never be and rage over her parents’ deaths.
She began to pick the mushrooms and enjoyed the time alone that she rarely got at the nunnery. Her mind wandered, as it often did, while she plucked the shrooms from the ground.
It wasn’t until her basket was nearly full and a large cloud blocked out the sun that she looked up, startled to find she was closer to the ruins than she had planned to go. She had been so intent on the mushrooms and her daydreaming that she hadn’t paid attention to where she had walked. Or how long she had been out.
But now that she was at the castle, she was intrigued by it, forgetting the approaching storm. Even after three hundred years the scars from the battle and fire could still be seen in the stones.
Cara’s heart hurt for everyone who had died. No one had ever discovered why the clan had been killed. Whoever had attacked had spared no one, not even a babe. The entire MacLeod clan had been wiped away in a single night.
She shuddered as if she could hear the screams and the sound of flames surrounding her. It was all in her mind, she knew, but that didn’t stop the terror from taking hold. Her blood turned to ice, and fear clawed at her, begging her to run.
Yet she couldn’t move.
Cara blinked and forced her gaze away from the castle to calm her racing heart as her necklace heated once more. It was so hot that she took it off and held the leather strap by two fingers. She had never feared the necklace before and rarely taken it off since her mother had placed it around her neck. However, there was something decidedly odd about it now, had been since the equinox. It looked the same, but she knew what she had felt.
The wind suddenly picked up and swirled around Cara. She gasped for breath and dropped the basket in an effort to pull the hair out of her eyes.
“Nay!” she screamed when her mother’s necklace was ripped from her hands.
Cara followed the precious link to her parents as it bounced over the rocky landscape to land near the edge of the cliff.
With her heart in her throat and her hands tingling with that strange sensation again, Cara hurried to the necklace as the first fat drop of rain landed on her arm. The wind suddenly dropped in temperature. Cara glanced up to see the storm had grown larger than she had anticipated. With the breeze beginning to howl, she inched closer to the necklace.
A bolt of lightning zigzagged across the sky a heartbeat before the clouds opened up and the downpour soaked her. After several days of constant rain, the ground was already soggy and unable to hold any more water.
Cara got down on her hands and knees, uncaring of the mud that soaked her skirts, and scooted closer to the necklace. Tears coursed down her face.
She should never have taken it off, never have feared the very thing that her mother had kept close to her heart. An image of Cara’s parents flashed in her mind, driving home yet again how lonely she was, how alone in the world she always would be.
“I’m not leaving without the necklace!” she screamed into the wind. Her mother had entrusted the vial to Cara’s care, begging her to keep watch over it. She wouldn’t let her mother down. Not now, not ever.
* * *
Lucan MacLeod stared out over the landscape he had loved since the first moment he had realized what it was as a lad. He leaned his forearm against the edge of the narrow window in his chamber in the castle that faced the south and gave him a view of the cliffs and the sea.
He never grew tired of the beauty of the Highlands, the rolling waves of the sea before it crashed into the cliffs. There was something amazing about the smell of the sea mixed with the heather and thistle. This land calmed the raging anger inside him as nothing else could.
It was the Highlands. His Highlands. And he loved it.
What he didn’t love was being trapped, and that’s essentially what had happened ever since he and his brothers had returned to their home over two hundred years ago.
That was their life now. And he hated it.
How many times had Lucan raged at the inability to leave the castle? How many times had he sat in his chamber as the fury over what had happened to him and his brothers consumed him? How many times had he begged God for a way to make it all go away, to free him from the dark torment that threatened his very soul?
But God wasn’t listening. No one was.
They were fated to hide away from the world, watching as time changed everything around them. While they endured. Alone. Forever alone.
He briefly closed his eyes and remembered what it was like before their lives had been ripped apart. It was a lifetime ago that he had stood at that very window watching the clan, hearing the children’s laughter over the roar of the waves. That time seemed like a dream now, a dream that faded with each day that passed, each beat of his heart.
As the son of the laird, Lucan had never wanted for anything. Whether it was food and drink or female company. Women had always sought him out, and he readily accepted them.
He had taken their touch, their smiles, and their bodies for granted. Now all he wanted was to feel a woman beneath him. He had forgotten what it was like to have the soft curves of a woman’s flesh against him, to have her wet heat surround him as he thrust inside her.
There were times his need had been so great that he had thought of leaving the castle and finding a wench. All it took was one look at his brothers and he would remember why they had locked themselves away, why they didn’t allow themselves to be seen.
Lucan and his brothers were dangerous. Not to themselves, but to everyone else. There was great evil out there, and it wanted to use them.
Over two hundred years of confinement in the castle. But what else was there? They couldn’t be seen, not as they were, the monsters they had become. As the middle son, he had always been there to make peace for his brothers. A rock, solid and steady, to keep them all together, his mother had called him. He didn’t allow himself to think what was becoming of him and his soul.
Fallon had taken the role as heir to the clan seriously. Everything he did, everything he thought about, was for their clan. He hadn’t known what to do with himself when there was no clan, and with the beast constantly hammering for control and no way to reverse what had happened, he had turned to the wine.
As for Quinn, they had nearly lost him to the beast. Lucan snorted. Beast seemed such an understated name. There was no monster inside them. It was a primeval god banished to the pits of Hell. Apodatoo, the god of revenge, was housed within each of the MacLeod brothers. A god so ancient, there were no records or tellings of him. And he was far worse than any beast.
Whenever this despondent mood struck Lucan, as it often did when it rained, he took himself off to his chamber away from his brothers. They had their own worries. They didn’t need to see him grappling with his inner demons. He could wallow in his self-pity the rest of the day if he allowed himself. But he wouldn’t. His brothers needed him.
He took a deep breath and had started to turn away from the window when something caught his eye. Lucan’s gaze narrowed as he spotted a breathtaking vision. It was a woman, a very young, shapely woman who had dared to come close enough to the castle that he could see the comeliness of her heart-shaped face. He wished he could see the color of her eyes, but it was enough that he saw her full lips that begged to be kissed and her high cheekbones that turned pink in the wind.
And the thick, dark braid that hung down her back to her waist. What he wouldn’t do to see that hair unbound and falling about her shoulders. He fisted his hands and he imagined running his fingers through the tresses.
Her gown was plain and worn, but that didn’t disguise her small waist and rounded breasts. She moved with the freedom of one who enjoyed being outdoors, of one who reveled in the beauty around her. The gentle curving of her lips as she looked out at the sea tugged at something inside him. As if she wanted the freedom to fly on the wind currents.
She picked the mushrooms with care, her fingers tender as she placed them in the basket. When she had stared at the castle, she had looked as if it pained her, as if she had known what had taken place.
