Ronin blinked. “I never said you were.”
“You did too. That night at the battle, you told me I was just like you,” he reminded bitterly.
“And you are.”
“I am not!”
“Yes, you are—”
“You killed my mother!” Grimm roared, with all the anguish built up from fifteen years of waiting.
Balder moved forward instantly, and Grimm found himself the uncomfortable focus of two pairs of intense blue eyes.
Ronin and Balder exchanged a glance of astonishment. “That’s why you never came home?” Ronin said carefully.
Grimm breathed deeply. Questions exploded from him, and now that he’d begun asking he thought he might never stop. “How did I get brown eyes to begin with? How come you’re both Berserkers too?”
“Oh, you really are dense, aren’t you?” Balder snorted. “Come on, canna you put two and two together yet, lad?”
Every muscle in Grimm’s body spasmed. Thousands of questions collided with hundreds of suspicions and dozens of suppressed memories, and it all coalesced into the unthinkable. “Is someone else my father?” he demanded.
Ronin and Balder watched him, shaking their heads.
“Well, then why did you kill my mother?” he roared. “And doona be telling me we’re born this way. You may have been born crazy enough to kill your wife, but I’m not.”
Ronin’s face stiffened with fury. “I canna believe you think I killed Jolyn.”
“I found you over her body,” Grimm persisted. “You were holding the knife.”
“I removed it from her heart.” Ronin gritted. “Why would I kill the only woman I ever loved? How could you, of all people, possibly think I could kill my true mate? Could you kill Jillian? Even in the midst of Berserker-gang, could you kill her?”
“Never!” Grimm thundered the word.
“Then you realize you misunderstood.”
“You lunged for me. I would have been next!”
“You are my son,” Ronin breathed. “I needed you. I needed to touch you; to know you were alive; to reassure myself that the McKane hadn’t gotten you too.”
Grimm stared at him blankly. “The McKane? Are you telling me the McKane killed mother? The McKane didn’t even attack until sundown. Mother died in the morning.”
Ronin regarded him with a mixture of amazement and anger. “The McKane had been waiting in the hills all day. They had a spy among us and had discovered Jolyn was pregnant again.”
A look of horror crossed Grimm’s face. “Mother was pregnant?”
Ronin rubbed his eyes. “Aye. We’d thought she wouldn’t bear more children—it was unexpected. She hadn’t gotten pregnant since you, and that had been nearly fifteen years. It would have been a late child, but we were so lookin’ forward to havin’ another—” Ronin broke off abruptly. He swallowed several times. “I lost everythin’ in one day,” he said, his eyes glittering brightly. “And all these years I thought you wouldn’t come home because you dinna understand what you were. I despised myself for havin’ failed you. I thought you hated me for makin’ you what you are and for not bein’ there to teach you how to deal with it. I spent years fightin’ my urge to come after you and claim you as my son, to prevent the McKane from trackin’ you. You’d managed to pretty effectively disappear. And now … now I discover that all these years I’ve been watchin’ you, waitin’ for you to come home, you were hatin’ me. You were out there thinkin’ I killed Jolyn!” Ronin turned away bitterly.
“The McKane killed my mother?” Grimm whispered. “Why would they care if she was pregnant?”
Ronin shook his head and looked at Balder. “How did I raise a son who was so thickheaded?”
Balder shrugged and rolled his eyes.
“You still doona get it, do you, Gavrael? What I was tryin’ to tell you all those years ago: We—the McIllioch men—we’re born Berserk. Any son born of the Laird’s direct line is a Berserker. The McKane have hunted us for a thousand years. They know our legends nearly as well as we do. The prophecy was that we would be virtually destroyed, whittled down to three.” He waved his arms in a gesture that encompassed the three of them. “But one lad would return home, brought by his true mate, and destroy the McKane. The McIllioch would become mightier than ever before. You are that lad.”
“B-b-born Berserk?” Grimm stuttered.
“Yes,” both men responded in a single breath.