Wicked Highlander (23 page)

Quinn couldn't stop smiling. Marcail not only returned his love, but would now be his wife. It felt right, as nothing ever had before. Even knowing that his god might never be bound and Marcail was mortal wasn't enough to dampen his spirits and hope for their future.

“It's good to see you smiling again,” Lucan said as he came to stand on Quinn's right.

Quinn nodded and raised his goblet to Marcail who stood with Cara and Sonya at the other end of the great hall. Sonya had told them earlier about Marcail's pregnancy. Quinn was awed and overjoyed, though a thread of fear hadn't left him since the news.

“It feels good to smile,” Quinn admitted.

Fallon moved to Quinn's left. “How things have changed around here. I think our parents would approve.”

“They would,” Quinn agreed. “We've defeated Deirdre, gotten our castle returned thanks to Malcolm's influence with the king, found great women to share our lives with, and we have a new family.”

“I can drink to that,” Lucan said and raised his goblet.

Fallon laughed and raised his next to Lucan's. It had come as a shock to Quinn to discover Fallon had stopped drinking wine. Water would be found in his goblet now.

“To our future,” Quinn said and put his goblet alongside his brothers'.

Lucan smiled and said, “And our women.”

They each drank deeply and let out a sigh.

It was Fallon who spoke first. “What do we do now that Deirdre is gone?”

“I've been thinking about that,” Quinn said. “There is no need for Warriors. I think we should find the spell to bind our gods. Marcail is willing to try.”

Lucan nodded as he lowered his goblet from his mouth. “I agree. I'd like to grow old with my wife.”

Quinn happened to concur with Lucan. Not to mention that with the baby on the way, Quinn wanted a normal life for his new family.

“I wonder if we should go back to the mountain,” Fallon said.

Quinn looked at his brother to see if Fallon was serious. “Why?”

“There might be those that need our help that couldna get out. Not to mention, I'd like to make sure all the wyrran are dead.”

Lucan rubbed his jaw. “Fallon has a point. Maybe we should return. Other Druids could be hurt or trapped.”

The thought of returning to that mountain left Quinn in a cold sweat. He knew Deirdre was dead, had seen her body with his own eyes, but he still couldn't shake the feeling she wasn't gone forever as he had told Marcail.

“I'll take Hayden and go in the morn,” Fallon said.

Quinn laughed. “Ah, your power to jump from one place to another. That's a nice power.”

Fallon shrugged but didn't bother to hide his smile.
“It is, though I canna jump somewhere I've never been before. Speaking of powers, do you have one you never told us about?”

“I can speak to animals.”

Lucan whistled. “When did that begin?”

“While in Deirdre's dungeon. I hated the rats. Once I figured out how to keep them away, they never bothered me again.”

“Ah,” Lucan said. “You were the reason all those animals attacked Deirdre.”

“God help any mortal man fool enough to try and take this castle from us,” Fallon said.

Larena walked up and put her arms around Fallon. “Are you already plotting a war?”

“They are never content, are they?” Cara said as she joined Lucan.

Quinn smiled and took Marcail's hand in his as he pulled her against his chest so he could wrap an arm around her. He glanced at the cuff around her upper arm with the wolf's head on it, matching his torc and bonding them forever. “We'll do whatever it takes to keep our women safe.”

“I expect nothing less from a Warrior,” Marcail said before she rose up on her toes to kiss him.

The hall erupted in cheers. Quinn laughed with Marcail. It was going to take some getting used to, having a life so full of love and happiness, but he was ready to find out.

 

Isla stumbled in the snow and fell to her knees. She had gotten turned around as she tried to walk down the mountain, and now she feared she would never leave it.

Her fingers were frozen and she could no longer feel
her feet, which was why she kept tripping over things. Snow had begun to fall, hampering her vision, but then again, on Cairn Toul, there was always snow.

She pushed off the snow and saw the blood where her hand had been. She needed to see to her wounds soon. Already she had lost so much blood. Anyone looking for her simply had to follow the blood to find her.

A tear fell from her eyes. She wiped it away and tried to push Grania from her mind. It had been an accident killing her niece, but the pain of what she had done would haunt her forever.

If Deirdre didn't find her first.

Read on for an excerpt from

UNTAMED
HIGHLANDER

The next thrilling novel from Donna Grant and St. Martin's Paperbacks!

Cairn Toul Mountain
Summer 1603

Hayden Campbell swore viciously as he turned over yet another frozen body on the rocky slope.

“This one is dead,” Fallon MacLeod yelled from his position farther up the mountain.

“They're all dead.” Hayden blew out a breath that puffed around him, ignoring the frigid temperatures and steady snowfall. Though he felt the cold it didn't bother him because he wasn't quite human.

He was a Warrior, an immortal with an archaic god inside him that gave him powers and immeasurable strength—among other things.

Hayden rubbed the ice from his eyelashes as his gaze wandered over the snow-covered slope and the numerous dead Druids. “We should have returned sooner.”

Fallon, another Warrior, walked toward him with heavy footsteps, his green eyes grave. “Aye, we should have, but my concern was for Quinn. We scarcely got him and Marcail out of this cursed mountain in time as it was.”

“I ken.” Hayden gazed at the hated mound of rock.
He had always loved looking at the great mountains, but being locked in Cairn Toul for too many decades and forced to watch the evil that grew there took away the pleasure the mountains had once given him. “Damn Deirdre.”

Deirdre, the one who began it all, was finally dead. She was a Druid, but from a sect who gave their blood and souls to
diabhul,
the Devil, for the use of black magic. She was, or had been, a
drough
.

There was another set of Druids, the
mie
, who used the pure magic born in all Druids to bond with nature and harness the natural power that came to all of them. The
mie
used their magic to heal and aid those in need, not to destroy as the
drough
and Deirdre did.

But Hayden and the other Warriors had defeated her. It had cost many lives, however. Too many lives.

Hundreds of Druids had been enslaved in the mountain for Deirdre to drain their blood and harvest their magic to add to her own. No one knew how old Deirdre was, but if Hayden could believe the rumors, she had lived for nearly a thousand years, going back to the time just after Rome was driven from the land by Warriors.

Warriors who had been made thanks to both the
drough
and
mie
in response to the cries of the Celts for help. Though Hayden couldn't fault them. Rome had been slowly suffocating Britain, ending all that made Britain great. And the Celts had been unable to defeat them.

The Druids had done what they could for Britain. They had no idea the primeval gods they called up from Hell would refuse to leave the men they took control of.

The gods were so potent that the Druids couldn't
remove them. The only thing the Druids could do was bind the gods inside the men after Rome had been defeated and departed Britain's shores.

And so the gods moved from generation to generation through the bloodline and into the strongest warriors. Until Deirdre found the MacLeods and unbound their god.

Deirdre's reign of evil had lasted far longer than Hayden liked to think about. Deirdre might have been powerful, but even a
drough
could be killed.

Hayden grinned, reliving the moment Deirdre's neck had been crushed by another Warrior and Hayden had engulfed her in fire.

“What are you smiling at?” Fallon asked, breaking into Hayden's thoughts.

Fallon was leader of their group of Warriors. They had banded together to fight Deirdre and the wickedness she spawned. Though they had expected it would take years, Deirdre had changed everything when she took the youngest MacLeod brother, Quinn, captive. That's when they had taken the fight to Deirdre.

“The fact Deirdre is dead,” Hayden explained. “Everything we've been fighting against all these years is over. Gone.”

Fallon smiled and slapped him on the shoulder. “It's a wonderful feeling, isna it? Now all we have to worry about is having the Druids find the spell to bind our gods once more. Then we can live as mortal men.”

Binding the gods was all Fallon, Lucan, and Quinn spoke about. But the MacLeod brothers had wives, so they yearned to have their gods gone from their lives.

Hayden, on the other hand, wasn't sure he wanted to be mortal again. He was too powerless that way.

“I'm going to look on the other side of the mountain,” Fallon said. “Maybe we'll find someone alive.”

“I think the ones that could make it out of the mountain did. It was the weather that killed them.”

Fallon blew out a ragged breath and clenched his jaw. “We should look inside the mountain then. Some might have been too afraid to leave.”

They both turned to the door that stood ajar amid the rock as if waiting for them to enter its wicked domain. All Druids were gifted with a certain power. Deirdre's had been moving stone. She had instructed the mountain to shift and form so that she had a palace inside it, shielded from the world.

Hidden from all.

Countless Druids had died heinously, and many a Highlander had been brought to her to have his god unbound. If he didn't house a god, he was killed.

Even now Hayden could smell the stench of death and iniquity that permeated the mountain, could still feel the helplessness that had weighed heavily on his shoulders while he had been locked in one of the various prisons.

But he had been one of the lucky ones. Hayden had broken free and escaped, determined to fight Deirdre and her bid to rule the world.

“Why would anyone stay inside that place?” Hayden murmured as unease rippled down his spine. He fisted his hands and forced himself to stand still and not give in to the urge to turn away from the malevolent mountain.

Fallon scratched his jaw, his gaze thoughtful. “I doona know, but it's worth a look. We freed these people, and it's our responsibility to make sure they return to their homes.”

Hayden considered Fallon's words. “They may not want our help. We are, after all, Warriors. They might not be able to tell the difference between us and the Warriors who allied themselves with Deirdre.”

“True. But I must look either way. I wasna held longer than a few days in the mountain so it doesna hold the memories for me it does for you.”

Hayden might not want to go into Cairn Toul, but he would. “I'm not afraid.”

Fallon put his hand on Hayden's shoulder and looked into his eyes. “I would never think that, my friend. I would not torment you, though.” He dropped his arm and smiled. “Besides, I want to return to Larena as quickly as I can. You give a final look over the mountain while I go inside.”

Before Hayden could object, Fallon was gone. He used the power his god gave him to “jump” inside the mountain in the blink of an eye. Fallon couldn't jump somewhere he had never been before, but the use of his power had saved them countless times.

They all had different powers. For Hayden, Ouraneon, the god of massacre that was inside him, gave him the ability to call up and control fire. There were other differences as well. Each god favored a color, so every Warrior transformed to that color when they released their god.

Yet, for all their differences, there was a great deal they had in common, like strength, speed, and enhanced senses, as well as deadly claws and sharp fangs. The most disturbing, though, were their eyes, which changed the same color as their god.

It had taken Hayden a long time to get used to that. He hadn't seen his own eyes, but he could imagine how
he looked when the whites of his eyes disappeared and his entire eye turned red.

As much as Hayden had rebelled and fought the god within him, that same god allowed him to defeat Deirdre. With Deirdre dead and his family massacred by a
drough
sent by Deirdre, there was nothing in this world for Hayden to do.

For so many years he had roamed Scotland, watching the world change around him while he hunted
drough
. Deirdre had taunted him that she had sent a
drough
to kill his family as she tortured him day after day. So he fought against Deirdre while seeking his vengeance on the
drough
.

Now there was no place for him in this new world. There was no place for him anywhere.

He continued wandering the mountain, looking for anyone who might still be alive, as he thought of what his next move might be. He had stayed in Scotland because of Deirdre and his revenge, but maybe now he would travel and see the different countries others spoke about.

Hayden leaned against a boulder and raked his hand through his damp hair. The snowfall had begun to grow more dense, the flakes thicker and heavier, but it didn't hamper his superior eyesight. They stuck to his eyelashes and covered everything in a blinding white blanket.

Hours went by with Hayden locating nothing but more dead. The fact that they were most likely Druids only made the findings more difficult to bear. Druids might have magic, but they were as susceptible to the elements as any human, and thanks to Deirdre's affin
ity for killing them, the Druids were becoming more and more scarce.

A shout from Fallon let Hayden know it was time to return to MacLeod Castle. As Hayden began to turn away something caught his eye.

He paused and narrowed his gaze when a gust of wind lifted a lock of long, black hair in the snow. Though Hayden knew the woman was most likely dead, he hurried to her anyway, hopeful he would leave the mountain with at least one alive. He spotted a pool of bright red blood in the snow, which gave him hope she was still alive.

“Fallon,” he barked while scraping away the flurries and ice from around the small, much-too-slim body.

The woman was lying on her stomach, one arm bent with her hand near her face, and matted ebony hair obscuring her features. Her fingers were slim as they dug into the snow as if she had tried to crawl away.

Hayden could only imagine the pain she had been put through, the heartache Deirdre had given her. He held his breath as he put a finger beneath her nose and felt a soft stirring of air.

At least they would leave the cursed mountain with one life. He reached for her and paused again. He didn't want to hurt her, but it had been so long since he had been gentle, he wasn't sure he knew how. All he knew was battle and death.

Maybe he should allow Fallon care for her. But as soon as the thought went through his mind, Hayden rejected it. He had found her, he would see to her. He didn't know why, he just knew that it was important to him.

Hayden blew out a breath and slowly, firmly placed
his hands on the woman's body before he tenderly turned her over. Her arm fell to the side, lifeless and still. Disquiet settled in his gut like a stone.

He shifted so that he leaned over her, shielding her from the onslaught of snow. Once he had her in his arms, Hayden brushed the hair from her face to see her incredibly long black lashes spiked with frozen snow.

He felt something shift inside him when he saw her face was pale as death, but even beneath the scratches, dried blood, and ice he could see her beauty, her timeless allure.

She had high cheekbones and a small, pert nose. Her brows were as black as the midnight sky and arched over her eyes. Her lips were full, sensual, and her neck long and lean.

But it was her cream-colored skin, so flawless and perfect, that made him reach out and stroke her cheek with the back of his finger.

A shock of something primitive and urgent went through his body like a bolt of lightning. He couldn't take his eyes from her, couldn't stop touching her.

Her body struggled for breath, struggled for life, proving she was a fighter. Even with the elements taking the breath from her one heartbeat at a time, she didn't give up.

Something inside him broke at that moment. He hadn't been able to save his family or the many Druids on Cairn Toul, but he would save this woman, whoever she was.

A feeling of protectiveness wound through him. It had been so long since he'd felt protective of anyone or
anything that he almost hadn't recognized the emotion. Now that he did, however, it grew stronger the longer he held her in his arms.

He would make sure she survived. He would ensure she was protected at all times. It wouldn't make up for the lives of his family or the Druids, but he had to do it.

Hayden found himself wishing she'd open her eyes so he could see them. He wanted to give his oath to her right then, for her to know that he would fight with her. Instead, she lay unconscious in his arms.

His vow would have to wait, but nothing could stop him from pledging himself to her.

“Does she live?” Fallon asked.

Hayden glanced up, startled to find Fallon near when he hadn't heard him approach. That wasn't like Hayden, but then again, he had never held such a lovely woman in his arms before, especially one that needed him as she did. “Just. She's bleeding badly, though I cannot tell where she is wounded.”

“Judging by the blood on your hand, I would say somewhere on her back.”

Hayden looked at the hand holding her and grimaced. He doubted they had much time to save her. For the first time in…ages…the need to defend, to shield someone consumed him, drove him. “She's shivering.”

“Then let's get her out of here,” Fallon said.

Hayden lifted her small frame in his arms. She was light, but through her clothes he could feel the sumptuous curves that proclaimed her a woman. He gave a nod to Fallon and waited. Fallon laid his hand on Hayden's arm, and in a blink they were standing in the great hall of MacLeod Castle.

“God's teeth!” someone yelled at their sudden appearance in the castle.

“Sonya!” Fallon bellowed.

The hall swarmed with Warriors, but Hayden only had eyes for the woman. He wanted, nay needed, her to survive, and was surprised to find himself praying—something he hadn't done since before his family's murder. He decided then and there he would protect her with his life.