Fated Legacy Complete Collection

Chapter 9

Chapter

Nine

B ran had gotten them situated in bed and slept spooned against her—his front to her back. She’d been exhausted, but sleep was hard to come by. She wanted to savor every ounce of these last hours with him. Renata knew that by this time tomorrow, she would have left his life forever.

The trip from the kibbutz to the airport was a nightmare. On a good day the van wasn’t overly comfortable, and with a freshly spanked ass it was close to intolerable. When they boarded, Bran managed to place a pillow on her seat without anyone seeing and for that she was grateful. During the flight Renata was polite, if a little distant. She was terrified that if she let down her walls or softened at all toward him, she’d lose her resolve. The worst part was he’d never know what leaving him had cost her. He would see it as a betrayal or the ultimate act of a misbehaving mate who had been too fearful to embrace her fate. He would see her as a coward, when she knew that leaving him was the bravest thing she would ever do.

“You’ve been awfully quiet,” he whispered as they stood in the line for customs.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know I was required to talk.” She hated the brutal sound of her own voice, but it was either that or burst into tears.

“Enough, Renata. I’m still not sure what provoked your behavior last night, although I have my suspicions. Everything will be fine.”

He had no clue of what she was about to do. She had never shared a fundamental piece of who she was, so how could he possibly know what made her tick? At first she had thought it hadn’t mattered if she told him everything or not. Then she realized she had started the relationship on a lie. A lie of omission, but a lie, nonetheless.

Once they had cleared customs, she went into the ladies’ room, where she entered a changing room and began to repeat one of the first spells her mother had ever taught her.

“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.”

She felt a little flicker of the same kind of electrical energy she felt when she shifted from woman to wolf and back again. It didn’t just sparkle or shimmer all around her, it infused her entire being with courage and power. She had begun to draw strength from her wolf self, as well as a sense of freedom she’d never known before.

She’d once joked with Bran that shifting was a kind of magick. He’d remarked that being a wolf-shifter was a natural state of being and had nothing at all to do with magick. Branson was not a fan of magick.

“I think a great many problems in this world have come from people’s belief in magick—trying to get it, trying to rid the world of it, trying to explain something with it. Instead of applying a logical thought process to explaining the inexplicable, people chalk it up to magick and then never find the real meaning. Separating fact from legend, myth from man, and magick from truth is the biggest challenge with the Arthurian legend.”

“But are magick and logic mutually exclusive?” she asked. “Can’t magick have a place in the real world? What about shifters? Isn’t that a kind of magick?”

“No,” he scoffed. “Shifters are the product of evolution, not some kind of airy fairy hocus pocus.”

Renata wiped her eyes and steeled herself to do what she had to do. She was convinced she couldn’t live her life denying an essential element of who she was, and Branson couldn’t take a sorceress as a fated mate. They were doomed.

The invisibility spell meant that anything she was wearing or holding was also hidden from sight. There seemed to be no problem walking out of the restroom and right past Branson, who’d apparently found a florist and was waiting for her with a bouquet of beautiful silver roses his home was known for. She told herself the blurred vision of the world around her was a product of the spell, but she knew that wasn’t true. Renata was walking away from the only love she would ever know.

She managed to get onto one of the shuttle buses that traveled between Heathrow’s terminals. She went several stops and finally disembarked with the last of the passengers. Renata again entered a restroom, waited until it was empty and then reversed the spell. She took the battery and chip out of her mobile, crushed the phone under the heel of her boot, and tossed the chip and battery in separate trash receptacles.

Renata exited the terminal, walking out into the rainy day and hailing a cab to take her to the train station. She would just disappear. He might look for her in Edinburgh, but she would never return to the city or the life she had built there. She would never be a curator; never work in the field she had once been so passionate about. At the station she purchased a burner mobile. She called the university and arranged to give up her housing and have her things sent to a local charity. Renata was able to terminate all the connections to her former life—utility bills, credit cards, even a magazine subscription. Once her calls were complete, she disposed of the burner phone the way she had her other.

She had money in the Hebrides and in several foreign accounts. Her mother had left her with means, and she would find a way to access the funds at a later time when she was sure she was settled in anonymity. Today she had done as much as she could to sever her ties to anything Branson might know about or might be able to discover. She boarded the train, heading for the northernmost point in Scotland. From there she would make her way home to the Hebrides on a ferry and find a way to build a life without Branson.

L ondon, England

Present Day

It had been a risk to come, but a risk she had been forced to take. The storm had all but destroyed the school and many of the surrounding farms and buildings. Surely Branson was no longer searching for her. He’d been persistent at first. A month after their return to the United Kingdom, she’d finally been able to find an out-of-work actress from Australia who just wanted enough money to get home. Renata had hired her to show up in Edinburgh and lay a false trail that ended in Spain. From there the girl had taken the cash from her anonymous benefactor and made her way home.

When she’d cast the runes that she’d inherited from her aunt, Renata had seen danger in a trip to the south. But she was a community leader and the person responsible for the school. She was the one who educated the people in the village. She was left with no choice but to accept the invitation from the museum to attend the gala for the benefit of the community. The museum’s only request was that she make an appearance. The Inverness papers had made a big to-do about her getting the children to safety. To have declined their offer would have hurt everyone in the village.

Realizing the road to the school had become impassable, she knew that losing power was imminent. Renata called the mayor and told him which children were still with her and that she had a plan to keep them all safe. She used a length of rope to tie them all together and led them up into the hills.

The cave was part of an excavation that she’d been working on for years. Not that she’d ever share her findings, but it intrigued her and in a way let her feel a connection to Branson. There were petroglyphs and pictographs in the cave, some of which seemed to suggest a link to the Arthurian legend, Branson’s specialty.

She took the children past the outer walls of the cave she had so painstakingly reenforced to the back of the enclosure, where she’d set up battery-powered lights as well as a system of ground torches. She lit the torches and told the eight teenagers to look at the petroglyphs and they would spend their time testing theories about their meaning.

Renata returned to the mouth of the cave and slowly intoned both a barrier and a protection spell. That should keep the worst of it out, she thought. Down below, she’d held the storm at bay for as long as she could to give people time to get to safety. As she shifted the broad energy and magick from the winter gale to keep her and the children safe, she felt exhausted.

When the storm finally consumed itself, they all made their way out of the hills and began the long walk back to the village, where she was hailed a hero.

“Thank God for you, Renata. I don’t like to think what might have happened if you hadn’t gotten the children to safety.”

Renata just smiled and moved through the crowd, accepting what she felt was unnecessary thanks and praise. As she pointed out numerous times, she’d done nothing more than any of the rest of them would have done.

The mayor laughed, and said, “That might be, but I doubt anyone else could have kept those kids in a cave all that time and made them think it was an adventure.”

And now, less than three months later, she was here in London. The gala was tonight, and she’d walked to the museum earlier that day to ensure she knew where she was expected to be. The event organizers had offered to put her up in a swanky hotel, but she’d opted for a much quieter hostel where she wasn’t likely to be spotted.

Renata had come to love her life in the Hebrides but being in London reawakened her thirst for knowledge and intellectual stimulation. She had been given access to the museum and to the closed gallery where the event would be held. As she looked around the room, she noticed a beautiful dark-haired woman walking among the metal sculptures. The pieces were abstract, but not so much so that their subjects weren’t identifiable. The woman was flanked by two rather beefy attendants and several academic types with thick glasses and clipboards. Renata guessed the woman was Mariah Halsey, the artist who had created the beautiful sculptures.

“They’re absolutely stunning,” Renata said as the group approached. Her brogue sounded stronger to her own ears in the chambers of the museum than it did at home.

The two men, whom she assumed were bodyguards, stepped in front of the woman, blocking Renata’s view.

“Stand down, guys. Ms. Valor?” said the brunette.

“Aye, and you’re Mariah Halsey.”

Mariah smiled at her. “I wasn’t expecting someone so young.”

“It’s a small village,” she laughed. “I’m the administrator, secretary, and chief bottle washer, as they say.”

Mariah laughed as well. “I know how that goes.”

“I don’t even know how to begin to express my gratitude for what you’re doing tonight for our school. And may I say the absolute power and beauty of your work is astounding. Truly, photographs don’t do them justice.”

Unexpectedly, Mariah blushed. It surprised Renata, as she had assumed the artist would be cold, unapproachable, and arrogant. But she didn’t appear to be anything at all like that.

“Thank you. It’s like Michelangelo said, a sculptor doesn’t create anything, we just allow the medium to show us the vision of what already exists within. It’s already there, I just set it free.”

“Oh, what a glorious way to look at it! But you do have a singular and unique talent.”

“Maybe, but mine is a skill that can be learned. What you did is a part of your DNA. To experience a storm that levels most of your schoolhouse and sends fishing boats into the middle of farms? Then when your escape route was cut off, you had the presence of mind to take those children up into the hills and find a cave for shelter? Not only did you keep them safe, but the kids all talk about it like it was some great adventure. When they were interviewed, they were relaxed and laughing like the whole thing was a great lark. And to top it all off, the community came together to rebuild and repair the buildings. It sounds like a very giving village.”

Renata smiled. “We were lucky. The kids were very brave, and there were petroglyphs to look at in the cave. Please know that any money raised will be put to good use and we already have new safety protocols to ensure nothing like this ever happens again.”

“Ms. Halsey, can we have your final approval on the exhibition?” said one of the coordinators as he approached them.

“I’m so sorry,” said Renata, “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“You’re not.” Mariah said, taking the clipboard from the official, looking it over and nodded in approval. “I was just finishing up here. Would you like to do a final walk-through with me? I suspect tonight you’ll be too busy to look at anything.”

“A tour provided by the sculptor herself? I’d be honored.”

“Well,” laughed Mariah, “basically I’m just an ironworker with fancy blow torches, arc welders, and a grinder.”

Mariah guided Renata through the exhibition. Renata was fascinated with Mariah’s attention to detail. She made infinitesimal adjustments to everything—tweaking the placement of a sculpture, turning the direction of the light by just a hair. They left the bodyguards outside the main reception area so they could have a bit of privacy.

“I had no idea you were wolf,” said Mariah when they were alone. “I didn’t even know there was a pack up in the Hebrides.”

Renata was taken aback but determined to make her way through the conversation without showing much emotion. Straightening her shoulders, she brought her head up to look Mariah directly in the eye. “There isn’t a pack in the Hebrides. When my mother was pregnant, she took refuge with her sister, who was a midwife. I was born up there and when she realized your kind didn’t want us, she settled down where she was and made a life for us.”

“Her origin pack banished her?”

“My mother had no origin pack; she was turned without her consent.”

“We have that in common. So was mine.”