Highland Bear (Book 4)

Chapter 47

Chapter 47

Artair felt as if his bollocks were going to fall off if he stayed in this snow drift anymore, but perversely, the cold numbed him to the point that he could feel again. It was a feeling that numbed all the emotions that tried to tumble around in his body, so instead he froze them in the snowdrift along with his bollocks. The feelings that emerged were through a frozen mist, dampened but still stinging in their piercing clarity, his heart sluggish and his head not wanting to process what was happening. In fact he was not sure whether what he was feeling was painful or not, his body not only numb to the cold it seemed, but also numb to the knowledge of the emotion trying to make itself known.

Taking another large gulp from the pilfered whiskey he allowed the burn to set fire to his throat and light him up inside, even if a little briefly. Allowing him to feel something strongly before it faded only moments later, and left him once again...numb. He had wanted to burn the world down around him, rip the small village apart when Alfred and two of the males from this cursed place had come to rip him away from the one woman who had wanted the person inside him, not the exterior...or his twin. The perfect twin who had had the world, he worshipped Aonghus growing up and his brother deserved that praise. But this once, this once, she wanted him and him alone. Now she was gone. What he had within him, the one part that she saw and liked that others never even saw, had been taken by her.

He could not even find it within himself to blame her for that loss. Instead, he silently thanked God that she had made that part shine, even for the shortest time, before taking it with her. So as he had been manhandled, Rohesia had been ripped from him, he had been ripped from the part of him which kept him warm, kept him sane. Now what did he have? Nothing. That was what he had. Nothing but the short, sharp burn of the whiskey hitting the back of his throat and the slow freezing burn of the cold on his bollocks.

When his head began to swim a little, he threw himself backwards into the snow drift, the softness tried to outweigh the creeping freezing numbness that the snow drift was causing. Maybe if he let his eyes drift closed now it would be possible that when he awoke he would no longer be of this world anymore. He could once again be with the woman his heart sang a mourning song for. Each beat causing his hearts blood to bleed and stain his soul with pain and death.

The lone tear trickled unbidden from his eye, slowly tracking its way down the side of his face and into his hair line from over his temple. Looking into the deep blackness peppered with only a few pinpricks of light, he took a deep, freezing breath, and closed his eyes, hoping that he would need no other help than that to see the laughing eyes of the woman he loved once more.

Heavy footfalls broke into his grief, he just wanted them to leave him the fuck alone. Had they not done enough, tearing him away from the one place he wanted to be. Letting strangers tend to the body of the one who had taken his heart with her on a journey he wished to follow soon. So why could they not just leave him alone now. His hearts blood was slowly pumping away as it leaked from the split which had appeared in it the moment he realised exactly how irreversible the situation was. Ignoring them may not make them go away, but it sure as hell made him feel better, and anything that made him feel better was going to dull the tedium for a little while at least.