Page 50 of Unraveling Fate

Taran forced a smile. “Apparently.”

Cadenza started to pace. “You can rip up metal, and you’re a car?”

He followed after her. “I’m not actually?—”

“I mean, if you’re the Ferrari, have I been talking to you this whole time? Did you hear what I told the car?”

“No, I’m not the Ferr?—”

“And does that mean when I sat in the driver’s seat, was I sitting in yourlap?What about when I held the steering wheel? Or shifted gears? What was I actually touching?” Cadenza threw her hands around as she talked, her volume climbing. “And how does that work with me replacing engine parts? Did I give you a new liver? And how the hell are you aFerrari?!”

Taran gathered her hands in his, stilling her frenzy. “Cadenza, you’re not crazy, and I’m not a Ferrari. At least, not really. Not originally.”

“Not originally?” She gaped at him. “What does that even mean?”

He blew out a breath. “It’s complicated. I wanted to explain it all to you, but this isn’t how I meant to do it.” He sat and patted the dirt next to him. “Can I try now?”

Cadenza stayed standing. “Do you or do you not live in my garage during the day as a Ferrari F12?”

“I do, but”—he held up both hands to forestall her—“that’s not who I am. And I know it sounds mad but it’s not, and neither are you. Please, sit and let me explain.”

Cadenza knelt beside him, eyes taking in his shirtless back. Shivers rippled across his skin as she traced the Celtic knotwork wolf tattooed across his shoulders. “It matches the design on the dash of the Ferrari,” she said, voice low.

“Norroway crest, you could say. My father has one around his left arm, and my brothers have their own as well.” He shook his head. “My father was born somewhere around 500 A.D.—he’s a Pict—myself, around 1100.” He kept his tone light, but snuck a peek at Cadenza’s face, wondering if she’d get up, thinking him just as mad as she’d thought herself. “But we’re not just Picts, or Scots. And not just humans.” He blew out a breath. “We work for the Fates.”

“The Fates,” she repeated, face neutral. He wished she’d say more, but maybe it was better to get it all out first.

“Aye, the Fates. I can explain more about that later, but the short of it is that my father and brothers and I worked as bodyguards of a sort to someone who was like a king, I suppose.” Better to leave it at that term for now; what he was telling her tonight was already plenty to digest. “This ‘king’ also worked for the Fates. My father and brothers and I could change shape,shift our form. My mother had a different role. Another man who worked with us, Ercildoun, had the gift of prophecy, or Second Sight. One spring, enemies of the ‘king’ invaded. We all assumed they’d go after him, and we wanted to keep my mother away from the fighting, so my father asked Ercildoun where to send her to keep her safe.” Taran paused. His stomach soured. Remembered adrenaline pulsed through his limbs. “He was wrong about where to hide her, and we were wrong about their objective. They found her and murdered her.”

“Why?” Her brow furrowed. “Why were they after her?”

Taran pressed his lips together. “I promise I’ll explain that too, but there’s so much to get through just for where we are right now.”

“Alright. I’m still sorry about your mother.” She reached a hand up to his face, hesitated, then stroked his hair behind his ear. She was still touching him. That had to be a hopeful sign, didn’t it?

“Aye, well, as I told you before, I wanted revenge. We found and killed the ones who killed her.”

Her fingers froze in his hair. “You killed them?”

Bugger. Sometimes he forgot how much sensibilities had changed over the centuries.

“Try to understand, it was a different era of the world. There was no judge or jury to appeal to for justice, especially in the context of our lives outside of normal humans. We made our own justice. But it wasn’t enough. I blamed Ercildoun as well. He should have seen, he should have known their plan.”

Memories pressed in. Grief and blood and moonlight. He shook himself and tried to lighten his tone. “And after being right so often for hundreds of years, he’d really become a pompous arse. He wouldn’t admit he made a mistake, and I thought he needed chopping down a peg or two.”

He lifted her fingers from his face and rubbed warmth into them. The night was getting on, the ground growing chill beneath them. Overhead the stars glittered like broken glass. “So, I led a raid.”

“What does that mean, a raid?”

He shrugged. “Common practice in the day. We steal someone’s prize cattle, a month later they steal them back. Your neighbor over yon hill was being troublesome, you harried them. Let them know you were awake, paying attention. You didn’t let them have peace.” He gritted his teeth. “My mother was gone. We had no peace, why should he? I’m not saying I was right, mind you, but that’s where my head was at the time. The raid went badly,” he said. “We loosed his favorite bull—a great, muckle brute of a beast—but Ercildoun’s wife ran out after us before we could drive it off. The bull went mad at all the confusion. Trampled her to death.”

Cadenza gasped and covered her mouth with her hands. The midnight chill wrapped around his hands without hers to hold them.

“That,” he cleared his throat, “that wasn’t the revenge I wanted. His wife was an unco brave woman, and I had no wish to see her harmed, let alone killed. It woke me out of my thirst for vengeance. I tried to go to Ercildoun, to make amends, but he’d have none of it. He laid a curse to match my crimes. Cattle were wealth back then, status symbols. And we conducted the raid in our shifted forms.” He pointed to the tattoo on his back.

“A wolf?” she asked. “You can turn into a wolf?”

“I could. Past tense. Under the curse I can’t shift naturally. I can’t become the wolf, and I can’t choose when to shift.” He closed his eyes, remembering strength and claws and speed, the absence of that part of him still a raw hole after all this time. “Instead, after Ercildoun laid the curse, every morning I turned into a great, black bull—the status symbol we raided. And tomake sure I never came near him again, the curse won’t allow me to leave the Norroway estate. Ever. I have to remain on lands we own. Over the centuries status symbols changed, and the curse adapted. I’ve been the bull, a stallion, a carriage.” He winced. That one had really felt foppish. “And now, the Ferrari.” He watched her stare off towards the racetrack, waiting for her reaction.