Domnall (Immortal Highlander, Clan Mag Raith Book 1): A Scottish Time Travel Romance

by Hazel Hunter

  Refreshed by the prospect of such fine justice, and the boon the Mag Raith had never given him, Galan took his mount to the tribe’s stables, where he handed him off to the brother in charge of the beasts. The other druid said nothing, and only glanced at him before guiding the horse to its stall.

  Annoyed, Galan walked out and followed the path to the settlement. Doubtless Aklen, ever the purest of souls, would have stern words for him. He would let the shaman scold while he considered what he would require for his pursuit of the Pritani. He had already decided on which mount he would take when he saw the shaman standing with the tribe’s elders. They waited directly in front of his cottage, each holding a golden scythe.

  Druids never wielded scythes except in the presence of an enemy. Must he teach them even the most basic of proper defenses?

  “Brothers.” He took in their expressions, which ranged from sorrowful to stern. “I followed the Mag Raith in hopes of persuading their return, but they eluded me in the hills. I shall attempt to track them on the morrow.”

  “We’ve accepted they should no’ return, Galan Aedth.” Aklen stepped forward. “We but hoped you wouldnae.”

  “I’m headman of this tribe.” The words fell flat, even on his own ears, as Galan realized why they were armed. “My guidance has kept our people safe since the time of the invaders.”

  “You deceived the tribe as well as the Mag Raith, Aedth,” the elder with the sternest face said. “You’ve kept our people terrified with your tales of fickle Gods and unknown enemies, and imprisoned our settlement against a threat that ’twould seem doesnae exist. By thus you cut off the Moss Dapple from the rest of druid kind. ’Tis unforgivable, what you’ve done.”

  He thought of the hordes of Sluath that had emerged from the mist, and smiled thinly. “I might now prove my claims, Brother, but you wouldnae survive it.”

  Aklen shook his head. “We ken now the face of your lies, and yet you persist. Collect what you wish to take, Aedth, and begone with you. The Moss Dapple banish you from the tribe, in this and all future incarnations.”

  Galan imagined squashing the shaman with a crushing spell. Hearing his skull crack and watching his brains spill out seemed almost worth his own certain, subsequent disincarnation by scythe. But Prince Iolar’s promise to him had made all that he had once valued seem now as meaningless as dust beneath his boots.

  “I want naught from you but a horse,” he told Aklen. “Have it saddled and ready for me at the falls passage.”

  Inside his cottage Galan collected enough garments and provisions to last him as he tracked the Pritani. To the pack he made sure to add the most powerful of his potions and spell scrolls, carefully stowing the precious vials where they couldn’t break. On his way out, he stopped by the hearth, and took from the mantel an old, small shell pendant carved with the face of a woman with striking features and kind eyes. He’d had to replace the fine chain that held it many times. The tiny carving had almost been worn away by the centuries he’d spent holding and caressing the only likeness of Fiana.

  “Soon, my love,” he murmured, pressing the pendant to his lips. Hanging it around his neck, he glanced at the banked fire in the hearth. “Naught else matters.”

  A few moments later Galan shouldered his pack and walked out, passing Aklen and all of his people as he left the settlement. He didn’t glance back at the tribe he had ruled since his wife’s death. They believed they had banished him, but in truth they had set him free. The shaman did not follow him, but soon after the smell of smoke grew thick.

  At the tunnel passage Galan mounted the horse left tethered there for him, and looked one last time toward the settlement. He could see the glimmer of the flames now, and the plumes of smoke rising as his cottage burned.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Finding the old stronghold vastly changed and yet fallen in ruins cast a pall over the hunters, one that Domnall silently shared. He’d been a fool to expect Dun Chaill to have survived as he remembered it, and doubted any trace of their first stay still existed. Over time invaders must have occupied the place and built onto it before they abandoned it, for the ruins of what had once been a small fortress appeared vastly enlarged. The forest had gradually reclaimed the place, clustering around and then growing within the moss-splotched walls. Once the roof had collapsed, the interior became planting grounds for any falling seed, and now possessed trees that had grown higher than its many towers. Every other wall he saw had decayed badly, and black gaps appeared where stones had been pried out or weathered away by the wind.

  Whatever the morning sun brought to light, Domnall suspected, it would do nothing to help the Mag Raith find the truth of their past.

  Putting the hunters to work making camp for the night, Domnall gathered dry deadfall and made a small fire so that Jenna might warm herself. Only then did he realize he hadn’t seen her since coming out of the remains of the gate house.

  “Mael,” he said as the tracker brought stones to ring the flames. “Where’s the lass?”

  “Last I saw Jenna, she told me she wished to look at something and headed in that direction.” The big man jutted his chin toward the partially-collapsed tower yet standing beyond the heap of another flanking the outer gate walls. “She went quickly, but ’tis expected since we didnae stop but once.” When Domnall frowned at him, he sighed. “You didnae have sisters, Overseer. The lass likely wished to see to her needs.”

  “Dinnae call me Overseer,” Domnall said but caught Mael’s expression. “I’m but a Pritani hunter again, no more.”

  “You’re our headman now,” Mael corrected. “Surely you’ll answer to that.”

  Nectan had been long dead, but without a tribe he had no claim to the rank. Then he recalled what Galan had once called Brennus, the leader of the Skaraven Clan.

  “Mayhap Chieftain.”

  “Chieftain of the Mag Raith,” the tracker echoed, and nodded as if satisfied. “Aye, ’tis more fitting.” He placed the last of the stones and went to gather more.

  Domnall fed the flames, but every passing moment increased his displeasure. He’d given Jenna his dirk, and knew her sensible enough not to stray far. Still, since entering the forest he’d felt uneasy. The land had gone wild, and predators likely roamed at night. Even if the lass didn’t know the dangers, she should not have gone wandering alone in the dark.

  “If ’tis gnawing at you, Chieftain, go after her,” Mael advised him when he returned. “She’ll surely be finished by now.”

  Domnall lit a torch and headed toward the half-fallen tower. Along the way he saw signs of Jenna’s tracks in the scatterings of dead leaves and twigs on the ground. Her trail led him to the base of the tower, where a narrow, rough-edged gap appeared in the mossy stonework. Beyond it three low walls enclosed what might have been a garden, but now looked like a graveyard of half-buried, rotted timbers.

  “Jenna?” he called out, keeping his voice low as he peered through the fall of ivy inside the gap. “Call back to me.”

  “Up here.”

  Domnall looked up to see her high above him, leaning slightly over the very top edge of the tower wall, a wall from which bits of rock and dirt now sifted to shower the ground. Dread filled his veins and stabbed him in the heart, making it difficult to speak with calm.

  “’Tis no’ safe, lass. Come down now.”

  “It’s not as bad as it looks.” Unaware of the precariousness of her situation, she sounded like any excited bairn. “From up here I can see most of the inner ward. The trees outside the walls block the interior view. Some of the biggest sections look as if they’re still intact.”

  If he dashed up after her, he might bring the whole tower down. Never taking his eyes off her, he crouched and planted the torch in the ground. His hands needed to be free if he was to catch her. Though his jaw clenched tight, he forced his voice to stay even as he stood.

  “Aye, and doubtless they’ll still be thus by morning.” He jabbed his finger at her and then at the ground.

&n
bsp; “Right.” Jenna grinned. “Coming down now.”

  The knot in his chest loosened with every step he heard from within as she descended. The ivy dragged at her hair and shoulders as she emerged, and she paused to free herself before stepping outside.

  “It’s enormous,” she told him, again sounding delighted. In the torchlight her face looked flushed with pleasure. “There were at least six, maybe seven towers–”

  Domnall snatched her off her feet and held her at his eye level, to be sure he had her attention. “You shallnae plague me by wandering off thus. Ever again.”

  “I told Mael.” She tried to wriggle free, and then frowned when he held onto her. “Are you planning to carry me like this back to camp?”

  “Quiet.” He carried her until he pressed her back against the solid stonework of the tower. There he held her pinned as he struggled for the calm that eluded him. “I found you, and took charge of you. Protected you, fed you, defied Galan for you. I fought the facking Sluath for you. You shall do as I say.”

  But instead of reacting with the same heated anger, she pressed her hand to his face. “I’m sorry that I frightened you.”

  That she could do this to him when even his sire had been unable to shatter his control shook Domnall to his core. He lowered her to the ground, and tried to step back. But the slow slide of her body against his sent his blood surging hot and thick into his shaft. Nothing had ever felt as good as her on him, and he slid his arm around her waist to hold her there.

  Jenna pressed forward against his swelling cock, and something just as urgent flared in her eyes. “We can’t do this. Not now.”

  He brought his hand up to the curve of her chin. “Yet we shall, I reckon. Soon.”

  “You don’t know me.” She turned her face to press her mouth to his fingertips. “I don’t know me. I could be anyone, anything. Maybe even a demoness.”

  “Never that, lass.” He pushed his thumb against her lips to keep her from arguing the point. Looking into her gaze and seeing her longing for him tempted him so that he nearly seized her up again. “Close your eyes for me. Only a moment now.”

  Her lashes fluttered down. “Domnall, this is…dangerous.”

  “Aye, and I dinnae care.”

  He braced his hands against the stonework on either side of her, and put his mouth on hers. Her lips felt softer than he’d ever imagined. He tasted them with the edge of his tongue, catching a trace of the spiced honey bread Mael had given her at the river. From beneath the sweetness came her own, warm and alive and luscious with female heat. When he parted her lips and took her mouth she groaned into his.

  Aye, this, that I’ve wanted since I saw you in the grove, asleep and somehow awaiting for me. For my voice, my touch, my eyes upon you.

  Jenna had spoken truth. He knew nothing of her. Yet as he kissed her Domnall knew everything. The catch of her breath, the soft sound that came from her throat, the tiny tremors that shivered through her flesh. He felt the clutch of her hands and the press of her breasts as if he’d always had such delights to relish. Her shy response, and how it grew bolder filled him with a longing and satisfaction he could never have before felt, and yet recognized as deeply and intimately as his own. By the time he lifted his mouth from hers he shook with a hunger that seemed to him he had always possessed, but locked away, waiting to be set free.

  By the Gods. She’s the one I’ve waited on, all this time?

  He knew nothing of her, and yet had a shaman been within the sound of his voice he’d have called him to tie their hands with a mating cord, this very moment.

  “Look upon me,” he urged, and she did. “What ken you of me and the Mag Raith?”

  Her damp bottom lip trembled before she caught it with her teeth then released it. “Very little. Almost nothing, except what you’ve told me.” She touched his cheek. “But it’s not what I feel.”

  “’Tis the same for me.” Domnall turned his head to kiss her palm. “I’m but a hunter. You, lass, you’re beyond all I ken.”

  Her eyes searched his face. “Not anymore.”

  Returning to the camp site with Domnall made Jenna feel rather self-conscious at first, but none of the hunters paid any attention to them. Edane and Kiaran sat mending their saddles, and Mael crouched by the fire roasting some meat impaled on six sticks. Broden, who stood watching the forest with his usual glower, barely glanced at her.

  They all suspect what we were doing, Jenna guessed, but they’re being polite. In this tight group the only privacy they had was given as a courtesy. It made her want to hug them all. And wouldn’t that delight Broden.

  Domnall came to inspect the sticks of food. “Grouse?”

  “Ptarmigan,” the tracker told him. “There’s hundreds roosting in the ruins. Kiaran’s birds took them. I found plentiful sign of hare and quail we may snare, so we’ll no’ go hungry if our stores run low.”

  Something was wrong with what Mael said, but Jenna couldn’t put her finger on it. She glanced over at the clutch of the falconer’s little birds, which were all preening themselves. One stretched out its wings, making her think of the Sluath, which she didn’t want to do, so she went to retrieve their waterskins.

  Away from the men she also didn’t have to keep pretending everything was fine.

  As Jenna sorted through their packs, she did the same with her qualms. Climbing up the tower had been a little foolish, but kissing Domnall had been entirely reckless. Recent events and how she had handled them had given Jenna a sense of her own personality: focused and stubborn, and yes, even a little daring on occasion; in all things, independent and self-reliant. Yet just a few minutes ago she’d been clinging to the big man and agreeing to…what? Intimacy? A relationship? They hadn’t even named it.

  He didn’t have to say sex. He was ready to have it with me right there against the side of the tower—and I wanted it too.

  Given this outrageous attraction between them, which was only growing stronger by the day, sex seemed inevitable. But what if Domnall wanted more from her? The way he’d looked at her after that wild kiss, and what he’d said, had shaken her to her heels. She had nothing to offer him but her body. Her heart might prove as vacant as her memory.

  When Jenna stood with an armful of waterskins her thigh and calf muscles locked up, sending shaky arrows of pain into her bones. She took an uncertain step before she realized she’d lifted too much weight for her tired legs to support.

  “Permit me,” Kiaran said, appearing at her side so suddenly she nearly dropped everything. “You shouldnae try to carry so much. You’re no’ a draft nag.”

  “You should wear a bell around your neck.” She didn’t mean to sound so grumpy. “Or maybe I should when I’m in a temper.”

  Kiaran began taking some waterskins from her arms. “When I first awoke in the ash grove without my kestrels, I felt such rage. Had they no’ found me, I might have torn apart the forest out of spite.”

  “You got away from the Sluath with your birds?” His expression grew wary. “I didn’t have anything with me when I woke up there,” she added. “Not even my clothes.”

  “They flew after me, I reckon.” He nodded at her arms. “Shall you manage those?”

  Another strategic change of subject, Jenna thought, and swallowed a sigh. “Sure.”

  As they walked back to the camp fire Jenna still tried to piece what he’d told her into the bigger puzzle. Like the kestrels the Sluath could fly, but the Mag Raith couldn’t. They’d had to ride hard all day from the Moss Dapples’ lands to reach Dun Chaill. The valley had been completely exposed to the sky. Assuming the hunters had somehow escaped, how could they have gone so far on foot without getting caught? What had they used to get past the tribe’s spell boundaries to reach the ash grove? Was it what erased their memories?

  Could the same thing have happened to her?

  Domnall and his men knew more than they were saying—or would say—in her presence. Yet Jenna was guilty of the same by keeping her ability to walk through
walls from them. How were they going to get through this if they didn’t trust each other?

  Mael took the waterskins she held and offered her one of the spitted birds, now roasted golden brown and smelling of herbs. Yet when she sat down by the fire Jenna felt almost too depressed and heartsick to take a bite. The men would go on taking care of her, the way adults did with lost children. To them she was a burden, not a member of the group.

  I kept up with them. I’ve done everything they’ve asked of me. Why don’t they trust me?

  “’Tis cooked through,” the tracker assured her when he saw she wasn’t eating.

  “I’m sure it’s delicious.” She glanced at the stone wall and got an idea. “It’s just that all the riding has tired me out.” She handed the stick back to him. “I think I’d better get some sleep.”

  No one tried to stop her as she picked up one of the horses’ saddle blankets and spread it on the ground at the base of the curved wall some distance from the fire. She stretched out and turned to face the men so they could see her, and then closed her eyes. The wall, which as she suspected provided excellent acoustics, helped her hear everything the Mag Raith said once they thought she’d fallen asleep.

  “She’s taverit, poor lass,” Mael was the first to mutter. “And she’ll catch chill over there.”

  “We’ve all pushed her too hard this day,” Edane said. “She managed, but she’s no’ accustomed to riding.”

  That much was true. Exhaustion dragged at her, making it easy to feign sleeping. Jenna had to press her thumbnail against the center of her palm to keep from actually dozing off.

  “Best take her to the nearest village, then,” Kiaran suggested. “For ’tis naught out here but more hard days and cold nights, and we’ve no’ a cart for her.”