Her Scot of the Morrow (MacLeod Dragons #3)

CHAPTER ONE

North Salem, New Hampshire

Present Day

–Willow–

I KNEW IT would only bring me temporary relief from my frustration, but the moment my sister, Hazel, passed out on the couch of the old colonial we just purchased, I snuck out and went flying.

Anything to get off the ground and get him out of my head.

And by him, I mean Mr. Morrow, as I called him these days rather than by his actual name. He didn't deserve to be formally addressed, given he was a betraying, heartbreaking Scotsman living six hundred years in my past.

A place where he should stay.

Hazel thought I was enjoying a few cocktails with her while we caught up over the past few hours, but I hadn’t been. Not a cocktail with alcohol in it, anyway. Instead, I let her think I was imbibing because I had long become a master at deception if it meant getting away from the voice in my head.

And I mean that literally because I still hear the bastard.

Mr. Morrow, or my Scot of the Morrow as I used to lovingly call him, had taken it upon himself to haunt me for longer than I could remember.

Well, that's not entirely true. Haunt would be the correct word before we met.

Pester would be the better word, years later, when I told him to go to hell in person, and he kept pestering me telepathically across time regardless.

But I digress.

There was a time I wouldn't use either of those words to describe him. Years that are vividly etched in my memory. How could they not be considering he had been the love of my life?

If I were to reflect on it, and I have been quite a bit over the past few days, I suppose it all began during my childhood when my imagination was more fanciful than logical, and he was a dashing ghost I could hear but couldn’t see.

Well, as dashing as a boy’s voice in my head could be at the time, until eventually I made a chance discovery and learned my dashing hero was very much alive, and living in medieval Scotland.

“And now what am I, all things considered, if not still a dashing hero?” he wondered, shocking me when he spoke to me for the first time while I was flying through the air, where I could usually avoid him and enjoy the peace I found soaring over the moonlit trees in my LSA or Light Sport Aircraft 2-seater plane.

All things considered? What was he talking about? Whatever it was, I had no intention of answering him or engaging in conversation. Not now. Not ever. Sure, there might be a looming medieval pact determined to say otherwise, but I had worked hard to get over him.

I had excelled in school so much that I graduated early, got my pilot's license, and haven't stopped flying since. While I loved being in the air, deep down I knew I was forever trying to escape him and our past.

Better still, the terrible pain he had caused me.

I pretended not to hear his deep Scottish burr in my mind, because I usually couldn’t when I flew, and he knew that, so I swooped down lower over the vibrant autumn trees as a fresh surge of anger that made no sense blew through me.

It didn’t make sense until my new home came into view, minus the ancient oak tree that had been out front.

Instead, my willow tree had taken its place.

And this time, I had a bad feeling it had everything to do with him.

Like my sisters and the trees they had been named for, I’d been seeing my willow on and off for years. As a rule, it tended to appear at points in my life when I needed to be particularly strong. When my mother died and my father left, for starters. So why now?

“I think you know verra well why, lass,” Mr. Morrow said.

Again, I ignored him because I knew he implied seeing my willow tree meant I was next in line to travel back in time. Next in line to be tested to see if I was part of some ridiculous, primitive pact that meant breeding with a half-dragon stranger six centuries in my past.

Honestly, I thought it was all crap. But then, I’d stop believing my inner dragon would ever surface when I was a kid.

So the idea I could be destined to breed with one to fulfill some crazy pact seemed as ridiculous and fanciful as giving an asshole medieval Scot a fairytale name they didn’t deserve.

“Land the plane, Willow,” that very Scot counseled, his internal voice as tight now as my emotions.

“And come face me once and for all, aye?” His medieval brogue thickened, and his voice grew grim, yet taunting in a way I knew all too well.

“And I suggest ye travel via the Morrow or ye willnae like where ye end up.”

“On that we agree,” Adlin MacLomain said, right there in our internal conversation as if he knew all about us talking across the centuries. Then again, he was a wizard who seemed to have a hand in all of this, so I wasn’t that surprised.

“You should return to the house, lass,” Adlin went on, “so we can decide where ‘tis best for you to go next. Thus far, I have covered for you, claiming that you never left when your sisters were worried over your whereabouts.”

Say what? He made no sense. “What are you talking about?”

Even if my sister Ellie had arrived while I was flying, how could he explain why my car was not in the driveway?

Mr. Morrow answered, making things clear in a way that made my blood run cold.

“Hazel doesnae have the gem over her dragon’s heart, so I have volunteered to be a prisoner at Sutherland Castle until you arrive.

If you dinnae, ‘twill be war betwixt the MacLeods and Sutherlands and both your sisters’ lives will be in peril as well as your unborn nephews. ”

Alarmed, I frowned and shook my head, answering before I could stop myself. “That’s impossible. I left Hazel sleeping on the couch. She’s fine.”

“She is now,” Adlin agreed, aware of things that must have happened despite my being only gone for a few hours.

“Hazel is safely back at MacLeod Castle, and in exchange for hers and her friend’s freedom, Sloan agreed to be taken prisoner by the Sutherland’s until you arrive and are ruled out as the lass meant to fulfill the pact. ”

It had been a long time since I’d referred to Mr. Morrow by his real name, and despite genuinely trying to convince myself I was over him, hearing it again brought all the old hurt and pain roaring back to the surface.

Yet, it seemed Sloan had another take on it.

“’Tis your inner beast’s anger,” he grumbled, sounding as frustrated as I was. “’Tis finally letting you know just how mad it is at you for repressing it and making it fly without its wings spread, and I dinnae blame it.”

“And like I’ve told you countless times, it’s none of your damn business what I do,” I bit back, again before I could stop myself. “So get out of my head and leave me alone already.”

“I would if I could,” he shot back, despite how much I sensed my words had wounded him. “But alas, ye are stuck with me, lass, as much as I wish it were otherwise.”

“You and me both because—”

“Enough,” Adlin interjected, the frown in his voice obvious. “What matters now is the Sutherlands are threatening to go after your sister Ellie if you don't go to them, Willow.”

“But that would break the agreement,” I replied, well aware of the details. “And give the MacLeods every right to wage war.”

“Mayhap had Hazel and Lucas not broken the agreement first,” Adlin revealed, again surprising me because I had left Hazel snoozing at home mere hours ago.

However, despite my disbelief, I sensed Adlin wasn't lying, which meant she very well could have traveled back to medieval Scotland without me knowing.

“Now,” Adlin went on, “despite Sloan voluntarily giving himself over to the Sutherlands, if you dinnae show up, they will take action and ‘tis your sister they’re threatening, not you.”

“Smart,” I muttered, because threatening any of my sisters was the only way to get me to do what they wanted. I didn’t bother responding, but swung my plane around and headed back to the small hangar I rented.

It turned out, when I got home, Hazel was indeed gone, and Adlin was waiting for me by my willow tree.

With a long white beard and white robes, he certainly appeared to be a wizard.

The average person might think he wore a costume, but my sisters and I, witches that we were, knew better.

Of course, these days I denied believing any of it, but in reality, I did and had for years.

How could I not, given Sloan and the Morrow?

The Morrow, as it happened, was something I discovered when I was much younger, after losing my mother and essentially my father too, because despite us living under the same roof, I rarely saw him.

Given I hadn’t met my half sisters yet, I was incredibly lonely and often bored, so like any little girl would, I entertained myself by dressing up and pretending I was somewhere else.

Mostly, I pretended I was going to meet my dashing Scot of the Morrow.

Until one day, I actually met him when I slipped on a unique, old-fashioned ring with a red stone I found in my mother’s jewelry box. That’s when my willow tree appeared for the first time outside my bedroom window, and the rest is history.

I had wandered out to the tree and traveled back in time to medieval Scotland, where none other than my Scot of the Morrow awaited me. He didn’t know he was waiting for me, but I did the moment I laid eyes on the little boy leaning against the willow tree from which I had magically emerged.

After that, I coined the phrase traveling via the Morrow because it always brought me back to him. Or at least it had until he told me he would be marrying someone else, and that was it. My romantic little fairytale came crashing down around me, and I left, heartbroken, never to return.

After all, despite my tender age of fifteen, he had already proposed to me, and I’d accepted. Granted, we were far too young and from different centuries, but still. We were going to make it work somehow.

“Have you the ring?” Adlin asked, bringing me back to the here and now, yet again knowing more than I anticipated.

Even though I’d had every intention of getting rid of my mother's mystical ring years ago, I couldn’t seem to bring myself to do it.

Partly because it had been my mother's and partly because it was mine in a way that made it impossible to let go of. I had walked away from my Scot but never the ring. And now all this was happening, I was glad I hadn’t because it gave me an advantage the others didn’t have, at least when it came to Sloan.

I could pull him to my tree, wherever it may be, without anyone knowing.

But did I truly want to?

I could tell by Adlin's grim expression that I had better, because too many lives were at stake, including my sisters’.

And as much as I tried to ignore it, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't worried about Sloan, too.

He might have treated me horribly, but it sounded like he was in as much danger as Ellie, if not more.

“Do you think it still works?” I wondered, pulling the ring from my pocket where I always kept it. I did my best not to wear my emotions on my face because I felt far too many of them at the thought of actually seeing Sloan again after so many years.

Had he changed as much as I? Was he still as handsome? Still as rambunctious and quick to laugh? It was hard to imagine the teenage boy from my youth growing more homely with age or losing the parts of his personality I loved, but anything was possible.

God knows, I wasn’t the girl I had been.

“According to Elowyn, or Ellie as you call her, the ring will take you where you need to go,” Adlin said, catching me off guard once more.

“How could Ellie possibly know that when she didn’t know about the ring?” I frowned and shook my head. “And she definitely didn’t know I traveled back in time in my youth. I never shared that with any of my sisters.”

“Yet I still knew,” Ellie said, surprising me when she opened the front door and stepped out into the crisp early morning air. She was as beautiful as ever with her intricately braided white-blonde hair and bohemian-style clothing, suiting the peace-loving, witchy vibe she’d long put off.

“What are you doing here, sis?” I frowned, seeing her car wasn’t in the driveway. “Did someone drop you off?”

That seemed strange given she had come from Salem, Massachusetts, where we all lived before moving here, and that was hours away.

“Someone did drop me off,” Ellie confirmed, not elaborating. Her gaze drifted to my ring. “You’ll want to put that on. The Sutherlands are growing impatient.”

Although I had tons of questions, starting with how she seemed to know so much, something about the look in her eyes gave me pause. A flicker of fear I had never seen before.

I didn't like how this felt at all. “Your life really is in danger, isn’t it?”

“It is,” she said softly, a strange light I had seen years ago flickering in her eyes. The same fiery flicker I saw in Sloan’s eyes before he showed me his dragon eyes for the first time.

“Along with our sisters’ lives,” Ellie went on, “so I need you to trust me when I tell you to put that ring on right away. At this very moment, or things could go terribly wrong.”

I might have said I never believed we were half dragon, but I knew the truth, and it seemed Ellie did too. Despite shoving my dragon deep down inside after Sloan broke my heart all those years ago, I still felt its urgency when it came to my sisters.

More so, I knew Ellie was right, so I didn't hesitate and slipped the ring on my finger because all my sisters would do the same for me. I couldn’t have anticipated what happened next, though, because it couldn’t have been more different than the first time I wore it.