After Damian left, Ronan gave way to his pent-up emotion, and as the sobs wracked his body, he dropped to his knees. Buttercup released a barely audible whine and tried valiantly to lick the waterfall of tears as they flowed down his face.
He didn’t know how long he’d sat there, giving in to his grief, but eventually, the darkening shadows woke him to the fact he was neglecting the puppy in his arms. At the very least, she needed to be fed and walked. Not necessarily in that order.
Cradling her in one arm, he used the other to dry his face.
“Are you done here, then?” a cheerful female voice asked.
His heart skipped a beat, and he looked down at the dog in shock.
An amused chuckle sounded from behind him. “Tell me you don’t think a puppy is having a conversation with you.”
Fearing he’d lost his mind completely, Ronan shifted his weight to his hip, falling back on his arse when he registered what his brain refused to comprehend and what his heart daren’t hope.
Dubheasa.
Perched on a waist-high headstone, ankles crossed and swinging front to back, she rested her weight on her hands as she leaned slightly forward. Her soft smile held amusement, but the glow in her brilliant green eyes was pure love.
“Have I died and joined you in the Otherworld?” he asked, scarcely able to believe anything else.
She frowned and easily launched herself off her stone seat. “Not that I’m aware of.” Dropping to her knees in front of him, she caressed his face. Her sharp gaze missed nothing as it skimmed his ravaged visage. With a tug, she pulled a chain from beneath her jumper and showed him a ruby pendant. “Apparently I had a charm that allowed me to see all portals to Earth, and no one thought to seal the one Loman used to return, time and time again.” She grinned. “Or maybe the Goddess feared your fierce temper would eventually get the best of you if you didn’t have a mate to keep you in check, and she let me go.”
“You’re really here?”
Her mouth curled up as she brushed a lock of his hair back. “I’m really here.” Her kiss was fast and firm, unsatisfying in its quickness. “Didn’t Sabrina tell you I’d return as soon as you were done?”
Dropping his head back against Dubheasa’s tombstone, he gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “I thought she was talking about my time here on Earth.” After setting a sleepy Buttercup on the grass beside him, Ronan reached for Dubheasa, drawing her down into his lap. “Ya’d think I would know better than to assume when it comes to the wee wild beastie’s predictions.”
“The child tends to be literal.”
“That, she does.”
Ronan cradled Dubheasa’s head in his palms as he drank in her lovely face. “What took you so long, love? I almost made terrible choices in the meantime.”
Her smile was luminescent. “I had faith you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t be Ronan Fucking O’Connor, the man I fecking adore, if you had.”
Wrapping his arms around her, he crushed her to his chest. “I’m still not certain you’re not a figment of my tormented mind, but I’ll never let you go, either way.”
“And I never want to be let go.” She wound her arms around his middle and rested her ear over his heart, and Ronan was positive she could hear the rapid, unsteady rhythm. “All I could think about as I faced down Loman was that I’d missed my chance to tell you how much you truly meant to me. I worried you’d never know the true extent of my feelings.”
“I knew,” he said gruffly.
“I had a lot of time to reflect in the holding room of the Otherworld, and I realized I loved you from that first sip of wine,” she confessed with a soft laugh. “Looking back, it was why I felt so disappointed when you disappeared the next day.”
“And the betrayal was made worse when you were sacked by Nick Lamda, no doubt.” Ronan’s guilt reared its miserable head.
“Yeah. I felt like a woman scorned. I wanted your bollocks mounted and hung on my wall.” She drew back and met his regretful gaze. “But it brought us to this moment, Ronan. Loman is dead, for good this time. The surviving victims are back with their families. And I’m here with you, where I was always meant to be.”
But one of the victims who didn’t make it through Loman’s house of horrors was Dubheasa’s father, and Ronan’s heart ached that she’d never get that relationship back.
“I’m sorry about your da, Dove,” he said gently.
One side of her mouth curled upward in a sad half smile. “It wasn’t your fault. You understand that, right?”
“I wish I’d had the courage to end Loman twenty years ago, before he concocted his plan.”
“If my father had never tried to go after yours alone, he’d have never walked into Loman’s trap. That’s not on you.”
“Did you see him in the Otherworld?” Ronan hoped she’d had a small measure of closure.
“I did, and he was better than I remembered. Happier, somehow.”
A tear escaped down her cheek, and he tenderly brushed it away with his thumb. His guilt was eating a hole in his stomach, and the discomfort was great. “I’m glad you got to talk to him. His last actions were to save you. But his death was my fault, Dove.”
Frowning, Dubheasa shifted and straddled his lap to look him more fully in the face. “I don’t see how it could’ve been.”
Although he dreaded her response, he manned up. “My father said it was due to my insolence and to make sure I told you that if I ever saw you again.”
She laughed.
“Not the reaction I was expecting,” Ronan muttered.
“The idea of a forty-plus man paying for his insolence, like a child, is what’s ridiculous, to be sure.” Pressing her forehead to his, she slowly rolled her head from side to side. “You weren’t to blame for that scaldy bastard’s actions, Ronan. Loman’s evilness was his own, and murdering my da was one more way he could think of to sabotage your happiness.” With a butterfly-soft kiss, she said, “Anyone with two eyes could see he couldn’t bear it that you were your own man. That you didn’t subscribe to his brand of hatred. Loman wanted you to be the image of him, and he despised you when you weren’t. Of course he was going to do whatever it took to make you miserable, to pay for your ‘insolence.’”
“How is it you’re so wise, love?”
“Well, this is my second lifetime,” she replied with a saucy smile.
“Aye, and it’s happy I am for it. I’ve never been so lost and alone as I was this week without you.”
“We’ll make a pact to share a long and healthy life together. Guardians ready to fight the good fight as soon as the Aether supercharges us.” When he nodded his agreement, she scrunched her nose. “And there’s likely no coming back. I may have sealed the portal on my way out.”
He grinned and did what he had wanted to since she first appeared on the headstone. Tangling his fingers in her thick, silky hair, he lowered his lips to hers.
As Ronan savaged her mouth, Dubheasa moaned her pleasure and returned his kiss, tongue thrust for tongue thrust, tasting the last of his fading grief and desperation. Wishing she could erase his suffering, she clung to him and pressed her body to his.
What she didn’t tell him was that she’d been present in the cell the entire time. His tortured thoughts, however brief before his rescue, were hers, and although their connection had been suspended when she was on the earthly plane, it had been restored the instant she received the arrow to her chest. He’d just been too distraught to hear her. If she’d ever doubted his feelings for her, they became clear in those moments, and yet again as she listened to his confession by the grave when he believed no one was around to hear.
Buttercup’s pitiful whine caused them to part.
“No shagging in front of our child,” Dubheasa scolded with a mock frown.
“The pup needs to learn the art of timing.”
“Or you do. I’m guessing my family’s graveyard isn’t the best place to get down and dirty.”
Ronan barked a laugh and rolled her onto her back on the muddy mound as he grinned down at her. “You’ve much more living to do, Dove, if you’ve never shagged in a graveyard.”
A giggle bubbled up, and she shook her head. “I’m not after getting soil in places it doesn’t belong, Ronan O’Connor.”
“But that’s half the fun of bathing after.” He leered, flaring his eyes wide.
Laughing, she pushed at his chest. “Get off me, ya fecking giant. I want to meet my baby.”
Ronan rolled onto his back and flung his arms wide with an overly loud sigh. “I can see I’m to be replaced in your affections by Buttercup. Look, I had a small window of time, but I lost it.”
“Hold your whist, ya eejit.” Dubheasa tapped his stomach with the back of her hand, then held out her arms and made kissing noises to tempt the puppy closer. “Come, Buttercup. Your new mam wants to spoil you.”
The impact of the large pup knocked Dubheasa backward, but Ronan was there to break her fall with an arm around her shoulders.
Two wide pools of chocolate, the color of Cadbury Milk Bars, stared up at her as Buttercup’s tail swished back and forth so hard, it rocked her entire body. No match for the soft, pleading light in the dog’s eyes, Dubheasa kissed Buttercup’s nose. “I already love you.”
“You say that now, but what about the wee hours of the night when she needs to go outside?” Ronan warned good-naturedly.
“That’s what I’m keeping you around for.”
He snorted. “Is that all?”
Dubheasa laughed at the suggestive quality of his question. “Among other things.”
After a few minutes spent playing with Buttercup under Ronan’s indulgent eye, Dubheasa sighed and looked toward the Black Cat Inn in the distance. “I suppose it’s time to tell the others I’ve come back.”
“Can’t we be selfish a while longer?”
“No.” Dubheasa gestured to a lone figure in the distance, heading toward them. “Unless I miss my guess, Bridget’s on her way here with a basket of food and a stern lecture for you.”
“Feck.”
“You should be prepared to catch her if she faints. It’s not every day your sister and da return from the dead.”
Ronan whipped his head back around to stare at her. “Da?”
Scrunching her brow, she tried not to giggle when she said, “Yeah, and didn’t I tell you that my da stepped through the portal with me?”
Wildly, he looked around, as if he were a callow youth, worried he was about to be caught in a compromising situation and expecting her father to step from behind the trees at any moment.
“He is waiting at his flat in Galway,” she explained. “I wanted to tell Bridg and my brothers first.”
Ronan scooped up Buttercup in one arm, then clasped Dubheasa’s hand in his. After bussing her knuckles, he winked. “You’ll have to be the one to catch Bridget if she falls. My arms are as full as my heart.”