The Capture of Highland Desire (The Mac Coinnach Brothers) (22 page)

“Soul mate?
  Truly?”  It came out as no more than a whisper from his choked throat.

“Aye.  And son.  Both waiting for ye to return to them.”

Eian’s eyes flew open and he stared at his uncle, unable to breathe.  He made a choking noise, and Alisdair helpfully pounded him on the back.

“Are ye all right lad?” he asked through a wry smile.  “Did ye no’ ken yer to be a father, then?”

The joy that surged in Eian’s heart was quickly crushed by the certainty that this time, he had mucked things up beyond repair.

He groaned and dropped his head into his hands.  “I left with no word, no’ even a goodbye.  She’s never going to forgive me.  Hell,
I
canna even forgive me.  I just thought… I thought anything so powerful as what I feel for that woman
had
to be magic.  I never really had any reason to doubt her though, did I?  In the end I was so afraid of what was in my own heart… I held onto the first excuse that would explain it all away.”  

              Alisdair nodded slowly.  “Aye, a smart lad ye are, to ken when and how ye’ve done wrong.  Ye have amends to make, but if ye trust her with the truth, the lass will forgive ye.  It’s no’ so easy to get rid of a soul mate.  Perhaps even quite impossible.”  He stood and cleared away the empty cups.  “Ye’re welcome to stay here tonight, Eian lad, and get an early start in the morning.”

             
Eian stood as well.  “No, thank ye uncle, but I want to leave right away.  I dinna think I could stand to wait as long as morning.  I need to get back to her as fast as I can.”

             
Alisdair smiled.  “Aye, I thought as much.  At least let me give ye some food and ale for the journey.  Ye came a long way to find out what ye already kenned.”

***

              When Allia woke on the second morning feeling nauseous, there was no point in denying it, she
knew.
Since she had made love to Eian several times with no thought whatsoever of birth control, she didn’t know why she was surprised to wake up with morning sickness.  Maybe with everything else crazy that had happened in her life recently, getting pregnant on top of it all didn’t even seem like a remote possibility.  As if maybe some sort of divine providence would step in and make sure not
everything
happened at once.  Surely it wasn’t possible to go back in time to a whole different life, find her soul mate, get kidnapped, discover her father was still alive and a follower of dark magic, lose her soul mate,
and
get pregnant on top of it all.  Silly, yes, but that was where her head had been at.  And true, she had been just too enchanted with Eian to think of little things like
consequences
. 

She slid her hand to her stomach and smiled
sadly to herself, fighting back a fresh wave of tears.  Eian would have been thrilled… if things had been different.  He had already told her he couldn’t wait to be a father.  And he would be a very good one too.  Sure he was a little wild, but he was also kind and patient... gentle.  Well, except when he was killing people to save her life.  Or when he was making love to her and lost control of his passion.  Tears filled her eyes.  And he hadn’t trusted her.  They hadn’t had enough time for that, they had only started building what could have been so perfect.  Now she didn’t even know where he was.  He had left her and his own unborn child just because of who her father was… a man she had never even met, but hated down to her very bones.  Because of him, her mother was dead, she had spent most of her life in exile, and now the man she loved was gone.  She hoped her uncle was right, that he’d come back once he calmed down a little, but no knowing was driving her crazy.

             
Leon had sat her down a few days ago, when she had finally emerged from her room, and tried to explain.  Her mother had been young and beautiful, and naïve.  They had all been naïve.  No one suspected that such a strong man could give himself over to the darkness so easily and so completely, but Mored was just born with a dark soul.  By the time anyone had realized the danger, Allia’s mother was dead and Mored was gone, off to build upon his dark skills and recruit new followers. 

The man who had fathered her was part of the very evil that the Mac Coinnachs were sworn to fight against.  In this world of magic and manipulation, of course he would be suspicious… what better way to infiltrate the Mac Coinnach stronghold than through a marriage?  She would have jumped to the same conclusion herself… but
understanding why Eian had reacted so viscerally to finding out her own father was his worst enemy really did nothing to dull the pain that sliced through her like a knife every time she thought of him.  Hadn’t she known from the very beginning that Eian Mac Coinnach was going to break her heart?  Her instincts had been practically screaming: bad-boy, trouble, stay away!  And yet… for all that, she couldn’t bring herself to wish back her time with him, or the new life she carried within her.  Even though he had torn her apart, she still craved his touch as much as her next breath.  How would she live without him now? 

Chapter 12

Allia
paced her room and rallied herself to make a decision,
any decision
.  Here she was, right where she’d been only weeks ago, except now she was going to have a baby.  Oh yeah, and her heart was broken, too.  No, broken wasn’t quite the right word.  More like turned inside out and ripped to shreds.  God what she wouldn’t give to have Eian here right now, holding her, making everything all right again.  She missed him so deeply that sometimes she felt like she could barely breathe with the hollow ache in her chest.  But she had to be strong, for her child.

In the back of her mind, she was still hopeful that Eian would come back,
eventually, but she suspected it would only break her heart more to see him look at her with disgust.  Especially if she couldn’t make him believe she never knew who her father was.  She could stay here; Leon would take care of her.  Far from the gruff and heartless man she had thought he was at first, she saw now that Leon had only ever had her best interests at heart.  Or… she could go back to the 21
st
century and raise her baby alone, or maybe someday find a man that she could love even a little bit.  A companion.  Either way, she was keeping the child that she already loved and cherished with all of her heart.  In truth, having Eian’s child with her was the only thing keeping her from completely losing her mind.  In her dreams at night, she kept seeing a cherubic little boy, with his father’s deep brown eyes and unruly mop of wavy brown hair.  The love that welled up inside of her was just enough to keep her going.

Eventually, s
he made her choice.  She would go back, or forward as the case may be.  The distance was bound to make everything clearer, and she would have time to think.  She had given it a week, and he hadn’t come back.  That most likely meant he wasn’t going too, and she just couldn’t stand the uncertainty, or the looking out windows every few minutes and hoping.  It would drive her mad, eventually.  Before she could change her mind, she headed for the stone circle, not even bothering to bring anything with her.  Though a horse would have been faster, she walked the couple of miles, surprised when she arrived there so quickly.  She strode right up to the stones, running her hand along the largest one as she passed it.  The granite was hard and smooth, as if people had been touching it like so for thousands of years.  Perhaps they had.  She looked around once more as if to say goodbye to a life she wished she could have lived, then took a deep breath.  Now or never. 

The voice was distant at first, so she wasn’t sure she had heard anything at all, but when she turned to look, she saw a figure running toward her, waving his arms and calling to her.

“Wait!  Waaaiiiittt!”

She watched him approach for a moment before she realized it was the very same man who had been calling out to her the last time she was here, only then it had been too late for her to
stay.  He was wearing the robes of a sorcerer, and he seemed very keen to stop her.  Curious, she bided her time and let him get closer.  He ran up to her, then bent over with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath.

“Dinna…..go….wait…”

She gave him a few more seconds to recover from his head-long sprint.  “Who are you?”

With one last gasp, h
e finally stood up, brushing some dust from his robes before he addressed her.  “I am Dirc, sorcerer to the Mac Coinnachs.  And ye, lass, shouldna go through that portal.”

She raised an eyebrow. 
“Why not?  I have nothing left here now.  I… I need time to heal.”

“Aye lass, ye do
, on that we agree.  But if ye leave now I’ll have just wasted a bluidy year of my life trying to make things right for those three stubborn arse brothers so the bluidy prophecy can happen and we can
finally
all live in peace!  Ye dinna ken how difficult this had been, especially with the last one… though I always kenned that lad was trouble.  It actually went better than I thought it would… until now.”  He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, then shook his head as if he had dismissed a thought. 

“You mean Eian?” she asked, though she knew
by now that’s exactly who the old man was talking about.

“Oh aye, the very same.
”

She gave an exasperated sigh and threw up her hands. 
“Don’t you know he left me?  He just… left!  I don’t even know where he went.  He didn’t even give me a chance to explain…”

Dirc shook his head
impatiently.  “Aye, the lad’s an imbicile, believe me, I ken that… but tell me lass, do ye no’ still yearn to have him with ye, feel like ye’ll die without him?”

She looked at the ground, but couldn’t deny the truth that burned in her like a thousand flames.  “Yes.”

“Because he’s yer soul mate, lass, yer other half!  Ye canna leave, the both of ye will be miserable.  It will be no life for ye at all, both of ye longing for the other, ye’ll go mad with it.”

“But Eian…”

He rolled his eyes.  “Aye lass, the lad has tried my patience too
.  For years
.  He was wrong, of course, to walk away from ye with no word, but I can tell ye this:  whatever ye’re suffering right now, he’s feeling it ten-fold.  He’ll be back to make things right.  He can do nothing less.”

Allia hesitated when Dirc offered her his hand, but then she took it, and he pulled her out of the circle and back towards the road to Lochain.  She took a deep, shuddering breath, but for the first time since that awful morning, she felt… hopeful.
  Maybe, just maybe…

She didn’t know if Leon had noticed her returning to the castle with Dirc, or had even noticed she was gone for the last several hours.  Since she had hand-fasted with Eian, he had called off her guards, and had since either forgotten to reinstate them, or hadn’t bothered.  After all, she was more or less ruined in the eyes of society at this point.

Needing some fresh air and space to think
before she saw Leon again, Allia wandered off into the hills, where she had always felt some measure of peace.  As she walked through the heather, she realized that she was unconsciously making her way to the cave where she and Eian had first met.  Her heart clenched at the memory.  How terrified she had been, dropped so suddenly into a new life that she didn’t understand.  And how cavalier, believing she could hold the man at a safe distance when just the sight of him had made her want to dive head first into the gorgeous magic and passion that was Eian Mac Coinnach and lose herself there forever.  Two huge tears escaped and rolled down her cheeks as she came to the entrance of the cave.  This time, she didn’t hesitate to go in.  Just within the opening, she found a torch and flint that Eian must have left there.  Maybe he had planned to come back, or maybe he just hadn’t needed them anymore.  Blinking back the tears, Allia struck the flint until she managed to light the torch, then started into the cave.  Maybe this time she would even swim in the pool.

***

Eian was almost there.  He had walked for days, and had run whenever the treacherous landscape allowed it.  He had slept little, eaten even less, and fretted constantly that he would be too late, or that he had lost Allia for good.  He kept going with single-minded purpose, knowing in his heart that he would rather die than live a life without her.  She was his mate.  Without her, he would never be whole again.  Nothing else mattered until he had her back safe in his arms.

Finally,
as he reached the top of the hill he had been climbing, he could see the castle towers of Lochain rising up like beacons in the little valley below.  He paused and took a deep breath, hoping to hell and back that Allia was still there, and knowing that even if she was, his fate with her was still uncertain.  She had every right to be angry, but if she didn’t take him back, he was going to spend the rest of his life wanting her with every bone of his body,
and aye, begging
. 

Just a
s he was about to start down the hill towards the castle, he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye.  Farther down the slope, a figure was ducking into what had to be the entrance to that cave where he had found the charm.  He did not even have to see the feminine curves and length of silky golden hair to know who it was.  Allia.  When his stomach flipped and his heart nearly burst with joy just at the sight of her, he knew for certain Alistair had been right: no magic spell, no matter how strong, could have this amount of power over him.  It could only be his heart’s own desire.