The Dark Highlander

And in that strange quiet moment, he realized that had he not broken his oath, had he not gone through the stones to save Drustan, he would never have met Chloe. Ironic, he mused, that his fate had required his own fall to lead him to the woman who’d been his salvation in so many ways. Had he been given the choice, to go back in time and choose not to break his oath and never meet Chloe Zanders, he would have resolutely walked into the stones and done it all over again, with full awareness that it would lead to this moment.

Simply to have the joy of loving Chloe for what time he’d had.

From that quiet place, his mind glided swiftly to another: to the bitterly cold night he’d danced upon his ice-slicked terrace wall. He’d done it because he’d always known that he could end it all by dying. Simple solution, really. No vessel—no resurrection. Mate, endgame, and match.

A part of him had been so weary of fighting.

But he’d resolved that eve to continue fighting, and relegated thoughts of suicide to his arsenal of the last resort, loathing the notion of it.

Then he’d met Chloe, who’d given him a thousand reasons to live.

He smiled bitterly. He couldn’t call forth the magic necessary to free her and see her safe without also releasing the Draghar, which put him in an impossible position.

He would never usher in that “epoch of darkness more brutal than mankind has ever known,” of which the Prophecy foretold. There was no telling how many millions might die. What if those words he’d taunted Simon with truly were what the thirteen planned to do? What if they did intend to go back in time? Mayhap fight the war all over again? Mayhap win this time?

It would utterly change four thousand years of mankind’s history. Man might no longer even exist in present times by the time they were done.

Nay. His choices, his chances, had all been exhausted.

Och, love, he grieved, it wasn’t supposed to end this way.

When he opened his eyes, it was to discover that they’d stuffed a gag in Chloe’s mouth. Her aquamarine eyes sparkled with tears.

“Cut her,” Simon said softly. “Show him her blood.”

Dageus bit down on his tongue, filling his mouth with a bitter metallic taste. He knew he had to time it to perfection. He had to make certain he inflicted a sufficiently mortal wound on himself that he would die before the transformation was complete, but not before the sect members were dead and Chloe was free. He steeled himself to act with flawless resolution. A single moment of hesitation could undo him. He had to be one hundred percent committed to dying.

And that was a damned hard thing to be when looking at Chloe.

One of the men drew a blade over the skin of her neck, and crimson droplets welled. Chloe writhed in their arms, bucking and struggling.

Now, he told himself, even as he whispered a soft “good-bye” to his mate. Grief flooded him so acutely, so intensely, that he tossed his head back and howled from the very depths of his soul.

Then, for the first time since the eve they’d claimed possession of him, he dropped his guard and stopped resisting the thirteen.

He opened himself up to them. He invited them. He embraced them.

The response was instantaneous. Power, cunning, and madness flooded him. He was suddenly bombarded with bits and pieces of thirteen lives, filled with the phenomenal force of twelve men and one woman whose lust for life had been so intense that they’d wanted to live forever. But far surpassing any sense of them as individuals was their united rage and hatred of their gaolers, a driving incessant determination to see the Tuatha Dé destroyed, even if they had to destroy all the realms in the process.

As they swarmed into him, he ripped into Simon’s mind, brutally probing. Though the answer would be of no use to him now, he still wanted to know. He wanted to know how things might have played out differently, had he acted less rashly, been wiser.

The answer he discovered made him laugh. The irony of it was rich: he’d come tonight with so much hope, yet now knew that, even had Chloe not been taken, this had always been his only alternative.

Simon indeed knew the way to reimprison the thirteen.

Dageus had to die.

Chloe struggled in her assailants’ arms, blinking back tears. She’d been such an idiot, running out of the castle, but damn him for trying to do it alone! How was she to know men would jump on her the moment she walked outside? She’d not even gotten the opportunity to scream and warn Drustan and Gwen that she was being taken.

She chewed desperately on her gag, but it was no use, she couldn’t make so much as a whimper. Oh, Dageus, she thought helplessly, watching him. He looked at her and his lips moved, but she couldn’t make out what he’d said.