Alexis shrugged. “It’s not anything, really.”
“How did you bring us back?” Hazel asked. “How did you know where we were?”
“We didn’t,” Alexis replied. “It was an accident.”
“I doubt that,” Grace interjected.
Alexis turned away. These women’s attention made her uncomfortable. “We better go find Callum.”
“Ye should talk to Hazel about the curse,” Christie told her. “She can tell ye about the…”
“Not now,” Alexis interrupted. “We can talk about it later. I’m sure the guys are waiting for us.”
She hurried away to the castle. Callum curled on his side on a table in the Great Hall. Sadie raced around him in a flurry of activity. “I’ll need some alcohol to disinfect the wound, and I’ll need a sharp needle and some thread to tie off the blood vessels. Most of the muscle is damaged, too. You won’t be able to move your arms for a while.”
Alexis and Christie appeared in the door. Angus sat in a chair by the fire with his leg propped up. He and Carmen and Robbie and Elle stopped what they were doing to watch Alexis and Christie.
Alexis would have given anything not to walk into that room, but Christie wouldn’t let go of her hand. He steered her over next to Callum, but neither Callum nor Sadie noticed them.
“I’ll need to cut your shirt off,” Sadie told Callum. “Turn over on your stomach, but please do your best not to move your arms. They really did a number on you.”
“I cannae,” Callum rasped. “It hurts too much.”
Sadie rushed around in front of him when Christie laid a hand on her arm. “Stand aside, lassie. We’ll fix him for ye.”
She didn’t turn around. “There’s no time. I have to get the blood vessels repaired before he…”
Christie took a firm hold on her and turned her around to face him. “Look at me, lassie. Ye can trust me.”
She opened her mouth to say something and stopped. She stared up at him in shock.
Angus spoke up from the chair. “Let him do it, lass. It’ll be much quicker than anything ye have in mind.”
“Christie, I…” Sadie stammered.
“Lassie,” he breathed, “ye always took good care of me. Let me do this, for ye and Callum. Ye ken I would never do anything against either of ye.”
She floundered in confusion. She couldn’t get her voice to work. Christie took hold of her shoulders and moved her out of the way. He laid his hand on Callum’s shoulder. Callum snarled through gritted teeth. “For Heaven’s sake, lad, get it over with.”
Christie took hold of Alexis’s hand. He laid it on Callum’s shoulder and covered it with his own. He draped his other arm around her shoulder and hugged her into his chest. Alexis closed her eyes.
Love for Christie filled her head and flowed down into her hand. Beautiful heat warmed her all over, and Christie kissed her on the forehead.
Sadie’s voice startled Alexis out of her trance. “Oh, my God! The wound is all closed up. What did you do? How did you do that?”
Alexis closed her eyes again and hid her face in Christie’s chest. She didn’t want to deal with these people right now—or ever, come to think of it. She wanted to flee. She wanted to hide and never be seen again. What good was magic if it only created a wall to separate her from everyone around her?
She broke out of Christie’s arms and raced from the room. She ran upstairs to the roof. A few fighting men still worked up there to clear away the wreckage of battle, but they didn’t know anything about her. They didn’t know what she just did. They paid no attention to her.
She strode out to the battlements. The still quiet dark of evening fell over the landscape. The men went downstairs and left her alone. The wind chilled her, but she didn’t seek shelter from it.
This whole wretched day would live in infamy in her memory. Little Davy McLean was dead. Angus and Callum were injured. Nothing could erase those hurts from her soul.
Saving them and bringing the women back couldn’t right the wrongs she caused. She hated herself and everything about her life. She didn’t belong here, and she certainly didn’t deserve Christie’s love. She closed her eyes. She closed her eyes on her whole life.
While she sat there, the roof door opened. Alexis didn’t turn around to see who it was. Footsteps banged on the roof, and Alexis waited for the person to go back inside and leave her alone.
To her chagrin, the person didn’t go away. They walked up to her and stopped. “I used to feel the same way you do now.”
Alexis spun around to find Hazel standing there. “You did?”
Hazel nodded. “All the time. I couldn’t live with myself. I wanted to destroy myself. I didn’t belong anywhere. Everything I did backfired and created a disaster. I blamed myself for everybody dying all the time. It was a black time for me.”
Alexis turned away and went back to gazing over the countryside. “I don’t want to do this anymore. I want to go…”
“Go where? Do you want to go home?”
“I can’t go home!” Alexis cried. “I tried, and the curse followed me there, too. It follows wherever I go. Everything I ever cared about gets destroyed whenever I’m around.”
“It sounds to me like you and Christie are closer than ever to lifting this curse. If that’s the case, you’ll be able to go wherever you choose.”
“I don’t want anything to do with Christie!” Alexis spat. “One of these days, I’ll do something to hurt him, too, and I won’t be able to live with that.”
Hazel kept quiet for a while. “He certainly seems to want you around.”
Alexis buried her face in her hands. A deep pain stabbed her heart—the heart he gave her. “He’s a wolf.”
“And so are you,” Hazel replied.
“Was it like this for you?” Alexis asked. “Did you resist becoming a dragon?”
“It almost destroyed me. I would have died if Fergus hadn’t saved me from the madness, and I tried to kill a couple thousand people. I was out of my mind. He stopped me, and he stayed with me until I got control of my power. I wanted to die, I was so ashamed.”
Alexis’s chin fell on her chest. “I don’t think I can stand this.”
Hazel squeezed her shoulder. “I know, honey.”
A tear dropped onto Alexis’s hands in her lap. Christie held those hands. He loved those hands and everything about her. How could he stand the sight of her, after everything she’d done?
Chapter 29
Christie sat next to Lachlan at the table. Callum still lay on his side across the table in front of them, and Angus still sat in the arm chair behind them. The women milled around, and Jamie leaned against the fireplace next to Robbie.
“Are ye sure about this, lad?” Lachlan murmured to Christie. “You’re taking an awful risk.”
“It’s no’ strictly necessary,” Christie replied, “but under the circumstances, it may be the quickest way.”
“Dinnae chance it,” Callum told him. “If there’s another way without risking your life, take that.”
“The whole place could come down about our ears in the meantime,” Christie pointed out. “Ye dinnae want to risk that. We’d all be dead.”
“Ye dinnae ken it’d work out that way,” Lachlan countered. “Did ye no’ say you’re traveling back and forth in time? Ye might travel back to the time when ye could repair the village without much bother.”
Angus interrupted from across the room. “It’s too dangerous. You’ll no’ go through the portal.”
“It worked just grand when Hazel did it,” Fergus added.
“These two arenae Hazel,” Jamie pointed out. “They have another way to get to the village.”
Christie blushed. “I have to marry her first.”
“Wheesht, lad,” Lachlan murmured. “Ye have lain with her twice already. I’ll wager the Church’ll give ye leave to do it again for the sake of all our lives. If they dinnae, then ye can marry her here and now and call it a day. I suppose we have enou
gh witnesses here to make it legal.”
Christie looked away. “I dinnae want to marry her like that, and neither would ye if ye were in me place. I wouldnae shame her in front of all these people.”
“Ye havenae asked her, anyway,” Callum growled. “Ye might consider asking for her hand afore ye go making your plans.”
“Callum’s right,” Angus added. “None of this means a thing without Alexis’s input.”
“She did happen to say that she wanted to go back to the village,” Christie remarked. “I mean, she said she wanted to go back that way.”
Jamie snorted. “That’s one way of puttin’ it, lad.”
Robbie pushed himself off the fireplace. “We’re sitting here talking about a lady’s sacred virtue like it’s so much coin in a man’s sporran. Ye cannae put a price on a woman’s life to lift this curse. I speak only for myself here, but if she doesnae do it of her own free will and out of love for Christie, then it’s no’ worth all our lives. I’d rather go down fighting than trade her for another few hours of a life tainted with this kind of talk.”
He paced around the room with his hands on his hips. The others fell silent, ashamed. Christie got to his feet. “You’re right, mon. I’ll go talk to her about it now. Between the two of us, we should be able to come up with an idea what to do. We have faced this afore, and I believe we can do a lot more, so long as we do it together.”
“Here, here, lad,” Angus exclaimed.
Christie left the room and went to find Alexis. He searched every room in the castle, but he couldn’t find her. In a way, he didn’t want to find her. Robbie’s words kept repeating in his head.
The longer he thought about it, the more he agreed with Robbie. He didn’t want to devalue Alexis, especially not now that he got her back in his home castle. He loved her and she loved him. He had to respect her, now more than ever.
He slept with her once in an inn and again in a forest somewhere. He could never do that again, not even to save every life in this castle or even of his whole Clan. He couldn’t trade her for anything. He prized her above all else. He had to hold her sacred, or none of this meant a thing. His life would be worthless.
He still hadn’t found her when he met Hazel coming down the passage to meet him. “I suppose you’re looking for Alexis. She’s up on the roof, and she needs you.”
“Is that what she said?” Christie asked.
“No, she said she didn’t want to see you because she was worried she would do something to hurt you,” Hazel replied. “She doesn’t know what to do with herself. She needs you to help her make sense of it all.”
Christie set off with sure steps. As long as Alexis needed him, he would answer the call. She was his whole future now. He knew that. He came out onto the roof in full dark. He couldn’t see her.
Her scent floated down the wind to his nose. His nerves prickled and he followed the smell to where she sat. “Ye should come inside, lassie. It’s too cold up here for ye.”
“I’m okay.”
Her voice sounded anything but okay. It sounded wooden and faraway. He laid his hands on her shoulders. “Come to my room. I want to talk to ye about something.”
“If it has anything to do with this curse, I don’t want to talk about it,” she replied. “I don’t want to talk about it ever again in my life. I want the whole thing to go away.”
He wanted to talk about nothing but the curse, but he had to play his cards right to make this work. “As ye say, lass. We willnae talk about the curse.”
She stiffened. Then she relaxed into his touch. “Okay.”
He rubbed her arms. “You’re frozen. What’re ye doing up here all alone, anyway?”
“I wasn’t alone. Hazel was up here a second ago.”
“What did she say?” he asked. “Did she tell ye about how she repaired that fabric of hers?”
“She said a lot of things, most of which I don’t want to believe. If she’s right about half of it, then I…I don’t know what to think or what to believe. It means this whole thing is nothing like what I thought it was.”
“Come down to my room, lass. We can have a fire there and talk this over.”
She let out a shaky sigh. “All right.”
He took her hand and led her back inside, back to the light and warmth of the castle. He sat her in a chair in his room while he got a fire going in the fireplace. When he finished, he sat in the chair next to her and took her hand.
“So what is everybody talking about downstairs?” she asked. “No, wait, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
“They’re just worried, is all,” he replied. “Ye cannae blame them for that and for talking it over.”
“I knew they were talking about me,” she muttered.
“That’s why I’m here,” he replied, “so we can talk about it.”
“I said I didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Then let’s talk about something else,” he replied. “I have something to ask ye.”
“What is it?”
“I want to marry ye,” he replied. “I want to make ye my wife and have ye stay here with me for the rest of your natural life.”
“That’s interesting,” she shot back. “The last time you said those words, you told the Faery King you didn’t want to have anything to do with me for the rest of your natural life.”
Christie blushed and looked away. “So I did.”
“Seriously, Christie,” she went on. “You can’t start thinking about me that way. What we have, it’s not like that. We had a fling, and now we’re up to our necks in lifting this curse. After it’s all over, we’ll be all over, too.”
“Is that what ye want?” he asked. “Ye dinnae want to share your life with me?”
“It’s not a question of what I want,” she replied. “It’s just a bad idea. We started out under less than ideal circumstances. It could never last, no matter how much we want it to.”
“Just tell me this. Would ye want it to last if it could?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“If it wasnae such a bad idea and hadnae started under such less than ideal circumstances, as ye say, would ye want that? Would ye want to stay here with me?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “I guess I’ll always be a werewolf. I don’t have a hope of going back to any kind of normal life, so what choice do I have? Even if I went home to my own world, I would always be a freak. I would never find people who would accept me. I would always have to come back here, whether I want to or not.”
“Is that what’s holding ye back?” he asked. “Ye dinnae want to be a freak in your own world?”
She took her hand out of his. “Look, you don’t understand. I was out in the forest earlier. I met little Davy McLean running around as a wolf, and he invited me to go running with him. He treated it like a perfectly natural suggestion.”
“Ye should have gone with him,” Christie exclaimed. “He’s a good one. He would have shown ye all kinds of things ye couldnae learn from anyone else. I wish I kenned half of what he kens about this island.”
“Well, I can’t ever go with him anymore, because he’s dead.” Alexis exploded out of her chair, away from him. The worlds burst from her lungs with such force they tore her heart out. “I killed him, okay? I killed him, the same way I destroyed all those people in the village. I can’t do this anymore, okay? I can’t keep…. loving you with all this going on. What if something happens to you and I lose you, too? I can’t stand around and watch you die. I can’t handle watching those things attack you. It hurts too much. The whole thing hurts.”
He watched her from his chair. He let her storm away to the window and turn her back on him. He sat silent for a long time and gazed into the flames. So that was it. She didn’t want to get hurt any more than she already was.
She moaned under her breath. “Just let me go, Christie. Just let me go off somewhere where I can be alone.”
He sat motionless. He couldn’t fight her anymore. Robbie
was right. If she didn’t stay with him of her own free will, he would rather she didn’t stay at all. He climbed out of his chair and crossed the room. She turned around to face him.
He took hold of her chin and kissed her. “All right, lassie. Just so ye ken I care about ye and want what’s best for ye. I’ll let ye go, and I willnae try to stop ye. Ye go down to the beach at Craignure at sunrise tomorrow, and you’ll find a boat to take ye over to the mainland. Ye never have to see Mull or me ever again.”
She tried to lower her gaze, but he kept hold of her chin. He made her look him in the eyes when he said those fateful words. “Just do me one favor afore ye go out of me life forever.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want ye to spend tonight out running,” he told her. “I want ye to go out there and run as a wolf under the moon—just for one night.”
Her eyes popped open. “But…”
“If ye can do that, I’ll let ye go in the morning. I willnae try to stop ye, and I willnae try to find ye or bring ye back, but ye must spend tonight out there. Understand?”
Her eyes raced around the room. He knew exactly what he was asking, and some part of her knew, too. That’s why she resisted. “Will you be out there?”
“No, I’ll no’ be out there.”
He let her go and went back to the fire. He leaned one arm against the mantle and stared down into the flames. The die was cast. Now it was up to her.
Chapter 30
Christie left Alexis alone in his room. Where he went, she didn’t know. She never saw him again, not even when she went out to get herself something to eat.
Her soul writhed in torment over his words. He really would let her walk out of his life forever. She didn’t want that, so why couldn’t she say so? He knew exactly what he was asking her to do. She was sunk, one way or the other.
Still, she couldn’t bring herself to consider marry him. Marry him! The whole idea was too preposterous to consider. She couldn’t get married, no matter how much the guy meant to her.
Curse Breaker (Phoenix Throne Book 7): A Scottish Highlander Time Travel Romance Page 20
