Page 41 of Her Scot of the Morrow
“Speaking of the Morrow.” Aspen looked at Willow curiously. “Should we assume it no longer exists now that you two are together?” She tilted her head in question. “And what about all the craziness with the gem? Was it your inner beast at work, after all?”
“It was,” Willow confirmed, surprising even me with how she said it with such conviction. “I could feel it when I shifted the last time at Sutherland Castle.” She winked at her sisters. “As we speculated, she’s a master of deception if it means getting to her fated mate.” She shrugged. “As to the Morrow, something tells me we’ll see it again.” Her eyes met mine. “I’m sure wherever we go in life, it will always be a part of us.”
“Then I would say ‘tis time life brings us back to where it all began,” I said, giving her a pointed look because I was growing impatient and didn’t want to wait another moment to make her mine. We had already lost far too many years together. “Back to our tree and the beginning of a long marriage full of many wee bairns.”
“I couldn’t agree more.” She smiled from me to the others. “If everyone’s up for it?”
Of course, they all said yes, so I slipped my hand into Willow’s, and we made our way back to the tree that first brought us together, bound our wrists with the MacLeod plaid, and exchanged our marital vows beneath its billowing, vibrant yellow leaves, surrounded by friends and family.
Like that day so long ago when we were but children, I noticed her dragon ensured she wore a blue dress when she shifted back earlier, and it shimmered in the moonlight, making her appear more radiant than ever. So radiant I couldn’t help but kiss her soundly once we were married, desperate to begin the rest of my life with her.
“Oh,wow,” I heard Hazel murmur in awe. “Is this yourMorrow?”
Seeming to sense its arrival, Willow smiled against my lips, and our eyes met for a lingering moment before we took in what had everyone eyeing the area in wonder and with good reason.
The Morrow had never looked so enchanting.
As if the entire castle and surrounding trees were caught in it, lightning flickered like fireflies over the churning, blue-black ocean awash in silver-tipped waves, and moonlight poured down like a glittering waterfall.
“Yes,” Willow said softly. “And I have a feeling it has something important it wants to show me,us, this time.”
“I think you're right, sis,” Aspen said, pointing at an area on the other side of the tree where the long, elegant leaves parted in the wind just enough for us to peer through. Almost like curtains pulled back so we could view what was on the other side, as if we were peering into another time.
“It’s just that, too,” Willow said, emotion in her voice as I kept her close, comforting her when a room with elegant furnishings appeared on the other side of the swaying branches. “That was my parents' bedroom when I was a little girl.”
She blinked back tears as memories unfurled in the room.
Sitting in front of a vanity was a beautiful woman who, although ethereal, could only be Willow’s mother because they looked so similar. It was clear by how slender and pale she was that she wasn’t doing well as she gazed lovingly at Willow's father, Malcolm Sutherland, who was dressed in medieval clothing.
If that weren’t unexpected enough, her mother’s equally medieval Scottish accent certainly was. As she spoke, she pulled the ring with the red gem off her finger, pressed it into his palm, and wrapped his fingers around it. “Ye will make sure my Willow gets this, right, my love?”
“Aye.” He crouched and cupped her cheek tenderly, his voice thick with emotion, gazing back at her with just as much love. “Iwill make sure she gets it. Dinnae fear for she will be protected and fiercely loved by me until she becomes the protector she was born to be.”
“Good,” she said softly, a tear rolling down her cheek. “I wish I had more time, but ‘tis not in the cards. Fate must unfurl as it will.”
Moments later, that memory faded and was replaced by Malcolm rocking back and forth and weeping with Willow’s mother cradled in his arms, and it was clear she was already gone. That faded only to be replaced with Malcolm chanting, then placing the ring in a jewelry box before leaving it on the vanity.
“And there I am,” Willow said, a tear rolling down her cheek as well when she appeared as the little girl I remembered, wearing the same blue dress she wore when she found the ring, and our willow tree appeared outside the window. “And that was the day I traveled back in time and met you, Sloan.”
“Yet again, led here by our father,” Hazel said softly. “And possibly, in a way, by your mother.”
“Wearing a ring that belonged not only to a powerful witch born of Scottish lineage,” Chara said just as softly as the Morrow twinkled away, and everything returned to normal, “but shockingly enough, by the sounds of it, verra much from our era.”
Willow brushed her fingers over her ring as if yet another veil was pulled away because she murmured in what sounded like wonder, “I think you’re right, and I’m only just remembering it now…her…how she sounded when she sang to me softly.” Her dragon eyes flared. “A lullaby, I believe.”
Then she said more, surprising all of us.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
–Willow–
NOTHING HAD EVER made me happier than finally marrying Sloan beneath our willow at the edge of the forest beyond MacLeod Castle, surrounded by family. He took my breath away as our wrists were bound and we became each other’s in every way possible, and he kissed me, only for the Morrow to appear and reveal more secrets.
More so, it revealed that both my parents were from this era.
If that weren’t shocking enough, given that I was the youngest of the sisters, I remembered the lullaby my mother had sung to me as a baby, and it surprised everyone because it clearly had to do with what was happening now.
“She sang of two warring clans and an ancient pact,” I said softly, still recovering from the emotional impact of seeing her again in a memory born of the Morrow. Seeing my father again, too. It was a poignant reminder that I had been loved by themboth, even though it seemed my father was never there. He had been, but like it was for Hazel, those memories had vanished from my mind, whitewashed in magic, until the time was right.
