Page 1 of Joanna's Highlander (Highland Protector 2)

Prologue

MACDARABROCH

SCOTLAND, 900 A.D.

“Father said when he and The MacDara proffered our troth to the sacred Heartstone—” The trembling girl, sweet Leannan, Grant MacDara’s chosen love, flinched as if her words were too terrible to speak aloud. “He said…it didna warm. Not even when they laid their hands upon it and chanted our pledge a second and even a third time.”

Leannan clutched at Grant’s hands, staring up at him with such anguish, he ached to wield the goddesses’ hammer and slay the source of her pain. Leannan’s pale hands felt bloodless—cold as ice from the loch or even worse, colder than death.

“The goddesses willna bless our union, Grant. We…” Leannan bowed her head. “We canna marry, m’dearest one.” Her voice broke as sorrow overcame her. “And our babe will surely be stricken from my womb.” She barely swayed from side to side. A heartbreaking sob escaped her with a soft hiccup.

“I canna bear it, Grant,” she forced out between shuddering gulps of air. “I canna bear the thought of such a life, but m’heart kens that I must let ye go.” She sadly shook her head. “Yer destiny doesna include me.”

The sacred Heartstone and the goddesses can just be damned and go straight t’whatever hell they wish.Grant Danann MacDara, second son of the goddesses’ druid clan, eased a hand free of Leannan’s desperate grasp and slid a finger beneath her chin. Gently, he lifted her face and brushed the whisper of a kiss across the trembling seam of her lips. “I dinna give a whit about the stone’s druthers or the goddesses.”

Building rage urged him to bellow, but he kept his voice low and calm. He had to. For the sake of Leannan. And for the babe. He kissed her again and forced a tender smile. “All I care about is a life with ye and our child.”

He slid a thumb across her cheek, wiping away the wetness of her tears. He’d make this right. They didna need anyone’s useless blessing. “We shall always be together, dear one. I swear it.” He drew her closer and cradled her to his chest. “And our child will be born braw and strong, aye? Ye will see the truth of it, m’love. I swear it.”

He’d take Leannan away. Away to somewhere safe. He tightened his arms around her softly shaking body and pressed a cheek to the top of her head.Athairwould be furious andMáthairwould be ashamed, but it couldna be helped. He was meant t’be with Leannan.

“We will build our lives elsewhere. I willna let ye go,” he quietly affirmed.

“We cannot,” Leannan whispered. “We must not go against the will of the goddesses.” She slowly pulled herself out of his arms and lifted her head. “We canna challenge the wisdom of the Stone.” She attempted a quivering smile. “MacDara blood flows in yer veins, dear one. We must heed the outcome of the rite or be cursed. Ye ken that well enough—or ye should.”

Muffled shouts and the warning blasts of the guard wall horns broke through the heavy shroud of doom filling the small torchlit room. Grant stiffened at the all too familiar signal that the men of the North had returned once again to attempt to take MacDara Broch. He grabbed Leannan by the shoulders and brought his face close to hers. “Bar the door behind me and keep hidden, ye ken? I’ll fetch ye once we’ve rousted the filthy bastards.”

Leannan framed his face between her small hands and ever so tenderly kissed him. Her sad, knowing smile nearly tore his heart from his chest. “Yer m’dearest love, Grant.” She paused and pulled in a deep breath, then slowly blew it out. “Hear me, dear one. M’love for ye is deep as the sea and true as the stars—for now and evermore, ye ken?”

The finality and despair in Leannan’s voice terrified Grant more than any murderous intruders ever could. He resettled his grip on her shoulders and gently shook her. “Stay hidden. I’ll fetch ye soon. I swear it, aye?”

“Aye, love,” Leannan finally answered with a soft touch of his cheek. “Go to yer kin now. Protect the blessed stone.”

Grant yanked open the door, then paused and looked back into the room. Leannan smiled again and nodded, her face aglow with such love and adoration it outshone the one blazing torch ensconced upon the stone wall.

I’ll ne’er see her again.The doom-filled premonition nearly choked him.

“Bar the door and wait for me, aye?” Leannan’s quick nod didn’t ease Grant’s feeling that his life was about to change for the worse. He closed the door and waited. The sound of the heavy oak beam falling in place across the threshold made him feel a bit better, but the gnawing fear that Leannan was about to be lost to him forever refused to leave.

Shouldering aside a stone wall at the end of the hall, Grant ducked into one of the many secret passages leading out of the secluded maze of hidden rooms that existed under the main tower of the broch. He made his way to the center of the stronghold and hurried up the circular stairway to the sacred room, the room that housed the blessed Heartstone and the four weapons of the goddesses.

The walls shuddered and dust fell from the rafters just as Grant reached the final door to the chamber. The faint din of shouts and steel clashing against steel several levels below hastened his steps. “They’ve breached the wall. I hear them in the corridor,” he warned as he pushed into the room.

His mother, Sarinda, her middle round and heavy with her unborn child, turned from the narrow window and nocked an arrow into her bow. “Aye, son. ’Tis true.” She turned back to the window, took aim, and shot. “Yer father told Alec that the other clans will ne’er make it here in time to join their steel with ours,” she added while still watching the melee below.

Grant’s younger brother, Ramsay, pulled their mother away from the window just in time for his youngest brother, Ross, to slam a great bronze shield over the opening. Arrow pings and clangs of blades crashed against the metal as both young men leaned into the shield and held it fast over the window.

“They’re upon us for certain!” Ramsay shouted, baring his teeth in a determined grimace as he bore down and shoved a broad shoulder against the back of the shield. “And their numbers are greater this time.”

“Grant—yer hammer!” Alec, the oldest of the four brothers, heaved a massive weapon of wood and stone to Grant. The goddess hammer. Grant caught the hammer easily, wielding the lethal gift from the goddesses as though it were an extension of his arm.

He rushed to the window beside the altar where his father stood. The white-haired patriarch of the MacDara clan seemed oblivious to the invasion, wafting his gnarled and bent hands through the gray tendrils of smoke rising from a soot-covered dish nestled atop a heaping circle of glowing red coals.

“Where are yer damn goddesses now,Athair?” Grant shouted at his father as he landed the broad head of the hammer square in the face of the Northman about to dive into the room through the window.

His father didn’t answer, just kept mumbling with eyes closed and face lifted to the three dripping candles hanging above the bronze brazier of smoking herbs.

Black acrid smoke seeped in from under the room’s only door. Arrow hits and the thud of the enemies’ blades rattled the heavy oak barrier until the hinges and bolts threatened to give way.

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