OAK LEAVES RUSTLED in the cold wind as Evander Talorc made his way across the sacred grove. The moon had risen full and bright in the sky, silvering everything with its cool light, but he no longer cared if anyone saw him. As he approached the spot where he had buried the woman he had loved, nothing much concerned him.

He’d made his choice. This night his torment would end.

The ancient stones stood as if guarding the unmarked grave of Fiona Marphee. The Pritani designs carved on their weathered surfaces caught the moonlight and edged it with shadow. Like him, they had come into the world hard and cold, wrenched from the womb of the mother to be hewn and etched by powerful forces. He’d often thought if he’d stood still long enough he’d become one of them. That they would watch over his lady from this night on gave him a little solace.

“Fair evening, love,” Evander said as he bent to place the bouquet of white heather in the cool grass, and then straightened to watch the tiny petals shiver in the wind. “’Tis been weeks, I ken, but the roof wanted mending. That little owl has taken to the barn rafters again. I expect he’ll winter there. I left your gray with the man who bought the sheep farm. He’ll look after her. You were right about the gorse. They’ve crept up through your heather now.”

He’d bloodied his hands, trying to weed all of the prickly yellow blooms out of the flower beds she’d planted. He knew by the next moon the frost would come to take it all, but he couldn’t bear seeing the life choked out of her heather. Not when he’d watched his love do the same to Fiona.

Evander had risked everything to be with his mortal lover, turning his back on his duty and his clan to run away with her. They’d gone as far from the Isle of Skye as they could, first hiding in the lowlands near Aberbrothock before traveling to the eastern highlands near Wick. He’d scoured the lochs and rivers until he’d gathered enough gold nuggets to buy an old shepherd’s cottage in the mountains, a few miles above a small seaside village. The local mortals, most of whom were descended from Viking raiders, tolerated their infrequent visits to buy necessary goods. Evander in turn remained civil but watchful.

They’d taken the name Hunter, but in truth they were the hunted.

Despite his efforts to make Fiona feel safe, she had fretted and worried every day about their future. Since their escape she had been convinced that they would be pursued, captured, and executed for what they had done. Every noise made her flinch. Every visitor sent her into a panic. Yet in the end their enemies never found them.

Death did.

There had been no warning that sickness had struck the old shepherd’s farm. Fiona only went there every few months to buy wool for her weaving, which she made into the blankets and coverlets that Evander took into town to sell. He always went with her, but for some reason on her final trip she’d waited until he went hunting before going alone. He’d heard her screaming, and rushed back to the cottage to find her filthy and hysterical.

“They’re all dead, even the bairns,” she’d sobbed against his chest. “I tripped and fell on the shepherd’s wife. The pox had eaten away her face–” She tore at the front of her gown. “Take this off me. She’s all over it.”

Evander had stripped her and scrubbed her clean, and for more than a week after that Fiona seemed well. His hope ended when he woke one morning to find her thrashing beside him, and saw the tell-tale dimpled lesions covering her arms and face. He’d wiped down her hot body and coaxed her into swallowing some broth, and lay with her until she came to her senses.

“I’m done for now, lad,” she said, her lovely eyes clouded by fever.

“’Tis no’ always so bad,” Evander said. But he knew if she survived she would be badly disfigured. It didn’t matter to him. She had become his whole world, and without her he would have nothing left. He would be nothing. “You’re young and strong, sweetheart, and I’ll look after you.”

“You still dinnae ken,” she muttered, and then rested one thin hand against his cheek. “The gods are taking me, and freeing you. ’Tis how it should end, Evander.”

“Now you’re talking daft,” he said and brushed the hair back from her pocked brow. “You’ll survive this. You’ve been through worse.”

“When I’m gone, put me in the grove,” Fiona said and closed her eyes. “The gods will forgive what I’ve done if you give me to the oaks. I want to sleep with them.”

“No,” he said and pressed her hand to his mouth. “Stay with me. Let my love be your strength.”

She shook her head. “You were ever my weakness.”

In the end his love and care had done nothing for her. The plague had ravaged her body before it had filled her lungs and choked the breath from her three days later. He’d left her for a moment to fetch water, and when he returned she’d gone. At times he wondered if she’d waited for him to leave so she could die without him watching it.

It had been almost six months now, and grief no longer stabbed him in the heart when he paid a visit to her grave. In the beginning he came every week to sit with her, and talk of how well her garden was growing, and the improvements he had made to their little cottage. Sometimes he stretched out beside her and simply looked up at the stars. But each time he returned to the grove he felt his heart grow heavier. Fiona could not hear him, and she was never coming back. When he spoke, it was only his ears that heard him. The days and nights he spent at the cottage had begun to blur together, while the world around him seemed to be graying and flattening. Everything he forced himself to eat tasted the same. He’d even tried getting drunk, but after half a jug of whiskey he’d only felt numb.

Evander could no longer bear his loneliness.

It should stop now, this miserable immortal existence of his. The finality of it made a darkness swell in his heart. He had been angry and foolish, and he had betrayed the men who had given him a home and purpose. Fiona was gone, and the gods would never offer him another chance of happiness. Whatever rewards awaited in the afterlife, none had been saved for him. He fully expected to be damned to oblivion.

“’Tis time,” he murmured. “I’ve naught left to me, lass. I cannae go on pretending I do. I mean to hunt the undead, and kill as many as I may before they take me.” Dying that way, in battle, was the only honorable way to end his life. It would also give him the chance to do a little good before he went. “I am no’ sorry I loved you. You made me a better man, Fiona. Be at rest now, lass.”

Beneath his tunic the ink of his war spirit woke, but for the first time since he had been inked it did not fill him with anger and blood lust. Instead it pulled at him, as if it meant to drag him to the ground. He glanced down.

Dirt fell away from a slender hand pushing up out of the ground, the fingers clawing at the air.

“Fiona.”

Evander fell to his knees, gouging at the soil around the hand until he exposed an arm, and then a shoulder, and uncovered a face. Frantically he wiped the dirt away, stilling as he realized the features were not Fiona’s. This woman had an angular face and a squared jaw, and her brows arched over large, thickly-lashed eyes.

A howl of rage rose in his throat, that the gods would be so cruel to give him such hope, and then such crushing desolation.

“Please,” she gasped.

Eyes so dark they looked like black pearls opened and stared up at him, reflecting everything he felt. Earth soiled every inch of her, and she smelled of rot. Yet when her blackened hand clutched at his, it tore at his heart. Someone had done this sickening thing to her, and it had not been the gods.

“I have you,” he said.

He worked his arms under her, and dragged her up, freeing her from her grave. He did what he could to brush away the soil from her strange white garments. Her skirt must have been hacked off her, exposing legs clad in hose so thin it looked to be spun from spider web. She wore no shoes, but she smelled of roses and earth now.

As he placed her on her feet she turned, revealing the back of her clothes had been soaked with fresh blood—so much that he could hardly believe she yet lived.

“Be still,” he said. “You are injured.”

“I’m not,” she said but looked down at her legs and then at Evander. “I can move. I’m not dead.” Her brows drew together. “I should be dead.”

Evander scowled, for her oddly-accented voice sounded exactly like Kinley Chandler, the female soldier from the future. Two years past Kinley had come through this very time portal to save the life of his laird, Lachlan McDonnel. And tonight Evander had come here to bid his lover farewell before he sought his own end. He looked down into the grave that he had dug for Fiona, but it remained empty. Only the shield he had placed under his lover’s head remained.

Evander gripped her arms. “Were you sent? Do the gods mean to torment me? Why do you come here?” When her eyes widened he shook her. “Tell me.”

Her eyes rolled back into her head and she dropped.

Evander kept her from collapsing, holding her against him as he fell to his knees and swore over her drooping head. The warmth of her bloody clothes made it clear she had been hurt only moments before in her time, yet when he carefully felt along her back he found no wounds. She had a tear in the back of her short white coat that seemed to be the source of the blood, but his fingers found only soft, unbroken skin beneath it. To be sure he dragged up the coat and the thin garment beneath it, exposing the long line of her spine. He couldn’t find a mark on her.

What had healed her? Evander glanced up at the ancient oaks, and felt his blood chill. Fiona had told him stories about the magic of the groves, tales he’d dismissed as superstitions. Could this place have healed the woman? Or had it been the gods themselves?

As Evander checked for her heartbeat, he felt the skin across his chest vibrating. Beneath his tunic his war spirit pulsed, hungry for violence and vengeance.

A low sound came from the woman, and her black lashes fluttered as she came out of the faint. She went stiff against him, and fear made her mouth tight, but she did not struggle.

“I shouldnae have shouted,” he said, his voice flinty. “You’ve done naught wrong.” It had been so long since he’d spoken to another person that he hardly knew what to say. “Tell me your name.”

“Rachel Ingram,” she said and glanced around them. “Where am I?’

Evander wanted to curse the gods for bringing the woman to him, if they had indeed sent her.

“You’ve come to the Scottish highlands, Mistress Ingram.” He waited for her to react, and when she didn’t he wondered if he should tell her the rest. “Did you no’ mean to?”

Rachel turned her head toward the hills, and her mouth tightened. “Someone’s coming.”

Evander looked over and in the distance saw an undead patrol riding in their direction. They must have picked up the scent of Rachel’s blood on the wind. His desire to battle them until he was killed swelled, and then just as abruptly dwindled. The smell of the blood would send the undead into a frenzy. They would tear him apart to get at her. His life mattered not, but she was a mortal, and entirely defenseless.

“We should get out of here,” she whispered.

“Aye.” He lifted her into his arms, and ran with her into the trees to where he’d tethered his red roan stallion. He seated her backward on the front of his saddle before he swung up and gathered the reins. He could see her confusion. “You must hold onto me and no’ let go, even for an instant. Can you do that?”

Rachel nodded and wrapped her arms around him, plastering herself against his chest.

The feel of her body against him soothed the savage rage his spirit had spilled into his veins, perplexing Evander. Nothing but burying a spear in the heart of the enemy had ever calmed him when his spirit was aroused, but there was no time to fathom it now. He touched his heels to his mount’s sides, and guided the horse through the forest to the bank of the stream.

“Close your eyes,” he told her, “and hold your breath.”

Since leaving the clan Evander had trained the roan in the old way, to accompany him when he used his ability to bond with water and travel through it. Before they had grown wealthy enough to keep horses on the mainland, the clan had always trained and taken their mounts into the waters with them. As he no longer had access to the clan’s mainland stables Evander had no choice but to take his mounts with him. He felt Rachel jerk as he changed and took her and the horse beneath the surface with him, where he pulled them through the currents as he thought of the small loch near his cottage in the north. A moment later they rode out of the churning, bubbling waves and onto the bank. Rachel didn’t move, and when he tilted up her chin he saw she still had her eyes squeezed tightly shut.

“You can look now,” he said.

Evander guided the roan up to the cottage’s garden, where he lowered Rachel to the ground before he dismounted. She stood waiting, her hair plastered to her head and her garments dripping wet. The journey through the water had washed the soil from her skin, which appeared flawless. Most of the blood had also been soaked from her clothing, but he could not permit any mortal to see her dressed so. She would be branded a witch.

“Come inside,” he said as he opened the gate.

She walked along the slate stones he’d used to make a path through the garden, and when he unlatched the door she entered the dark cottage. He quickly lit a fire in the hearth, and led her over to it before he retrieved his robe.

“Take off your clothes,” he told her without thinking, and then added. “So you dinnae become chilled and sick.” He held out the robe. “Put this on after you do.”

He hated the terse, grating sound of his voice in the stillness. Why was she so silent? Had he frightened her so much?

Rachel silently stripped out of her outer garments, beneath which she wore tiny trews and some manner of breast-shaped band. When Evander realized he was staring, he averted his gaze. Once she had wrapped his robe around herself she swayed on her feet, as if she meant to faint again. He took her arm and guided her to his big chair.

“Sit and rest,” he said.

Once she did, he gathered her garments and squeezed the water from them before he pitched them into the flames. He glanced at her, expecting an angry protest, but she simply watched him with her big, dark eyes. Her stillness unnerved him, until he recalled that Rachel likely had no understanding of where she was or what had happened to her.

“My name is Evander Talorc, and I will tell what I ken.” He drew over a stool and sat before her. “The grove where I found you is a portal through the ages, and brought you here from your time to mine. We’re in the Scottish highlands, and you’ve come to the year thirteen sixteen.” He waited a moment for her to react, and when she didn’t he said, “You are not the first to journey here from the future. That you could cross over means that you are druid kind, for only they may use the groves for such journeys. Do you ken of the magic folk?”

Rachel said nothing, but curled her hands into fists.

Evander silently cursed himself for saying too much. “I’ll no’ harm you, Mistress. My clan, my people, protect yours. ’Twill all be well.” He rose and retrieved a bottle of wine, a goblet and a loaf of bread from the pantry, and brought both to her. “Here.” Yet when he poured the wine for her, and broke off a piece of the bread, she didn’t move to take either from him. “’Tis no’ to your liking? Do you want water? Fruit? There are apples and pears, I reckon.”

She stared past him into the flames as if she no longer heard him, her bottom lip caught in the edge of her teeth.

What had she said in the grove? I can move. I’m not dead. I should be dead.

Evander drew back, and suddenly all of the oddities about her came together to paint a dire portrait. Perhaps she had been injured and alive when she had been put in the ground, and her druid blood activated the time portal. Thus she had been transported here, still trapped in the earth. The horror she must have felt to awake thus was what had made her so compliant. Rachel wasn’t afraid of him. She no longer heard him. Her own terror held her fast in its grip. He reached out to touch her, and then thought better of it.

“You’ve been made whole and well, Mistress Ingram. I cannae tell you how, and it doesnae seem so to you now, but the gods have smiled upon you.” And cursed him with her care, it seemed.

When she said nothing he went to fill the goblet with water from the kitchen urn. He should take her down to the village, and have them summon a druid from the nearest settlement. The magic folk would know what to do with her. Yet he had told her his name, and she might repeat it.

Evander saw the water overflowing from the goblet to the counter and slammed down the urn. He’d never had any patience with wenches, nor had he the belly for nursing one who had gone daft. Still, the wee lass had been trapped in the earth. That would make mad even the strongest of men.

As soon as he returned to Rachel, he smelled fresh blood, and saw drops of it on the planks just before her. On closer inspection he saw that she had knotted her hands so tightly her fingernails had cut into her palms.

“Show me your hands.”

When she didn’t, he gently pried open her fingers and used the water to wash away the blood, turning her palms toward the firelight to see how deep the gouges were. He felt something warm and wet drop onto the back of his own hand, and looked up to see the tears spilling from her brimming eyes. He had no words to comfort her, and yet still he tried.

“What was done to you is healed, lass. No one shall touch you again. I swear it.”

Rachel’s lips pressed together, and then she began weeping, her slight frame shaking with the force of her sobs.

Evander lifted her from the chair and sat down to hold her on his lap. He knew nothing of her, so it should have seemed strange to be so familiar. Instead her warmth and slight weight fit against him as if she had been formed for just such an embrace, and made an answering heat rise in his chest. He tucked her head under his chin and rubbed her shoulder and arm with his hand, wishing he knew what more to do to ease her anguish.

His touch alone seemed to soothe Rachel, for she soon calmed and only shuddered now and then as she lay against him. To see her face he had to brush her damp, tangled hair back, and the desolation he saw in her expression wrenched at him.

“You have my word. I’ll keep you safe.”

“I know you will,” she whispered, and touched his hand. “Thank you for saving my life.”

He would have to explain to her that her healing had been none of his doing, but her eyes closed, and he heard her breathing slow and felt her body relax. She had fallen asleep in his arms with absolute trust, as if she had always done so. He knew he should carry her into his bed, but after so many months of solitude, holding her and watching her gave him genuine pleasure.

Evander wondered why anyone would harm such a woman, for she must have been a cherished beauty in her time. The firelight shimmered over her, picking out glints of blue and violet in her black tresses, which had dried now. Once combed he imagined it would look like polished jet. He liked the regal straight line of her nose, and the wide, generous curves of her lips. She had chiseled cheekbones that balanced her strong jaw, and skin as luscious as the flesh of a golden pear.

Rachel shifted against him in her sleep, and his robe fell open to reveal her small, perfect body.

He reached to cover her again, but could not help looking upon her for a long moment before he did. As with her back, he saw no sign of injury. She had slight breasts and slim hips, but her flat belly bore none of the marks from childbirth. The fragile curves of her delicate figure made him think of fine porcelain brought by ships from the east, so rare and exquisite that only the wealthiest of nobles could afford them. Yet even as he admired her elegance, seeing her thus made his blood pulse hot and thick.

Evander had not felt nor thought of his own desires since Fiona had died. Feeling his cock swell for Rachel filled him with such self-loathing that he nearly swore aloud.

She is shocked and frightened and needs care. What you want matters naught. Protect her.

He gathered her against him and stood, carrying her into the bed chamber he had shared with Fiona. After the pox had taken his lover he had burned the linens and mattress, which reminded him too much of her wretched death. For his own comfort he’d made a new mattress with clean straw padded with soft fleece, and bought new linens from the village. Carefully he placed Rachel on the bed, covering her with his old tartan before he stood brooding over her.

She looked so frail and helpless that he wanted nothing more than to lay with her and hold her through the night. That he wanted to do more than that made his gut knot. What manner of man was he, to desire a woman who had been savaged and buried alive and hurled through time?

Get away from her.

Evander needed to retrieve Fiona’s gray from the farmer keeping her for him, and then he could sleep in the barn. He also knew he couldn’t do either unless he knew Rachel was safe.

“I am sorry for this, lass.” He picked up the wedge stones he used to block the narrow window when it snowed, and then went out to close the door to the bed chamber. Bracing Fiona’s heavy standing loom against it assured that Rachel would not be able to open it. “’Twill be only for the night.”

* * *

Cozy warmth surrounded Rachel as she opened her eyes to see an odd-looking ceiling above her. It seemed to be some kind of densely-woven thatching made of thin, long branches and bunched grasses. A small spider web occupied one corner, and gleamed like fine silver lace in a bright, narrow beam of sunlight. It felt like morning, but the air around her seemed very cold, and she could smell wood burning.

The bed she lay in looked exactly like the one from her vision of the green-eyed man and the dying woman. She touched an edge of the clean, finely-woven sheet, surprised to find that it had the feel of expensive organic linen. She brought it to her nose and smelled lavender and sunshine, and suddenly her head filled with flashes of memory.

Please, just shut up and die.

Bile burned in Rachel’s throat. She could still taste the dirt David had shoveled onto her, and feel the warmth of her own blood spreading across her back. She couldn’t have survived what he’d done to her. Frantically she looked around the room. Why was she here? After what her husband had done to her, she should be dead. Was she dead now?

A deep, hard voice cut through those awful thoughts.

I have you.

The warrior she’d seen in her mind had told her his name last night—Evander Talorc. He’d been angry with her for not being Fiona. Still, he’d brought her to safety, and claimed that she’d come to the highlands of Scotland in the fourteenth century. It all seemed so bizarre. Yet he’d told her what he considered the truth. Nothing Evander thought contradicted a word that he’d said to her.

Nothing he thought? How could she know what he’d been thinking?

Rachel pushed herself up in a sitting position, expecting to feel the usual nausea. Her head didn’t spin, and her belly remained calm.

Of course I feel well. David isn’t around to drug me anymore.

To keep from thinking about him and all the horrible things he’d done to her, which would make her puke, she inspected her surroundings. The room she occupied had rough, stained plaster walls, a floor covered by several woven mats, and a few pieces of old, crude furniture. The only window, which appeared to be nothing more than a long, narrow slit in the thick wall, had been filled with two heavy-looking, wedge-shaped rocks. The thick mattress beneath her made rustling noises when she moved, and smelled of hay. Atop the linen sheet lay a faded plaid wool blanket with black and gold stripes on a plum background.

Everything quietly shrieked fourteenth century Scotland, too.

“Hello?” When no one answered her Rachel listened for a moment, but heard nothing. “Is anyone there?”

A low, masculine voice came to her, but it wasn’t anything she could hear. Instead he spoke inside her head, as if someone had tucked a tiny speaker behind her eyes.

I must be gentle. She will ken naught of this time, and may fight me as Kinley did the laird when first she came. I cannae take her back to the grove. If she returns, the cowardly fack who harmed her may try again. Should I take her to the magic folk, and ask them to have Cailean care for her, or send her to Dun Aran, and the clan? Aber will kill me the moment he sees me. What if she was sent for me? Why was she in the grove where I buried Fiona?

With the voice came images of boots pacing and kicking straw. One horse watched her warily from its stall, the large reddish-white roan she vaguely recalled from last night. Another smaller, dappled gray with a silky black mane stood waiting to be unsaddled. She caught glimpses of sacks of grain, tack hung neatly from hooks and hand brushes for currying, but all of it looked rough and crude. It also shifted oddly, until she realized she was seeing the barn through someone else’s eyes.

Evander’s eyes.

Rachel knew she was inside his head, hearing his thoughts, and seeing what he saw. It couldn’t be her imagination, not with all the unfamiliar words and names streaming into her mind. She closed her eyes to concentrate, and dredged through her hazy memories to recall everything he’d told her.

None of it made sense. Her blood had allowed her to travel through time? She’d somehow jumped from twenty-first century California to fourteenth-century Scotland? Who were the druids, and the clan? Why had he assumed that she’d been sent to him?

A dragging sound came from the other side of the door, which opened.

Rachel watched as a tall, lanky form appeared on the threshold. She recognized his dark green eyes and grim expression, but not the copper-red hair. It balanced features too bold and fierce to be handsome, and gave him the look of a large, predatory feline.

Evander.