by Sky Winters
Chapter 4
“Why in the hell do the Highlanders go so far uphill?” the guard gasped as he dropped to his knees panting.
“The bastards can go hundreds of miles in a single day on foot. You have to remember, the bloody animals can change into bears - bears of all things! - and move forward through this terrain like it is nothing.”
Lord Lachlan's voice rang out over the campsite where the exhausted guards were finally allowed to sit down and have a rest. He finally felt like they had been able to travel far enough that they would not be pursued any further by the camp of Highland bears.
“We have to make sure, you know, and although my mages have been able to concoct a way to make our scent seem as if it was going to the east to keep the Highland devils off of our trail, better to be safe than sorry. I'm sure you would rather climb a couple of hills for your own safety rather than lay out in the open without the assurance that you will be safe.”
Sadie was tied to a tree in the corner of the campsite, near Lord Lachlan, who was roasting a rabbit over the fire. Sadie thought back to the first time that James hunted for their breakfast and sighed sadly to herself, wishing that she was back in his arms safe and sound. She didn't know when she would be, but she believed their capable bear shifters would notice her absence and come to rescue her as quickly as possible. However, she was nervous about the fact that Lord Lachlan had supposedly found a way to keep the shifters off of their trail and prevent them from rescuing her. Somehow, their scents would be going to the east as they traveled further and further west, back toward the castle. But surely, they would know to go to the castle and not chase after random smells, right?
It was hard to be comforted by this, as the bear shifters showed a noticeable lack in judgment when they transformed. They followed their instincts above all else, making them vulnerable to attacks of strategy. She didn't want to leave her life in the hands of others, but if she had to, she was glad that she had thrown her lot in with the noble bear shifters of Lord James' clan.
“Tell me, wisp,” Lord Lachlan said, removing the gag from her mouth. “Why exactly did you choose to appear in my home if you didn't want to marry me?”
“It wasn't a choice,” Sadie said coldly.
“Oh no? I find that hard to believe. You surely knew that I had been pursuing you all this time, right?" Lord Lachlan said quietly, out of earshot of his men. The guards were already drifting into a deep sleep, as they had been worked to the bone by the demanding Lord Lachlan.
“I don't know what you're talking about," Sadie said, quirking her eyebrow at him.
“Sure you do," he said, moving toward her and pressing his face close to hers. It made her shudder and recoil, but she had nowhere to run. “I have been looking for you for so many years, when I finally spoke your name, I knew that you would be mine. It just makes sense. I knew you would be the one to help me take down the Highlanders. Without you and your power, they would rule forever. You don't know how terrible that would be. The world would be roaming with freaks of nature like those bear shifters. Half man, half animal. They have no sense of decency; they are totally evil."
“They are not evil. I think the evil is in the shape of a man who is willing to do anything to harm others and destroy their way of life.”
“Shut your mouth, wisp,” Lord Lachlan barked. “These are creatures without a God, and they should never have existed at all. They are freaks of nature; don't you understand? You are my ticket to eradicating them from this land once and for all. Without you, they will be free to roam and continue destroying life as we know it. Don't you think that's a problem?”
“I don't see why you hate them so much," Sadie said. “They keep to themselves. They don't hurt anybody.”
“They don't hurt anybody?!" Lord Lachlan exclaimed. “Haven't you seen that man James, that bastard, plowing through my men like they were nothing? How can you say that they don't hurt anybody? They would kill you just as soon as they would look at you.”
“The problems between the Highlands and the Lowlands are caused by fear and greed. And you will get away with mistreating and murdering these people simply because they don't fit into your small idea of what normal should be. It's completely unfair to expect that of them, when they are so much more than normal. They are better than normal. It is you who is the evil coward, causing problems between the Highlands and the Lowlands. You just want to control them all, but you are never going to be able to pull it off. If you want my help, I say you will have to kill me first.”
Lord Lachlan's face grew red, and Sadie flinched, expecting him to take his temper out on her at that moment. But as she had learned from her tour in the dungeon, he did not feel comfortable unleashing his wrath anywhere but the privacy of his own bleak dungeon. And that was exactly where she was heading. At the very least, she had gotten her last words in, and nothing could infuriate a tyrant like the truth.
Chapter 5
“What are you doing here? You should be in bed healing. Lord James, I don't think that this is safe for you."
James ignored the well-meaning protests of his clansmen and continued moving forward, running as quickly as he could in his ferocious bear form. The men watched him in admiration and concern, as blood leaked from his fur in the middle of his stomach.
“There is no time to be in bed right now," he snapped. “Not when Sadie is missing.”
“My lord, please reconsider. It may be just as useful to have you back at the camp to protect everybody else. If Lord Lachlan knows where our camp is now, that means that everybody is in danger. Who is going to protect the rest of the clan if we are all going after Sadie? This doesn't make sense and it might be a trap.”
James paused and thought about this for a moment. He was listening to a man named Dodd, who had always had a gentle voice of reason. James had come to respect him a lot over the years, and he stopped running for a moment to listen.
“Why don't you let us go forward and see what the trouble is? We can come back and report to you as the others move forward to deal with the situation at hand. We will bring Sadie back to you, or you can come and meet us and get her for yourself. But I honestly think that it's a mistake to have the Alpha leaving the clan vulnerable right now.”
James could see the logic and what Dodd had to say made sense to him as the Alpha. He heaved a heavy sigh and turned around, heading back to the campsite with his mind racing. As he ran, a sudden and powerful feeling came over him. He felt Sadie was calling to him from the west, and as he turned around and headed west toward the campsite, it was as if his heart was soaring as he made his way closer to his beloved. He closed his eyes and willed the spirits of the forest to guide him, and instead of stopping back at the campsite, he continued moving with all of his energy toward the west.
***
“James is going to find you, you know," Sadie said quietly.
“James is a stupid bear who will follow his instincts and by the time he figures it out, it will be too late for you. I will have already done what needs to be done.”
“Are you going to kill me?" Sadie asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Eventually, but I am going to put you away for a very long time and enjoy myself while I do it. Torture you until you have no choice but to help me get rid of the Highlanders. I will figure out exactly what you know and how I can use that to help me. We have been seeing you for years, and now it is time to hear you speak. I don't know how this happened, but I can only assume that it is divine intervention on my part. I have been doing God's work by eradicating the Highlanders from this land. And now, God will expect me to continue doing his work by forcing you into obedience and giving you the opportunity to serve His divine will. You will serve me and pleasure men as I see fit.”
“You think like a primitive beast," Sadie said dismissively.
Lord Lachlan was angered but he gave her a terrifyingly calm smile. “You may think so now, but I think that you will change your tune when you are in my dungeon. Nobod
y stays lost for long. We are all the lambs of God and will find our way eventually.”
“Oh please,” Sadie grumbled.
“Now, don't trouble yourself, dear. You will be of great use to me yet, so I will not be killing you. Not right away, anyway. You will only wish that you were dead and find that the Lord's salvation is the only thing that will save you.”
“If you cared so much about purity and the Lord, why did you want to take me before our wedding night? It doesn't matter if the priest knew or not, God would know, right?”
“Shut your mouth, woman,” Lord Lachlan sneered, “or I will finish what I started before you pulled a knife on me right now."
Sadie clamped her mouth shut and leaned as far back against the tree as she could. The last thing that she wanted was for Lord Lachlan to touch her before James and the others could rescue her from him. If that meant that she had to stop taunting him and taking out her anger on him, that was exactly what she would have to do.
As James slowly approached the area where Sadie seemed to be heading, a sudden, sharp stab of pain caused him to buckle to the ground. He quietly whimpered and transformed into his human body. The wound on his stomach was pulsing agonizingly, and he suddenly regretted not listening to Gail and his comrades.
James was laying naked on the ground, gripping onto his stomach and looking around for something that he could use to bandage his wound. He closed his eyes and silently asked the spirits for guidance, and suddenly his eye fixed upon a plant that was laying in front of him. He recognized it vaguely as one that he had been taught about in his youth, and he quickly picked it, chewing in his mouth before using it as a salve to put on his wound.
It helped him to feel better almost immediately, and he got to his feet, panting slightly. Unfortunately, he had to conserve his strength and use his human form for a while. That was the only way that he would be able to make it to Sadie in time. Who knew what the disgusting Lord Lachlan would do to his beautiful mate, and the thought filled him with rage that drove him to move past his pain and bound through the forest as if it were nothing. He had to get there before Lachlan and his men did anything to Sadie. They would feel like she deserved it, but he would not let them harm her.
Not only that, but they might harm his unborn child, and that would be unforgivable. Especially if Sadie did not know that she was bearing a child for him. Maybe in some way she would know, but he felt it was very important to let her know that she was going to be a mother, and the soul reason his clan would be able to survive throughout the course of history. Maybe that had been her destiny, whether they knew it or not. Sometimes fate had a funny way of working. Of course she’d had a terrible husband in her own timeline, but fate had made up for that and provided her with an escape to the Highlander clan where she would ultimately be able to make a better life for herself. He could only hope. If he let her down and allowed her to be harmed by the most disgusting man who had ever grazed the Lowlands, he would never forgive himself.
The idea made him want to scream with agony, and he let out a mighty roar. He ran for a few paces before dropping to the ground, still in agonizing pain from his stomach wound. He lost consciousness on the ground, his head floating in a dizzy darkness between time and space. As he began to pass out, he had a strange thought that maybe this was where Sadie had come from.
***
“All right, lads. Up and at them," Lord Lachlan's voice rang out over the campsite. The guards began to stir and grumbled, but they got up and began packing up their supplies. “We have to get back to the castle before the Highlanders get on our trail. There's a lot we have left to do with Miss Sadie here. The wisp isn't going to talk willingly. Of course, I already planned for that in advance, so as long as we get to my castle in time, everything will be fine. Hurry though, the disgusting animal people are fast. Much faster than we are.”
The soldiers readied themselves to leave. Lord Lachlan gripped Sadie by her dress and untied her from the tree. He held onto her wrists with his big clammy hands, pushing her forward ahead of him as they began to march downhill toward his castle. He looked down at her from time to time, and Sadie couldn't help but think that he looked even uglier in the sunlight. His face was blotchy and broken, and his teeth were broken and black, like his heart. She had learned of all of his horrible exploits from the tour of his castle in the future, and discovering the painting of herself marrying him had been enough to make her want to vomit.
“You call me a wisp," Sadie said. “What exactly do you mean by that? I don't understand the reference. Could you please explain it to me? Who do you think I am?"
Lord Lachlan looked down at her, a pleased grin on his face. He seemed to enjoy the fact that she was talking to him. And so, her question seemed to engage him immediately. It was a great opportunity to hear himself speak, and she knew that he would take it.
“My lady, do you not know your own legend?"
She shook her head, batting her large green eyes at him sincerely. The more she knew, she felt, the more likely she would be able to escape. She would have to play it very carefully.
“You’ve been here before, you know. In the Highlands. We've seen you here for years. But before you were just the wisp, you were not flesh and blood. Just a wisp of a person. Here, but barely here. We all knew your face from legend, and even your name. When you suddenly appeared in my room, I knew that you were meant to be my bride. And I knew that you would be the one to help me get rid of the Highlanders once and for all. If I could just keep you, and keep you away from them, for myself, then you would be the one to help us to make us victorious in our war against the shifters. The bloody devils are just too uncivilized to live in this world, but now that you are here, we will be able to stop that. Won't we?"
Sadie said nothing as she contemplated his strange story. Instead of acknowledging his question, she just tilted her head at him. He took this as a sign of acknowledgment and grinned, and they continued marching on toward his castle as the cold air blew against her face. How much of this legend was true? And how much of it had James known?
Chapter 7
“Lord James, are you all right?"
Gail cradled his head in her arms and peered down at him with her friendly concerned face.
“I heard you roar and knew that you didn't go along with the rest of them. They're heading further east, I can tell. I feel it. That’s why you came back west, wasn’t it? You felt Sadie this way. That must be where Sadie really is. I have to help you, but first I need to know if you can stand up. I gave you some herbs to help with the pain. Can you move?”
James groaned quietly as he got to his feet. Gail dusted off his shoulders and offered him a small cloth bag. He pulled his favorite kilt out of it and grinned at her, slipping it on.
“Right. Now that you're all good and proper, maybe we should try moving now.”
James nodded and they began walking further toward the area where Sadie's scent was coming more strongly. James collapsed against a tree, and Gail rushed to his side.
“James, do you need help?” she asked, frowning.
Before James had a chance to reply, she was transforming into her bear form and nuzzling his shoulder. He knew that she wanted him to climb onto her so that they could move through the forest more quickly. He did as she wanted, knowing that it was just his childhood friend suggesting it and not somebody who would hold it over his head later.
“So, are you happy to be a father?" Gail asked him. The bear kind could speak to each other without words, which was good for James because he was lacking in energy.
“I would rather not think about that until I have Sadie and my unborn child back,” he said.
“Understandable," Gail said.
“I'm worried though. What if something has already happened to her?"
“You would already know," Gail said. “In your heart. You know, when my father was killed, my mother just knew something was wrong. I think that the same thing would happen with you and Sadie. She h
as been captured yes, and she could be in terrible danger, that's true. But she’s still here. And I'll help you see to it that she gets back home safe and sound.”
“Thank you, Gail," James said, laying his head against her. And with that, they bounded along as quickly as Gail could carry him, into the uncertainty of the forest ahead.
***
When the darkness fell around them, Gail paused in her tracks.
“You know, I'm beginning to think that Lord Lachlan and his men don't know this forest very well,” Gail chuckled.
James was about to agree when suddenly he perked up, distracted. “Gail, do you smell that?”
“I do! It's the remains of a fire. They've been here. We're on the right track.”
Gail was about to start running again when James jumped down and put his hand on her shoulder.
“I smell her,” he whispered.
Gail gazed at him as he walked up to a tree, smelling it and contorting his face with fury.