Untamed Highlander

Isla had always found it amazing that each Druid found that special connection in different places with different things.

She had offered to help Cara to stay out of the village and therefore away from Hayden. She wasn’t ready to see him yet. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be ready to see him again. He stirred feelings too deep, made her long for things she couldn’t have.

Every time Isla was near him she could think of nothing but him. For her own sanity, she decided against her present course of action.

If Ian, Cara, or anyone else suspected why she was in the garden, no one said a word. Which Isla was eternally grateful.

“You’re a natural,” Cara said with glee as she inspected Isla’s work.

Isla shrugged and rubbed her cheek against her shoulder. “My mother’s magic was like yours. She found her greatest pleasure in the earth. She thought mine might be like hers, so she often had me with her.”

“I wish my mother had stayed alive so I could have learned the Druid ways as you did.”

Isla sat back on her heels and turned her face up to the sun. “Spells are learned, Cara, but who you are, the magic that makes you a Druid, has always been inside you, guiding you. You just needed to learn to listen to it.”

“Ah, but listening to it when for nearly a score of years I didn’t isn’t as easy as you might think.”

Isla smiled and looked at Cara. “Nay, I cannot imagine it is. You seem to be coming along nicely.”

“I have help,” Cara said with a wink. “I’m also a quick learner.”

“That certainly comes in handy.” Isla rose and dusted off her hands after planting the last seed.

Cara’s head cocked to the side, her dark brown eyes gazing thoughtfully at Isla. “Where is the source of your magic? The place where you feel its power the most?”

In all her five hundred or so years Isla had never found that source. Until she had stepped into the sea at MacLeod Castle. She recalled that day with clarity. How her magic had sharpened, how everything had seemed to come together in a rightness and calmness that surprised even her.

“The sea,” she answered. “It’s the sea.”

“Then it’s a good thing we live next to it, aye?” Cara said with a grin. “You don’t happen to hear the trees talk like Sonya, do you?”

Isla shook her head. “I’ve heard of Druids being able to do that. It’s a rare gift Sonya has.”

“So is her healing. I’ve come to truly understand how wonderful the Druids are. And to think Deirdre is killing them.”

Isla removed the dirt under her fingernails on one hand with the fingernail of her other. “For every Druid Deirdre kills, one turns from our ways. We are a dying breed, Cara. I fear that one day none of us will exist at all.”

“What will Deirdre do for power once all the Druids are dead? Won’t she need them still?”

“It was a question I posed to her as well. I thought if she realized how quickly she was killing them that she might allow more to live.”

Cara’s nose wrinkled in distaste. “That’s not what happened is it?”

“Nay. Deirdre explained to me that it was her goal to slay all the Druids. I would be the last to be killed.”

“Why?” Cara asked and threw her hands up. “I don’t understand.”

“If there are no Druids, no one would be able to challenge her.”

Cara rolled her eyes. “No one has yet. What makes her think there would ever come a time that it happened?”

“The droughs might be more powerful alone, Cara, but if a group of mies ever got together and focused their power against Deirdre they could destroy her. Or they could have. We’re past that now, I believe.”

“There are too few of us left,” Cara said sadly.

“Once Deirdre has consumed the magic of every Druid, she will be unstoppable.”

Ian leaned a shoulder against the kitchen wall and snorted. “And here I thought she was already unstoppable. We couldn’t kill her.”

Isla looked from Cara to Ian and back again. “But we did slow her down. If that can be done to her, there has to be a way to kill her.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

Isla hoped she was right. Deirdre had more power than any Druid had thought imaginable. Not even the droughs had expected her to gain that kind of powerful black magic.

Isla had seen for herself the envy other droughs had of Deirdre. In the early years the droughs could have easily destroyed Deirdre, but their fatal flaw was that they never worked with other Druids. So they had allowed Deirdre’s power to grow.

The mies had expected the droughs to take care of Deirdre. And when that didn’t occurr the mies, who should have banded together and killed Deirdre, decided to hide instead.

Isla couldn’t blame either side. She wondered if the decision had been hers to make what she would have done. She’d like to think she would stand up to Deirdre, but she had failed to do that in the past.

Ian and Cara’s conversation turned to the other Druids, but Isla caught sight of something more interesting emerging from the sea.

She moved toward the edge of the cliff and the path that led to the beach. Her eyes were fastened on Hayden. Her mouth went dry and her heart quickened at the sight of his stunning body, the hard muscles, the bronze skin.

He was perfectly made, perfectly beautiful. A man any woman would want in her bed. She had felt his mouth, his hands on her skin, knew how they could tease her.

She had held his rod in her hands, felt it fill her, knew the joy of having him thrust inside her. She had touched his muscles, felt them flex beneath her hand, knew the places on his body that brought him to his knees.

Isla drew in a shaky breath as her nipples hardened just thinking of Hayden. She folded her arms at her waist and watched him shake the water from his fair locks.

He stood nude, unabashed in his body. Her eyes drank him in, ever hungry for more.

“The longing on your face tells me there is most definitely something between you and Hayden.”

Isla stiffened when Ian walked up beside her. She glanced at Ian to see him twirl a long stem of grass between his teeth. She thought to lie to him again but decided against it. It wouldn’t do her any good.

“I doona know him well,” Ian continued. “But what I do know of Hayden is that he often reacts before he thinks. He’s the kind of man you want by your side in a battle, the kind who would never leave a friend behind.”

“He is all of that.”

“Like any Warrior I know, his past holds him. It is why he acts the way he does, why he chooses to be alone.”

Isla cut her eyes to Ian. “Are you defending him?”

His face scrunched up. “Nay. I’m merely pointing out that what he said in the hall the other morning might have been done rashly.”

“It wasn’t.”

Though she wanted to believe it was. Her heart hurt the more she watched Hayden on the beach. He tugged his saffron shirt over his head and reached for his kilt.

“Hayden’s hatred for droughs goes very deep. He has every right to detest us. It was droughs who killed his family.”