Page 34

Centuries we’ve kept this secret, and in an instant, it’s undone by one wild, irritating woman. AMacKaywoman, the last person in the world I’d want to share with and who, if my father is to be believed—could be my ruin.

Fuck.

“Wait up!”

I continue to stomp farther down the shoreline in search of my discarded clothes with as much dignity as I can muster in the brisk morning air—Keyanna’s crunching footsteps close behind. I reach up to let my fingers press into the tender skin of my shoulder, trying to reason how it possibly could have healed so quickly. Being what Iamdoesmean a certain level of resilience, but a wound of this nature should have taken days to heal. There’s no reasonable explanation for it already being so much better.

Keyanna’s hurried footsteps interrupt my musings. I peek at her over my shoulder, scowling. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

“You mean somewhere other than the cove where the magic loch monster saved me and then turned back into an asshole farmhand?” She scoffs. “No, I don’t have anywhere better to be.”

I smirk down at her when she catches up, falling in step beside me. “Admit it,” I taunt. “You just like the view.”

“Hardly,” she answers with a roll of her eyes, but I notice her cheeks are still pink. “I don’t need to stare at your ass. You make an ass out of yourself every time I talk to you.”

“Cute,” I murmur.

The anger in her eyes has dimmed now, and in its place is a terrifying sort of curiosity, one that tells me she is absolutely not going to just keep quiet about this and leave me the fuck alone.

“So have you always been…” She waves her hand in a circle as if searching for the word. “A monster?”

“No,” I answer dryly. “A witch gave me a magic apple after I pissed in her roses.”

Key’s eyes widen comically. “Really?”

“No,” I say with a smirk.

Key scowls. “See? Total ass.”

“So you keep saying.”

I spot my clothes a few meters ahead, trying my best to ignore the woman beside me when I manage to scoop them up a minute later to dress. Key, to her credit, stands demurely to the side, her gaze fixed pointedly in the other direction.

“Not like you haven’t seen it all,” I tease.

Her mouth does this twisting thing, like she’s bitten into something sour. “I didn’t see anything.”

“Sure you didn’t.”

“So whatdidhappen to you?”

“Nothing happened to me.”

“You just woke up one morning as the Loch Ness Monster?”

“I hate that term,” I huff.

She chuffs out a laugh. “What exactly do you prefer?”

“Iprefernot to be called anything at all.”

I shove my feet into my boots with more aggression than is necessary, cursing my own damned luck for being in this situation. Of all the people who I could have spotted in the loch, of all the people who could have landed themselves in that situation…Why did it have to beher? Is it some sort of cosmic joke? One last laugh of the MacKay clan at the expense of the Greers?

I pause in dressing, my father’s whispered warning flitting through my thoughts.

For the end only comes—

I shake that thought away. I’m not about to be swept up in panic by superstition and conjecture. With that in mind, I start dressing again, but faster. I need to get the fuck out of here and regroup.