'Called by a Highlander' E-Book Bundle 3: Clan MacDonald

Three Highland warriors. Three modern time travelers. Three journeys through time. Can love survive a Scottish medieval war?

Three love stories. Close to 1,000 pages of edge-of-your-seat drama and sizzling time-travel romance!

Discover the adventures of three modern people thrown into the early 14th century, the midst of Robert the Bruce’s Wars of Scottish Independence, and get entangled in the destiny of the Highland Clans MacDonald.

The Called by a Highlander E-Book bundle 3: Clan MacDonald contains three steamy E-Books in which medieval Highlanders and modern-day men and women unite in love and war.

If you like fierce warriors, strong heroines, and intoxicating romantic encounters, then you’ll adore Mariah Stone's high-drama Highlander series.

Dunadd Fort, Argyll and Bute, May 1313

“A footprint.” David Wakeley shook his head and stabbed his index finger at a carving in the stone he was standing on. It was in the form of a foot, or an ancient axe head, depending on how you looked at it. “I can’t believe this is what two years of searching has led to.”

Dùghlas Ruaidhrí furrowed his blond eyebrows and crossed his huge arms over his chest, muscles bulging. A tall, broad Highlander with a claymore in the sheath at his back, he stood several steps away from David. They were on top of the Dunadd hillfort, surrounded by the moss-covered remnants of the ancient stronghold and blown by strong winds from all sides. But despite the cold, Dùghlas wore a pale blue linen tunic with his braies, or medieval breeches, because it was May, and May was warm for Highlanders.

Cool gusts coming from the sea in the west made David shiver in his leine croich. He hadn’t grown up in an icy medieval castle. He’d grown up in Chicago, and though the winters there were freezing, they’d had down jackets, scarves, and hats to keep them warm. And he’d never take central heating, hot water, and warm cars for granted again.

“Um,” Dùghlas said, “are ye surprised, man? ’Tis where ye asked me to take ye.”

David went into a pocket at the side of his tunic and retrieved a rolled piece of vellum with a hand-drawn map of Scotland showing ten crosses around it. It was soft and smooth, and it was the most precious possession he owned. His way to freedom.

“I did.” He looked up at the horizon to the west, where the coast of Loch Crinan silvered between dark hills and mountains. A cloud hung above it, spreading rain like fog.

River Add snaked around Dunadd hill, cutting through green, rusty, and yellowish fields. The country spread all around them in brown, green, and gray valleys, hills, and mountains. The bogs of Moine Mhor extended in a rust and ochre carpet to the west. Black sheep, their fleece still short after the spring shearing, grazed peacefully on the slope. Seagulls squawked above them. Gusts coming from the sea brought the scent of rain and salt and trouble. The wind caught the birds and shut them up, and they soared, fighting against the invisible force, hanging in the air as though someone had put them on pause.

David bit his lower lip. He brought his pointy-shoed foot closer to the carved footprint, attentive to any feeling of strangeness in the air—a buzzing, sucking sensation, the scent of lavender and fresh grass that had accompanied Sìneag, the faerie who had sent his sister, Rogene, through time. And because he had foolishly not believed Rogene and grabbed her arm to stop her, he had traveled in time, too.

And he’d been hunting for that scent for two years.

But the scent of moss, wet earth, and stone, accompanied by a whiff of sea and sheep dung, was undisturbed. Sìneag was nowhere around.

David’s stomach flipped, churning and twisting. He had been hoping one of the rocks he had visited over the past two years would glow and buzz and open for him, let him return to the twenty-first century.

Back to the life unlived.

Back to fulfilling his full potential.

Back to the football scholarship that would allow him to go to college and get a degree and make something of himself.

That would allow him to prove to himself—and to everyone—that he wasn’t just a dumb fuck with a reading disability born into a family of geniuses. The scholarship was being held for up to three years and would expire in July.

He was only twenty-one; he had his whole life ahead of him. But he was wasting it among fourteenth-century warlords, medieval knights, and warriors.

He had his sister here, but nothing else that held him. He was stuck in this medieval prison the goddamn faerie had put him into without his consent.

Three years. Two of them spent searching. Nine stones he had slammed his hand onto.

Zero faeries found.

Zero tunnels through time open.

Zero chances to go back.

“I just didn’t think it would be this, Dùghlas,” he said. “This nothing. You told me this place is supposed to be swarming with faeries and spirits or whatever. You told me faeries leave glass beads here and carve things in stone, and people goddamn disappear.”

Dùghlas’s silvery eyes were like a sharpshooter’s rifle scope on him. “Aye, ’tis what folk say. Did ye really expect to see a faerie?”

Yes, he had. But he couldn’t say it out loud. When Rogene had told him a faerie had sent her through time to 1310, he’d laughed at her. Dùghlas would think he’d lost it.

“This was my biggest hope,” David murmured. “My sister told me something about this place, but I didn’t listen very well. It’s a place of power, apparently. The inauguration stone, right?”

Yes, Rogene, a historian in 2021, and wife to Laird Angus Mackenzie in 1310, had told him many things about Scottish history. Only, he’d been too drunk—or too tired of being lectured—to pay attention.

Now, it wasn’t like he could pick up a phone to ask her. And Eilean Donan was about a week away on horseback in good weather.

The inauguration stone was different from the time-travel stones, of course, but the principle was the same. Carved symbols in stone had power. There were some carvings next to the footprint that David couldn’t quite decipher. They could be connected to the time traveling rocks for all he knew. Maybe they would even work when the time travel stones wouldn’t.

Your time will come after you meet the woman you’re destined for. That was what James—one of the other time travelers and the husband of Angus’s sister, Catrìona Mackenzie—had told him the day David set off on his travels. Sìneag had apparently told James about this when he’d tried to take David back to the twenty-first century with him.

David didn’t want to believe it. He was afraid of being stuck here forever if he fell in love like his sister had with Angus, like James had with Catrìona… Others, too.

He stubbornly believed he could find a way through the rocks without Sìneag’s unwelcome condition.

But, proving James’s words, none of the time travel stones worked for him—the ones with a handprint, with the river of time, and the tunnel carved on them. So, he’d considered Albert Einstein’s quote “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” and decided to try something new.

This rock.

Holding his breath, he stepped into the footprint.

Nothing happened. He didn’t travel in time. He was just standing there, inhaling the wind, and trying to fit his large foot into the small footprint.

“Ye’re now King of Dál Riata,” Dùghlas proclaimed. “Congratulations.”

David cursed under his breath and stepped back, disappointment dripping from him like sweat. Dùghlas went to a bowl carved in a stone five steps away from the inauguration stone, sank to his knees, and gathered rainwater from the bowl in both hands. Then, still on his knees, he stretched his arms to David.

“Would Yer Grace allow Taranis, the feared god of thunder and rain, to bless yer reign for years to come?”

David gritted his teeth. “Only if Taranis sends a lightning bolt up your ass.”

The anger, the constant sense of helplessness, of being locked down against his will, was a sickening, corroding storm in his guts. He needed the only thing that helped him to forget.

Uisge.

With a sigh, he sat down on the rock, still warm from a few hours in the morning sun, and took out his flask—a horn with a cork—filled with uisge. He tucked his map under one foot so that the wind wouldn’t carry his most precious possession away, pulled the cork, and took three long, satisfying gulps. The fiery liquid burned his mouth and his throat as it descended into his stomach. It was pretty much pure alcohol, bitter but oaky and smoky, and there was the beginning of real scotch somewhere in there. Though whisky wouldn’t be invented until the fifteenth century, Rogene had told him. The familiar high hit his brain cells and he started to relax, his senses swimming.

Finally.

Wiping his wet hands off on his braies, Dùghlas came and sat by his side. “By God’s teeth, friend, yer fascination with things sent up an arse hasn’t stopped surprising me in the whole moon we have been traveling together.” Rolling his eyes, David offered the uisge. Dùghlas drank, croaked, and handed it back to him. “The things I remember ye wishing up my arse were a tree branch when we slept in the woods and it was too wet to kindle. A wet cloth when I tried to wipe the vomit off yer face after ye got drunk. And…oh, ’tis the best one yet, one of the rocks ye’ve been chasing and slamming yer hand into. The whole seven-foot-long rock.” Dùghlas shook his head and laughed.

David drank more, chasing that numbness he needed. “Well, you can now add ‘go fuck yourself’ to the list.”

“Ah.” Dùghlas pulled the map out from under David’s foot. “’Tis a good one. I prefer pleasuring myself to shoving things into my body that dinna belong there.”

David chuckled and toasted to that. “You’re not wrong there.” He drank more.

“Where do ye want to go next?” Dùghlas asked, staring at the map. “Man, I’m glad ye understand this child’s drawing and can orient yerself. ’Tis ogham to me.”

“Well,” David said, “I don’t know. This is the last rock I know of.”

“There are more,” Dùghlas said. “The Picts were everywhere. They conquered Dál Riata, too, at some point. Perhaps yer rocks are somewhere in Galloway or even England. But I’ll tell ye one thing. Be careful. Dinna ask folk about them. Dinna talk about them to someone ye dinna ken. And if ye can help it, dinna go near them longer than necessary.”

David gulped more of the uisge, his head already spinning pleasantly. The wind from the sea gusted stronger now, throwing the long strands of his dark-blond hair, which he hadn’t cut in three years, into his eyes. A few raindrops fell on his face and on the map, but he registered them only distantly. Scotland and rain. That had been his life for what felt like forever.

“Why? Would faeries make me disappear?” He drank more. He needed more of that warm burning in his stomach, to chase the cold of the wind and the rain away. He’d already stopped caring that the rain might ruin his precious map. A few more gulps of alcohol, and he’d stop caring that he was stuck in the Middle Ages. That was what he was going for.

“Nae.” Dùghlas frowned. “But there’s folk that dinna take people who believe in such things kindly. Especially priests.”

David nodded. A sweet light-headedness tricked him into thinking he had no dark thoughts, that he was joyous and light and fun. Everything he wasn’t when sober.

“We should go,” Dùghlas said, then rolled up David’s map and handed it to him. “The farmhouse down there”—he pointed at a croft—“mayhap they’ll take us in.”

David stood up, swaying, and pointed two fingers at his friend like Elvis. “Yeah, man. I’m glad you’re traveling with me. You keep me out of trouble.”

As they walked down the hill, David balancing over the worn-out, ancient rocks that indicated ancient ramparts, Dùghlas said, “Ye’re glad? ’Tis a nice change from wishing things up my arse and telling me to go and pleasure myself.”

Black clouds darkened the world. Rain intensified, and David was blinking water away. He was almost there, almost in that oblivious state where he could tolerate his miserable life and where the obnoxious, self-deprecating voice in his head was silent. But something bothered him. As he stepped over one wet, moss-covered step, his foot slipped a little, but he regained his balance.

“Careful,” said Dùghlas.

“Thanks for the warning, man. I’ve been nothing but careful for three years.”

Dùghlas frowned, a question born in his eyes at the mention of three years, but he withdrew, sighed, shook his head, and resumed walking.

They reached their horses, which were tethered to a bush at the bottom of the hill, and rode to the farm through what was now a true downpour. It was a typical Highland croft, with low stone walls and a thatched roof. They banged at the door, and a man opened it. He was in his fifties, short with a gray beard, a tired, weathered face, and a thin, pointy nose. The impression of a skull filled David’s drunken mind.

“Maybe we should find another place,” he whispered into Dùghlas’s ear, but based on the man’s deepening frown, he had probably said it too loudly.

Dùghlas waved his hand at David as if to shoo him. “Friend,” he said to the old farmer, “we are looking for shelter for the night in this weather. We are happy to do work for ye in exchange.”

The man’s lips thinned, and his chin moved forward as he looked at the ground and pushed the door to close it. But Dùghlas laid his hand on the door and stopped him. “Any work. Please.”

The man’s milky eyes were tired. “I can use two pairs of strong hands.”

“Good,” Dùghlas said.

“As long as ye dinna mind a leper in the house.”

Dùghlas froze. “A leper?”

David shook his head. Leprosy was a common, incurable disease in the Middle Ages. David didn’t know much about medicine, but he knew that it was a bacterial infection, treatable in the twenty-first century by antibiotics. But it was a slow and painful death sentence in the Middle Ages. If he and Dùghlas were careful about hygiene, they should be fine. And David always had a cake of soap with him. Plus, uisge would help to disinfect…if he had any left.

“We don’t mind,” said David. “We can sleep in your stables.”

The man nodded. “If ye clean them, feed the horses, and cut the firewood, ye may.”

Dùghlas looked at David with big, angry eyes. As a medieval man, he was terrified of leprosy. Maybe David should be, too.

“My friend here will,” Dùghlas said.

“Good.” The man stepped aside and let them come in. “My wife just made dinner.”

As they entered, the scent of woodsmoke, unwashed bodies, and overcooked pottage hung in the room. There was a hearth in the middle of the house. The dirt-packed floor was covered with reeds, except for a healthy circle around the hearth so that any sparks wouldn’t start a fire.

In the golden semidarkness, smoke hung under the thatched ceiling like a rainless cloud, and David’s eyes started to burn. But even with the only light coming from the flames in the hearth, he could see the woman. She was bent over the cauldron, her back as round as a wheel. Her face was illuminated by fire, and there were the clear signs of long untreated leprosy.

As David stood by the door, blinking raindrops and smoke away, he drunkenly thought this must be where the old witches from fairy tales came from.

Her deep-set eyes were milky, the skin on her face dark and purple and hugging her skull like papier-mâché. She held the long, wooden ladle in her hand with three dark, rotting fingers. She watched David with a frown, her cloudy eyes menacing.

Dùghlas cleared his throat. “Good day.”

David felt an urge to add madam, but stopped himself.

“Good day,” she replied. “Supper isna ready yet.”

“I’ll show ye the stables,” said the man. As they walked back into the torrential rain, the old man led the way through the yard of the farm. “My name is Padean, and my wife is Peigi. We are farmers. I lived in Carlisle before. I am a Scot, though,” he added defensively.

He showed them the stables, gave them two shovels and two axes. David and Dùghlas worked for a couple of hours. The scent of manure and freshly cut wood were rich in David’s nostrils. Physical work sobered him somewhat. When all was done, they went back into the hut.

“All done?” asked Peigi, still leaning over the cauldron.

“Aye,” Dùghlas said, and put his sword against the wall by the door.

“Pottage?” she asked.

“Thanks.” David unbuckled his own sheath with his sword that was held by his girdle and proceeded to sit at the table next to the hearth.

Padean took another ladle and poured the pottage into two clay bowls. He put the bowls in front of David and Dùghlas. The steam of something hot and freshly cooked tickled David’s nostrils, and while Dùghlas introduced them, David shoved spoon after spoon into his mouth. The thick soup was mainly barley with a few root vegetables, but it was the best thing David had tasted in days. Padean poured two more bowls for himself and Peigi. He put them on the table, then came to help her stand up and led her to sit next to him, shielding her away. David glanced at Padean’s hand as the man ate and noticed his fingers were dark, too. He hadn’t escaped the disease.

For a while, the little house was filled with the crackling wood, the drum of rain against the thatch, the slurping of pottage, and the wind howling in the slits of the door. Halfway through the meal, Padean said, “Ye two are brave men. Nae everyone would come into a house with lepers. They say, ’tis God’s punishment, a corruption of the very soul. Dunadd Fort helps to keep people away, and the Cambel tacksmen are kind enough not to bother us or put a too heavy of a strain for rent and produce. What brings ye two here?”

David relaxed, warm and full. He stood up and removed his wet leine croich. His long hair, gathered at the back in a tail, still dripped with water.

“Do you mind if I let it dry?” he asked as he stood up.

“Aye, lad,” said Padean. “Do so.”

“I look for faerie stones,” David said as he stood by the fire with his leine croich hanging from his hands. “The ones that are up there—”

He stopped because the woman gasped, and the slurping stopped, and the only sounds were of rain and fire and wind.

“Leave,” said the woman. Her voice was like a thunder strike. “Get out now.”

Dùghlas chuckled. “Please, ’tis nothing. My friend is just curious—”

The woman turned to David, her face dark under her hood. “’Tis a curse. Those stones are a curse. The same curse that hit me. ’Tis the faeries’ fault, all their fault that God is punishing me, and now my husband. Leave before ye bring death to us!”

“Peigi,” said Padean placatingly, “the lads have nowhere to go. It rains and there’re nae other farms nearby. Come now, calm down, they can just go to the stables—”

“Nae, ye fool. I already brought the curse on ye. This man is just another one sent by God.” She looked straight at David. “Up there, Dunadd hill, is the stone with the foot. But ’tis nae what ye’ve been looking for, aye, lad? Or ye wouldna have asked. Ye’ve been searching for the stone with the hand, aye?”

Mumbling angry curses, something along the lines of I told ye nae to tell folk the wrong things, Dùghlas stood up from the table and came to the fire, quickly rubbing his hands. His tunic, his hair, and his shoes were still wet, and David knew his friend didn’t want to go out into the rain any more than he did.

David slowly picked up his leine croich. “Yes. I was looking for a hand.”

The woman laughed hysterically. “Ye fool. ’Tis nae in the open like that, facing the sky, looking over the country. ’Tis in a place darker than night, where nightmares are born.”

Even drunk, David felt a chill go through him. He stood, holding the wet leine croich that weighed as much as a sheep. “You know where it is?” he asked.

“Shut up,” murmured Dùghlas as he put the baldric back on.

“I ken,” Peigi said, narrowing her eyes at him. “But I wilna tell ye. I follow God’s path. Only when my soul is healed, will my body heal.”

He looked helplessly at Dùghlas, who shrugged. David shook his head, attempting to make his drunken head work faster.

Padean took David by his elbow and led him to the door. “Ye must go. Ye are upsetting her.”

David picked up his sword. “Where then?”

But she didn’t reply. Disappointment weighed at David as Padean opened the door and gently pushed him and Dùghlas out into the gray, muddy rain. Water poured over them as Padean led them firmly to the farm gates.

“Where is the stone with the hand?” David asked.

Padean pushed them out of the low gate and closed it, creating a barrier between him and David and Dùghlas. Then he sighed and shook his head, looking down.

“’Tis in Carlisle Castle,” he said. “I was born here, but as a lad, I was brought to my uncle, the mason who worked on the castle dungeon. I remember seeing that stone—the handprint, the odd carvings of waves and a tunnel or something similar. ’Tis odd and pagan and shouldna be talked about by God-fearing Christians,” he added with anger.

Carlisle…David thought. English territory. His next destination.

Padean’s eyes softened. “If ye think about going there, lad, be careful. The castle is probably still well guarded. But I remember a way in. See, as a young lad, I fell in love with Peigi. She lived in the town, but I wasna allowed to leave the keep after dark. So I sneaked out. On the northwestern side of the curtain wall, the stones form a sort of stairway. They stand out a wee bit. The enemy wilna notice that, only them who kens ’tis there. My uncle, a Cambel, told me about it, to help me see my love. So mayhap it will help ye in yer search. Ye helped us with the stables and the firewood. We didna give ye shelter. ’Tis the very least I can do.”

Then he turned, and, slouching like a question mark, returned to the sick love of his life. The girl for whom he’d spent his youth climbing the castle walls. Look where love had gotten them. David shuddered.

Sighing, he took out his map. Rain still poured, but he hoped to make the mark quick enough for moisture not to destroy it. He laid the parchment on top of the stone wall surrounding the farm, then took out a quill and a small jar of ink Rogene had given him so that he would write to her.

His sister was a dictator. What did she expect from a dyslexic who could barely write with pen and paper, let alone with quill and ink? He hadn’t written her in two years. He hadn’t seen Paul, his nephew, for two years. David had left Eilean Donan Castle when Paul was about two months old.

He missed Rogene and Paul and thought of them often. Paul would already be a toddler, walking and babbling. He was a sweet baby, and his sister and Angus couldn’t get enough of their son.

With a quill, he made a cross where Carlisle was, approximately. Rain poured on top of it, and it smudged. “How long till Carlisle?” he asked.

“About one week on horseback,” Dùghlas said. “But I am nae coming with ye.”

David put away the map so that it wouldn’t be destroyed by the rain. “What?”

Dùghlas sighed heavily. “I canna set foot on English land, man. And I do need to get back to my own business, as much as I enjoyed this odd adventure with ye.”

David frowned. He wished he could convince Dùghlas to keep traveling with him and helping him, but he knew the man had his own life, his own agenda, and his own mission. As with all relationships for David, this was only temporary. No woman, man, or child could keep him here.

With regret, he squeezed Dùghlas’s shoulder. “I am sorry to hear that, buddy. As annoying as you are, I would rather make this insane journey with you than without you. You kept me safe. You taught me how to survive. You…” His throat caught. This was no use. Why was he being emotional when there was no way for him to make any connections in this age that he hated so much?

Dùghlas’s rifle-scope eyes were sharp on him again as he squeezed David’s shoulder.

“Dinna dismiss friendships so quickly, man,” Dùghlas said. “Whatever ye look for in those stones…mayhap ’tis nae there at all. Mayhap, if ye accepted whatever life is throwing at ye, ye’d realize ye already have all ye need. They are just rocks, after all.”

David shook his head. The man had no idea what he was talking about. They hugged, rain pouring over them as if from a bucket. Wind cut through David like a knife. Then they went their separate ways.

As Dùghlas’s horse grew smaller in the distance to the north, swallowed in the Scottish landscape like another dark spot of moss, David huddled in his leine croich. Loneliness crept into him with the wet coldness of the Highlands. Wondering if he would ever get back to Chicago, he led his horse south to Carlisle.

There, in the dungeons of the castle, somewhere where nightmares were born, could be his way back through time.

His way home.