Once Upon A Highland Legend Read Online Free Page A

its place. Let them crown their kings upon that other slab of stone and mayhap it would stem rivers of blood.
    Disgusted to his core, Callum turned away from the cairn. It was complete now, but he could not credit that his father’s body would now lie and rot beneath the heavy stones. His bones would remain here for eternity, forgotten under the mists of Am Monadh Ruadh.
    And where might Callum be?
    Except for those who had followed his Da, his tribesmen were now scattered to the winds. Alba was no more. He was a man without a home.
    With a growl of displeasure, he started down the hillside, battling his conscience and his temper. That’s when he spied her…
     
    Annie yawned and stretched, thinking that somehow, she must have dozed…with the crystal in her hand. She lifted it to her bleary eyes. It was nearly colorless again. What a strange, but fascinating rock.
    After eating her sandwich, she had been so entranced with the thing, peering into it, watching the colors change and trying to figure out how it worked, that she must have dozed. She didn’t recall feeling sleepy, but she guessed it must have come upon her suddenly, after filling her stomach, because she felt like she’d been asleep for a hundred years or more. She thought maybe her plane trip must have taken more out of her than she had realized, because the hike hadn’t been all that strenuous. She sat up and shook the fuzz from her head.
    What time was it anyway?
    Instinctively, she sought her bag to grab her phone and text Kate again, but her brand-new pack was gone. With a shriek of alarm, she shot to her feet, looking about, her gaze focusing on movement in the near distance.
    There was a half-naked man, rebuilding the cairn she’d passed on the way up. Clearly, he must have taken her bag, because unlike the Winter Stone, bags didn’t simply get up and walk away on their own. Wrapping her fist around the crystal in her hand, she was angry enough to whack the guy upside the head with it, so she took a few calming breaths before starting in his direction. At the very least, she needed her phone back so she could let Kate know she wasn’t going to make it back on time.
    And her camera. She’d spent half a month’s salary on the bloody thing and she wasn’t about to let some half-naked man have it.
    Of course, she wanted her special pen, too—the one she’d been carrying around since she learned she’d gotten into the University of Michigan—her father’s alma mater.
    And maybe a hairband. She’d taken her hair down, but it was bugging her now.
    And her map. She was pretty sure that if she covered enough ground she could find the Lairig Ghru pass and make her way back from there, but she would much rather get her bearings right here and now.
    Damn it. She wanted her pack back—with all its contents! It wasn’t so much that the bag was expensive, but it was perfect. It had taken her years to find a bag so right, and she didn’t intend to give it up so easily. If he didn’t return it, she vowed to knock him silly with this lovely rock. She gripped it harder within her fist, ready to do battle.
    But the closer she got to the cairn, the more disoriented she felt—as though somehow she wasn’t exactly in the same place where she’d sat down to eat her sandwich. She faltered, looking around.
    Where was she? The mountain peaks were all in the right places, but something wasn’t right here. The trees were closer—as though they’d crept up the mountain while she wasn’t looking.
    She turned back to the man who was busy defacing the cairn. Dressed as he was, there was clearly no place for him to have hidden her bag on his person, but he could have buried it beneath the rocks. Didn’t he realize these things were of historical significance? He was defacing history! He was making it nearly impossible for someone who knew what they were doing to come in and make any sense of the structure.
    Naked bastard.
    “What do you think you’re doing?”