Midnight's Kiss
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For Melissa Bradley, the best assistant!
Extraordinary planner, mutual shoe-lover,
and treasured friend.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As always, my thanks go first to my fabulous editor, Monique Patterson. I’m fortunate to be working with such a wonderful person, and talented editor. Thank you for suggestions, insight, and spot-on ideas.
To everyone at St. Martin’s who helped get this book ready, thank you.
To my amazing agent, Louise Fury. So glad to be on Team Fury!
A special note to my shout-worthy street team, Donna’s Dolls, who circle the globe. Y’all rock!
To my kiddos, parents, and brother—A writer makes sacrifices, but so does the writer’s family. Thanks for picking up the slack, knowing when I’m in deadline that I might not remember conversations, and for not minding having to repeat things.
To my amazing hubby, Steve. I couldn’t do any of this without your support and encouragement. You have always known how to make me feel like the most special person in the world. The very first time I met you, you made me laugh. Eighteen years later and you’re still making me laugh. I love you, Sexy!
CONTENTS
St. Martin’s Paperbacks Titles by Donna Grant
CHAPTER
ONE
MacLeod Castle
May 2013
Things had changed.
And not exactly for the better.
Arran MacCarrick stared at the chessboard with unseeing eyes. He was 646 years old, and today he felt every day of those years.
A great sadness weighed upon him. Not for himself, but for his friends. It warred with the restlessness that urged him to do
something
.
The need for battle, to work his body into a frenzy as he unleashed the powers within him from his god, Memphaea. The yearning for something to do kept him awake at night—and on edge through the day. He searched for anything—and everything—to occupy his thoughts and body. If only for a little while.
Camdyn said he needed a woman. Arran inwardly snorted. The last thing he needed was a woman to get in his way and make him fret about her mortality.
A woman.
“No’ likely,” he murmured.
An unwanted memory of his sister filled his thoughts. She had been a bright, shining star in his world. A free spirit who saw only good. Her future was supposed to have been filled with love and laughter.
Instead, Deirdre had found him. Shelley, his sweet sister, had tried to help him. In return, she was torn to pieces before his very eyes.
He hadn’t been a Warrior then, hadn’t had the power to stop the wyrran. But even now with that power running just beneath his skin, he knew he was better off without any hindrances.
Are you really?
He glanced up from the chessboard to see Lucan and Cara walk hand in hand up the stairs, whispered words of lovers passing between them.
Unbidden, the lonely nights assaulted him. While the others laughed and talked with their women, he sat in his room alone, staring at the telly without paying attention to whatever movie someone had given him to watch.
Arran might know he was better alone, but he would admit—only to himself—that he envied what the other Warriors had with their women. The smiles, the touches, the secret looks.
It was those women, formidable Druids all, who had helped shape every Warrior in the castle. The Druids were strong, independent, and fierce. Perfect matches for the immortal Highland Warriors they had claimed.
Arran and the others of MacLeod Castle had killed two of the most evil Druids who had ever walked the earth, and they lost friends in the process.
It had taken centuries to end the reign of evil. After defeating such threats, happiness should have followed.
But Fate wasn’t always so kind.
Arran remembered his partner as he looked up to find Aiden staring at him impatiently. Arran was moving his knight on the chessboard when Larena burst into the great hall, followed closely by her husband, Fallon MacLeod.
“Check,” Arran said as he folded his arms on the table and tried to pretend he didn’t hear Fallon and Larena as their year-old argument started up again.
Aiden MacLeod snorted and drummed his fingers on the table. “Uncle Fallon and Aunt Larena are at it again,” he mumbled, his fingers alighting on top of his queen.
Arran looked at Aiden, one of only two children brought into a world of magic and Druids. Aiden was the son of Marcail, a powerful Druid, and Quinn MacLeod, one of three brothers both Highlanders and Warriors.
With a nudge of his foot against Aiden’s, Arran said, “Make your move, lad.”
Aiden’s green eyes flashed confidently. “I bested you last week. I can do it again.”
“Doona get cocky,” Arran warned, though a smile had pulled up the corners of his lips. They teased Aiden as being just a lad, but he’d come into manhood just as stubborn, intelligent, and headstrong as any of the MacLeods.
“I’m tired of waiting!” Larena shouted. “It’s past time, Fallon, and you know it. We’ve sacrificed centuries! I want a family. I want to hold my own children.”
Arran could no longer ignore the couple. He found his gaze shifting to his leader and Larena. All the men at the castle, save for Aiden, were Warriors—Highlanders with primeval gods locked inside them.
They had enhanced senses, incredible speed and strength, as well as individual powers given to them by their god. Each of them deadly in their own right.
Larena was the only female Warrior in a castle full of women who were Druids. The Druids often said the stones of the castle seemed to hum with magic. It was no wonder, Arran thought, with Warriors and Druids occupying the massive structure for over seven centuries.
“Larena,” Fallon said wearily as he wiped a hand down his face.
“No,” she interrupted him, anger making her voice quiver. “Don’t try to tell me it’ll be all right, because it isn’t all right.”
Larena walked away, leaving Fallon staring after her. Arran glanced to his left to a room off to the side that had been converted into a media room. There Hayden, Galen, and Logan watched Fallon silently, waiting to see what would happen.
The people who lived at MacLeod Castle were family. They weren’t bound by blood—they were bound by fate. Arran took a deep breath and thought how each of them had walked a path that had converged at the castle.
Even during their darkest hours, the love between them, the laughter, and the determination held the group together. For the past year, tensions had grown. And patience was wearing thin.
All because of a spell that could bind the gods inside them once more.
Aiden silently rose from the table and strode from the great hall as Fallon’s shoulders slumped. Arran knew his leader needed a large glass of scotch, but Fallon had turned away from any kind of liquor long ago.
Instead, Arran grabbed Aiden’s untouched mug of coffee and walked to Fallon. Fallon took it without a word, his face lined with concern and dread.
“You know she’s no’ going anywhere,” Arran said.
Fallon and Larena’s love was too strong for anything to tear it apart.
Fallon sipped the coffee. “She’s hurting, and I can no’ make it better. I’ve tried. I’d give her the moon and stars if I could.”
“So, I guess this means the lead we had on the spell was another dead end?”
Fallon nodded.
Arran grimaced. The spell to bind their gods wasn’t much of a concern for him, but for the other ten Warriors who were married, it was all they focused on.
It was only through Isla’s powerful Druid magic of hiding MacLeod Castle from the world and keeping the Druids within her shield from aging that the mortals had lived as long as they had.
Aiden, Quinn’s son, had been born four hundred years before, and with special magic allowed to age until his twenty-fifth year. The Druids had also taken precautions through the centuries by a potion that would prevent them becoming with child. No one wanted to bring children into the war that had raged.
It worked until last year, when Camdyn and his wife, Saffron, had found themselves surprised, expectant parents.
“Larena saw Emma,” Fallon said into the silence. “It’s always worse for Larena afterwards.”
Larena wasn’t the only one affected by the birth of little Emma. Camdyn and Saffron were still on MacLeod land, but they were building their home outside Isla’s shield. With the threat of both Declan and Deirdre gone, everyone felt safe enough to leave the shield.
Camdyn and Saffron had left the castle, mainly because of their child. Aiden was gone more than he was at the castle—and with the tensions so high, it was no wonder.
“We all thought to have found the spell by now,” Fallon continued.
“And to have your own child.”
Fallon drew in a long, deep breath. “We waited centuries until the evil had been eradicated, and now that it has, we can no’ find the spell.”
The spell had been written on a scroll and hidden in Edinburgh Castle, but it, along with three shipments of magical items, had been taken from Edinburgh to London centuries ago. Two of those three shipments arrived in London. The other was lost.
“We’ve searched London, and even Buckingham Palace. It’s no’ there,” Arran said.
“It’s no longer a scroll, but nothing we’ve come across exhibits any magic.”
“Could it be cloaked somehow?”
Fallon lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “I doona have an answer.”
Arran might not care if his god was bound or not at the moment, but he knew his fellow brethren were suffering as much as Fallon. He was one of four Warriors who wasn’t mated, so if he could do something, he would.
“We need to follow the path.”
Fallon’s brow furrowed as he looked at Arran. “What?”
“The journal you found at Edinburgh Castle, it said that there were three shipments. One by water, two by land. We know that one by land didna make it to London. Since nothing has been found in London regarding the scroll—”
“Then we assume it was in the shipment of other items that was lost,” Fallon finished. A ghost of a smile appearing. “I like your thinking.”
