Page 40 of Highlander Unraveled
If they could change history, anyone could. Even Steven. He could take me back in time to before I ever left for Gealach in the first place, making Logan and Saor and all my friends disappear. I shuddered.
Steven reached out with lightning speed and grabbed my wrist, yanking me toward him.
“You, sweet wife”—though when he said sweet it had more of abitchtone to it—“Aren’t going anywhere.”
Steven tossed me down on the bed, and I bounced wildly, trying to scramble to the other side before he was one top of me.
“No!” I shouted. I wasn’t going to let him touch me. Not like I’d let him so many times when we were married. He might be able to have me sinking back inside myself, quivering in fear, but the fact of the matter was, I was a changed a woman. I was stronger. More confident. More knowledgeable. I kicked and punched beneath him, tried to scratch his face, but he caught my wrists and slammed them up over my head, sending a shooting pain through my shoulders.
“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing? You’re my wife and this is my right.”
I leaned up, looking him dead in the eye. “I. Am. Not.Your.Wife,” I said through gritted teeth. “You mean nothing to me. And I do not belong to you.”
He only laughed and squeezed my arms harder. I would have bruises tomorrow, I was certain. As long as there was a tomorrow…
“You’ll do your wifely duties, whether you want to or not.”
Wifely duties… He meant lay there while he raped me.
The room around me vibrated. I wasn’t getting enough oxygen with him lying on top of me. I wasn’t the waif I was when married to him before, but he was still bigger and his weight was crushing.
The air seemed to shift, the walls closing in.
“What the—?” Steven said, jerking backward.
He still kept me pinned as he scanned the oddly pulsing room.
So, it wasn’t me. He saw it, too.
“Oh, thank God,” I murmured. It was the time warp, had to be. I was leaving, or least I prayed I was leaving. I remembered this odd shift in the air from when I’d first time traveled, though I remembered nothing from the second time. Only waking up at Mrs. Lamb’s.
Steven stared hard at me, trying to figure out what it was I was saying as the room around us began to vibrate in earnest, like an earthquake.
I just closed my eyes and waited for it to be over. Waited to find myself lying in a pasture or my own bed at Gealach.
But a second later, the room stopped shaking, and Steven’s weight was still on top of me. The darkness of the room caving in around me, making it hard to breathe.
I opened my eyes to find his menacing glare.
“What were you saying?” he asked.
My tongue felt thick, my lungs tight, heart pounded.
Nothing had happened. I looked around the room, trying not to do so frantically, but I couldn’t help it. Everything was the same.
Was it an earthquake? No! I couldn’t believe that it would be. This couldn’t be all there was, the half-broken promises of Fate. Fate was supposed to be good and kind and give people what they deserved. I didn’t deserve this. I knew that.
“Get off me,” I seethed. “Getthe fuckoff me. Now.”
But Steven only laughed at my words, not giving a crap about my anger, my hatred. I bucked and kicked and yanked at his hold on my arms.
I had to be my own hero. Save myself from him. I couldn’t wait for Fate to intervene. I needed to get away from this man, right now.
“I’m not letting you go. Ever.”
“You don’t have a choice. You don’t own me.”
He sneered. “Then maybe my new friend can send us to a time where I do.”
