Chapter 23
LACHLAN MACBETH
Her wish is granted when the train experiences a major line closure, forcing us into an early departure and onto a complimentary replacement bus.
But if the train was a cramped and suffocating cage, the bus to continue our journey to my homeland is an absolute circus. It’s packed with rowdy and impatient travelers all desperate to get home.
From the second we stepped onto the coach, I’ve been fighting my own instincts worse than ever.
The sour smells of human sweat, cheap beer, and cologne clogs my nostrils.
Worse, I spot a sign for an onboard toilet that is sadly out of use.
Every time the door opens and closes, a strong smell of piss fills the air.
I spend the entire journey boxed around Elena like a living wall. By the time the bus reaches Nairn train station, Elena looks completely exhausted and my nerves are in tatters.
“That’s it,” Elena says, the moment we step out onto pavement, her voice shaking with a mixture of adrenaline and fatigue. “No more trains. No more buses. I’m finding us a car. Right now. There’s no way driving on the wrong side of the road is worse than this.”
While she marches off into the tiny village to find someone willing to rent us a vehicle, I’m left to wait for her at the edge of a quiet, misty farm road.
I glance back to see her walking toward the village center, and turn to trudge down the gravel path dragging our suitcases and Maren’s heavy cooler as I desperately need a moment away from the human heartbeats.
The air out here is cleaner, heavy with the scent of wet peat, pine, and heather.
I stop by a short, moss covered stone wall that separates the road from a vast rolling green pasture and let out a long and exasperated sigh.
I rest my hands on the damp stones, allowing the cool wind to soothe the residual heat in my blood.
A soft, wet snort breaks the silence.
I look up through the drifting fog, and emerging from the mist like furry little boulders are a herd of Highland cows.
There are five of them with their thick, shaggy ginger coats dripping with the rain, their huge sweeping horns curving up toward the sky as they trek slowly down the muddy hill with their wide dark eyes locked onto me.
Most humans would be terrified of their immense size, but to me, they’re the most beautiful and comforting sight in the world. They’re a piece of home.
The largest of the herd, a huge matriarch with a long fringe of hair covering her eyes, plods right up to the stone wall.
She stops inches from me, tilting her head, her nostrils flaring as she takes in my scent, and I’m positive she doesn’t smell a human in a flannel and jacket.
She smells the ancient waters of the North.
My lips curve into the first genuine and relaxed smile I’ve had all day. The stiff and defensive guard dog posture melts entirely out of my shoulders, and cool relief spreads like a balm to my frustration.
“Hullo beautiful,” I murmur, my voice dropping into a deep velvety croon and the soft dialect of the highlands.
I lean over the stone wall, entirely unafraid of her massive horns, and stretch out my hand. The cow steps closer, pressing her wet, velvety black nose directly into my palm. She lets out a deep rumbling huff of approval, her long tongue reaching out to lick my wrist.
“Aye, I know,” I whisper to her softly, using my fingers to gently scratch at the thick coarse hair right between her furry ears. “It’s a loud messy world out there, isn’t it? Full of too many small and noisy things.”
The rest of the herd gathers around the wall nudging each other to get closer to me.
I chuckle lightly, a low happy sound vibrating from my throat as I reach out with my other hand to scratch a second, smaller cow under the chin.
I speak to them in low rhythmic Gaelic, murmuring old nonsense verses about the hulls, the heather, and the quiet depth of the water.
They lean into my touch, their heavy eyelids fluttering shut, completely charmed and pacified by my presence standing at their gate.
If only they knew how much theirs meant to me.
A soft intake of breath sounds from the path behind me.
I turn my head, my hand still buried in ginger fur to find Elena standing a few feet away holding a set of car keys in her hand. She stops dead in her tracks to watch us.
The tiredness is gone from her face, and her gaze is shimmering with soft and watery warmth while her lips are parted in absolute awe.
“Lachlan, are those Highland cows? Aww, they look like giant fur balls with horns,” she breathes, her voice trembling slightly as her heart visibly melts before my eyes right there on the gravel path. “Oh my god, this is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life!”
Elena Pierson
I stare up at Lachlan, my hands still hovering over the thick shaggy fur of the cow, my heart a puddle of mush. I’m looking at this giant Scottish mythical monster crooning to a herd of cows thinking I can’t possibly love him more.
I don’t think he could get any cuter than he is right now, which is saying something.
Especially when a tiny little ginger calf no bigger than a golden retriever wobbles out from behind its mother.
It nudges its soft and rubbery pink nose right into my free hand, letting out a tiny high-pitched moo that completely breaks me, and I spend the next few moments contemplating moving a baby cow into my apartment back home.
“I can’t believe this,” I whisper, as I look up at him charming the other cows. “You’re literally like a Disney prince, a giant Scottish Disney prince with fins.”
“Just a local welcoming committee,” he chuckles, and my heart does a little happy flip at the sight of his smile. He scratches lightly at one of the big animals, looking very much like a highlander at home.
“Well, the welcoming committee is adorable,” I say, feeling freer than I have since we set out on this weird journey, as I spend a glorious minute burying my fingers into ridiculously soft woolly baby hair.
I look up and instantly melt inside while Lachlan watches us with the sweetest and most adoring look on his face.
But then a man walks by, his eyes dilating as if hypnotized by something, and in a split second Lachlan’s demeanor flips.
The warmth is gone. My gentle golden retriever has vanished, replaced by a menacing and monstrous predator whose jaw is set so tight, the muscle is jumping.
He stops in front of me, sending the farmer scurrying away and then turns to grab my upper arms. His grip is firm but careful not to hurt me.
His chest is heaving with exertion under his jacket and begins to radiate a lot of heat.
He stares down at me and I watch the blood leave his face as a shocked expression spreads, while looking like he’s never seen me before, and my brows pinch together.
“Lachlan?” I ask, my breath catching in my throat as a sudden wave of worry hits me. “What is it? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Worse,” he whispers, his voice dropping into a rough and urgent frequency that makes the air around us feel thick and heavy.
He runs a hand through my hair and pushes it back away from my face, his gaze searching over me as he does.
His green eyes dart frantically over my shoulder, scanning the empty road as if an army is about to march over the hill.
“What’s wrong?”
“Elena, I’ve been so blind, and daft. You were doused in selkie magic.
Every male with a pulse who comes into your orbit for the next day or so is going to find you completely irresistible.
Not that you’re not already to me, my flower, but it’s the sea charm magic.
And they quite literally won’t be able to stop themselves. ”
“What?!” My jaw drops.
I look down at my clothes, smoothing my hands over my shirt.
I don’t feel any different. There’s no magical glowing light, and I don’t smell anything strange, and there’s absolutely no physical sign that a supernatural beacon is currently wired directly into my skin.
And yet, the terror on his face tells me he’s completely serious.
The heavy iron car keys bite into the palm of my hand as my fingers freeze around them. “Oh my god, but I don’t feel anything. Is there a magical aura around me or something? What is it?”
“Aye, something like that,” he heavily intones, his expression pinching into a sorrowful expression.
Suddenly, everything clicks into place. The overly confident guy on the train who wouldn’t take a hint.
The farmer who just looked at me like I was a glass of water, and he was dying of thirst. They aren’t just being normal annoying guys, they’re reacting to a magical pheromone.
Some sort of cloud that I can’t perceive above me because of Maren’s magic.
“Oh my god, that’s why every male I get near has been acting so weird, isn’t it?”
“I’m so sorry Elena. I was so focused on getting the luggage back that I didn’t think about you being human,” Lachlan mutters, a low fierce growl vibrating deep through his chest as he steps even closer, completely blocking me from the world.
“The selkie’s magic on you will subtly make you appear like their deepest most inescapable desire, if they’re allowed close enough to smell you that is.
We can’t stay out in the open. Not for another second. ”
“I managed to get a rental car,” I blurt out, my heart starting to race with a mix of panic and a strained, dizzying brush of adrenaline. I point a shaking finger toward the tiny coupe car parked at the end of the village lot. “It’s just there.”
“Aye, it’ll do just fine,” he says, gently but firmly spinning me around and guiding me toward the vehicle.
He scoops up our heavy suitcases and Maren’s cooler with one hand and his other arm wrapped securely around my waist. “We need to get inside and we’re going to lock the doors, and you’re going to drive us as fast as those tiny wheels can carry us. ”
I look at the car, then at the steering wheel visibly sitting on the right side of the dashboard, and a whole new wave of panic slams into my chest. I’m going to have to drive a stick shift on the wrong side of the road while blasting an invisible siren of pure aphrodisiac monster magic on my skin.
“Right,” I swallow hard gripping the keys tight. “I meant to tell you it’ll be a bit snug, but it’s all they had.”
Lachlan stops, his nostrils flaring at the size of the tiny coupe. Before I found him petting cows like a sexy Scottish farm hand, I was hoping he would say we had time to find a different rental, but now it’s an emergency.
“I’ll be fine. We’ve got to get you out of here,” he mutters, his lips in a mulish and stubborn line.
“Okay,” I say, “let’s get locked in.”
I make it to the passenger side of the car, my fingers trembling as I jab the key into the lock and throw the door open and look up at Lachlan.
He doesn’t just step inside as he’s too tall for it, but he practically folds himself in half to fit.
His massive shoulders wedge tightly against the plastic door panel, and his knees are shoved up toward his chin while his head is millimeters from pressing against the fabric of the stained ceiling.
It looks like a giant trying to squeeze into a toddler’s toy car, and there’s no possibility he’s comfortable.
“Are you going to be alright in here?” I ask, tossing the cooler onto the floorboards behind my seat.
“Just drive, sweetheart,” he grunts, his green eyes darkening and scanning the ferry dock behind us. “There’s no time to find another car now. I can hear footsteps approaching, and we’ve got to get going.”
“Right, okay.” I push his door shut and run around the hood of the car before diving into the right hand driver’s seat. The moment I pull the door closed, I hit the lock button, and a loud metallic click echoes through the car, sealing us inside.
“Whew,” I breathe, staring down at the dashboard. “Okay. It’s all going to be okay. I can totally do this.” Worry wracks my insides.
“You’re going to do fine, Elena, not to worry,” Lachlan murmurs, his deep voice vibrating right through the console. He reaches a hand across the gear shift and lets his fingers rest protectively over my knee.
The affectionate touch sends a wave of warmth in my chest, a grounding anchor against the sudden spike of panic starting to rise.
“But the magic is still bleeding off you, Elena. I can practically see it now that I’m looking for it, and it’s rising with each second as it gets trapped in here with us. We’ve got to go.”
I look down at my hands on the steering wheel. My brain, it completely short-circuits and backfires. Everything is backward. The rear view mirror is to my left, the window is to my right, and the gear shift sits awkwardly by my left thigh.
Oh my god. This is so weird.
I turn the key and the ignition sputters to a life along with the dashboard.
“Right. Driving on the left. Shifting with the left hand. No big deal, right?” I mutter like a mantra, pushing in the clutch and putting the car into what I hope is first gear as I send a prayer up to whoever’s listening to at least make sure we make it through this and I don’t accidentally kill us both.
This whole adventure is going to make one hell of a story for Natalie. If I make it through this.