon her, or keep her here forever, but the sacred tenets of the Veil granted him fourteen days to convince her that this was where she belonged. Few knew of this particular tenet, but he did—and fully intended to make use of it.
He rose from his chair and sadly looked down at her. “No, my lady. Fourteen days and fourteen nights are mine by right of the mate bond. Here ye are, and here ye shall stay until that time has passed. If, at the end of that time, ye still wish to return to yer reality, then I shall return ye to the portal at Seven Cairns.” Unable to resist, he caught her up by the shoulders and covered her mouth with his, pouring every raging bit of yearning and loneliness into the kiss, willing her to feel all that he felt, willing her to open her mind and heart to all the possibilities, and last but not least, willing her to give them a chance. A determination to make her see settled in his heart and rooted in his soul. He would not lose this woman. Too much depended on their bond, and the longer he remained in her presence, the more he knew beyond any doubt that life would be unbearable without her.
Chapter
Seven
Lyla fought the incredibly powerful urge to toss all logic out the window and lose herself in the most perfect kiss she had ever experienced. Breathtakingly hot and groaningly tender. The completeness of this strange man’s mouth on hers. The impossibly familiar feel of his hard, muscular chest beneath her hands. All of it made her blood roar so loudly in her ears that she just knew she was about to pass out again. Fighting to make it all make sense, she pushed him away and broke the sacred connection, immediately missing his heat as soon as he honored her wishes and stepped back.
Heart pounding, she gasped for air. His kiss had drowned her, then hoisted her to dizzying heights, and breathed new life into her. She shoved back deeper into the chair, curling into a knot of confusion. “Who are you?” she choked out, her already weak voice threatening to fail her completely. “Who are you—really?”
His liquid silver eyes took on the same golden, otherworldly glow of earlier. She swallowed hard, unable to decide if he was an angel or a demon. Or maybe an eerie mix of both. But his eyes revealed something she recognized: loneliness and yearning. She’d seen those feelings in her own reflection toomany times before. She’d know them anywhere. “Who are you?” she whispered again.
“I told ye who I was, lass.” His smile was sad. Resigned. “Magnus MacRaith.” He nodded at her. “Yer fated mate.”
Fate mates.Seriously? “That’s the stuff of fairy tales and romance novels.” Bitterness filled her tone, and she hated how she sounded.
“Is it now?” He widened his stance and folded his powerful arms across that broad chest of his that had felt oh so good beneath her hands. “Have ye ever experienced a kiss such as the one we just enjoyed?” He arched a silvery-white brow that matched his thick mane of hair, which he wore pulled back from his handsomeness and secured with a black leather strap, like some sort of sexy medieval warrior. Leaning toward her, he lowered his voice.“And do us both the courtesy of being honest when ye answer me, aye? What did ye feel when we kissed?”
She preferred not to step into that particular trap at the moment. She needed time to think about it. “What about all those other things you said? A Highland Veil that keeps different realities separated and all that strangeness? Do you really expect me to believe all that? Where is this place, this Thirteenth Realm? Really?”
“So ye dinna believe in magic, then?”
Answering her with another question wasn’t fair. It didn’t matter that she’d done the same to him. That was different. She had a right to pick and choose what she answered. She was the one at a disadvantage here—especially since he’d as much as said that he intended to hold her prisoner for two weeks. “Magic is an illusion. A perception. A con.”
Was he going to pull a rabbit out of a hat now? She tried not to think about how quickly he’d suddenly become partially dressed when she’d requested it, and the way the fire had burned brighter when he’d aimed a word she didn’t understand at it. Shehad to have imagined all that oddness because she’d just come out of that weird faint that had overpowered her. “Real is real,” she said. “Humanity’s wishful dreaming about controlling the world around them is what created the fairy tales about magic.”
With the smooth, predatory grace of a mighty jungle cat, he retrieved his goblet from the table beside her and sauntered over to the cabinet covered in exquisite cut-glass decanters. As he poured himself another drink, he slowly shook his head. “Yer reality must be a sad place indeed. Do all there feel as ye do about using the power of the energies?”
“Using the power of the energies?” She thought she knew what he meant, but now more than ever, she needed to be certain. Her returning to where she belonged depended on it. “Is that your definition of magic?”
“Aye.”
“Most of us believe in science. Reality. That which we can see or feel. Many of us would love to believe in magic, but we know better.” She wasn’t lumping the earth religions into that classification. Honoring and respecting nature were different things entirely. Her stomach chose that inopportune moment to interrupt the conversation with an embarrassingly loud growl.
The nearly seven foot tall, maybe even taller, enigma who stood before her, this man who claimed to be her so-called fated mate, smiled as if he’d just overheard the juiciest secret. Once again, he took a knee in front of her. Did he know that every time he made that chivalrous move, her heart fluttered a little bit harder? He held out his hand, placing it within inches of her mouth. “The best from my kitchens, my lady.”
