Written in 60 minutes. No time for spellcheck or reread.

I saw my death.

Hours later, long after he’d coaxed Elizabeth to lay down and at least try to get some rest, Jason hadn’t been able to get the words out of his head. To stop hearing the terror in her voice—to erase the image of her screaming in her sleep, trying to escape their room as if it were on fire—

Because in her dreams, it had been—

She’d been screaming the names of the children not yet born—what kind of curse had she been given to see the future, to feel it—only to see the worst of it?

He paced his solar that morning, angry that he couldn’t simply kill someone and take away the shadows in his wife’s eyes. She’d risen that morning, exhausted, but refusing to speak of her nightmarish vision. He’d hadn’t pushed it—

What would he say? How could he prepare against a foe neither of them could see?

“You seem more agitated than usual.” Johnny said with a frown. “Are you still angry with me? How I was to know she’d lock me in a closet—”

“You were offensive to her,” Jason snapped, happy to have someone to glare at. “I asked you protect her, not make comments about her work. Milo is taking over her protective detail while she’s in the keep—”

Johnny scowled, then shook his head. “No. I don’t believe you’re angry at me about this—you would have punched me. What is the problem—”

“Because last night I had a nightmare.”

They both turned and Jason blinked at his wife in the doorway, her arms folded protecting around her middle, dark circles digging grooves beneath her eyes.

“A nightmare,” Johnny echoed. He looked at Jason dubiously. “I dinnae ken. You’ve had one before, and Jason was fine—”

“Elizabeth, you don’t have to—”

“He’s your first, and he can’t protect you if we don’t tell him.” She lifted her chin, closed the door behind her. “What he does with the knowledge—I cannot control.”

“Tell me what?”

“I have visions,” Elizabeth said softly. “Of things that have not yet happened. ‘Tis how I saved the regent’s life. And last night, I dreamt that someone burned me at the stake.”

Johnny stared at her for a long moment, then turned questioning eyes to Jason who nodded. He returned to his gaze to Elizabeth. “‘Tis why you were acting strange during Beltane. I thought mayhap you had a relative who’d been taken up for a witch.”

“Close enough.” Elizabeth took a deep breath. “Will you keep my secret? At least until my babe is born—”

“I don’t see how this is anyone’s business.” Johnny shifted uncomfortably. “And you should not worry about being burned at the stake. Jason won’t let it happen.”

“I’m sure he’ll do his best,” Elizabeth said. She bit her lip. “You may tell Francis when he returns from wherever he’s been sent,” she told Jason. “But I was hoping we could speak.”

“Aye. Johnny—”

“I’ll be in the hall if you need me.” Johnny nodded to them both, then left the room, edging around Elizabeth warily. She closed her eyes, flinching.

“I’m sorry, maybe I shouldn’t have told him.”

“He’ll deal with it.” Jason strode towards her, taking her hand and leading her to the hearth, urging her to sit. “You should still be resting—”

“I was very—I was not myself last night, and I did not—I should have thanked you—”

He scowled, then crouched down to light a fire—there was a chill in the air, despite the summer months and he would not have her catching cold. “You don’t need to thank me—”

“Jason. Please look at me.”

He grimaced, then twisted to look up at her from his crouch. “I won’t let it happen.”

“I hope that’s true.” She reached for his hand and he gave it to her. “But I’ve been spent this morning trying to recall every piece of the dream, searching for anything that might help us identify the man in the dream. I know his face, Jason. I know his face. And one day, we will meet. Because I knew him in the vision.”

He nodded. “And I will make sure he never comes near you.”

“Aye.” Her smile was faint. “But do you know what I did remember from the dream that we can hold on to? I couldn’t be sure if the first part was real. Sometimes the visions blend into the dreams, and only pieces are true. But in the second part—when I was running through the night—I was running away, hoping to keep the men chasing me from my children. Two of them. Just like the first part. This isn’t going to happen for a long time, Jason.”

“How long?” Jason demanded.

“In my dream, this child—” She pressed a hand to her middle. “He was three. The second was an infant, maybe a few months. We have years, Jason. I don’t want to spend them living in fear of the day this man comes into our lives.”

Jason rose to his feet, and Elizabeth stood as well. “So you want me to forget?” he demanded. “Forget that one day, in three or four years, some man is going to try and kill you—”

“No.” She pressed her hand against his chest, against the beating of his heart. “No,” she repeated. “I will know this man when he comes. But this dream—the beginning—I think it was sent to me so that I know there will be joy. I have been so happy here. Whatever the regent had planned for me, he did not account for you.”

Jason searched her eyes, confused—her expression was clear, even hopeful. The woman he’d held him in his arms last night had been terrified, barely able to breath. “I want you to be safe here.”

“And I am safe. For now. Your aunt almost thinks I’m worthy of you,” she teased. “And most of the clan—at least those I’ve met—they’ve accepted me. And I’m going to be a mother. I never dreamed any of this would come true for me. I spent most of my life locked in a room hundreds of miles away, afraid that I would simply vanish into nothing. That I would never truly exist.”

“Is that what your father did to you?”

“After my mother died, aye. From the day after we put her into the ground until he received the summons from the regent, my entire life was the four walls of that room.”

Jason clenched his jaw—the point of what his wife was tring to tell him was not how unhappy her childhood had been, but it was hard to ignore the image of her wasting away like that. “You don’t want to live with me following you around and keeping you safe every day,” he sid slowly. “Because then I’d be no better than your father.”

“I would never say that,” Elizabeth said with a quick shake of her head. “He wanted me to disappear. You want me to be safe. I just—I want to live. Promise me. We’ll be on our guard, but we won’t let what I saw last night—what happened in the clearing all those months ago—we won’t let it ruin our future.”

He wasn’t sure he could keep that promise one hundred percent of the time, but if his wife wanted to concentrate on being happy, on caring for their family and building a home here—then he would make sure that she never had to worry about her safety again.

Jason would take on that worry for himself.

“Nothing is going to keep us from having that first part of your vision,” he told her. “Two sons. To start,” he added, and she smiled, leaning up to kiss him.

“Thank you,” she murmured against his mouth. “For accepting me.”

“Thank you for trusting me.” He tucked an errant curl behind her ear. “Now, will you please go rest?”

“Only if you come with me.”

——

Francis returned from his travels near the harvest, exhausted from trekking the length of Scotland from Elizabeth’s home in Annan, near the border, to weeks spent in Edinburgh.

“I’m sorry there’s no more to report,” Francis said with a shake of his head. He sipped his ale. “Most of the people in her village—they thought she’d died long ago. They were surprised to hear the lass had married. She’s not been seen since they buried her mother.”

Jason clenched his jaw. Elizabeth had said as much, but to know that even her own people that thought her dead and gone for years— “And her family are still in the capital?”

“The brother went home, but yes, her father and sister are still at court, hoping for a rich husband, I think.” Francis paused. “There’s no rumors about a power grab for Albany. He spent part of the summer in France—he only just returned just before I left. Most of the court was talking about the queen. They think she’s planning to leave the Angus—he’s seized some of her property.”

“Idiot,” Jason muttered. “But nothing about Elizabeth or her family?”

“Not a thing.” Francis waited a moment. “The people in Annan—I did learn that there were a spate of trouble around the time the lass’s mother died. A riding accident as she said, but there was a lot of witchcraft accusations for the next few years. Jeffrey Webber condemned six women to burn in three years.”

“Six—” Jason swallowed hard. “That’s a lot for one area—”

“Aye. It’s made the village a bit more hesitant to talk to a stranger, truth be told. It only ended the local church intervened. No one’s sure what started it, but it did seem to be the only thing out of the ordinary.”

Jason scrubbed his hands over his face. Had he put his wife in danger by sending Francis to her home? Was the man from Annan? They’d thought her dead but now they knew she wasn’t.

“You tell me that the lass sees the future,” Francis said, drawing Jason’s attention. “That her father knew about it. He likely wanted to be seen as being harsh on those suspected of witchcraft so that no one could point in his own household.”

“Maybe.”

“Whoever this man she saw in her dreams—she has the right of it. She’ll know him when she sees him,” Francis continued. “Concentrate on the future. The other one that she saw. She’ll safely deliver the bairn. That’s enough to be grateful for.”

——

Their son came early on a bitterly cold day six months later, just before February faded into March.

His aunt and Barbara had shoved him out of their bedchamber, Tracy proclaiming this was no place for men and that he should go about his day. They’d fetch him if he was needed.

Jason had bared his teeth at his aunt and growled, but she’d merely sniffed and slammed the door in his face. He could hear his wife’s screams from the solar down the hall, and he rejected all the ale that Johnny and Francis had offered him.

“Don’t know why any woman wants to be a mother,” Johnny muttered as another scream echoed in the night.

“Shut it,” Francis muttered. “Jason—”

“It’s been hours,” Jason said, striding towards the door, then turning back. “I should be in there.”

“To do what?” Johnny asked, frowning. “What do you know about having babes? All men are good for is the making of them. And then, ye know, we’ll teach the lad how to crack heads—”

Another scream cut off abruptly, and then there was silence. Jason scowled. “I’m going in.” He jerked open the door and strode down the hall to his bedchamber. Just as he was reaching for the handle, it opened and his aunt stood there, and there was the sound of a baby crying behind her.

“Oh. Good.” Tracy smiled broadly. “We’re cleaning up the lass now. You have a son—”

He moved past her to find Elizabeth laying back against the linens and furs, her face red and sweaty, her hair hanging in limp, damp strands around her face. She held a bundle in her arms as Barbara stepped away, her arms full of stained cloth.

Elizabeth looked up at his approach, her eyes bright with tears, her smile bright. “Jason. He’s here. Look at him—”

Jason could barely force a breath out of his lungs as he gingerly sat on the edge of the bed. She pulled back a piece of blanket covering the babe—and his face was as red as his mothers, his eyes scrunched up—his hand waving around, clenched in a fist. He let out another angry cry.

“He’s a bit disappointed in the outside world,” Elizabeth told Jason, stroking a finger down the babe’s cheek and he quieted at her touch. “‘Tis a cold Highland winter he’s been brought into.”

“He’ll get—” Jason took a deep breath. “He’ll get used to it.”

“Would you like to hold him?”

Yes— “He’s small,” Jason said, skeptically. “What if I drop him?”

“You won’t.” She held him out, and Jason hesitantly accepted the ridiculously light child into his arms.

“There’s—there’s nothing to him,” he said, confused. “I’ve held rocks that were heavier.” He looked down into his son’s face—when the babe cried against, Jason tried to touch his cheek the way Elizabeth had, but his finger wasn’t as soft and it didn’t help.

“He’s just a bit of a thing now, isn’t it? But he has a healthy set of lungs. Barbara, you said he was perfect, did you not?”

“Aye, healthy and as perfect a babe as I’ve ever delivered,” the healer announced proudly. “He’ll be a proper Morgan laird when the time comes.”

“Should you—” Helpless, Jason handed the baby back to her. As soon as he was back in his mother’s arms, the babe stopped crying, and Elizabeth laughed.

“That’s already. You’re just brand new, aren’t you, dearest? You’ll learn soon enough that the safest place to be is in Papa’s arms.” Elizabeth looked at him, her eyes shining with tears. “He’s so beautiful. I want to have a dozen more.”

“I—” He didn’t think he’d survive another birthing and he’d done nothing but sit down the hall and worry. “We’ll talk about it later.” Jason paused. “Are you sure you still want—”

“Aye. The child in my dreams—he was perfect. And he loved you so much. I could feel it. His name will be Cameron.”

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