Highland Shifter (MacCoinnich Time Travel) Read Online Free PDF Page B

The ten-year-old’s blue eyes clouded with unshed tears. “What is it?”
    Lizzy shook her head and patted her daughter ’s head. “It’s okay. Find your grandmother and aunts.”
    Selma ran off and Lizzy closed the door behind her staring blankly at Amber with fear etched in her face.
    Amber pulled Lizzy into a chair, although the physical connection caused Amber more pain. Her empathic gift felt like a curse during times of grief. It was as if she harbored the misery of everyone around her.
    “Can you feel him at all?” Amber asked. Lizzy and her son shared a bond that once allowed them to speak to each other in their heads. As Simon grew, that bond severed. Left in its wake was what Lizzy described as a simple hum. A buzzing sensation told her, her son was well.
    “No.”
    Amber didn ’t press. Soon her mother Lora and sister Myra rushed into the room. “What happened?”
    Tara was fast on their heels.
    “’Tis Simon. Lizzy can’t feel him.”
    Lizzy sobbed. For Amber, the sound renewed her deepest fear, for Lizzy never cried. She was as strong as any Highland warrior.
    Lora knelt beside Lizzy and gathered their hands together. “Shh.”
    “I can ’t feel him.”
    “I know, lass, but hold hope. I ’ve not had any premonitions of death.”
    “If not death, then what?” Tara asked.
    Myra ran her palm over her swollen belly as she spoke. “Could he have turned himself into an animal so small you’re not able to sense him?”
    Lizzy shook her head.
    “What if he used the stones?” Amber posed the question, and the women all turned to stare at her.
    “Did he ever say he wanted to?”
    “Nay. But perhaps—”
    Lizzy shot from the chair and fled the room. Amber knew her sister-in-law would search all the hiding spaces around the Keep where they ’d hidden the stones. After Tara and Myra left, going in different directions, Amber joined the search up the spiraled staircase to the tallest tower and into what appeared to be an abandoned room.
    Behind a hidden door was a space occupied by one of the sacred stones—the stones the ancients charged her family with for their safekeeping—the time traveling stones, that hadn ’t been used for over a decade.
    When Amber ’s fingertips touched the stone, it started to glow. She lifted it out of its home intending to take it to the others as proof.
    As she started to stand, the stone in her hand grew hot. Fearing she ’d drop it, Amber set it on the floor. Before her eyes, the stone split into several pieces. Light cascaded over the stone and created a searing heat. Amber backed away and watched as the broken stone mended itself back together.
    When the light faded, and the temperature in the room dropped, the stone appeared unharmed, but beside it was a thumb size piece of the rock.
    Determining the stones wouldn’t burn her palm, Amber gathered them and searched out the women in her family.
    She found them in her father ’s study, each with a bewildered expression on their face. Amber lifted both stones up. When she did, Lizzy and Myra pointed to the table on which they’d placed the other stones. Once Lora returned to the room all five stones sat beside smaller pieces.
    “Should we look in the trunk?” Myra asked.
    “Simon would never take that one.” Lizzy said.
    The trunk Lizzy spoke of housed the sixth stone. Safely tucked away to be used some 500 years in the future. Simon would die before compromising that one.
    Lizzy fingered the smaller stones. “They had babies.”
    Myra, six months pregnant with her third child, laughed.
    “What do you suppose it means?” Tara laid an arm over Lizzy’s shoulders.
    “I ’ve no idea.” Lizzy lifted one of the tiny stones and inspected it closer. “There’s writing on it.”
    Amber crowded her, taking a better look.
    “Aye. ’Tis the same as the larger stones.”
    At the doorway to the study, the patter of small feet crowded in. Amber smiled into the faces of her nieces and nephews. Briac, Tara ’s