Jan Delima: Celtic Moon

“Hello. Yes. He’s here with me.” Elen met Dylan’s stare, her eyes intense. “Okay. We’re upstairs in the study. Do you want to talk to him?” She blinked, staring down at the phone, then back to Dylan. “Porter just hung up on me.”

PORTER BARGED INTO THE STUDY, HIS BREATHING UNEVEN. His raven-dark brows narrowed over fierce blue eyes as he glared at Dylan with obvious annoyance. A tattoo of a Celtic cross covered his bare cranium. He always kept his head shaved bald, flaunting his Irish mother’s symbol. The personal insult the Christian emblem represented to the Guardians was just an added perk.

He marched over, brandishing a cell phone. “If you will not carry your damn phone”—he took in a large gulp of air, his nostrils flaring—“I’m wondering why you bother having it.”

Dylan accepted the phone and placed it on the mantel. “What’s wrong?”

“You had a call on the main line.” Porter crossed thick arms, his chin raised. He wasn’t an overly tall man, barely six feet, if that. But what he lacked in height was more than compensated for by width. He was vicious in battle, fearless—his inability to shift irrelevant.

“And—”

“It was that woman.”

A fist wrapped around Dylan’s gut and squeezed. There was only one person Porter called that woman . “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

Elen inhaled sharply, edging to the side of the sofa. “Sophie? Are you sure?”

Porter shot her a disgusted glare before handing Dylan a piece of paper with a number. “She gave you an hour to call.” He checked his watch. “And I wasted fifteen minutes trying to find you.” The censure in his voice eased into respect. “She was wanting me to tell you that it concerns your son.”

“A son,” Elen whispered.

Dylan stared down at the number, immobile. All thoughts of the Guardians, Cymru, his people, the gathering— gone . Until that moment he hadn’t known the sex of his child. He turned his back to the room, facing the fireplace, not wanting his weakness observed.

“Watch yourself,” Porter warned. “That woman has more cunning than a mother fox.”

Dylan hadn’t needed the warning. He’d underestimated Sophie once, on the night she ran. Four months pregnant and he still hadn’t been able to track her. Then she erased her life. Completely. Everything except her father’s grave. Desecration, it seemed, was where her line of betrayal ended.

Porter cleared his throat, giving his form of consolation. “You almost had her in California.”

“Four years ago,” Dylan snapped, unappeased. “And she cleared out just before we got there.”

Five times he’d almost caught Sophie, but not once had he gotten a glimpse of his child. Every time she had eluded him as if an unseen force had warned her. A ridiculous notion, he knew . . . because Sophie was only human.

Dylan felt a delicate hand on his shoulder and shrugged it off. “I want to be alone for this call.”

Elen’s footsteps retreated to Porter’s side of the room. “We’ll wait for you outside then.”

“Use the house phone,” Porter added. “I’ll be tracing the call.”

SOPHIE SAT ON A GRANITE BENCH AS MOISTURE SEEPED into her jeans. She almost stood, but slumped back instead, figuring a wet ass was the least of her worries.

The waiting was brutal.

She checked her watch for the hundredth time, almost convinced Dylan wasn’t going to call, when the phone lit up, its unfamiliar ring causing every muscle in her body to tense.

With shaking hands, she brought the receiver to her ear. “Hello.”

“Sophie?” Deep and calm, but with an underlying edge of controlled anger.

She had rehearsed this conversation a thousand times, but the reality of hearing his voice erased all rational thought. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “This was a bad idea—”

“Don’t you dare hang up on me, or—”

“Or what?” The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. His arrogant tone flooded her with unpleasant memories. “You’ll hunt me down like a rabid animal? Been there. Done that.”

“You’ve held on to your anger well, Sophie, yet I’m the one who’s never seen my son’s face.”

She swallowed hard, clutching the phone with both hands. “You gave me no other choice.”

“Not true.” His tone dropped dangerously low. “You could have stayed.”

“As a prisoner.”

“No,” he growled. “As my wife.”

“Is there a difference?”

Silence filled their tenuous connection, thick and vile, poisoned by mutual betrayals.

A muffled sound followed, as if Dylan had pressed the receiver into something soft to hide his reaction.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t call you for this.”

“What’s my son’s name?”

Her breath caught in her throat. Such a simple question . . . and yet it held agonizing impact. “Joshua.”

“Joshua,” he repeated in a low tone. “A good name. Is he well?”

“He’s beautiful,” she said with a heavy heart. “He’s the reason I called. I need to ask you something.”

A slight hesitation. “What’s wrong?”

“Josh has been,” Sophie chose her words carefully, “acting odd lately. And not the normal teenager odd.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“I’m suggesting that he may have inherited more of his father than I had hoped.”

A long pause. “Are you talking from a cell line?”

She understood his concern. “I can call you from another phone.”

“No,” he snapped, and then softened his tone. “You need to bring my son home. If what you’re suggesting is true, it’s a dangerous time for him.”

She felt dizzy, nauseated, panic edging to the surface. “How dangerous?”

“He could die.”

Her heart clenched with the worst kind of pain. It was what she had feared most. “What can I do?”

“Come home,” Dylan coaxed. “I can help him . . . before it’s too late.”

An overwhelming apprehension drove her to make an unplanned offer. “We can meet you somewhere.”

He didn’t answer immediately, the predator having sensed her fear—using it well to sway her decision. “He needs to be around his own kind now. Are you willing to risk his life because of your hatred for me?”

“You’re so clueless,” she snapped, letting all her painful memories fill those few words.

“Then enlighten me.”

“It’s irrelevant now.” She closed her eyes, weighing her options. Her son’s welfare, as always, influenced her decisions. However, Sophie had a distinct advantage over the last time she’d been in Rhuddin Village; she was not the same naïve woman that Dylan once knew. She was older now, wiser, and had learned how to defend herself and those she loved.

Quite well, in fact. “Is the lake house still available?”

“It can be.”

“I need a few days to clear things up.”

“You must come now,” he said, his voice firm. “A few days may be too late.”

“I’ll be there tomorrow,” she conceded, not liking the fact that it revealed a hint to her proximity. She had others to protect. “We’ll be there in the evening.” She calculated the travel time in her head and added six hours. “Probably around eight. I’ll call you on this phone when we reach Maine.”

“Hold on . . .” His voice trailed off and then returned. “Let me give you my cell number.”

An unexpected laugh erupted from her, or more like an involuntary release of pent-up nerves. “You have a cell?”

“You find that amusing?”