Chapter Nine

Margaret slept more soundly than she had in days as she lay curled up in Angus’s arms. The fact that he loved her so much that he had risked everything to come and find her only made her love him more. When she awoke the next morning, the familiar nausea had returned. Splashing some cool water on her face, she got dressed and joined Angus, who was already downstairs but had let her sleep in a bit longer before heading out to the fields.

“You ready?” he asked.

“I am,” she replied, sipping on a bit of water from ladle in the water bucket.

“I made us a bit of food,” he offered.

“Thanks, but I haven’t much of an appetite this morning.”

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing. Probably just a bit of fatigue from the long journey.

“Maybe you should stay inside today,” he told her.

“Don’t be silly. It will pass. We have a lot of work to do and I’ve already put us behind schedule with my nonsense.”

Angus studied her face for a moment and placed his hand on her forehead, checking for any signs of fever. Satisfying himself that she didn’t appear to be too warm, he finally nodded and opened the door for her to exit the house.

“Let’s get the ground ready and then go into town. I have enough left to get at least a start on seeds in the ground.”

“I feel so bad about everything, Angus. I feel like this is all my fault.”

“Let’s not talk about any of that anymore. You were scared and you had your reasons. We should have both been more honest with one another and we would have been much better off.”

“Fair enough. We start fresh from today.”

“Great plan. Now, let’s get to work.”

The two of them toiled side by side, breaking the ground for planting. When they were done, Margaret grabbed them a bit of ham and bread to eat while Angus got the wagon ready for going into town. Angus ate his food before getting onto the wagon, while she ate hers along the way. The spring had brought color to the brown ruins of winter, sprouting colorful flowers and blades of fresh grass as they made their way along the road. It made her smile to know it had been almost one full year since she had come here to be Angus’s wife. They had come a long way. She only wished they had done so much sooner.

“I see you found the little lady,” the old man at the market told Angus with a broad smile.

“I did,” Angus told him, picking out some apples while she looked at other vegetables toward the end his roadside stand.

“I can’t blame you for going after her. My Hilde and I have been married for fifty-two years. You only get one great love in your life,” the man said, smiling toward a woman that was approaching the stand at a very slow pace.

“You’d have been dead years ago if not for me.” The woman laughed as she approached. She looked over at Angus and then Margaret. Margaret felt incredibly weak as she stood there and almost swooned. Angus caught her in his arms and held her while she collected herself.

“I am just so tired,” she said.

“Well, that is to be expected in your condition,” the woman told her.

“What do you mean?” Margaret asked.

“With child. I remembered when I had my first, it darned near knocked every bit of the energy right out of me,” the woman said.

“Oh, I’m not expecting a baby,” Margaret said with a laugh, wondering where the woman got such a crazy idea.

“Faint and pale and I’m guessing you are nauseous in the mornings? I have a sense about these things and one look at you tells me you have a little one on the way, honey,” the woman told her with a soft smile.

Margaret’s eyes widened. That was the last thing she had expected. She looked over at Angus, who appeared equally as shocked. They stood staring at each other for a moment and then Angus suddenly broke into a huge smile and pulled her into a hug, kissing her right on the lips in front of the aged couple, who looked on with smiles of their own.

“A baby!” Angus exclaimed. “We are going to have a baby!”

“I guess we are,” Margaret said, breaking into a smile of her own.

On the way home, Margaret asked Angus about his plan to make sure no more men came for her. It was especially important now that they were having a child. He just patted her hand that was wrapped around him.

“Don’t worry about that right now,” he said. “I’ll deal with it.”

“But, Angus, I want to know,” she told him.

“You have something more important to focus on now, my love. Just trust me, and you will know in time,” he said.

“Okay, Angus,” she replied, leaning her head against his back and enjoying being with him again after her momentarily lapse in judgement in running away. Then another thought occurred to her. “Angus, our baby. Will they be a shifter, too?”

“Yes, love. They will be many things.”

“What do you mean?”

“There are tales about shifters who are half human. The human side, though you would think it inferior to that of a dragon, it changes things. It creates a certain amount of instability that both alters and improves the dragon, gives it additional powers.”

“Powers?” she said, a little wary of something that sounded like witchcraft.

“For lack of a better word. Pure dragons shifters are only two things. They are either human or they are dragon. When a human has a shifter baby, something else is introduced, but there is no way of knowing what it will be. They may be able to read thoughts or merely be more powerful. It’s just something that develops over time as they grow.”

“So, there is no telling what our baby might be able to do?”

“Exactly.”

“I’m terrified.”

“If it helps any, so am I. It is such a fear of the unknown that makes it forbidden for dragon shifters to breed with humans.”

“But you did it, anyway?”

“I suppose I’m a bit of a rebel.”

“And a runaway.”

“Yes.”

“You never really told me why you came here.”

“I just wanted some peace and quiet. I thought I was a bit of a loner, but then I found that I was incredibly lonely.”

“But not enough to return to your home and take a shifter wife that would have been accepted there?”

“I didn’t belong there. I would have never known peace.”

Margaret suspected that there was still more to this story than he was telling her, but she decided to let it go for now. If he wanted to elaborate further at some point, he would certainly do so. She would just have to wait until that time came or perhaps it just wasn’t important. Time would tell, just as it would tell them what this child of theirs would bring into the world.