Page 37

CHAPTER 36

T ristan didn’t have to ask Shayne anything else. He had his answers, finally. Although he had absolutely no doubt that he would chase Marty to the ends of the earth to be with her, he knew that he would never continue putting her through this hell unless there was a good reason. That reason was their baby. He pressed his lips against Marty’s forehead as he did his best to block out her soft sobs as he released her hands and pressed his hand against her stomach.

“Has this plan ever been tried before?” Tristan asked, wanting to make damn sure that they were making the right decision.

“No,” Liam said, shaking his head. “Since ye came up with the plan, we haven’t had a chance to test it out.”

“Why not?” Tristan asked, doing his best to ignore his wife as she cried, “Please don’t.”

“Half of us were either making our own attempts to break the curse or we were too late.”

Meaning he’d already been killed.

“We did our best, lad, to watch after Macha when ye couldn’t, but nothing helped. She was either too far gone in her grief over losing ye or the curse took care of things,” Declean quietly explained.

“We tried to approach her, but that didn’t end well either, lad,” Finn sheepishly added.

Tristan had questions, a lot of them, but for right now, he was content with just sitting back and holding his wife while they finished explaining everything to him. Besides, he’d have all his memories and answers by the end of the night, but he wouldn’t have her. Right now, he needed to hold her one last time before he was forced to say goodbye.

“We figured that if we couldn’t break the curse fer yer son, then the best thing would be to free him from this curse by making ye promise to stop trying,” Liam explained before adding with a glare, “But ye kept breaking yer promise and pissing us off, lad.”

Which would explain the ass whooping Liam had dished out, Tristan realized with a wince.

“We’re not happy that ye broke yer promise and are forcing our hand on this one, Tadgh, but we’ll do what needs to be done,” Liam promised, making Marty tremble harder in his arms.

For their son, Tristan would do anything, including giving up his own life, but he had one question that he needed answered before they went through with this.

“Will I be able to watch over them?” Tristan asked, closing his eyes and tightening his hold around Marty as her sobs tore at his heart.

“I’m sorry, lad, but once ye fail to break the curse, ye won’t get to see her again until the next time she’s born,” Shayne explained.

And if this worked, and their son was freed, then he would never see her again. This was too much to ask her to go through and it needed to end. It would kill him to never see her again, but he would give her the freedom that she deserved.

“This time, she knows about us before the curse took its hold and we’ll be able to stay by her side without scaring her,” Shayne said, giving him the one promise that would make this situation tolerable.

He allowed himself another moment to simply enjoy having Marty in his arms before he opened his eyes and did what needed to be done. Ignoring her sobs and the way she clutched desperately to him, Tristan leaned down and pressed a kiss against her forehead, one on each cheek before he pressed his lips to her trembling ones.

“I love you so much, Marty,” Tristan whispered hoarsely against her lips, “so goddamn much.”

“Please don’t do this, Tristan,” she pleaded against his lips.

“Shhhh, it’s fine, baby.”

“No,” Marty sobbed, shaking her head frantically as she pulled away from him. “It’s not!”

“It has to be done, lass,” Liam said soothingly.

“No, it doesn’t!” she cried.

“Marty-”

“There has to be another way, Tristan! There has to be!”

“Lass, if we don’t remove him before the curse kicks in, then we won’t have a chance to save yer son.”

“No,” Marty said, stubbornly shaking her head. “You don’t know that. Maybe you missed something-”

“Each of us has our own trigger for the curse, lass,” Declean explained, interrupting her. “And yers has always been started by Tadgh getting a babe on ye. It triggers Tadgh’s death and, as a result, yer death. It’s what called us to ye.”

“Then, it shouldn’t make a difference whether you end his life or if you give us a little more time to figure this thing out!” Marty cried, grabbing his hand and squeezing it, making it difficult to do what had to be done.

“If we take him, lass, it won’t be a true death. That’s why he came up with this plan in the first place. We’ll simply pull him out of his body and that will be it. If we let the curse take its toll, his death will trigger a series of events that will end with yer death.”

“I won’t allow that,” Tristan said, pulling her attention back to him.

He forced himself to ignore the tears streaming down her face as he leaned in to kiss her one last time, but she wasn’t having it. She pulled far enough away from him so that she could cup his face in her hands as she flat-out begged him not to do this.

“You don’t need to do this, Tristan. We can find a way to beat this thing.”

“If it means that you and our son get a chance to live,” Tristan said softly as he gestured to Shayne, “then I don’t have a choice.”

“Yes, you do!”

“No,” Tristan said, turning his face so that he could press a kiss against the palm of her hand just as Finn and Aidan appeared on either side of her, “I don’t.”

With a slight nod, Finn and Aidan disappeared, taking his heartbroken wife with them.

“I’m so sorry, lad,” Shayne said softly as he moved towards him.

Tristan ground his jaw shut tightly when he heard Marty scream his name from somewhere upstairs. He carefully stood up, ignoring the pain in his shoulder and the back of his head and the way that his heart pounded in his chest at the thought of never seeing her again.

“This is why you never pushed me towards her, isn’t it?” Tristan asked as he tried to force his mind away from everything that was happening.

“Yes,” Shayne said with a sad smile. “I was in no rush to get here, lad.”

“Tristan!”

He forced his eyes closed as he fought against the urge to go to her and drag her into his arms, but he couldn’t. If he so much as saw her again, he knew that it would break him.

“Do ye want to give her a proper goodbye, lad?” Shayne asked and he knew that he was being offered one last night with his wife, but he couldn’t take it…he just couldn’t chance it.

“No,” Tristan forced the word out of his mouth as he opened his eyes and faced his oldest friend and protector. “Send me home, Shayne.”

“Verra well, lad,” Shayne said quietly as he moved his hand towards Tristan’s chest. “Let’s bring ye home.”

* * *

“You’re making a mistake!” Marty snapped as she tried to push past Finn.

“I’m sorry, lass,” Finn said again as he gently gripped her shoulders and stopped her from leaving.

“Would ye like something to eat or drink?” Aidan asked with a polite smile as he gestured once again for her to lie down and rest.

Ignoring him, Marty ducked away from Finn’s hold, furious with herself for losing it the way she had. Instead of crying and pleading with Tristan not to go through with this asinine plan, she should have slapped some sense into him. She’d been so focused on losing him that she didn’t do anything to stop it from happening.

Now, she was trapped in their bedroom with two guards while her husband was downstairs making the biggest mistake of their lives and she had no idea how she was going to stop him. Screaming and crying certainly hadn’t helped, Marty thought bitterly, pissed that she’d screwed up what was probably her one and only chance at saving Tristan.

At saving them.

She needed him and so did their baby. She didn’t care what Tristan or these men thought. Deep down, she knew that this was wrong. It wasn’t just because she didn’t want to lose him, she didn’t, but because this plan felt wrong for so many reasons. If they’d been cursed together, then that’s how they needed to break this curse, together.

If the curse had a hold over their baby, then it was just as trapped as they were and tying to cheat this curse wasn’t going to change things. She also didn’t think that this plan of theirs was going to free their baby. Their baby surviving to be born wasn’t a guarantee that it would be free from this curse one day. For all they knew, the baby would return to wherever it had been all these years once it was his time. Now, since Tristan was so hellbent on this plan of his, the baby might never get another chance to escape.

Their only chance to beat this curse for their child and for them was to face this thing head-on together. They needed more details about the curse so that they could do some research. They also needed to know more about what happened in their past lives and the events that triggered the curse. What they didn’t need was Tristan destroying their only chance at breaking this curse.

It had to be the hormones, Marty thought with a sigh as she pulled her foot up and slammed it down on Aidan’s instep. That was the only explanation there was for it, she decided as she ignored Aidan’s curses and focused on Finn, the only thing standing between her and the door.

“Now, lass, we can talk about this,” Finn said, licking his lips nervously as he stumbled back a step.

“Move,” Marty simply said, moving towards him, more than prepared to take a shot at the family jewels again if that’s what it took to get him out of her way.

He opened his mouth to argue, but she was done playing around. She kept moving towards him, knowing without a doubt that he would never hurt her even to protect himself. She didn’t want to hurt him again, but she would do it if she had to and he must have realized that because he suddenly disappeared.

“That was easy,” Marty murmured, more than a little confused as she shot a look over her shoulder at Aidan to make sure that he was still distracted, but he wasn’t there.

She didn’t know what was going on and she wasn’t about to waste precious time trying to figure it out. They could be back at any moment and she needed to be out the door and heading down the stairs before that happened.

Reminding herself that all they needed to do to stop her was to lay their hands on her had her moving quickly. She threw open the door, half-expecting someone to be waiting on the other side to grab her. When she didn’t see anyone, she bolted out the door, hoping that her luck would hold.

All she wanted to do was get close enough to Tristan so that she could talk some sense into him. If that didn’t work, then she’d use the chokehold that her father taught her in the second grade when a large fourth grade girl kept pushing her off the swings and stealing her turn. It had worked like a dream back then and she hoped that it was just as effective this time. This was her only shot and she wasn’t about to blow it. Well, not again.

This time, she was going to…going to…

Why was Tristan calling someone a bitch and telling him to man up?