Free Awaken the Highland Warrior by Anita Clenney

started to leave, but she turned and saw him. If he hadn’t been so disturbed by her legs and her discovery of the hidden key, he’d have done the decent thing and covered his groin.
    “I’m going to take a walk, see if I recognize anything,” he said. He needed to find out how he’d gotten here and what part she played in this game.
    ***
    Bree slid the apple pie in the oven, then stirred the beef stew simmering on the stove. If this didn’t loosen his tongue, nothing would. She glimpsed something outside the window. Faelan was headed toward the dig. This was her chance. She grabbed her camera and ran out the back door. Opening the iron gate, she hurried through the graveyard, stopping just long enough to pick up the piece of broken gravestone she’d used to prop open the crypt door last night. She didn’t know who Orenda was or why she’d been buried here, but Bree had used part of her gravestone so many times she felt she owed the woman a debt.
    She passed Rosalie Wood and her stillborn baby, resisting the urge to stop and pull a lone weed that dared grow against the aged stone. Her great-great-great-grandfather Samuel had buried his wife and child together. Isabel had been only eleven when her mother and newborn sister died. When Frederick built the house, he put it near the graveyard, so Isabel wouldn’t have to walk far to tend the grave.
    Bree couldn’t tend her sister’s grave. She’d been cremated. Perhaps that was why she felt so connected to Isabel. They’d both lost a baby sister. What would it have been like having someone to play with, to share her thoughts and dreams?
    Other than her twin, all her family members who’d died were here. Samuel, Isabel, Frederick, her father, grandmother, and Aunt Layla. They would be nothing but bones now and a few scraps of cloth, but Faelan, who’d been buried with them before she was born, was bursting with life, eating all her food, and lusting after her with every glance. He’d been here all her life, every summer she visited. When she was a toddler chasing butterflies. Sixteen and heartbroken because her first love thought she was weird. And a few months ago, when she ran to her grandmother’s to escape Russell.
    Would Faelan leave when he found his family? Bree’s chest felt tight, like her bra was too small. But wasn’t that her plan, to find out who he was and get him back where he belonged?
    She set Orenda’s stone against the crypt door. “I’ll put it back again, I promise.” Bree followed Faelan’s muddy tracks to the burial vault. She picked up the shovel, placed the square tip against the stone covering, and pushed. Wood cracked as stone scraped against stone, exactly how she’d imagined it sounded when the angels opened Jesus’s tomb. Finally the time vault stood uncovered for the second time in more than a century and a half.
    ***
    Faelan passed the archeologist’s holes, continuing until he came to a withered pine. He touched the deformed trunk and remembered standing a few yards away when lightning struck. This was the field where Druan had ridden up, the trees where Faelan had hidden the time vault. They were taller now, some bare, some gone.
    The earth had aged, but not him.
    He didn’t know what happened to Druan’s disease. Maybe the other demons played some part in it. And his brothers, what of them? He’d dreamed of Tavis last night. Faelan looked at the sky, tracking the waning sun. He needed to get back. Demons preferred the dead of night, still he wanted Bree safely away before then. Until he knew otherwise, he had to assume she was innocent, but getting her to leave would be a fight. Tomorrow he’d check the place where the body had been found and secure the crypt. If anyone discovered the time vault’s secret, human or demon, the clan was doomed. He turned and retraced his steps back to the house. When he neared the graveyard, his stomach dropped. The crypt door stood open.

Chapter 7
    In the light of day, the time