Fighting Fate: Book 2 of the Warrior Chronicles Read Online Free PDF

Jordon Bennett, and even liked him most of the time, but he wouldn’t admit it any more than Jordon would have.
    Flashing Red a grin he reserved solely for her, he told her the truth. “I’ve been dreaming lately.” He shrugged when she set her bio-friendly tea container down, her expression turning from curiosity to concern.
    “Mari?” she asked, using the name only she and Jesse knew that never failed to sear his heart with a hot poker and salve it with cooling gel at the same time.
    Shay nodded, all flirty pretense gone. Red knew and kept his secrets, another reason he loved her and would do almost anything short of outright murder for her and her family. Not that she would ask. Red was used to fighting her own battles.
    “Every night for the past week and a half. Some dreams I remember. Sometimes it’s just a feeling and a lingering sense of foreboding.” Shay couldn’t help the slight shiver running up his spine.
    “When was the last time you saw her?”
    Shay knew Mari was living half the year on Orkney where her main jewelry studio was and half the year just outside Edinburgh, Scotland. Every year he updated his stack of jewelry catalogues with her latest creations. He last saw Mari fourteen months ago when he traveled to Edinburgh to torture himself with her image, afraid to approach her for fear she wouldn’t remember him, or worse yet, would remember and not care.
    “A little over a year ago.”
    “Has she remarried?”
    “No. Not since her first husband died almost twenty years ago.”
    Reed put her small hands on what passed for hips and cocked her head at him, sea blue eyes narrowed. “Why don’t you just go to her, tell her you still love her and see what happens? What, exactly, do you have to lose?”
    My dignity. My self-respect. My dream-lover and the possibility that she might love me in return.
    “It’s been too long now, Red.” Shay looked around the meadow at Potter’s Woods where they were training. It was too early for the residents to be up and about. The sun was still young in the east, filtering through the oaks and maples and willows closer to the pond. Water bugs, dragonflies and butterflies danced along the banks in the mottled light. Shay had a life here. One he loved, among people he loved. He even loved his work, although it forced him to engage with Jordon, Red’s husband, more frequently than he’d like. Could he bring Mari here? Would she come? Could he live anywhere else now that he found a family here?
    Red spoke, drawing his attention away from the early summer beauty surrounding him, bringing him back to the reality that sometimes family was a pain in the ass. “That’s a bunch of B.S. and you know it. If you’re dreaming about her there’s a reason. It’s well past time you stopped shagging everything in a skirt and faced the fact that you’re afraid to really love.... and you’re a moron.”
    The moron comment stung. It was the supreme insult in Red’s lexicon of insults. That he was afraid was simply true and Shay wasn’t one to engage in self-delusion on a conscious level. Fear was fear and any warrior worth his salt acknowledged it and moved past it.
    “You’re not getting any younger and you’ve let the one woman you’ve ever loved go about her life half a world away while you pretend you’re not lonely and you can be happy without her. You should be ashamed of yourself for not trying. If she doesn’t want you, you can stop pining and move on.” She wiped the perspiration from her face with her small towel and then threw it at his head, hitting him squarely in the face.
    “It’s well past time to get your chiseled ass in gear and sweep that woman off her feet. Bring her here. We’ll lock her in Finn’s cottage until you can convince her you’re worthy of her love. If she doesn’t get that after about seventy-two hours I’ll knock some sense into her or send her unworthy ass home. Problem solved.” With that, Red walked away.
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