Page 25 of Highland Warlord
Morgana’s acceptance was a warm pillar of sun after a century of storm clouds. Bael felt it flow through him with a surge of light and power unlike anything he’d ever imagined.
Locked in the de Moray’s dungeon, he’d listened to the storm raging outside and wished he was out in it, so it could clean away the bereft agony of being separated from his mate.
A mate he’d told he didn’t want. A mate he’d made promise to have her brother kill him.
Instead, she’d accepted him, with barely a kind word spoken between them.
Why?
Testing the reinforced chains with his new strength, they felt more flimsy to him. Breakable.
Ha. Let the Druid King try to keep him from his mate,now.
A great crash reverberated through the castle, and a cold wash of dread vibrated in his bones.
Morgana, she was dying. He could feel it in the dimming of his soul.
How cruel could the fates be to lead him to her and then allow her to be taken? He wouldn’t allow it. Not this time. Hestrained against his bonds, sweat breaking out over his skin though he felt colder than the glaciers of his homeland.
This was his fault. He’d allowedhimselfto be taken. He’d spent moments of unmeasured bliss in Morgana’s arms and then slinked away to the dungeon to face his end rather than risk her possible rejection of him. He was such a fool. He should have fought for her.
He’d fight for her now. Fight for the life she’d infused within him, regardless of his resistance to it.
With a roar born of rage, he tensed against the chains, then strained, cording his muscles and calling forth his beast.
For the first time without the invocation of blood, the world faded to shades of grey. Every sound differentiated into an echo, every sight detailed with the precision of a blade. His beast surged within him and so did a new and powerful magic.
The chains shattered.
Though Bael knew nothing of the layout of the keep, he was spurred into action by the inexorable link he’d just formed with his mate. He stormed up stairs and through the halls of the castle, passing tapestries and busts that must have dated back to the Roman times. Libraries, chambers, a solarium, some of which hid cowering castle staff, but none of which contained the woman he yearned for.
Hiswoman.
It shocked him that he allowed the people to live. That his Berserker beast didn’t claim the blood that was generally his due.
Was it because of his mate? Because of her acceptance?
Morgana. Where was she?
A hiss and whistle of wind drafted though one hall, and as he followed it, it built to a scream. Voices echoed off the stones.
Bael heard his mate, his sweet, yet strong-willed woman, her voice filled with defiance, and then fear.
With no thought for tactics or strategy, he burst into the throne room intent on killing whomever was not Morgana and sorting it all out later.
He was behind his mate who’d sunk to her knees, struggling for life. Three witches turned to look at him in eerie unison. They were his enemies. They’d hurt Morgana. He’d kill them all with his bare hands.
He knew what they saw as he moved. A blur. A rush of air. And then the woman who reached her arms toward Morgana was crashing through the window casement, shattering the wood, and collapsing, broken, to the ground outside.
The sinister girl who’d taunted him from the flames was flesh and bone this time, and she made a satisfying crunch against the wall when he flung her with a swing of his fist.
He took a moment to check on his mate, his heart lifting to see her clutching her chest and gasping in huge lungs full of life-giving air.
That moment cost him.
The crone, screeching with shock and outrage threw out her hands and Bael was lifted from the stone floor, mid-lunge, as though his heavy frame weighed no more than a whisper by a wind funnel that whipped his hair painfully against his face and shoulders. He flailed about, desperate limbs trying to find purchase, but there was nothing but the most intangible and salient element surrounding him.
“I will end you,” he roared.
