Read Incarnate: The Moray Druids #3 (Highland Historical) for Free Online

a myriad of noble reasons why he should marry Vían.  He’d been found in her bed, such as it was, and therefore honor bound him to her.  Though Picts didn’t believe as the English did, that a woman exploring her sexuality was more sinful than a man doing the same, it still was a man’s responsibility to take care of his offspring. 
    And what if their night together had resulted in a child?
    The very idea terrified and humbled him.  He was an Earth Druid after all, they were known to be more fertile than your average Celt. 
    And yet, that still didn’t encompass the reason he was now taking a bride home rather than searching for the Grimoire as he was bound to do. 
    The moment he’d seen Vían trembling and wounded on the ground, something inside him had shifted.  For so long, he’d been consumed by his work, by the responsibility of being the king of a proud and clannish people, and by the charge he’d been tasked with by the Goddess. 
    A de Moray Druid. 
    With her soft amethyst eyes and skin that seemed as though it had never been kissed by the sun, Vían made him feel like a man.  Just a man.  A creature of blood and bones and hunger and lust. Nothing more. 
    In truth, he could have stayed with her in that hovel and lived out his days roaming the forest, fishing the lake, and planting wee babes in her belly every night by their fire.  They’d tell stories, shape clay, weave baskets, and let the forest help them to forget that an Apocalypse loomed on the horizon.
    “Is that Dun Moray?” Vían’s question shattered his brooding fantasy as they broke over a rise and the Moray valley spread out beneath them.  It shimmered like an emerald in the autumn sunlight, the village alive with activity.
    “Aye,” Malcolm answered, the mantle of obligation again beginning to weigh upon his shoulders.
    “So, it’s really true… You’re King of the Picts.”  She said this as though the fact disappointed her, somehow, and that endeared her to him all the more. 
    Most women of his acquaintance chased him with the vigor of a pack of wolves.  His crown being the prize rather than his heart.  “Do ye think ye could take to being my Queen?”
    “That remains to be seen,” she whispered, and pressed her cheek to his back.  “Why would you want me?  I know naught of your world.  I have no family.  I’m nobody… nothing.”
    The forlorn words were made all the more bleak by her tone.  She truly believed that about herself, which was a tragedy, and he planned to spend the rest of his life changing her mind.
    “To me, ye’re everything,” he insisted, hoping she could hear the raw truth in his tone.
    “How can that be?  You don’t know a thing about me.  I don’t know a thing about you. We’ve only just met.”
    A wise and careful woman, his lass.  He liked that.  “I know that ye’re practical and resilient, which I appreciate.  Ye know what ye want, and ye go after it.”  He was glad she couldn’t see his lips twitch with the memory of how she’d persuaded him into her bed.
    Not that it took much persuading.  
    “I know that ye’re proud and lonely and that ye carry around a painful secret that ye doona want to share with anyone, least of all me.”
    Her gasp was audible. “How do you—what makes you think that?”
    “I’m more perceptive than yer average man, lass,” he tossed her a smile over his shoulder as they began to descend the hill into Moray Valley.  “And we all have secrets.”
    “What are yours?” she asked after a pause. 
    Malcolm considered putting her off, perhaps until they knew each other better, but something about the open vulnerability in her question pushed him to answer her.
    “When my father was killed, everyone thought I was in exile while Macbeth ruled, but in truth, I was in the hands of my enemies.”
    “The English?” she asked.
    “Nay.  Druids.  Dark Druids.  Women who have taken the powers of the Goddess and twisted them for their