Highland Shifters: A Paranormal Romance Boxed Set

by Unknown

  “What do you think of all this?” Alec asked me as he peered over the edge, taking in the ground below. “Do you believe in dragons?”

  I lifted my head to the sky, preferring the wind to the weight of the earth. It smelled like rain. Again. Scotland was a wet place.

  Soon, agreed the voice.

  Oh shut up, I thought at it. I don’t need you to state the obvious. To Alec, I said, “I guess I do now. I don’t really understand what’s going on though.” He started to speak, but I held up my hand. “I get that you’re looking for your maiden to break your curse, but I can’t be it. There’s no way. There must be a mistake.”

  “I donna know, lass. It feels right to me.” His hazel eyes searched my face. “That kiss--”

  I cut him off. “Was an accident.”

  Alec shook his head. “No, lass. It wasna. It rang through me like church bells, sweet and holy and right.” When I tensed, he stepped away as if not wanting to crowd me. “I’ll give you time, lass. There’s no rush. I’ve been waiting for two centuries, it hurts me none to wait more.” He strode over to the turret wall and climbed up to perch on its edge.

  I paused for a second, stunned by the idea of living that long. “You’ve been alive for two hundred years? Are you serious?” It boggled my mind. All that time. He’d seen wars start and end, witnessed the advent of electricity, the telephone, the industrial, and now the digital, age. What did he think of all that? Did he have a smart phone or a computer? Or did he avoid it all?

  “Aye. Tis true. Come sit with me.” He motioned for me to join him. “I will tell you the nature of our curse.”

  I walked over to him, refusing the hand he offered. “I’ll just stand here, if that’s okay.” The idea of my legs swinging free, with nothing to catch me but hard earth a good fifty feet below made my stomach clench. I may not have liked my life at the moment, but I still wanted to live.

  “I won’t let you fall.” He peered down at me, but I shook my head.

  The voice disagreed with me. Safe.

  I thought I told you to shut up? The weight that heralded the voice’s presence dwindled as it receded to the background. Good. The less that thing meddled with my life, the better. I’d been fighting to keep it contained since it first appeared.

  Alec waved at me and gave me a questioning look. I’d kept him waiting while I scolded the voice. “Sorry, I get lost inside myself sometimes. Makes carrying a conversation difficult.”

  He offered his hand again.

  “No thanks. I’m good.” I much preferred the wall in front of me.

  Turning to look out at the sprawling green hills that surrounded the castle, he said, “Suit yourself.” Then, a beat later, “How did you come to Inverness?”

  “The voice dragged me here, likely aided and abetted by your brother’s spell,” I said unable to keep the bitterness out of my voice. “It told me I would be safe for a while so I opened a cupcake shop thinking I could be normal.”

  “Cupcake?” He quirked an eyebrow at me.

  I narrowed my eyes, trying to decide if he was for real. “Don’t tell me you’ve never had one?”

  Alec shook his head. “Nay, sorry, lass.”

  “You’ve had cakes or tortes, right?” At his nod, I said, “Cupcakes are fancy but smaller versions of cake. I’ll make you some, if you like. Do you prefer chocolate or vanilla?”

  “Both,” he said.

  “I make a great marble cupcake with a chocolate ganache icing. You would like it.”

  “I’m sure I would, lass.” He stared out into the distance, watching the clouds race across the sky.

  I moved to stand beside him, leaning against the wall, which came up to my chest. Resting my elbows on the rough stone, I said, “So you’ve been cursed all this time? All two hundred years?”

  “Aye.”

  I waited for him to speak, but he remained silent. “That’s all you have to say? ‘Aye?’”

  Alec scratched his head. “It’s not a tale I’m used to sharing, lass. I donna know where to start. We’ve kept it a secret for so verra long.”

  I knew something of secrets. They would suffocate you if you let them. “Okay, start slow. What’s the curse?”

  His posture relaxed a bit. “We are cursed to remain in our human form and on this land until we find our maiden.”

  “Who cursed you?”

  “One of the fair folk.”

  “Why?” I pushed.

  “Gavin,” he said as if that name alone explained everything. Given what I’d observed so far, it probably did, but I wanted details.

  “What did he do?”

  Alec paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts. He blinked as the first drop of rain hit his face. “Do you want to go in, lass?”

  I wiped a rain drop off my cheek. “Not yet. It’s just sprinkling right now.”

  He gave a nod of approval. “You’re not afraid of a little rain.”

  I lifted my face to the weather, shivering as the cold water hit me. “You know, if I’d gone inside ten years ago, I wouldn’t be here now.” Storms used to lure me outside with their darkness and sizzling flashes of light. I’d walked my first storm at the age of ten. It had been a fun hobby until the voice blasted its way inside me.

  “If you’d gone inside, I donna know how we would have met.” A shadow crossed his hazel eyes, tinting them a mocha brown.

  “Maybe I wouldn’t be your maiden.” I met his gaze, knowing there would be no shadow in my eyes. My life had no room for extras like love. Even a dalliance was too much to expect.

  He lifted one shoulder in agreement and looked away. “Mayhap, but we were talking about Gavin, were we not? All of us are dragons, but we each have our own special skill that sets us apart.”

  “Malcolm’s a wizard,” I said.

  “A mage,” Alec corrected. “Niall is a healer. I am a scholar and Gavin is a berserker. Do you know what that is?”

  “He goes crazy?” I could believe it. He hadn’t seemed all that stable so far.

  “No, not crazy. That’s a modern definition. Back in our time, a berserker was a warrior who could not be killed. No weapon could touch him, and once Gavin starts, he doesna stop until he has destroyed all his enemies.”

  “He’s invincible.”

  “Aye. Tis a great thing to have him fighting on your side, but he’s not as invincible as we thought.” Alec’s shoulders slumped and his hands clenched into fists. “Knowing he couldna be killed, our enemies conspired to set a trap for us. We thought we were fighting for our lives, but it was just a trick. Another mage opened a portal on the battlefield and Gavin killed many of the Fairy Queen’s court.”

  I frowned. “I don’t follow.” I’d never seen a portal, although I recognized it was quite logical that they existed based on everything else I’d seen so far.

  “To Gavin, anyone in front of him was to be killed. He canna control himself once he goes berserk. So during battle, the portal thinned the walls between our world and that of the fair folk.” He put his hands together, wiggling his fingers to illustrate his point. “The two worlds overlapped and it all looked the same to Gavin. Many died who were not even part of the fighting.”

  “Couldn’t you stop him?”

  “We picked him up in our dragon forms and dropped him in the North Sea to come to his senses, but by the time we intervened the damage had been done.” He sighed. “In truth, of all of us, he needs his maiden most. Only she can calm the berserker in him. If he’d found her back then, the battle may have ended very differently.”

  “Sorry. I guess Malcolm’s spell didn’t know that.”

  “It’s not your fault, lass. No need to be sorry.” He went quiet then, staring out into the horizon as thunder began to rumble. The rain picked up, but I didn’t move or speak, wanting to give Alec some space. I could tell by the furrow in his brow and the sadness in his eyes that the past had come to take its toll again.

  After a while, he resumed speaking, gaze fixed on the rolling moors
in the distance. “We apologized and Gavin offered his life to the Fairy Queen, but she was too angry to let that be the end of it. She cast this curse on us, trapping us in human form and anchoring us to this place. Time rushes by,” he waved a hand, “but we don’t change.”

  Lightning shattered the sky, punctuating his words. I flinched. I’d learned to distrust the raw energy of the earth. It had caused me no end of trouble.

  Alec caught my reaction. “Are you all right?”

  So much for the girl who’s not afraid, I thought to myself. Of course, I highly doubted Alec had ever been touched by lightning. Being electrocuted by Mother Nature and imbued with a paranormal something I never wanted made me jumpy around storms.

  I blinked the rain out of my eyes and widened my stance, preparing to shoulder the storm. If Alec could stand it, so could I. After all, there wasn’t much more that could be done to ruin my life. I had nothing left to lose. “Yes, I’m fine,” I said, my voice flat.

  The weather mocked me with multiple streaks of lightning. Thunder boomed loud enough to shake my heart in my chest. Alec jumped down from the turret wall. Squinting, he tracked the storm clouds that were coalescing right over us..

  “We should go in.” He took my elbow and nudged me toward the door that would lead into the safety of the castle, but I couldn’t move.

  My hair was floating, rising toward the sky. The last time that had happened, I’d ended up with the voice.

  Alec turned back to me, eyes widening as he caught sight of my hair. His coppery strands were winding their way upward as well.

  “Run,” I told him, fighting the energy taking over my body. It was too late for me, I could feel it in my bones, but Alec might have a shot if he moved fast enough.

  He did run….right toward me.

  “No,” I screamed as his arms went around me. Lightning zapped the turret, bright as a strobe light. The air crackled in my ears, a loud static. I closed my eyes and braced myself, waiting for the pain, but it didn’t come.

  Opening my eyes, I tried to figure out what was going on. The lightning still snapped around us, an electric predator hungry for a kill. Alec had wrapped himself almost completely around me, sheltering my smaller frame in his much larger one.

  His eyes closed, he grunted and groaned as the storm’s fury dropped on our heads. Small licks of lightning seemed to reach out and lash his back. I could feel the way his muscles tightened with every hit. Where I would have passed out by now, Alec stood strong and unscathed.

  I kept waiting for the storm to pass, for the lightning to fade, but it didn’t. It pounded and thrashed the turret, going on and on until I suspected it wasn’t a natural phenomena.

  Attack, agreed the voice.

  “We should go inside. It’s not a real storm,” I yelled to Alec, pushing for him to shuffle with me toward the door.

  He gripped me tighter and moved with me, but way too slow. We would be charred like meat on a grill at this rate. I yanked against his arms, frantic to go faster. “Come on, before you get hit again.”

  “Och, lass, donna worry about me. I’m half made of fire.” His eyes met mine and I saw his pupils had gone as copper as his hair. “This storm can’t hurt me.”

  A shout sounded and Malcolm joined us on the turret. Covering my back, he said, “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, but there’s something wrong with this storm.” I gestured to the sky as best I could considering the fact I was pinned between both men.

  “I know, I can feel its magic,” he said, his voice grim.

  “Can you tell who it is?” I asked.

  “No, but I will find out,” Malcolm said, his voice curt. “They’ve broken the wards on the castle and I willna let that stand.”

  “We should go inside. We’re not safe out here.” I tried to physically urge the men toward the door, but they stood firm. Both Alec’s and Malcolm’s arms tightened around me, holding me in place.

  “There’s no shelter from this storm, lass,” said Malcolm. “It’s magic. Better to face it here than let it loose inside the castle.”

  “What does it want?” I asked confused.

  “You. Can you not feel it?”

  My stomach sank as I read the energy around me. I should have done that earlier, then maybe I wouldn’t have missed the weather’s true intent. Malcolm had been right, the storm had an extra weight to its presence that I had learned to associate with heavy magic. It had to be the witches. They were the only group I’d encountered who used magic so openly in their quest to trap me.

  I poked at the voice. Are you there? I’d been distracted by Alec, but where had the voice been? Sleeping? If so, it would be the first time the voice missed an attack on me.

  Safe, said the voice, unconcerned with the storm. It didn’t think an outright attack was a threat. Well, that was a new one.

  I worried my bottom lip, trying to sort out what this meant. If the witches’ spell worked and they found me what would happen then?

  Dragons, said the voice. A vision flashed into my mind’s eye of the turret and Alec and the magic denied. They’d hit Alec with a direct strike and nothing had happened which meant…

  “They can’t touch me here,” I said, wonder filling my voice. Pushing against the men, I wiggled my way free. Hands raised in the air, I screamed, “Bring it! Come on you sadistic bitches, just try and take me now.”

  The storm, which had paused for a moment, gathered itself and surged right for me, electricity snapping in the air. My long tresses didn’t just stand on end, the energy yanked at them until I thought it might actually pull my hair out of my head. Lightning cracked the air like a bull whip, striking the turret, but never coming close enough to actually touch me.

  I threw my head back and laughed, feeling powerful instead of hunted. The wind convulsed around me, angry and thrashing. Neon blue and brilliant white flashed as thunder boomed, but as loud as it was, I refused to move. The running stopped here.

  My moment of glory was ruined when Alec grabbed me and dragged me back through the door. I fought him, not wanting to leave, not understanding what was happening. It wasn’t until I saw Malcolm standing in the spot I’d been, lightning webbing over him like rope that I realized the truth.

  I hadn’t been safe.

  I wasn’t untouchable.

  The voice had lied.

  No, it said immediately, tone sharp. Dragons.

  Then Malcolm blinked out of existence, the storm disappearing with him.

  “Malcolm,” Alec cried out. He ran outside while I stayed in the relative safety of the stairwell that led to the turret. Kneeling, he planted a hand where his brother had been as if hoping to grab Malcolm and bring him back, but that didn’t happen.

  Alec looked over his shoulder, anguish furrowing his forehead. “Where is he?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  He jumped to his feet and was in front of me before I could blink. Shaking my shoulders, he asked, “Find out.”

  I pushed him away. “Don’t touch me,” I said, my voice an angry hiss.

  “They were after you. Malcolm has been taken in your place. You have to tell me where he is so I can save him.” Alec’s hands dropped at his side and I could see how hard he worked to remain calm, taking deep breaths and clenching his jaw to hold his emotions in check.

  Heavy steps pounded the stairs behind me. The other brothers hurtled toward us, their faces twisted with worry.

  Gavin arrived first. “What happened?” he asked, not even out of breath after bounding up what I’d counted earlier as two hundred steps.

  Niall came right behind his brother. “Malcolm told us to stay inside, but then we heard him yelling.” His brown eyes searched my face. “Is everything okay?”

  Alec shook his head. “Nay.” He held up his hands. “Malcolm is gone.”

  Gavin’s eyes went wide with shock and his mouth fell open. “What do you mean he’s gone? What about the curse?”

  “How many times have we tried t
o destroy that bloody spell or even tunnel under it, only to find it unbreakable?” Niall asked, his lips a thin angry line as he looked from me to Alec and back.

  “I donna know what happened, brothers.” Alec pointed to me. “But she is the key to fixing it.”

  I edged back, eyeing the distance between me and the dragon brothers and the stairs leading to the ground floor of the castle. Given how fast Alec had moved earlier, I doubted I would make it, and the voice wasn’t helping me either, trusting in this delusion that a band of cursed dragon shifters was somehow my salvation.

  Niall, catching the direction of my gaze, stepped to block the way to the stairs. “What do you know, lass?” His voice was gentle, but steel gleamed in his eyes. Fiery, red steel that would not hesitate to burn me if it became necessary.

  “I don’t know anything.” I crossed my arms.

  “Some maiden she is,” snorted Gavin. He looked me up and down, a little disapproving smirk on his face. First he’d wanted to bite me, now he was my judge and jury?

  “Oh fuck you,” I shouted. “I never asked to be anyone’s maiden.” To Alec, I added, “You should have never brought me here or at least let me leave when I wanted to, then none of this would’ve happened.”

  “That’s not how it is with a dragon and his maiden,” Alec said. “We’re destined for each other. To turn away from fate’s desire is to invite death.”

  “Okay, well, maybe that’s how dating worked back in your day, but in the twenty-first century, we don’t believe in destiny or fate. They don’t exist.”

  All three men rolled their eyes at me, which made me want to smack them in turn. I made my own fate and destiny was a word used only by fake psychics.

  Not true, sniffed the voice in my gut.

  Shut up, I growled at it. I’d been a modern woman in a modern world before it showed up. I’d never asked for this fucking magic, never wanted to lift the veil. Now I’d added a missing dragon shifter to the mix. Like I knew anything about that.

  “You see the future, right, lass?” Niall’s voice intruded on my thoughts. “Can you not look to see where Malcolm is or where he will be?”

  “He has to be here. The curse wouldna let him go any further.” Gavin headed for the stairs, his stride full of purpose. “I will go search for him. If there’s magic here in Inverness beyond our own, it canna hide from us.”