Falling for Angels - Hazel Hunter Page 0,12

please… ’Tis easier to abide loneliness. I cannae match your strength, lass, but you’ll no’ easily break me.”

“Okay.” Roxanne came closer. “So, we’re springing it?”

I took her to the pond, and kept my trews on as I waded out. I heard her shedding her garments, but kept my back to her. If she wished me to look she’d show herself to me. I ducked under the water to scrub the soot from my hair, and then surfaced to see Roxanne swimming toward me.

“This is amazing.” She held out her hands. “Don’t be shy. I won’t hurt you.”

“I’m no’ an immortal, nor druid kind,” I reminded her. “My life, ’tis the only one I’ll live. You cannae desire a mortal mate.”

“I want you. I want kids, too.” She hauled herself up my chest as if she meant to kiss me, and then the joy fled from her expression. “Crap.”

Roxanne seized me, and threw me out of the pond. I landed with a painful thud on my arse, and when I looked over at her she had another of me in her strong arms. Only that Smith had bared jagged teeth that he snapped an inch away from her face.

I flung myself into the water and swam for the pair, reaching them just as Roxanne cried out. The calpa had shifted into its natural form, that of a huge black horse, and had latched onto my lass’s shoulder. I grabbed the monster’s mane and wrenched its head back. When I saw what it had done to her I roared my fury and snapped its neck.

“Roxanne.”

I dragged the lass out and carried her up to the bank. The deep, ugly wound on her shoulder made me furious as I tore my shirt into a bandage for her.

“We need to tell the laird,” Roxanne said. “He doesn’t know they’re using the springs now, too.”

It unmanned me to realize she could bleed to death, and be lost to me forever. “Dinnae die on me, lass.”

“I don’t want to.” She touched my face. “If I can’t have you, I don’t want to come back.”

“Fack eternity,” I told her. “We’ll love now, and leave forever to the Gods.”

And that is what we joyfully did.

Chapter 11

Wild Horses

I didn’t know anything about the Highland Angels and the McGillean. No one asked me if I wanted to live in fourteenth-century Scotland. I just happened to be a passenger on their plane when it crashed into a time portal. I only took that trip so I could see the Royal Highland Show, and find out more about my heritage (orphan here). My Scottish blood had some druid mixed in, so I survived and jumped back in time.

Now I worked in the clan’s stables, the only place where I felt at home. All of the horses liked me, but it wasn’t as if they had a choice.

The clan had mostly destriers trained for battle, but also pack and plow horses to do the heavy farm work. The laird’s stablemaster, Conor, managed the herd, but each clansman looked after his own horse. What tack they had to speak of was simple but kept in good repair. The one thing they didn’t have was an equine vet, and while I wasn’t fully qualified, I was still better than nothing.

“Your alpha is a water hog,” I told Conor as I finished mucking out the last of the stalls that morning. “She keeps trying to get out to the loch. She’s carrying twins, too.”

The stablemaster, who was big, broad, and bad-tempered with everyone including me, scowled. “Dinnae jest on that, Jaime.”

I loved it when he used my name. No matter what mood Conor was in, he made it sound sexy, and intimate, like he was really saying I want to get you naked, girl.

“Take a look.” I led Conor back to the mare’s stall, and guided his hands around her swollen belly until he felt the two sacs. “I think they’re lodged in different horns in her uterus.” Touching her with him made me feel shy. “They’ll probably come early, too. Didn’t you check after you put her with the stallion?”

“I didnae breed her,” he admitted.

Horses aren’t designed to birth twins; they almost always lose one or both shortly after conception. Even if a young, healthy mare can carry them to term, they usually don’t survive delivery, which often kills the mother, too.

“What did you with twins in your time?” Conor asked as we left the stall.

“We called a theriogenologist to reduce the pregnancy.” Which I