Unwanted (23 page)

“
’Tis
Yuletide this morning.”
 
He stretched onto the bed beside her and stroked her cool cheek.
 
“
’Tis
a time for family and gifts and miracles.
 
I know that neither of us has had much in the way of any of that.”
 
He
laced
the fingers of a hand through hers.
 
“Until now.”

He
swallowed,
lifting a desperate prayer to any and every deity he’d ever heard of.

“You are my miracle, woman.”
 
He pressed a gentle kiss to her lips.
 
“I love you.
 
You own me body, heart, and soul.
 
Even my Berserker.
 
You owned him from the beginning.”
 

A soft knock on the door interrupted his plea, and Evelyn’s belly preceded her into the room.
 
She made her slow way to the bedside and looked down at
Rhona’s
pale face with a soft smile.
 

At the doorway, Roderick and Connor stood in silence, looking to Evelyn as though she held the answers to the mysteries of the heavens.
 

Lindsay wriggled in between the two brothers and stood in front of them, Iain tucked into her arms.

“I have ‘the sight,’ you know,” Evelyn murmured.
 
“But since I’ve been expecting, it’s been dormant.”

Finn didn’t care.
 
He wanted to be left alone with his mate.
 
But he dared not disrespect the sweet woman in front of Roderick.

“She can hear you,” Evelyn prodded.
 
“This whole time she’s been fighting to return to you, to tell you something.
 
And now…”

Finn’s heart clenched.
 
“I would give anything to hear her voice again.”
 

“Would you?” A whisper rasped from the bed.

Finn froze, half expecting his mind to have conjured her beloved voice out of sheer force of will.
 

“Because you still owe me two gold coins.”

Her clear, brindled gaze met his when Finn pulled back in shock and she lifted her beautiful mouth in a weak smile.
 

Evelyn touched
Rhona’s
arm very softy, and her mouth split into a wide, sunny grin.
 
“That’s what I came to tell you.
 
I knew this morning that she would be back.
 
That she was going to live.
 
Also, that I’m having twins.
 
A boy and a girl.”

A choking sound came from the doorway and Connor reached over to soundly pound Roderick on the back.
 
 
 

Lindsay rushed to Evelyn and wrapped her in a warm and careful one-armed hug before reaching out laying Iain into
Rhona’s
arms.
 
“This is just too much wonderful news for one day,” she exclaimed, her voice full of happiness and thick with emotion.

Finn hardly paid notice to any of it.
 
He just stared down into
Rhona’s
open eyes, his breath captured in the moment.
 

“Say something else,” he demanded on a painful exhale.
 
“I want to hear your voice.”
 

“I love you,
Fionngall
MacLauchlan.”
 
And he knew she did because her luminous face shone with it.
 
“And you’re right.
 
It would be disaster if you tried to raise poor Iain on your own.”
 
She looked down at the small, wispy-haired head with fond love.

“Aye.”
 
Finn laughed, not at her words but because of the foreign emotion sweeping through his body.
 

“You’ll never have to,” she promised, her soft, elegant hand cupping his cheek.
 
“Because I’ll always be at your side.”

“We’ve all known loneliness and fear and desperation,” Lindsay gave Evelyn’s shoulders a fond squeeze and reached her hand out to Connor and Roderick, who joined them at the bedside.
 
“But now we have our growing family to give us security and hope for a long and prosperous future.”

Family.

Finn looked down at Iain and now understood that family didn’t necessarily mean blood ties and duty.
 
Its meaning was tied to this moment.
 
Where love and support, hope and kinship flowed between people who pledged their devotion, nay, their very lives to each other.
 
And did so because they
wanted
to.
 

Joy.
 
Exaltation.
 
Love.
 
Finn was certain now that no word existed for this emotion.
 
But it flowed between them along with the certainty that this would be the first winter holiday of many that they’d have together, with the family that now surrounded them, and the clan they now called their own.
 

Kerrigan Byrne's stories span the spectrum of romantic fiction from historical, to paranormal, to romantic suspense.
 
She can always promise her reader one thing:
 
memorable and sexy Celtic heroes who are guaranteed to heat your blood before they steal your heart.
 

Kerrigan lives at the base of the Rocky Mountains with her husband and his three lovely daughters.
 
She's worked in Law Enforcement for the better part of a decade and moonlights as Tribal Belly Dance instructor.
 

*Kerrigan donates a percentage of all book sales to
 
www.womenforwomen.com
 
to help the innocent survivors of global war and oppression.
 

To find other books by Kerrigan, visit her website at:
 
 
www.kerriganbyrne.com