The door opened, and the immortal he’d visited for centuries to seek relief from his current existence smiled up at him. The silvery-haired matron stepped back while waving him inside. “Welcome, honored chieftain. Come, dry yerself by the fire while Keeva pours ye a wee dram to warm yer soul.”
Mathison shoved back the hood of his riding coat and fought the urge to shake off the water. ’Twould be a rude thing indeed to behave like a common mongrel in the presence of the one rumored to be a daughter of the mother goddesses. “I thank ye for yer hospitality.”
He moved to stand in front of the huge hearth that took up one end of the long meeting room. Fresh wood popped and crackled in the glowing bed of coals, revealing that someone had recently fed the blaze. Mairwen’s assistant, the wee lass known as Keeva, hurried over with a tankard, which he accepted with a nod. That youngling always set him on edge. She flitted around too much for his liking, always reminding him of a flighty moth or an annoying midge.
She smiled more than usual today, and a different sort of energy filled the air with an excitement that caused his hackles to rise.
Hazarding a sip of the whisky she’d given him, he widened his stance and waited. Something was most definitely different this time. He sniffed the air, taking in the scents surrounding him. The stench of disappointment that had fouled all his earlier visits was gone, replaced by a new aroma—a layer of leeriness and something else. Even though he both feared and dreaded the answer, he had to ask, “Ye have found her?”
The old one didn’t smile, but neither did she bow her head with regret. She merely studied him as if weighing the sins of his weary soul.
“Answer me, Mairwen.”
“We feel we have found her.”
“But?”
“Uniting the two of ye will not be easy.”
He snorted a bitter laugh. “Nothing about my life has ever been easy.”
Mairwen directed him to the large stone bowl that sat in the center of the table. “Come. See who we think may be the one we have searched for so verra long.”
At least the bowl seemed harmless enough. Not like those strange things that the young apprentice of Mairwen had shown him on his prior visits. Still, a bit of cautiousness seemed prudent. He approached with the wariness of a beastie ready for a trap to spring at any moment. Then, he locked eyes with the image captured atop the waters in the bowl and forgot all else. Even Dubh, his inner wolf, perked to attention and growled, “She is ours. She is our one.”
Preferring to proceed with caution, Mathison maintained a detached, calm demeanor. “Who is she?”
“Calia Wiles.” Mairwen moved to stand beside him. “A twenty-first century American seeking isolation in the Scottish Highlands in the hopes of escaping her troubled past.”
While something in the woman’s lovely hazel eyes pulled him in, the silvery-white stripe in her dark hair gave him pause. “She is in the future, ye say?”
“Aye.”
Something was not right. He felt it. “What realm…exactly?”
“She is mortal, grand chieftain.”
His heart sank to the pit of his stomach. “A mortal.”
“Aye.”
He turned away from the compelling image and started toward the door. “My fated mate canna be a mortal who will die in a handful of years and shriek in terror whenever she sees me shift into my wolf. And look at her hair. She is no springtime lass who might be willing to change. That one will be set in her ways.”
“Wait, mighty one.” Mairwen’s order possessed the power to halt him just as he reached the door. “Once the two of ye are bound and settled in the Ninth Realm, her lifespan will match yers just as the Highland Veil blesses each fated mate reunited to strengthen it. She is naught but nine and thirty mortal years of age.”
“And yet, I notice ye dinna address my other concern. Ye know as well as I the prejudices a mortal would face in the Ninth Realm.” He shook his head, taking care to keep his back to the image, fearing that if he looked at her once more, the woman on the waters would somehow coax him into returning and tossing caution to the winds. “Because of this curse, I am known as the Wraith, the restless spirit that wanders through the Ninth Realm. No one recognizes me. None of my kith nor kin. No one. When I tell them of our times together in an attempt to stir their memories, they canna see me at all and claim I disappear before their verra eyes.” He flicked his hand at the bowl on the table. “Yet ye bring me a mortal with half her life gone and expect me to be grateful even though my pain will only grow once we are joined? Ye expect me to believe this is the woman foretold to break the curse?”
“Tell me how yer pain will grow?” Her eerily bright eyes flashing, Mairwen charged toward him with her colorful skirts swishing in time with the jangle of her silver bracelets. “Ye will have yer fated mate. The curse will be broken, and her lifespan will be matched with yers. As a Defender, a protector of the Highland Veil, ye know as well as I that the Veil always keeps its oath to ye.”
“And when I resume my rule, and my people reject her—what then?”
“Are ye that great a coward?”
He bared his teeth, his frustration flaring into a rage that ignited his wolf’s fury. “Dinna ever call me a coward?—”
Mairwen didn’t back down. In fact, she bore down on him with even more determination, her blue eyes flashing. “Then dinna act like one!” She stabbed the air with her bony finger, pointing at the bowl. “Tell me ye felt nothing when ye looked into her eyes. Tell me that, and we shall end this meeting, but know this—until that mortal dies, the other half of yer soul, her soul, will not move on to the next incarnation. The Wraith ye are now is the Wraith ye shall remain for however long that takes, as well as for how long it takes us to find her in the next life.”
“The old one speaks with wisdom,” his wolf said, growling and gnashing his teeth. We need that mortal. She is ours and will complete us.
