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tightly.
    He
stood when she did.
    So
embarrassed she was afraid she’d break out in hives, and wishing for all she
was worth that she hadn’t come, she couldn’t meet his eyes. “I’m sorry I
bothered you,” she said and hurried from the room.
    This
was the second time she’d fled from an embarrassing incident with Colin Quinn.
It would damn well be the last.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter
Six
     
    “Saraid
lives.”
    Owein
pushed away from the bar to slip loose-kneed into the chair Keely had vacated.
    Colin’s
gaze swung from the empty doorway to stare down at the stunned relief in
Owein’s darkened eyes.
    “You
mean to tell me you’ve pressed me all this time to help you break the curse,
when you weren’t sure she even lived?”
    Owein’s
voice was sharp with censure. “You ask me that, Colin Quinn? Though you refuse
to recognize it as the gift it is, you’ve enough of the fairie blood to know
people of the realm are one with their true mate, heart and soul. I live, so it
follows, Saraid does as well. But Fiona, that fairie witch, shaped a curse
that’s held even against a king’s power. How was I to know she hadn’t found a
way to destroy the heart and leave the soul?”
    Owein’s
logic was sound, so Colin gave no answer. He didn’t consider his fairie blood a
gift. From her comments, it was clear Keely had no knowledge of her fairie
heritage. Considering the strain on her face when she hurried from the room, he
didn’t think she would see her fairie blood as a gift, either.
    It
was a shock to learn she recognized him in the dreams, meaning he appeared to
her in human form. His memories of the dreams were always from the mind of the
beast. And unlike her, his participation in them was never a cause for concern.
    For
as long as he could remember, his Halfling blood had lived in harmony, coursing
through the boy by day—later the man—and the wolf by night. While the human
slept, the wolf prowled the fields and cliffs of Dunhaven.
    With
Keely’s arrival in Ireland all those years ago, his solitary excursions had
ceased, but the change had been pleasurable, for the most part, and his
impressions, from their nightly walks, benign.
    Until
this morning.
    He
awakened to a sense of urgency and wasn’t surprised when he found her in his
foyer an hour later. She claimed he entered the ring last night, something he’d
always instinctively avoided in both wolf and human form. Keely’s first
physical awareness of Saraid on the same night couldn’t be a coincidence.
    Though
he wished it otherwise, he could no longer avoid playing a role in the breaking
of the curse. Not when his mind still reeled from the stark look of despair in
Keely’s sorceress eyes. She’d all but apologized for being visited by a force
she never asked for and one she didn’t understand.
    Owein
insisted Colin claiming her as his destiny was the answer to breaking the
curse. Then again, that solution had a guaranteed side-benefit for the fairie
king. Combining the blood of two Halflings had always been the other half of
Owein’s agenda.
    Colin
had no intention of fulfilling that half, but neither was he comfortable sitting
back and watching Keely fumble her way in the dark.
    The
way he saw it, the intricacies of the curse were the key to breaking it. In his
experience, no problem, whether in business or day-to-day life, had only one
solution. There was always a back door. All he had to do was find it.
    From
the date of Colin’s birth, Owein had been scheming to use him toward his own
selfish ends. Two, he decided, could play that game.
    “What
is the significance of the rose?” he asked, bluntly.
    Caught
in his own musings, Owein answered without the calculation he usually employed
whenever Colin inquired after a detail surrounding the curse.
    “’Tis
Saraid. My own lovely rose. It’s what I called her.”
    “I
believe it’s time you filled me in on all you know of the curse, not just those
details you’ve decided will