“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 that. 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,” he said softly as he gestured to Shayne, “then I don’t have a choice.”

“Yes, you do!”

“No,” he 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.

He ground his jaw shut tightly when he heard Marty scream his name from somewhere upstairs, probably their room. He carefully stood up, ignoring the pain in his shoulder and the way 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?” he 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.

“No,” he 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,” he said again as he gently gripped her shoulders and stopped her from going to the closed door.

“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 hadn’t done 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, she 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 was not going to help or 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 would 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 on the curse so that they could do some research. They also needed to know more about what had 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, she 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,” she 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 if she had to and he must have realized that because he suddenly disappeared.

“That was easy,” she 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.

Realizing that all they’d need to do to return her to this room 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 on him that her father had taught her in the second grade when some 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?

Chapter 35

“Fucking do it!”

“If ye would shut the f**k up I might be able ta!” Finn snapped back, his focus never shifted away from where his hand laid on Tristan’s chest.

Tristan ground his teeth shut as he waited for it to happen. Any second now it would be over. The pain would be gone, the f**king stress from waiting for this bullshit to be over with and hopefully the agony of knowing that he would never see Marty again would be gone.

This needed to end and now. Deciding to take himself out of the game was hard enough, but the way that each and every one of his so called brothers kept wimping out on him and prolonging this was f**king torture. He didn’t want to do this, didn’t want to walk away from Marty and their child, but he had to do it. If his being around was a factor in triggering their deaths, then he had to be taken out of the situation.