“I’m coming.”
The last people he expected to see when he opened the door were Carrick and Catriona Clifton, especially after what Cayden told him about the split with his family. The very next thing that struck him was something was terribly wrong. Taylor swallowed and felt the blood drain from his face.
“What’s wrong? Is it Cayden? Poppy?”
“May we come in?” Catriona asked. “You’re her cousin aren’t you? Taylor?”
He flushed. If there was something really wrong, he didn’t want there to be any lies. “I’m her half-brother. It’s a long story and it doesn’t matter right now. What’s going on?”
“Do you know where they were going? We got a call from Annabel about an hour ago over the radio. She said Cayden needed help.”
Taylor blinked and ran his fingers through his hair. “They didn’t say, but it’s probably to the place Cayden calls Bell’s Cove.”
“How far is that from here?” Carrick asked tensely.
“About ten miles, I guess. Ten miles northwest of here.”
Taylor watched as the big male scowled.
“That’s got to be it. That’s the place.”
“If there’s anything wrong I’d like to go with you. Poppy may need some specialized help.”
Carrick looked like he was about to protest, but Catriona laid a hand on his arm to silence him. “Of course you must come, Taylor. If there’s anything you think she might need, you should bring that, too.”
“Cat,” Carrick began warningly, “What if…”
Taylor sensed the tension between the two of them, and guessing its cause, he looked at them. Hell, even as intimidating as Carrick Clifton was, he knew he had to admit to what he already knew about Cayden and their whole family, especially if Cay and Poppy were in some sort of trouble. “If…um…if it’s about what you are…”
Carrick’s dark eyes narrowed dangerously. “What do you mean ‘what we are’?”
Taylor swallowed nervously before the older man’s stare, but continued on, resolutely. “I know.”
“What do you know?” Catriona asked softly, gently.
Taylor’s eyes flicked from her to her husband and back to her again. “I know you’re different…um…that you’re Silkies.”
Carrick swore. His dark eyes almost black with fury. “What the hell is the world coming to when we allow humans to know our true identity?” He shook his head in disgust. “Let’s go!” he snarled.
****
The sound of a boat engine woke her. Annabel struggled to sit up, her hands automatically fumbling in the dark until her sensitive fingers located the spear gun’s slender profile. The lights of a smaller craft glimmered in the distance as it came into the cove. She scooted over to Cayden until she leaned across his muscular body protectively, covering as much of it as she could with her own slender frame. The night air had cooled and she shivered again, only just now realizing she was still nude, her body covered in sand. Her leg muscles screamed with pain, but she ignored it as she tried to see through the dark.
“Cayden?”
Annabel heard the deep voice, but wasn’t sure if it was Carrick or Ciaran. She sobbed and brought the spear gun up in front of her.
“Go away, Ciaran.” she cried. “Don’t come near us. If you do, I swear I’ll shoot.”
“Poppy!” Taylor called out to her. “It’s me and Cayden’s parents!”
She sucked in a sobbing breath of relief and dropped the spear gun. Knowing help had arrived, she finally allowed herself to feel the fatigue and pain that wracked her body. “Taylor?” her voice broke. “Please help! You have to help Cayden. Please.”
She could see them now from the lights of their boat. Time sped up. While Catriona guided the boat in until its bow scraped and wedged against the sand, Carrick and Taylor vaulted over the sides and sprinted on to shore. She looked at Cayden’s father pleadingly.
“Help him! Please. I didn’t know what else to do. Please help him.”
Taylor threw a blanket over her shoulders and scooped her up in his arms. “Shh, Poppy. Don’t talk right now. Are you cramping?”
“Yes.” She spoke through gritted teeth.
Carrick examined Cayden. He turned his sharp, suspicious gaze on Annabel Barton. “What happened here?”
“Ciaran…”
“You want me to believe Ciaran, my son, is responsible for this?”
She nodded.
“Carrick!” Catriona interrupted. “We need to get him back to the Skerry. You can find out how it happened later.”
As Annabel felt Catriona’s gentle hands, she stared up into sharp green eyes that glowed with respect.
“I see what you did for my son,” the woman whispered to her. “Thank you.”
“I want to be near him,” Annabel murmured.
“Cat! You can’t…” Carrick protested.
“She’s too weak…” Taylor said at the same time.
“Leave them be.” Catriona’s voice was firm.
Annabel smiled and let her eyes drift shut.
It was Catriona who began to efficiently direct everything once they pulled up to the Skerry, insisting that Taylor bring Annabel on board. While Carrick assessed the damage to Cayden, his wife ran a warm bath for Annabel. Bell watched them all in a daze.
“Put her in,” Catriona told Taylor. “Did you bring medicine for her?”
Taylor nodded. In the light in the luxury bathroom, the bumps and scrapes on her body were clearly visible. “I brought painkillers. Poppy? Are you hurt? Did the bast… Ciaran… hurt you too?”
She turned glazed eyes away from the scrapes and bruises she had no idea how she’d gotten and looked at Taylor. What? Before she could even try to formulate an answer, she cried out in pain as a cramp knotted her leg muscles. Taylor shook out a couple of valiums and shoved them in her mouth before reaching for a glass of water to help her wash them down.
“Swallow, Poppy.”
****
He looked from his sister to Catriona Clifton.
“Don’t let her stay in the tub. She needs to be moved, her muscles are beginning to spasm. If you can get her something to wear I can handle her. You can go to Cayden.”
She nodded gratefully and hurried to clean Poppy up. Taylor stepped out of the cabin and onto the deck. With his hands braced on the Skerry’s deck rail, he let his shoulders slump. He had feared something like this. Her body could only take so much, and she refused to acknowledge it.
He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched the rail until his hands hurt. He loved her, but in this he felt so helpless to stop any of it. All he could do was clean up the damage.
When Taylor returned, his sister lay on the bed in the cabin clad in silky pajamas, her face twisted in pain. Catriona touched Poppy’s forehead soothingly.
“We owe her, Taylor. Even in the dark, I could see what she accomplished. Anything you need, you have only to ask!”
Taylor nodded and turned his attention to his sister. He hardened his ears to her cries as he forced her spastic muscles to move. Even so, his expression reflected almost as much pain as hers at what he had to do if she was to avoid a permanent setback.
When she swore at him, he clenched his teeth. He knew she didn’t really mean the words she hurled at him. Still…it hurt.
Chapter 12
Cayden surfaced slowly. Vague memories assaulted him as he did so. The shock on Bell’s face, the slicing pain of the propeller against his leg right before he morphed. The bitter brutal assault from Ciaran. And again Bell’s voice right before he passed out on the beach with Ciaran paused above him. Was he dead? Had his brother killed him?
He groaned with pain as he opened his eyes, and then groaned again as he recognized the interior of the Skerry. What the fuck? How had he gotten here? Sure as shit Ciaran didn’t bring him.
“Oh Cayden! Thank God!” It was his mother’s melodic voice. Twisting his head ever so slightly and ignoring the pain that throbbed in his forehead like the in
cessant beat of some heavy metal garage band, he gazed uncomprehendingly at her face. He felt a surge of the love he had tried to deny, but still, her face was not the one he longed…no…needed…to see.
“Bell.” His voice was little more than a hoarse croak.
“She’s sleeping in a guest cabin.”
Part of him relaxed. She was here. On board the Skerry. They were both really here. He started to sit up but a wave of dizziness made his head swim and his stomach turn.
“Not so fast, Cayden,” his mother soothed. “It’s been two days since you arrived.”
Worry over Bell exploded like a flash bulb in his brain. From the light coming in the windows, he knew it was well past the time of day she was normally up and about. Was something wrong?
“Bell,” he tried again. “Is she…?”
His mother touched his shoulder and gently but firmly pushed him back against the covers.
“She’s an amazing young woman, Cayden. She still won’t talk about what happened, but I saw what she did. Somehow, she loaded the life raft with everything she needed and got it and herself to shore. She even dragged you up out of the water, cleaned and treated your wounds, and when we first arrived, she was shielding you and had a spear gun pointed at us.”
Cayden listened to what his mother told him with horror. Fuck! He knew how very little it really took to overtax Bell. What his mother just described was so far beyond Bell’s physical capacity it bordered on the unbelievable. If she had truly done all that, there was no telling what harm she had done to herself.
This time he sat up again, fighting the dizziness and nausea and swinging his legs off the bed. “I must see her.”
“Cayden, she’s resting and you should be too.”
He turned his velvety eyes, so like his father’s, on her. “Please, Momma. Just for a moment so I’ll know she’s all right. If Ciaran touched her…” he let the sentence dangle in the air. He would kill him. While he might not fight his brother on his own behalf, when it came to Bell, all bets were off.
Although the surface wounds he’d received had healed, his thigh was still mending, and the blow to the head had slowed his recovery and left him dizzy. His mother would have to help him, but go to Bell he would, even if he had to crawl there.
He sat down in the chair next to her bed, his body shaking with weakness he despised. She looked pale and her face was lined with pain.
“Taylor has been moving her,” Catriona said tensely, “but she screams with the pain. Is it always like that?”
Cayden picked up Bell’s hand and held it against his cheek. He closed his eyes and swallowed thickly as he listened to his mother. He needed to talk to Taylor. His fears grew that she had somehow injured herself or that Ciaran had injured her in some way. He stared into her pale face. “I love you, Bell,” he whispered quietly. “I have always loved you. I will always love you. It doesn’t matter what I am.”
“She knows?” his mother asked.
“I had to change in front of her when Ciaran came after me.”
“But you had already told her brother. Why not her?”
Cayden closed his eyes, pain searing his heart. “I was a coward.”
Bell’s eyes fluttered open. They were glazed from the valium. Her fingers touched his beard-shadowed cheek. “Cay!”
“Oh baby,” he sighed. “What have you done to yourself?”
“He hurt you,” she whispered. “I made him leave, though.”
He covered her hand with his large palm. “How?”
“The flare gun. I told him I would shoot him.” She shuddered.
“What did he do?” Cayden knew Ciaran’s temper, his unpredictability.
“He left, but you were on the shore and I was on the boat. I didn’t know where he was, so I loaded everything I needed on the raft and found the spear gun before I pushed everything over to you. I knew I would have to kill him if he came after me like he did you. Even a fraction of what I saw him do to you would have killed me.”
He could imagine the terror she felt. Even fully mobile, she would have been no match for Ciaran either as a human or especially in his seal form. His throat tightened as he looked at her. It had taken an incredible amount of bravery and love to get into that water in the dark and come to him.
Cayden touched her. “My beautiful, brave Bell.”
A fat tear welled in her eye and rolled down her cheek. “I didn’t feel brave. I was so scared. I called, but no one would help, so I had to do it. There was no one else. I couldn’t leave you there. I love you. I—I thought you were dead. I thought he’d killed you.” Her voice broke.
“Even knowing what I am you still came?” There was a world of uncertainty in Cayden’s voice.
She smiled, her eyes starting to droop. “You’re Whiskers, my very best friend.”
He wiped the tear from her cheek and simply stared at her. His head ached abominably, but he didn’t want to leave her. Catriona touched his arm.
“She’s asleep, son,” his mother said quietly.
“I want to stay.”
****
In the end, Catriona and Taylor moved a comfortable chair and stool next to the bed so that Cayden could keep his leg propped up. She had seen that stubborn look before. It was one that Carrick was a past master at, and it appeared Cayden had inherited it. When she came in later to look in on them, they were both asleep, Cayden’s hand lightly holding Annabel’s fingers. She sighed as she looked at them. They had already been through so much, but she knew it wasn’t over yet. Not by a long shot. Catriona had seen the light of battle in her husband’s eyes. He was still determined to keep the two of them apart, and the fact that he owed Cayden’s life to Annabel wouldn’t make one bit of difference.
Those were almost the same thoughts going through Carrick’s mind. It was one of those times when his inclinations as a father were at odds with his responsibilities as head of the clan. As a father, he saw the way Cayden and Annabel looked at each other. He wasn’t an unfeeling man, or even a cold one. He still remembered what it was like when he first fell in love with Cat. But he had a duty to the clan, as did Cayden. With Ciaran now so obviously beyond redemption, Cayden could not be allowed to abandon his duty as the elder son who would one day be lord. He must bring forth heirs. Strong Silkie children to rule future generations. It was one thing to dally with a human, it was another to actually mate for life with one. His greatest fear was that he might be too late on that score. Many Silkies never mated, but among the ruling class, it was much more common. When it happened, it was for life and sometimes beyond.
Carrick stepped out onto the deck. The Skerry was now anchored just offshore from Barton’s Point. He would stay there until he could find some way to get Annabel Barton off his ship and keep Cayden on it.
“He won’t leave her,” Cat said softly just behind him. “We must find some way around this, Carrick, around this custom that requires the Silkie Lords to take Silkie wives. Does Cayden even know of it?”
“No,” Carrick admitted. “I never thought it would be an issue, and after his banishment seven years ago, I thought this whole relationship with the human would be a thing of the past.”
“Can’t you appeal to the Council? Your father was able to get an exemption for me.”
“That was different. Even though you were not a Silkie, you were also not human.”
“Human…Faerie, what does it matter? I was a land dweller just like Annabel.”
“But the Faeries are cousins, still of our broader world with an even greater understanding of magic than ours, so the match in some respects was desirable. She is a human with not only human limitations, but limits even most humans don’t have.”
Catriona stared out at where the Belle once again bobbed at the Barton’s dock. “I can see her memories, you know.”
Carrick turned his head abruptly to stare at his wife. “She allows you?”
“I don’t know if she is even aware she’s doing it. They are foggy, but I wo
nder how much of that might be the drugs she takes for the pain. Her brother says he’s never seen her this fragile since just shortly after the accident.”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Carrick cut in. “She’s too weak…even for a human!”
Cat tilted her head to one side as she looked at him in astonishment. “Do you even think about what you say? Honestly, Carrick, what she did that night would have been tough even for an able-bodied person. And few people, man or woman, would have had the nerve to get into that dark water not knowing where Ciaran might be lurking. Yet she did. Barely able to use her legs at all, she still got into that water and pushed that loaded raft over so she could take care of our son. Did you not see that she had even managed to move him away from the water?
“Imagine that Carrick! On land, with little or no use of her legs, she managed to drag him up the beach and out of the water. She must have crawled on her stomach, with only her arms to pull her.”
“Enough!” Carrick thundered. He didn’t want to picture it. He didn’t want to feel any kind of empathy with Annabel Barton. Yes, he owed her a debt for saving his son, but that still did not make her a suitable mate. In their world, she would not have survived the accident seven years ago, but more than anything else, she was human.
****
Annabel dragged her mind out of the valium fog it wallowed in. She needed to wake up, needed to move. It was one of those moments where she still had the dream, the illusion of mobility. At the waking edge of these drug-induced rests, she always had the feeling, the fantasy, that she would wake up, swing her legs over the edge of the bed, and run to the kitchen like she used to.
Reality hit though as soon as she attempted to sit up, when her legs refused to move, refused to support her weight. The reality was she could never keep up with Cayden. Her body still felt like she had been rolled over by a freight train. And if she had doubts about her ability to be with him when she thought he was only human, now she knew there was no possibility whatsoever.
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