Chapter 11 #2
“Just tell me!” Allia felt her pulse racing and she wondered if she was going to be sick.
If it wasn’t death or war that had made him leave, then it was something much, much worse.
This was it, then. She had taken a risk, and now was the part she had known all along was coming.
She was about to have her heart completely and utterly broken.
Leon put a gentle hand on her arm, and she was so on edge that she flinched at the contact. “It’s about yer father…”
Oh god, no… “My father?” she asked weakly. But all of the pieces that she had thought didn’t even belong suddenly seemed to fit together. In one flash of understanding, she knew now why Eian had left.
“When I was being held prisoner”, she began carefully, “the man who captured me said that my father was an evil man, by the name of… Mored. But I didn’t believe him.
” She took a slightly desperate breath. “I thought he was trying to trick me into giving away information or something… it’s…
not true… is it?” But she already knew it was.
The pained look on her uncle’s face told her everything. “Oh my god…” She slowly lowered herself onto the bench near the fireplace. “And Eian?”
Leon sat down beside her, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. Kindness and sympathy were not his strength by any means, but he was trying. “Yer father is the Clan Mac Coinnach’s mortal enemy.”
Her heart broke a little more. The tears welled up behind her eyes, but refused to fall. “And he knows?”
“Aye.”
“Well…” she breathed. “No wonder he left.”
“Lass, he was wrong to leave ye… he claimed ye, swore to care for and protect ye… those vows dinna come with conditions.”
She shook her head. “We barely know each other, Uncle. Not really. He must have thought I kept it from him, lied to him even. I… I suppose I would have thought the same thing; in fact I know I would have. He must think that I was going to betray him…” Her heart clenched tight in her chest. I would never…
“I need to go after him. I need to find him and explain…”
“No!” Leon was adamant. “Ye’ll be staying right here, even if I have to assign twenty guards to ye day and night.
If ye leave this castle alone, ye’ll be captured again as soon as ye pass from Lochain lands.
Perhaps even before.” He crossed his arms and clenched his jaw.
“No way in hell will I risk that again, and trust me, ye dinna want to end up in yer father’s hands, lass.
And that’s exactly why we sent ye away all those years ago…
we were trying to find a way to kill him. ”
She sniffed, and he handed her a cloth from his sporran. “And did you?”
Leon pressed his lips together and let out a breath through his nose. “Aye, we did discover how he could be killed, but… no one here could do it.”
“How do you…”
“Och lass, that’s no’ for ye to worry about. Ye’ll wait here, and Mac Coinnach will come back after he’s had time to think things through. He’s bonded to ye; he will have to come back.” But despite the confidence of his words, he didn’t look all that certain to Allia.
The tears began to fall, she just couldn’t hold them back any longer. She looked up at her uncle accusingly. “You knew! You knew all along and you didn’t tell me! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Lass, ye were better off to no’ ken about any of it. Ye were so young…”
“But I have a right to know that my father is an evil…monster! All of these years, I thought he was dead.”
“He was dead to you, lass, as he should remain.”
Dead to me… yes. “I need to be alone”, she choked out. Allia turned and headed for the stairs to her chamber. She did not look back, but she could feel her uncle’s heavy stare as he watched her go.
A moment later, she was closing the door to her room and collapsing onto the bed.
Only this morning, she had woken up in Eian’s arms, turning her head to look into his deep brown eyes and see his lazy smile, his tousled hair falling over his face.
She had felt safe, cared for… whole. He had pulled her closer and made love to her as if she were the most precious thing on earth, and she had wondered how she could have ever doubted him.
Now… everything was broken. She turned and sobbed into her pillow, heart wrenching gasps that seemed to go on forever.
She knew that eventually she would take action…
some sort of action, when she felt stronger…
but for now all she could do was fall apart.
***
Eian sank down into the plain wooden chair and accepted the cup of whiskey, turning it in his hand and mentally readying himself for what was to come.
His feelings for Allia, real or not, were so strong, already so much a part of him, he wondered if it would physically hurt to have them torn away.
He shook himself and looked up at Alisdair, who pulled another chair over to sit near him with his own cup of whiskey in hand.
“I canna imagine ye’d come all this way for naught, lad”, he said almost casually, and in a way that made Eian quite certain the wizard already knew exactly why he had come. And yet he was still going to make him say it.
Eian took a deep breath that tasted of the salt breeze, stared into the golden liquid in his cup, and cleared his throat.
“I seem to have gotten into a bit of trouble, and I need yer help.” Och, but those words stung his pride!
He had barely forced them past his lips, but then, he was dying inside, so what did it matter?
The expression on Alisdair’s lined but still ruggedly handsome face didn’t change. Aye, he knew, the bastard. His uncle lifted his cup and took a casual sip.
“And Bren couldna help ye?”
“I… I was already on the western coast, at Lochain. It was just as easy to come here.” True, more or less. If you didn’t mind crossing the most rugged and forbidding wilderness in Scotland. In truth, it had more than suited his mood.
Alisdair smirked, obviously seeing straight through Eian’s carefully chosen words. “So what is this trouble that is so great it brings ye all the way to the northern reaches of Scotia?
Eian took another deep breath, and boldly met the other man’s eyes, striving to hold on to his last few shreds of dignity, but failing miserably.
He let the breath go. “Someone has placed a spell on me, and I need help to remove it.” He would have done it himself, for God’s sake, if it weren’t nearly impossible to remove a spell from your own body or mind.
Och, this asking for help because of his own foolishness was akin to torture.
He waited while Alisdair narrowed his eyes and seemed to look him over.
Eian squeezed his shut, preparing for the worst. He only hoped whatever kind of spell it was, it could be removed easily enough.
When he opened his eyes a moment later, his great uncle’s lips were quirked up in what looked like amusement. Eian frowned at him. This was not funny, damn it! He was suffering…
“Eian lad, what sort of spell do ye think has been placed on ye?”
Oh, here we go… the ultimate humiliation, because he wasn’t in enough agony already. He looked back down into his cup, then threw back the rest of the whiskey, swallowing the burning liquid in one gulp before he answered with a sigh of defeat. “A love spell”, he muttered.
When nothing but silence answered him, Eian looked up.
He could have sworn Alisdair was biting the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling.
If he didn’t need the wizard’s help so badly, and if Alisdair’s potent magic couldn’t take him out with a twitch of his little finger, Eian might have been tempted to punch him just then.
He leaned forward menacingly in his chair, anger twisting his face into a scowl.
Alisdair held up his hands. “Och lad, calm yerself, there are no spells on ye.”
Eian sat up straighter. “There is”, he insisted. “It made me fall for the daughter of Mored MacReeve. I couldn’t bloody stay away from her! By the time I figured out it was all part of a plot against our family it was too late… damn it Alisdair, this is serious, ye need to help me!”
“There are no spells”, the wizard insisted gently. “And a dark spell like the kind you speak of, I would have sensed the instant I saw ye. The feelings ye have are entirely yer own, Eian.”
“No! There has to be a spell. I could never fall in love with Mored’s daughter, I would never betray my family like that!”
“Ye have betrayed no one. The lass is innocent, untainted by the darkness. That is why she was hidden all those years ago. She kens nothing about who her father is, only that her mother was wed against her will to a cruel man, and died for it in the end. If they have even told her that much. She has been waiting for ye, all this time. Just as ye have been waiting for her.”
Eian felt his hands begin to shake, and he gripped the cup tighter. Alisdair picked up the jug on the floor, held the cup steady with one hand, and poured out some more whiskey. “Drink.”
“She truly kens nothing? She is innocent? Are ye certain?” Eian felt his heart squeeze painfully in his chest. If what Alisdair was saying was true… did it change anything? Did it change everything?
“Aye. It is the ancient prophecy of our family finally come to pass, Eian. And ye are a part of it. Three brothers, three soul mates, three sons. And then the darkness will be pushed aside forever. In the future, no one will even believe there was once such a thing as dark sorcerers who wielded the power of nature for evil. For them, it will be no more than a fable. The stuff of bedtime stories and myth. And the Good shall continue to work unseen, as it always has.”
“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 na?ve.
They had all been na?ve. 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?