Insolent: The Moray Druids #1 (Highland Historical) by Kerrigan Byrne

dare, they screamed at him. Just let them kill me.
    “You know how persuasive we can be.” The old woman cackled as Malcolm’s face drained of color, but he stood his ground.
    “Never,” he vowed, in a voice so dark, Morgana didn’t even recognize it.
    “That remains to be seen.” The crone turned from him. “But for now we need the book.”
    “And men in hell need water.”
    “If you do not give…” Macha put her other elegant hand out, and Morgana fell to her knees. “We will take.”
    For the first time in her life, Morgana wished she could feel her heart pound with terror. Wished that she could sense the blood surge through her and heat her skin in a flush of emotion and pain. For now, facing the end, she could feel none of those things. It was as though her life slowed to a trickle. She could feel her heart struggling to find its fuel, her lungs trying to force oxygen into the almost non-existent flow. Muscle and tissue screamed for want of it. She was shriveling up from the inside. She knew she should be worried about the Grimoire. Knew she should be mourning for an earth that might never be if they failed. But all she could think about was how she’d never get to tell Bael the one thing he needed to hear before the end.
    That he was worthy. That he was accepted. That he could be loved, if he’d allow it.
    And now it was too late.

Chapter Twelve
     
    Morgana’s acceptance was a warm pillar of sun after a century of storm clouds. Bael felt it flow through him with a surge of light and power unlike anything he’d ever imagined.
    Locked in the de Moray’s dungeon, he’d listened to the storm raging outside and wished he was out in it, so it could clean away the bereft agony of being separated from his mate.
    A mate he’d told he didn’t want. A mate he’d made promise to have her brother kill him.
    Instead, she’d accepted him, with barely a kind word spoken between them.
    Why?
    Testing the reinforced chains with his new strength, they felt more flimsy to him. Breakable.
    Ha . Let the Druid King try to keep him from his mate, now .
    A great crash reverberated through the castle, and a cold wash of dread vibrated in his bones.
    Morgana, she was dying. He could feel it in the dimming of his soul.
    How cruel could the fates be to lead him to her and then allow her to be taken? He wouldn’t allow it. Not this time. He strained against his bonds, sweat breaking out over his skin though he felt colder than the glaciers of his homeland.
    This was his fault. He’d allowed himself to be taken. He’d spent moments of unmeasured bliss in Morgana’s arms and then slinked away to the dungeon to face his end rather than risk her possible rejection of him. He was such a fool. He should have fought for her.
    He’d fight for her now. Fight for the life she’d infused within him, regardless of his resistance to it.
    With a roar born of rage, he tensed against the chains, then strained, cording his muscles and calling forth his beast.
    For the first time without the invocation of blood, the world faded to shades of grey. Every sound differentiated into an echo, every sight detailed with the precision of a blade. His beast surged within him and so did a new and powerful magic.
    The chains shattered.
    Though Bael knew nothing of the layout of the keep, he was spurred into action by the inexorable link he’d just formed with his mate. He stormed up stairs and through the halls of the castle, passing tapestries and busts that must have dated back to the Roman times. Libraries, chambers, a solarium, some of which hid cowering castle staff, but none of which contained the woman he yearned for.
    His woman.
    It shocked him that he allowed the people to live. That his Berserker beast didn’t claim the blood that was generally his due.
    Was it because of his mate? Because of her acceptance?
    Morgana. Where was she ?
    A hiss and whistle of wind drafted though one hall, and as he followed it, it built to a scream. Voices