Magic on the Highland Moor. Two-Natured London 6.5.
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About this ebook
Adeline Emery is livid. One moment she’s heading to work with her sister; the next, she’s whisked off to Scotland—for her own safety. A deadly enemy has targeted her family and they need a powerful ally. For that, Adeline has to marry a complete stranger.
She would much rather stay with her new protector.
For Nicholas Fortier, a warrior of the Crimson Circle, escorting a vampire lady to be married should be an assignment like any other. But Adeline isn’t like any woman he has met before. Protecting her ignites his hunger, the vampire instinct that preludes the most powerful mating bond among their kind.
But she has been promised to another.
Scotland and the manor of the Meyrick family should be a safe haven. But there is something sinister going on. Soon Adeline is in as great a danger as she would’ve been in London. And this time Nicholas doesn’t have the strength of the Crimson Circle to rely on.
Through the Highland moors, they fight for their lives—and their love. But is the magic of Highlands enough to give them their happily ever after?
Susanna Shore
Susanna Shore is a historian turned author. She writes Two-Natured London paranormal romance series, P.I. Tracy Hayes mysteries, The Reed Files crime capers, and House of Magic paranormal cozies, as well as stand-alone thrillers and contemporary romances.
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Magic on the Highland Moor. Two-Natured London 6.5. - Susanna Shore
Magic on the Highland Moor
Two-Natured London 6.5
Susanna Shore
Magic on the Highland Moor. Two-Natured London 6.5.
Copyright © 2020 A. K. S. Keinänen
All rights reserved.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
No part of this book may be reproduced, translated, or distributed without permission, except for brief quotations in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, dialogues and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, organisations or persons, living or dead, except those in public domain, is entirely coincidental.
Published by Crimson House Books at Smashwords.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes:
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Cover © 2020 A. K. S. Keinänen
Editing: Lee Burton, Ocean’s Edge Editing
Twitter: @SusannaShore
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www.susannashore.com
Two-Natured London Series
The Wolf’s Call
Warrior’s Heart
A Wolf of Her Own
Her Warrior for Eternity
A Warrior for a Wolf
Magic under the Witching Moon
Moonlight, Magic and Mistletoes
Crimson Warrior
Magic on the Highland Moor
Wolf Moon
P.I. Tracy Hayes Series
Tracy Hayes, Apprentice P.I.
Tracy Hayes, P.I. and Proud
Tracy Hayes, P.I. to the Rescue
Tracy Hayes, P.I. with the Eye
Tracy Hayes, from P.I. with Love
Tracy Hayes, Tenacious P.I.
Tracy Hayes, Valentine of a P.I.
Thrillers
Personal
The Assassin
Contemporary Romances
At Her Boss’s Command
It Happened on a Lie
To Catch a Billionaire Dragon
Which Way to Love?
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Epilogue
About the Author
Excerpt from Wolf Moon
Also in the Two-Natured London Series
Also by Susanna Shore
Chapter One
Adeline Emery sat seething in the back seat of a dark car racing through the night. No, fuming. Smouldering. She was particularly fond of the word smouldering. She so seldom had a chance to use it, and it so well described her mood: furious and hurt at the same time.
Just because she had climbed into the huge black Land Rover voluntarily didn’t change the fact that she was here against her will. And just because it was her sister who had asked her to get into this car didn’t mean she wasn’t upset. Heartbroken.
In the front, the two men ignored her, like they had for most of the past hour. No, not men: males. Vampires. Warriors. Members of the Crimson Circle, the elite troops created to protect their kind. Huge and dangerous.
She had always wanted to meet a true Circle warrior, had imagined all kinds of breathtaking, blood-heating, knickers-wetting scenarios when her romantic nature got the better of her. But now that she was within spitting distance of not one but two of them, all she wanted was to … well, spit.
Even after an hour she struggled to comprehend how she had ended up here: abducted and on her way to Scotland as fast as possible. One moment she had been walking to work with her sister, Allegra. The next, Allegra had fed her an outlandish, tearful story of mortal danger that required Adeline be instantly removed from London.
Allegra’s tears were the only reason Adeline was still in this car. Without them, she would have made her escape already in London. Now, as they sped through the nightly motorway eighty miles per hour, she would be foolish to try to escape.
They would have to stop eventually. She would flee then—provided it was somewhere she could find shelter for the day.
It wasn’t easy being a vampire so young she couldn’t face the sun yet. Contrary to human belief, she wouldn’t burst into flames come sunrise. She would fall into a deathlike sleep—which wasn’t much better for her well-being. Imagine being in a strange town, with no place to safely shelter, incapacitated. Helpless. At the mercy of humans.
At a hundred and eighteen, a century after her fulfilment, of being made a vampire, she might still have another century ahead of her in the night. Weakest vampires took that long before they were able to face the sun again. But Allegra had emerged in a little over a century, which gave her hope she would manage the same.
She had already begun to show signs of winning the sun within the next couple of years, a decade at the most. She awoke ahead of sunset these days and could move about, provided she remained indoors. And even though sunrise still was an instant lights-out for her, she didn’t drop into sleep at the merest hint of dawn like she had when her promise had been first fulfilled—when her vampire gene had been triggered. Allegra always insisted Adeline use the scientific terminology when talking about the change that took place when the vampire variation of the two-natured gene was activated to turn an otherwise ordinary human into a vampire. Allegra had a doctorate in genetics and preferred science. Adeline was an English literature teacher at the Night University. Describing the process as fulfilling the promise, as vampires had for millennia, suited her nature much better.
But she hadn’t won the sun yet, so once it came up, she would be dead to the world. If she wanted to escape, she would have to be in such a secure location by then that the men in the front seat wouldn’t find her. Because if they did, all they would need to do would be to carry her back to the car, and she wouldn’t know anything about it.
There was a reason why vampire abodes were such fortresses against intruders.
But the night was young and she had hours until sunrise to plan her escape. She had overheard the men mention they would spend the day in Edinburgh, as they couldn’t comfortably reach their destination before sunrise.
She supposed she should be grateful they wouldn’t force her to the indignity of arriving unconscious. For their part, the warriors would be able to continue through the day just fine. If they were a day younger than three hundred, she would be very surprised. Their mere presence had an impact in Might like only old vampires had, making the energy that powered the two-natured twirl and brush against her skin until she felt like she was in the middle of an electrical storm.
Even powerful vampires wouldn’t drive non-stop all the way to Edinburgh, would they? But as she studied the huge warriors who filled the front seats with their muscled bodies, she wasn’t at all sure they had to rest. Ever.
She wasn’t as robust, however. Or at least she could make the most of her delicate looks and force the men to make a pit stop. Preferably in a larger town. They were on the M1 from London to north that had many large cities on its route, Leicester the next one coming up in an hour.
Would it be better to escape closer to London so that it would be easier to return home, maybe even before sunrise, or wait until they were almost in Edinburgh?
They would reach the Scottish city well before sunrise, which would give her a couple of hours to make her escape and find shelter. But the warriors had mentioned taking her to a Circle safe house. That sounded like a place from where it would be impossible for her to escape unnoticed.
No, she would have to escape before that. It was imperative she didn’t reach her destination.
Bile rose to her mouth when she thought of what awaited her there. A husband.
She couldn’t fathom what had possessed Allegra to arrange a marriage for her all of a sudden. As a century older, her sister had been raised with Victorian principles and morals that she hadn’t quite managed to shed during the subsequent century despite being the head of their small household and a woman of science, but she had never even mentioned that Adeline should consider marriage.
She would have told Allegra that she wasn’t ready for it yet. A little over a century might seem like a long life lived already, but she had spent most of it in darkness. Once she was able to face the sun, she would head out into the world and see all the wonders she had only read about until now. There was no place for a husband, a mate, in those plans.
Allegra hadn’t talked about marrying either. Adeline was absolutely positive her sister wasn’t even interested in relinquishing her freedom to some man. Vampire females might slowly be gaining their independence, but vampire males were still very much entrenched in their ancient patriarchal beliefs. Allegra wouldn’t tolerate those any more than Adeline did.
Yet, out of the blue, Allegra had declared that she had arranged a marriage for Adeline. Who did that anymore? And with a complete stranger—a man who lived in the Scottish Highlands, of all the places remote—blindsiding her with it after the contract was already signed. Allegra had never done anything so … malicious before. Adeline had lived all her life believing her sister was incapable of meanness.
Worse yet, she had thought they were good friends, but if Allegra thought she would meekly go to Scotland and abide by the marriage she had negotiated for her, she didn’t know her at all. Her stomach ached just thinking about it.
Adeline didn’t for a moment believe in Allegra’s excuse that it was to shield her from mortal danger. How mortal a danger could it be if it was possible to counter it with a marriage?
A scream of rage threatened to rise within her and she squeezed her hands into tight fists to keep it in. She wouldn’t give her abductors the satisfaction of her anger.
She sat on her fists to halt the urge to punch the seat in front of her with everything she had. She was behind the driver and it might cause an accident. There were limits to what she was prepared to endure to end this nightmare. Crashing the car at eighty miles per hour wasn’t within them.
She tried to breathe evenly to control her rage, but it wasn’t helping. Was it her rage? Or was she losing control of her rider?
Shock poured over her like ice cold water and her rage subsided. She had never had trouble with her second nature, the entity within her that made her two-natured instead of one. That didn’t mean the creature wasn’t capable of wrenching free, and high emotional turmoil was exactly the kind of leverage it would use.
Bad things happened when a vampire’s second nature was in charge. Bloodbaths. Massacres. Carnage.
Her only hope, should her rider overpower her, was that the two warriors would be more than capable of controlling her. But she didn’t want to be at their mercy in anything, not even in preventing her from going berserk. So she sat absolutely still, listening within.
Though her second nature was restless, it was under control. This anger was all hers.
As if owning the anger gave it strength, her rage surged anew, and suddenly she couldn’t take it anymore. The roof of the car seemed to press down on her, crushing her. Her pulse beat in her throat like a galloping racehorse, making it impossible to breathe. Her sight was dimming. A scream escaped from her mouth, startling even her.
Stop the car! I have to get out!
Chapter Two
Nicholas Fortier jumped in his seat