Highland Shifter (MacCoinnich Time Travels #4)(8)
Author: Catherine Bybee

She prayed it was the latter. The family would depend on her to reveal hope of Simon’s safety. And each year her empathy grew, nearly crippling her.

“Mother?” Selma MacCoinnich pulled at Lizzy’s skirts. The ten-year-old’s blue eyes clouded with unshed tears. “What is it?”

Lizzy shook her head and patted her daughter’s head. “It’s okay. Find your grandmother and aunts.”

Selma ran off and Lizzy closed the door behind her staring blankly at Amber with fear etched in her face.

Amber pulled Lizzy into a chair, although the physical connection caused Amber more pain. Her empathic gift felt like a curse during times of grief. It was as if she harbored the misery of everyone around her.

“Can you feel him at all?” Amber asked. Lizzy and her son shared a bond that once allowed them to speak to each other in their heads. As Simon grew, that bond severed. Left in its wake was what Lizzy described as a simple hum. A buzzing sensation told her, her son was well.

“No.”

Amber didn’t press. Soon her mother Lora and sister Myra rushed into the room. “What happened?”

Tara was fast on their heels.

“’Tis Simon. Lizzy can’t feel him.”

Lizzy sobbed. For Amber, the sound renewed her deepest fear, for Lizzy never cried. She was as strong as any Highland warrior.

Lora knelt beside Lizzy and gathered their hands together. “Shh.”

“I can’t feel him.”

“I know, lass, but hold hope. I’ve not had any premonitions of death.”

“If not death, then what?” Tara asked.

Myra ran her palm over her swollen belly as she spoke. “Could he have turned himself into an animal so small you’re not able to sense him?”

Lizzy shook her head.

“What if he used the stones?” Amber posed the question, and the women all turned to stare at her.

“Did he ever say he wanted to?”

“Nay. But perhaps—”

Lizzy shot from the chair and fled the room. Amber knew her sister-in-law would search all the hiding spaces around the Keep where they’d hidden the stones. After Tara and Myra left, going in different directions, Amber joined the search up the spiraled staircase to the tallest tower and into what appeared to be an abandoned room.

Behind a hidden door was a space occupied by one of the sacred stones—the stones the ancients charged her family with for their safekeeping—the time traveling stones, that hadn’t been used for over a decade.

When Amber’s fingertips touched the stone, it started to glow. She lifted it out of its home intending to take it to the others as proof.

As she started to stand, the stone in her hand grew hot. Fearing she’d drop it, Amber set it on the floor. Before her eyes, the stone split into several pieces. Light cascaded over the stone and created a searing heat. Amber backed away and watched as the broken stone mended itself back together.

When the light faded, and the temperature in the room dropped, the stone appeared unharmed, but beside it was a thumb size piece of the rock.

Determining the stones wouldn’t burn her palm, Amber gathered them and searched out the women in her family.

She found them in her father’s study, each with a bewildered expression on their face. Amber lifted both stones up. When she did, Lizzy and Myra pointed to the table on which they’d placed the other stones. Once Lora returned to the room all five stones sat beside smaller pieces.

“Should we look in the trunk?” Myra asked.

“Simon would never take that one.” Lizzy said.

The trunk Lizzy spoke of housed the sixth stone. Safely tucked away to be used some 500 years in the future. Simon would die before compromising that one.

Lizzy fingered the smaller stones. “They had babies.”

Myra, six months pregnant with her third child, laughed.

“What do you suppose it means?” Tara laid an arm over Lizzy’s shoulders.

“I’ve no idea.” Lizzy lifted one of the tiny stones and inspected it closer. “There’s writing on it.”

Amber crowded her, taking a better look.

“Aye. ’Tis the same as the larger stones.”

At the doorway to the study, the patter of small feet crowded in. Amber smiled into the faces of her nieces and nephews. Briac, Tara’s oldest son, stepped forward, a strange pack dangled from his hand.

“Grandpa asked me to rush this inside,” Briac said.

Lizzy gasped, and Tara walked to her son.

“What is it?” Amber didn’t recognize the material or design.

“It’s a backpack.”

Amber still had no idea of what her sister-in-law spoke.

“Where did it come from?”

Selma stepped away from the other children and placed her hand into her mother’s palm. “Simon’s horse arrived without him.”

* * * *

Simon wrapped his arms around the lass and braced for the fall.

A scream ripped from Helen’s lips the moment gravity crushed them to the earth’s surface.

They landed on something soft. The air around his body no longer felt cool or permeated with the smells of the forest. Simon jerked his head up, but kept the lass firmly within his hold. Protecting her from whomever may have followed them in the vortex.

Looking from side to side, he recognized the inside of a home similar to the one he’d spent the first decade of his life.

Under the trembling girl was a sofa. To the side of the couch was an end table and lamp. A mechanical noise filled the room and a high-pitched beep repeated every few seconds. Other than the noises of the apartment, there were none.

Simon sighed with relief and closed his eyes. No bloodthirsty warrior had tumbled with them through time. But this was not how he thought his day would end when he awoke this morning. Ah, but the woman under him was wonderfully soft in all the right places,

“Get. Off. Me.”

Simon had no desire to move. But move he must. And explain.

Helen’s small fist pounded against his chest, her legs started to kick out from under him.

“Calm down, lass. I’m moving.”

As soon as his weight lifted from hers, like a frightened rabbit, she scurried several feet away.

Simon stood to his six-foot-two height and glanced around the room.

“You’re naked!”

A necessary evil when shifting from animal to man. Much like an animal wearing only its fur, Simon felt no shame in his nudity.

The woman in the room had other thoughts.

Simon watched a blush rush to her cheeks. The glow brought much-needed color to her face. Her eyes left a fiery path, as she looked her fill. When her eyes settled south of his stomach, his body responded.