A CHRISTMAS WISH

Chapter 31: The Black Wolf Returns!!!

Iain had puzzled for days over the question. And the conclusion he had come to was not one he liked very much.

Her words had angered him because he had let them anger him, as if he had needed them to squash any budding tenderness their lovemaking had evoked. Iain wasn’t used to introspection and before meeting Sarah he hadn’t done much of it, ‘twas a novel experience and a damn tiresome pursuit which had been solely responsible for giving him quite a few raging headaches over the past few days.  

In all honesty he was far angrier with himself than he was with her. He was angry because he hadn’t even realised that he still retained any semblance of vulnerability.

He was loathe to admit it but that night, staring into her eyes, he had forgotten for just an instant who and what he was. He had been a hairsbreadth away from revealing the man behind the mask, the man who......Iain shook his head, forcing his mind away from that particular line of thought, ‘Twas best not to venture into those troubled waters.

But his errant thoughts seemed to have a mind of their own; they turned unbidden towards another topic which he found equally hard to stomach.

For some unfathomable reason he had been thinking about his past far too much lately to suit him, and today wasn’t an exception.

It was as if Sarah had cast some kind of witch’s spell on him, one which was forcing him to reassess and re-examine his life. Iain resented her for it, almost as much as he despised himself for letting the past back into his life.

He had assumed his childhood had effectively knocked out any feelings he still retained. Between hazy memories of a mother he had never really known to a father whose drunken rampages and vitriolic tirades often veered towards vicious beatings, Iain had spent his formative years in a state of perpetual fear. Though he had never let it show, not to his bullying father, nor Hugh nor any of his clansmen.

Even then as a young boy, bruised and battered, he had refused to let any one else see his distress or his pain. Sometimes Iain thought it was that indifferent attitude, that cold reserve, which had goaded his father into taking out his frustrations on him by meting out the worst punishments imaginable. It was as if the man had wanted to break him, to watch him crack, but Iain had never given him the satisfaction. He had endured years of physical violence and emotional abuse silently, and it had enabled him to build a shell around himself that had proven impenetrable over all these years.

His past brought with it bleak memories of a lonely little boy too weak and helpless to protect himself. Too ashamed to raise his voice or fight back because somewhere in the back of his mind he had blamed himself for not being able to pull his father out of the mad haze that had enveloped him. In the end he had been unable to protect his own father and Iain had carried a heavy burden of guilt for that failing, though he hadn’t realised that until a long time afterward. It shamed him even now as a man, which was why Iain hadn’t ever dwelled much on his past before, choosing instead to forget about it.  

His nightmarish childhood or lack thereof was the reason he had spent his life in an endless pursuit of strength.

His father had often yelled that the powerful in the world were the ones who held control and for some reason, either consciously or unconsciously those words had stuck in his head.

“Power” and “Control”, aye, those were the things that had nurtured him, sustained him, forged him into the man he was today.

And Iain held onto them rigidly as his horse finally rode beyond the boundary wall into the village.

Iain wasn’t quite sure how he would approach Sarah at this point, but he had come to a few important decisions. There was no way in hell he could let her see the chink in his armour when it came to her. It was getting more and more difficult to hang onto his old theory, but he was still adamant in maintaining even to himself that all he felt for her was lust. Even though the assertion rang hollow now Iain couldn’t afford to let it be anything more than that. Especially since he was the only one who knew exactly why his father had been the way he was, a truth no one else was aware of.