The Sunstone Brooch : Time Travel Romance Katherine Logan (no david read aloud TXT) 📖

my parents. I didn’t see them very often, but I know I’m theirs.”

“Why do you think I agreed to let my daughter marry an outsider?” Arne asked. “I agreed because of who you are.”

“I don’t believe you.” Tavis’s mind did a quick data search. Were there any clues in his life that he wasn’t his father’s biological child? No. Not that he recalled. And he and his brother even resembled each other. Arne was lying. But why?

Arne crossed the room and collected an ebony container the size of a shoebox. He returned to his seat and opened it. From where Tavis stood, he couldn’t see the contents.

Arne held out the box. “Please put the brooch in here.”

Tavis removed the brooch from his pants pocket and set it in the box on top of a photograph. He turned his head to look at it right side up. “That’s my mother with Erik. How the hell is that possible?”

Arne removed the photograph and held it up. “You are correct. It is a picture of your mother and Erik. This is evidence that what I said is true.”

The hairs on the back of Tavis’s neck stood on end. “Where the hell did you get this?”

“Your mother had it taken when they were in Rome. That was about two weeks before you were born.”

“I don’t believe you, and besides, my brother and I are too much alike not to be full brothers.”

“Erik is also his father. Your grandfather knows the truth. His son had an illness in his childhood, which made him unable to father a child. Your grandfather made all the arrangements. And Erik gave me this picture to explain this truth to you.”

“I don’t believe it. Erik would have told me something this important. And why did he pick me and not my brother?”

“Erik and your grandfather had to decide which one of you would be a guardian. You were chosen.”

Tavis dropped to the floor as his emotions spun around in circles. He didn’t know if he was pissed, hurt, betrayed, or mad enough to kill. “Why didn’t Erik tell me? He had plenty of time.”

“He intended to when your son was born, but he was away on Council business and unable to bring you here. He was waiting for the naming ceremony.”

If Tavis had thought he lived in two worlds before, now there was no doubt. “This doesn’t change anything. I still intend to take my family to the future.’

“You and Astrid are free to leave, but your son will be raised here and take your place on the Council when he comes of age. He will not travel until he’s an adult, so the riches available in the future won’t influence him.”

Tavis was aghast. “What?” he shouted. “You expect me to leave my child behind? That’s not happening. He’s leaving with Astrid and me.”

“He cannot leave,” Bjørn said.

“You can’t do that,” Tavis said. “Erik would let me go and take my family.”

“Erik is no longer here,” Arne said. “But there is another option for you. Ensley Williams is also Erik’s child.”

Tavis clutched his head. In all his years in the Navy, fighting in Afghanistan, or dealing with Elliott, he’d never gotten this pissed. “How many more children did Erik have?”

“We only know of you, your brother, and Ensley. He chose the mothers because of their lineage.”

“What’s so special about that?”

“Both your mother and Ensley’s have direct lines to us.”

“Not to Erik, I hope.”

“No, to the first Keeper,” Arne said. “You have a choice, Tavis. Your family or Ensley.”

“That is no choice at all. I won’t leave my son, and I won’t exchange my life for Ensley’s, for my half sister.”

The Council members stood. “We are finished here. It is now time to prepare for Erik’s funeral.”

They all walked off without speaking, and Tavis returned to his place on the cliff and sat on a boulder. He’d been sitting there alone, trying to figure out a way to resolve the situation, when Arne joined him.

“Whether you believe this or not, I did argue your case. But Astrid would never be happy in your time.”

“Without our child, neither one of us could ever be happy. But what I want to know is why did Erik go to the future to impregnate women? Surely there was one here who would have accepted him.”

“He lost three wives in childbirth. After that, no one would agree to marry him, and he didn’t want a slave girl. He thought medicine in your time would save his child. He searched for years until he found your mother and Ensley’s mother, hoping one of them could give him what no other woman could.”

“Shit, Arne! You’ve manipulated me for years, first locking me into marriage and now blackmailing me. You knew I’d refuse to leave without my child or sell out Ensley Williams. You now have what you wanted. I’ll live here with my family, but when the Keeper comes for me, and he will, my family and I are leaving. All of us. Together.”

Tavis marched off. Hell, he was pissed. How long would he have to wait for Elliott to come for him? Elliott could come immediately, but it could be years for Tavis. That’s the way the damn brooches worked.

But Elliott would come, just not soon enough.

66

Mallory Plantation, VA—Ensley

When the travelers came through the fog, Ensley found herself in the cleanroom for the third time in under twenty-four hours. And man, not only was she exhausted, but her hip burned like a branding iron had stamped her initials on it.

Time for some ibuprofen with a whisky chaser.

Once she dulled the pain, she could easily sleep for an uninterrupted twenty-four hours. But before she put her head on a pillow, she wanted a long, hot bubble bath and a bowl of chocolate mint ice cream. She’d fantasized about both for weeks.

The cleanroom soon became a beehive of activity, with four horses neighing and stamping their feet and eleven travelers shaking off the temporary