Read Online Caledonia Fae 04- Druid Lords by India Drummond - Free Book Online Page A

the bedroom, naked except for a long, sheer robe. Even with the trials and worries of her first years on the Caledonian throne, she’d bloomed since returning from exile. Although she still had the lithe frame of her race, she appeared softer, her hips slightly fuller. Living in hiding for decades had made her lean, but now she’d come into the fullness of maturity. She’d never looked lovelier.
    “What were you thinking just now?” she asked as she approached. He noticed a flutter of unusual energy about her aura, but the moment passed quickly and he dismissed the distraction as a trick of his mind.
    Munro shook his head and reached out to take her hand. “I was in another world.” Without missing a beat, he added, “You’re beautiful.”
    The early morning sunlight streamed towards them from the outer chamber. “Liar. I’m exhausted,” she replied, and they curled up on the swing bed together. After a long, languid moment, she said, “I didn’t think you’d come.”
    “Why?” he asked, genuinely surprised.
    “You’ve been distant of late. I know my choice to take Koen didn’t please you.”
    “I’ve been giving you and Griogair the opportunity to be together without tripping over me. Besides, it’s been hard work establishing the Druid Hall.”
    Her expression turned serious. “Griogair asked you to stay away?”
    “No, of course not,” he reassured her. “But he is your mate, and you love him. You deserve time alone with him.”
    “I need you ,” she said. “When you are across the portal from me, I feel empty. Will you return to live in Caledonia? Perhaps after we are mated?” Something in her expression and the quiver of their bond told Munro she was holding back. This was the most vulnerable he’d seen her in some time.
    “I can spend more time here if that’s what you need.” He kissed her temple and she nestled into him. “We’ve had an interesting development at the Druid Hall,” he said. “Huck thinks he’s found a female druid.”
    “Really?” she asked.
    “We can’t be sure until we talk to her, but he said she read some runes.”
    “That’s an unusual gift, even among the fae. She must be well developed. Where is she?”
    “Amsterdam,” he said. “A city outside the Ashkyne borderlands. Konstanze has been giving him pretty much free reign to visit the human realm through her gates.”
    “He’s travelled into our borderlands as well. My Watchers tell me he makes a few trips a month through our gates.”
    “I think Huck is restless.”
    “Maybe he wishes to visit his own homeland. Where is he from?”
    “America,” Munro said. When Eilidh gave him a blank expression, he added, “It’s over the ocean from Scotland.”
    “North?” she asked. “To the frozen lands?”
    “West. Beyond a large ocean we call the Atlantic.”
    Eilidh sat up in the bed, making it sway sharply. “He’s from The Bleak? Why did you never tell me this? I knew he was not from the area around my own borderlands, but I always assumed…” Her voice trailed off.
    “What’s wrong with him being from America?” The fae gave strange names to human places, calling large cities wastelands . It didn’t surprise him that she didn’t know the human names for cities outside her own borderlands. She even referred to cities in Scotland by their ancient fae names rather than the common English names.
    “We don’t talk about The Bleak.” She shuddered as though someone had just walked over her grave.
    “Who is queen of those gates?”
    “No one,” she said. “The Bleak is a wild place, full of dangers. The fae were driven out millennia ago, the queens killed, and the gates severed.” After a pause, she added, “I never considered there might be druids there. I’m glad Huck Webster escaped such a horrific existence as he must have experienced in those desolate lands.”
    Munro searched for a way to bridge the gap in their understanding to gently ask what she thought Huck had escaped