Page 79 of Tempted By a Highland Beast
Three days later, the celebration had settled into memory, and life at Duart had begun to adjust to its new rhythms. With the wedding behind them, Constantine’s claim on Rowena, and on the alliance she brought, was secured. The doubled patrols now stretched across MacLean lands, watchful and steady, and for the first time in days he felt a grim certainty that whatever threat Alpin schemed, they were ready to meet it head-on.
It was in the midst of this fragile confidence that a maid found him, her face pale as she told him his father’s condition had worsened since morning. By afternoon his steps carried him to Niall’s chambers, where the once-mighty laird lay diminished, his bones sharp beneath thinning skin. Sleepless, fever-riddennights had stripped him of strength, leaving only the shadow of the man who had ruled before.
“Constantine,” Niall said, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Niall,” Constantine replied, taking a seat in the chair beside the bed. The word felt strange on his tongue, formal acknowledgment of a relationship that had been defined more by absence than presence.
For a long moment, they simply looked at each other, two men who shared blood but had never truly known each other. Then Niall lifted one trembling hand, the gesture requiring obvious effort.
“I’m proud ye ken,” he said, the words coming out rough and unsteady but unmistakably sincere. “Of what ye’ve become.”
Constantine had waited to hear those words for a long time, and yet they seemed insignificant now that they had finally been spoken.
“Are ye?” Constantine asked, his voice carefully neutral. “Proud of the bastard ye cast out? Proud of the son ye never acknowledged until ye had nay other choice?”
“The truth,” Constantine repeated, feeling something crack open in his chest; not gratitude or forgiveness, but a kind of raw honesty that he had never been able to express before. “Dae ye want tae know another truth? Dae ye want tae ken what it feltlike tae grow up carryin’ nay name? Tae watch me maither die kennin’ that nay message would come from Duart, that nay one would come fer me?”
Niall’s breathing grew more labored and his eyes closed briefly, pain flickering across his features.
“Everything I built,” Constantine continued, his voice gaining strength as years of buried pain found their voice. “Every reputation, every alliance, every scrap of control I clawed together was carved out of necessity. Nae choice. I became what I am because I had tae survive in a world that told me I was worth naethin’.”
“I ken,” Niall whispered, the words carrying the weight of genuine remorse. “I ken what I did tae ye. What I failed tae dae.”
Constantine leaned forward, his dark eyes boring into his father’s failing gaze. “It is what it is,” he said quietly, the words heavy but without cruelty.
Inside, though, the storm churned. For years he had imagined this moment, convinced that seeing his father powerless and dying would bring him satisfaction, justice at last. Yet as he sat there, he found no triumph, no release. Only the dull ache of wounds too old and deep for revenge to mend, and an emptiness that felt like a hollow victory.
Niall didn’t try to defend himself, didn’t offer excuses or justifications. He simply listened, accepting his son’s words with the resignation of a man who knew he was beyond redemption.
As the afternoon wore on, Constantine remained in the chamber, watching as his father’s breathing grew increasingly shallow. He called for the healer, but the woman could only shake her head sadly—there was nothing more to be done.
When death finally came, it was quiet and almost anticlimactic. Niall’s breathing simply grew fainter and fainter until it stopped altogether, his features relaxing into a peace he had rarely found in life.
Constantine sat in the sudden silence for a long moment, then reached forward and closed his father’s eyes with gentle fingers. There should have been triumph in this moment, he thought. Victory. Justice served after decades of neglect and abandonment. Yet none of those feelings came.
Hours later, after Niall’s death had been formally announced and the initial arrangements had been made, Constantine found himself standing outside the room he now shared with his wife. Rowena must have heard his footsteps, because her voice came through the heavy wood before he could announce himself.
“Constantine?” she called softly. “Is that ye?”
“Aye,” he replied, his voice rougher than usual.
The door opened immediately, revealing Rowena in a simple evening gown, her hair loose around her shoulders and her face soft with concern. She took one look at his expression and stepped aside to admit him.
“What’s wrong?” she asked gently, closing the door behind him and moving to where he stood in the center of the room, seemingly lost.
Constantine struggled to find words for something he didn’t fully understand himself. “Me faither is dead,” he said finally, the statement falling between them like a stone dropped into still water.
Rowena’s face softened with sympathy, but she waited for him to continue, sensing that there was more he needed to say.
“Fer most of me life,” Constantine admitted, his voice barely above a whisper, “I imagined that watchin’ him die would feel like justice fer me maither and me childhood. Like all the years of exile and abandonment would finally be balanced by seein’ him powerless and afraid.”
He moved to the window, staring out at the darkening landscape beyond the castle walls. “But when it happened... when he actually drew his last breath... there was naethin’.”
Rowena approached him slowly, her feet silent on the stone floor. “I’m sorry,” she said softly, her voice carrying genuine sympathy. “I’m sorry fer what ye lost. And I’m sorry fer the faither ye never had.”
“He said he was proud,” Constantine said, still staring out at the night. “At the end. He said he was proud of what I’d become.”
“And how did that make ye feel?”
