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

moving square across the floor, and every moment it passed was a moment she could mark her failures. 
    It had taken some considerable reworking of the wards to allow her into the castle, and still keep the Wyrd Sisters out. The power of the de Moray Druids was nothing like the dark workings she’d seen from her captors.  Their spells were lyrical chants and prayers and even songs.  Their runes pulsed with light instead of darkness, and their Magick was fortified with love rather than hatred. 
    But the wrath in Malcolm’s eyes had been dangerous and terrifying.  More frightening than any of the atrocities she’d witnessed as a captive of the Wyrd Sisters.  In fact, it was the dark-haired, black-eyed Berserker, Bael, who’d shackled her and whisked her to the dungeon.
    Because Malcolm couldn’t bear to look at her, didn’t trust himself to touch her without causing her harm.  He’d said as much.
    And who could blame him?  He’d offered to make her his queen, and she’d betrayed him.
    The irony weighed on her chest like a load of bricks. 
    As the shadows grew long, and the meager light from the outside began to dissipate, Vían fought an encompassing, paralyzing panic.  Her chains became heavier, the stones colder and more unforgiving.  The scuttles of vermin, unseen or just imagined, were more frightening than the complete isolation of the void. 
    You’ve failed us, Vían. Badb’s voice hissed on the wind.  We’re coming with the Grimoire, and if you don’t take what we bade you when we break the wards, then you’ll be returned to the void for eternity.  But first we’ll make you watch as we toy with your lover, and slaughter everyone he loves…
    “No,” she whimpered, dropping to her knees.  Even in this dungeon she wasn’t safe from their evil.  The darkness always found her.  That was her curse.  She’d traded her soul to it, and now had to live with an eternity of tormented regrets.
    The sound of the heavy bolt and the scrape of the door against the stones brought Vían to her feet.  Never let it be said that she faced her fate on her knees. 
    Never again.  Not even before Malcolm de Moray.
    His climb down the dungeon steps was long, as though he didn’t want to reach the bottom any more than she wanted him to.  Golden light from his torch spilled over the stones from the entry a moment before his wide frame filled the archway.
    Vían’s heart leapt into her throat and stayed there, rendering her mute, as she watched him mount the torch in its sconce.
    Gone was the gentle, patient lover of the prior night.  Gone was the noble, beloved ruler of the Pictish people.  The man who stalked into her prison trembled with a fury that covered wounds.  Wounds that she’d created.  Scars she’d ripped open.
    As he loomed over her, a creature of cold rage and hot blood, one word ripped from his lips that surprised them both. 
    “ Why ?”
    The question encompassed so much, and yet Vían didn’t know where to start.  He had such control, and such power.  She realized now that the Wyrd Sisters, as potent as their dark Magick was, underestimated this Druid. 
    “You have no right to ask me that,” she answered, cursing the tremor in her voice.  “My reasons are my own.”  And they were many. 
    “I have every right!” he exploded, the walls of the prison trembling with the force of his emotion.  He captured both her shoulders in a brutal grip, and pulled her to him so his eyes burned down into hers.  “But I wasna asking why ye’re a minion of those evil hags.” He gathered a cold, lethal calm back into his voice.  “I was asking why I still desire ye as desperately as I do. Even after everything ye’ve done.”
    Vían didn’t have time to process the question as he crushed his lips to hers in a punishing kiss.  He didn’t plunder or explore, didn’t give her time to respond, but instead kissed her long enough to bruise her lips and then ripped his mouth from hers