“What do you want? I cannot waste my time with you,” he said, tugging the reins so that Midnight led him away from the odd man.
“I know where she is,” the man spoke as Alex prepared to gallop away.
Alex paused. Had he heard him wrong? “Who?”
“Maddie. I’m here to take you to her. You do not have much time.” The man crossed his arms; he had an impressive presence.
Alex ignored him, unable to believe the man knew his wife. He turned his horse around and left the man, but it wasn’t to be.
A few moments later Alasdair was riding abreast of him. “Maddie. I know where your wife is. I’ll take you to her if you’ll stop being stubborn and listen.”
A blonde woman with a bow across her back suddenly appeared not far away from them, her eyes as blue as Maddie’s. “Alasdair, we must hurry.”
Alex stopped his horse and stared at her. “Where did you come from?”
He swore that she had not been there the moment before.
“We don’t have time for this. Follow us to your wife.”
Alex turned back to Alasdair. “Who the hell are you, and who is she?”
“He’ll not budge until we tell him, Dyna. You know he’s infamous for his stubbornness.”
The woman—Dyna—sighed and merely replied with a “Hurry.”
Alasdair turned back to Alex. “We are your grandchildren, and we are acting as guardian angels. We were allowed to come and help you because Dyna wishes to be born and I wish to know my grandmama. If you don’t hurry, Dyna will never exist. She’s to be the daughter of your yet unborn son.”
Alex just stared at Alasdair, unable to comprehend the words he’d spoken. Grandchildren?
“Jake will be my sire.”
His three-year-old son Jake? That’s exactly who Alasdair looked like. Jake. The eyes were the same. Alex did not understand how this could be. But suddenly, it didn’t matter. He had to find Maddie.
“Come,” Dyna said, as if hearing his thoughts. “We cannot wait. You must follow us.”
“Where is she?” He followed them because he knew not where else to go.
Alasdair said, “She’s in a cave, dying. We sent illusions of your horse to pull Mac and the lads to the same place. Hopefully, they’ll arrive about the same time we do.”
Alex did not understand half of what they said, but he had to trust his gut on this one. And it told him that these people could take him to his wife. “Take me there and hurry.”
Alasdair glanced over his shoulder at him. “You should know you were not wrong, Grandda, about refusing to travel to Ramsay land. There will be a big avalanche from this snowstorm. Had you agreed to come and left in a few days with Logan as planned, it could have buried you all. ’Tis why Grandmama—Maddie—followed her gut and left on her own sosuddenly. She felt it her only window of opportunity—and it was.”
Dyna smiled and said, “Do not blame her overmuch. We pushed her to leave then, knowing that she’d win you over in the end.”
He’d lost his mind, if he were to guess, staring at these apparitions in front of him. But then, he’d been in desperate need of guidance, and there were some things a Scot never questioned.
They flew across the landscape, and he didn’t pass another soul along the way, so he had no way of knowing if the two with him were real or not. He supposed it did not matter as long as they brought him to his wife.
A short time later, the lass led them off the main path toward a hidden cave. “She is in there.”
She dismounted, pulled on the reins of Alex’s horse, and tied them to a bush. He dismounted and rushed into the cave, Alasdair behind him.
“The others will be here soon. They’ve gone off to direct the others here. Your lads are grand. It is Grandmama you must help.”
There Maddie was, curled up by a dying fire, looking small against the backdrop of the cave. Alex knelt in front of her, Dyna behind him, as Alasdair attended to the fire. His hand went to his wife’s cheek, and he was surprised at how cold she was. Should she not be warm near a fire?
He set his hand on her neck to feel for the rhythmic pulse of her heart, but he couldn’t find it. He tried the other side of her neck and thought he felt just a wisp of a pulsing beat. “Is she dead?”
