Fated Legacy Complete Collection

Chapter 1

Chapter

One

C astillo El Cazador

Bilbao, Spain

April 2019

El Diablo , for that was what he was, and it was the only way she thought of him, thrust harder and faster. The wooden table was uncomfortable against her belly and breasts and the edge dug into the juncture of her thighs as he rammed himself into her. He no longer had the power to make her weep and she’d given up begging him to stop. Neither were effective. He took her whenever and wherever it pleased him, and she endured. Her time would come, and on that day she would try to free those who were kept in the depths of his fortress even though they called her vile names such as bruja, puta and traidora .

Breagha Valor had thought once his seed had done its work and was settled in her, he might leave her be, but she had been wrong. The results of the pregnancy test less than a week earlier had seemed only to spur him on. And now here they were yet again, his tight grip on her hips as he slammed into her depths. Without warning and only a final, brutal thrust, he ground his hips against her ass and flooded her womb.

When he was finished, he held her down as he withdrew, stroking her buttocks as he did so. “You have pleased me Breagha. I look forward to watching your belly swell with my offspring. Of the three I have selected to breed with, you are the first to take. I have had Marta and Felicia returned to the holding cells with the others.”

Breagha thought perhaps she might have preferred the fate of Marta and Felicia to her own. The accommodations and food might be better up in DeMoncada’s quarters within the main keep, but at least those in the dungeon below did not have to suffer being taken to his bed.

She closed her eyes and waited trying to regulate her breathing and trying to pretend she was any place other than here. She could hear him getting dressed. Breagha lay perfectly still trying to ensure she didn’t catch his attention. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t rape her again, but if he stayed naked it was a sure sign of his intent to do so. The mattress groaned as he sat on the edge of the bed. He stomped his foot, forcing it down into the leather boots he preferred to wear.

Then the mattress made a sound of relief when he rose from it. His footsteps echoed on the Saltillo tile as he approached, and she bit back a sigh of desperation. She hated her own life and the life that was now growing in her belly. El Diablo kicked her legs apart and she could hear the zipper to his breeches being lowered. She steeled herself for another attack, but it never came.

Instead, an explosion sounded outside the castle—not too far away, from what she could tell. A few seconds later another explosion—this time closer. The castle was under attack. El Diablo cursed and ran from the room, slamming the door behind him with enough force that it bounced open instead of closing and locking. Breagha glanced over her shoulder to confirm what her ears had heard. For the first time since he had snatched her off the streets months ago, she had a chance to escape.

Breagha pushed off the table and ran to the set of windows closest to her just in time to see dirt and tree branches fly through the air close to the outer wall as the attack continued. The castle shook from the closeness of the blast. She watched as soldiers ran to defend the wall and the main entrance to the keep. Breagha went to the door and peeked out into the hall. She could hear El Diablo’s men swearing and moving swiftly in response to the attack, but none were coming upstairs. Gently she closed the door, ensuring it did not lock.

As quickly as she could, Breagha pulled on clothes more conducive to traveling—leggings, two sweaters layered one over another and hiking boots. She dressed hastily and continued to keep an eye on the progress of those seeking to breach the castle walls. Some of those attacking the fortress were fighting their way over the ramparts and moving toward the dungeons to release the prisoners. Those who had been held captive below would soon be liberated by the invaders.

She gathered up a few things, including an additional pair of shoes as well as the money she’d had with her when she’d been kidnapped and some loose gemstones she’d found lying unattended over the past few months. When he’d first installed her in the room, he’d tossed her knapsack into the cupboard. She used it now to bundle the items she would carry with her when she made her escape.

Her heart raced as she opened the doors to the balcony, which overlooked the opposite side of the keep from where the commotion was. It was as if this side of the fortress had nothing to do with the other; here there were no explosions, no fighting—just the peaceful gardens and beyond them the pastures filled with sheep.

Breagha went to the windows on the other wall one more time and was able to see those brave men who had come for them, helping the stolen women up into the light from the prison below. They would be saved. It was time to see to her own escape and survival.

She closed and locked the door from the bedroom into the hall. Strapping her knapsack to her back, Breagha closed her eyes, stilled her mind and whispered to the universe and powers that be, “Invisible is what I wish to be. I call the power of light to me. To my enemies make me hidden from sight. Deliver me safely from this fight.”

Not my most elegant spell, but it ought to do the trick.

Breagha could feel a light tingling as the magick encompassed her being. The landscape and the ground below lost all of its stark lines and appeared to now be cast in soft focus. She swung out over the railing and onto the iron trellis which was covered in bougainvillea. She tried to avoid the wickedly sharp thorns that adorned the flowering vines but winced each time one of them pierced her skin. It wasn’t the most graceful descent as Breagha crawled down the metal lattice, but she reached the bottom safely.

She held her breath as three men rushed past her and one of them looked directly at her. The spell was holding. She walked at a brisk pace toward the narrow gate, only wide enough for a single person to get through. She opened it, peeked out to ensure that she had a clear path to the pastures beyond, and slipped through closing it behind her.

Breagha began to make her way past the fenced borders of the fields that were part of the Castillo El Cazador estate, on her way to open ground and the beach beyond. As she crested the top of the cliffs and looked down, she could see where those who were the aggressors in today’s fight had staged their attack.

A ground-shaking, thunderous noise pierced the air, and she looked back in time to see one of the castle’s walls begin to crumble. She moved away from where those who had come for El Diablo held position. There was no telling what they might do to her if they found out he had kept her for his woman and that she carried his child. She headed north toward a small inlet that was easily missed if one didn’t know what they were looking for. It was there that El Diablo kept several boats hidden. As she made her way down the rocky ledge, she could hear footsteps behind her. Breagha moved off the path, praying her invisibility spell still held and that the approaching men would not see her.

They rushed past her—three bodyguards and El Diablo himself. They untied one of the boats and all four men boarded. As they pulled away, she watched in horror as the monster whose baby she carried drew a gun and fired, killing the other three men. Then he pulled something out of his pocket and put it in the trouser pocket of one of the men. Next he pushed all three bodies overboard and dumped something out of a small pail into the sea. He was chumming the water! When he had emptied two buckets of the bloody concoction, he engaged the boat’s engines and sped away.

Breagha had only one hope. Get to the remaining boat and save herself. Yes, the water would be full of sharks, but the boat was not so small as to make an easy target for them. Scrambling down the steep incline, she managed to get to the vessel. Thankfully, it was good sized, and had a cabin and galley below. The gas and water tanks were full. There even seemed to be fresh food and citrus on board—at least enough to get her to her first port of call in France.

Grateful now for her love of geography, Breagha set the course finder for France. Once there, she would get what food and fresh water she could and head for Ireland. She would skirt the western coast of the Emerald Isle and make her way to the Hebrides off the coast of Scotland. There were plenty of small fishing villages along the way where she could take on necessary supplies. Breagha knew there were two other ways to travel by boat from Spain to the Hebrides, but El Diablo would be far more likely to use one of them to get to wherever he might be going, if he was headed north.

The journey would be long and difficult, but at the end awaited safety and her sister, Mairead. El Diablo might have been able to contain her magick, but even a powerful wolf-shifter like him did not have the power to defeat the two women combined. Besides, her sister was a much beloved healer and midwife and Breagha was sure they could rally to fight the evil monster who had held her captive for the past six months. She’d been snatched off the streets of Paris at the beginning of a trip that had included an extended archeological dig. It would only be now that Mairead would be starting to worry what had happened to her.

L och Langavat

Outer Hebrides, Scotland

Winter Solstice, 2019

The storm outside howled throughout the night and gale-force winds buffeted the small farmhouse at the top of the dunes. Her little one had chosen one hell of a night to make her grand entrance. It was often said that those who were stormborn held much power and would do great things. Right now, Breagha wished only for her little one to make her entry into the world.

“Push, Breagha, Push!”

“I can’t, Mairead. Oh God, it hurts! I want it out!”

“Come on now, the bairn has done nothing to you. She deserves to live and so do you. Now push!”

“He did this to me. That monster turned me into a monster. What if the baby is a monster too?”

“He is dead,” Mairead reassured her.

Breagha had not had the heart to tell her sister she had seen him escape.

“You are safe and that bairn was no part of what he did,” her sister reminded her. “There’s no need for your daughter to ever know. We’ll raise her with our values, with our traditions. I know you told me not to, but I ran the runes. This child will be important, Breagha, and it will be a girl. You must bring her light into this world.”

Breagha Valor wrapped her hands around the sturdy handholds her sister, who was the midwife for the surrounding community, had created for her.

“Come on, Breagha. I can see her head. She’s almost here.”

How dare Mairead cast some runes about this baby! Breagha had specifically asked her not to. She didn’t want to know. She just wanted it out and then to give it away. She’d tried to make herself love the life that grew inside her, but she couldn’t. She had felt the infant’s power and feared the child would be a vessel for evil—just like her sire had been. Breagha had found an adoption agency in the United States that would place the baby with a well-screened couple. But what would happen if the child’s mutant traits became dominant?

She couldn’t think about that right now. Breagha grunted and pushed with every ounce of her strength and screamed with pain. This baby was coming whether she liked it or not. Maybe Mairead was right. Maybe this little girl would be able to make amends for the evil her father had perpetrated upon the world. Breagha gripped the handholds again and pushed a final time, groaning. She didn’t have the energy or strength to scream. The babe slipped from her body, and she sighed and lay back, exhausted.

“Hello, my beautiful niece. You are born into this world to do great things,” crooned Mairead.

“Give her to me.”

Breagha managed to sit up and hold out her hands. Carefully Mairead placed the tiny figure in her sister’s arms. The baby had a head of caramel-colored silky hair and opened her eyes to peer at her mother. She didn’t scream or make a fuss, just rested and cooed. In that instant, Breagha knew that it didn’t matter who or what her sire had been. All that mattered was this child was hers and she would be loved.

She looked at Mairead. “She’s ours—yours and mine. We will raise her to be a fine and loving child. We will teach her our ways and someday she will be part of our coven.”

L och Langavat

Outer Hebrides, Scotland

2048

And they had done it. Renata had been raised by her aunt and her mother. She’d been raised to have a deep connection to the land and its beauty and power. Her earliest childhood memories had been of her mother or her aunt playing a game with her—a game that she would later figure out was a way to teach her to tap into her natural power.

Renata had proven to be a powerful sorceress. Her mother’s magick had been augmented by her transition from human to wolf-shifter. Having been born a shifter, Renata’s power had been enhanced from the beginning and had only grown stronger as her knowledge and training had been increased. By the time she was a tempestuous teenager, she’d been able to control all of the natural elements around her—air, water, fire, wind and the very plant life and soil itself. One more than one occasion her passionate nature had manifested itself in a storm centralized over their property.

She often wondered if her mother would have even acknowledged that she was a wolf-shifter if it hadn’t been for the terrible nightmares Renata began to have towards the end of her childhood. When her hormones had begun to kick in, her inner wolf had come forward demanding to be acknowledged. Her mother had finally told her a basic story of her origin, explained how the two of them were different from her aunt, but reassuring Renata that she had been loved from the time of her birth.

Renata had never seen her mother shift, never run the fields and hills of their property as a wolf. Even though she loved the freedom it gave her, seeing the pain in her mother’s eyes had made her repress her own need to run free. Rarely, the need had been overwhelming, and she would indulge herself.

One time had been on a desolate night of the soul with howling winds and sleet that blew almost sideways. The experience of shifting had terrified and empowered her at the same time. There was something about running free in her wolfen form that had been incredibly liberating. But afterward she felt as if she had betrayed her mother and aunt and had repressed her need to allow her wolf to run free.

The last time had been when her mother had died. Her aunt had passed away the year before and Renata had felt so alone. She’d gone up to the top of the knoll that sat behind their farm. There had been a full moon and she’d removed her clothes and shifted. She had howled her grief to the moon. It had helped until she’d realized the next morning that the entire village had heard her. Half of them had gone out with rifles looking to kill the wolf and the other half had been convinced it was of supernatural origin. In either event, Renata understood there was no room for her wolf, and vowed to never shift again.