And Be My Love, here.

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When Eloise probably couldn't breathe under all that earth.

When her fingers connected with something that was undoubtedly not mud or dirt but then clearly not rock or stone, she paused, but only for a split second while her mouth formed a wide o, before she began digging more feverishly.

"Help! Someone!" she howled wildly, but with little hope when she'd exposed what was clearly skin. "Oh, my God." Kayla kept at it, swiping and scratching at the dirt, uncovering a bare shoulder and part of a neck. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she moved more dirt away from where she now guessed Eloise's face was. The jaw and cheek were revealed, and Kayla wrenched the scarf from around her own neck and used that to more gently remove all the grime from the face.

The skin was dirtied but not discolored. This body had not been here for three weeks.

And the more she cleaned the face of all that had covered it, the more sure she was that this body did not belong to Eloise. Her relief was only wobbly. Too many questions consumed her now. Who was this? And how was this body not decayed, not even a little bit. The earth she'd moved was not freshly turned before she touched it.

Carefully, she exposed a square chin and jaw, stubbled but not heavily. The mouth was shown next, lips as pink as any living person, full and still, moving only when she wiped the scarf across them before settling back into a pleasing shape. Kayla's frown grew but her tears lessened, confused by how real, how alive this person appeared. A man, clearly, but who? Other questions jumbled and spun in her mind while she worked to expose all of him. His nose was narrow, and she used her fingernails to scratch away at the dirt crusting inside his nostrils, though she wasn't sure why she should. Next, she unearthed his eyes, closed, dark lashes fanned against his hollow cheeks.

Stunned and beyond bewildered, Kayla sat back on her heels and considered what she found.

A man, dead and buried, under six inches of earth, in the middle of the forest.

A body actually, she amended, but one that had not long been buried here.

She turned her head again, this way and that, trying to make sense of... at this point, anything.

And when her attention was drawn again to the man's body, she was struck by something that had escaped her notice at first. Another frown furrowed her brow. Kayla lifted a shaky hand and gingerly touched the man's shoulder, the lone corner of his body excavated.

And she gasped when she felt how warm was that flesh.

He should not be warm.

"Please someone come and help me," she whined and went onto her knees again, digging out the man's chest, just enough that she could lay her ear against him. She could discern nothing, no sounds, no vibrations. She sat up and tapped at his cheek. "Sir?" She took his face in her hand, thumb to the right of his nose, fingers to the left, and shook him. "Are you dead?" Grimacing, she pried apart his lips, now able to determine that all of him was warm, like any living person. And his skin was smooth and... lifelike. Inside his mouth, there was no dirt, no debris. Kayla put her ear there now and closed her eyes, willing her brain to silence so that she might hear or feel any sign of life. When she straightened, she laid two fingers against the side of his neck to check for a pulse. After five seconds, she could discern nothing, not even a thready bit of life.

She started CPR, more as a just in case thing, not with any hope that he was actually alive or could be. Recalling her training from her lifeguard days, she cleared more dirt away from around his head so that she could tilt his neck and raise his chin. She placed her hands on his chest, one on top of the other in the space she'd already cleared of dirt and pushed hard and fast. She did this thirty times and then pinched his nose and covered his mouth with hers, delivering two rescue breaths. Nothing. She went back to compressions, using a steady rhythm in her thrusts, up on her knees to use her body weight to accumulate force. And then she administered two more rescue breaths. Still no response.

"Come. On. Man," she urged, in time to the first three of the next set of compressions on his bare chest. Her next two breaths, over his warm lips, were answered with a gasp. "Oh, Jesus." She pulled back and froze, waiting for more. The mouth beneath her moved, the bottom lip trembling. "Yes, that's it. Breathe." She laid her palm against his warm cheek. "Breathe." The man's lips pursed, inhaling and exhaling. And Kayla cried again, this time with relief. When his long black lashes began to move, Kayla used her scarf again, wiping away more loose dirt from his face.

"You're alive," she cooed. But then she didn't wait for his eyes to open, but began digging out the rest of him, beginning with his other shoulder. "I can't believe it." She kept digging, glancing between her task and his face, waiting for those eyes to open. "Oh, shit. I'm so sorry," she said, when she inadvertently scratched his arm. Her own eyes widened as she exposed more of the man's body. Holy crap. The guy was built. But then she saw no marks on him, no bruises or bullet holes or stab wounds, or whatever had knocked him out but had not killed him.

Pulling her gaze from the sculpted chest, matted with black hair, Kayla returned her regard to his face, entranced to find a pair of black eyes watching her.

"Oh," she squeaked, and her hands went still.

He blinked several times, struggling to focus, it seemed. She held off with the dozens of questions that assailed her, questions begging to be asked. She settled back onto her heels once more and waited. His arms and hands began to move, stirring the loosened dirt around him. Roused to action again, Kayla assisted, scraping away more earth from around him.

He lifted one hand, and then his whole arm, up and out of what was supposed to be his grave, and held it above his face, curling and extending his fingers. The other hand appeared so that only the bottom half of him was buried.

"How did...what happened to you?"

"The witches." His voice was scratchy, weak even.

"Oh." Oh, boy. Maybe he had been conked on the head, maybe the mark was in the back, still buried.

She glanced around the forest again but despite all hope, there was no one else around. When she turned back to him, he was struggling to sit up. Kayla sprang into action again, standing and taking his hand, pulling him to an upright position, though he remained seated, his lower half still wedged in the earth. Without a word, he pulled his hand away from hers.

The man rolled his shoulders and shifted his waist left and then right, as if warming up at the gym. He lifted a thick, muscled arm and applied his hand to the back of his neck, seeming to rub out kinks or cramps, his fingers lost inside his longish, black hair. Kayla slowly walked around so that she could see the back of him, to find the injury that had knocked him out. His head and wide back were coated in thick mud, but she could discern no injury or blood.

"Who sent ye, lass?"

Confused once more, and then more so by the anger in his tone, Kayla took a cautious step backward, away from him. He was forced to turn his head to have her in view, which he did, and leveled her with a dark scowl. "Who sent ye?" Harsher now, impatient.

"No one sent me," she returned defensively, rushing out the words to appease him.

Growling something unintelligible, he set his hands on either side of himself, on the ground that was not disturbed, save for what excavated dirt had been thrown onto it. He bent his elbows and his muscles rolled and flexed as he lifted his lower body out of the grave. Though his motions were stiff and slow, he managed to lift himself first from the hole, sitting himself on the ground while his feet remained within. In the next moment, a bit unsteady still, he pulled himself to his feet.

And turned an impatient glare upon Kayla.

"Who are ye? And why did ye no' kill me?"

Gaped-jawed, Kayla stared at him. Even if she did understand what he was asking for, or insinuating, she couldn't have answered. The guy was wickedly gorgeous, with broad shoulders to hold up that thick neck, and arms that suggested a brutal weight-training regimen. He was tall, and though there was no spare flesh on him, like not an ounce of it, he wasn't lean, was too powerfully built, too...huge to be considered lean. His hair was as dark as midnight, a perfect match to his angry, obsidian eyes. But honestly, as fabulous as his body was, Kayla found her gaze again and again drawn to his face. Ferocious fury aside, he must have originally been sculpted in granite, so chiseled were his jaw and cheeks. On a lesser man, one with a narrow face, he'd have appeared gaunt, she decided, but on him...well everything looked good on him.

Moments ago, she'd had a brief concern about his bare chest, when only that was available to her gaze; she'd wondered if he was naked under the remaining dirt. Thankfully, he was not. But what clothes—and accessories—he did wear did nothing to lessen her anxiety. He was dressed in some sort of baggy pants, the color of a young deer; they looked to be made of wool. They were tucked into leather boots, to which she could give no evaluation because so much mud clung to them still. Of greatest concern, and what held her focus just now, was the scabbard that dangled from the leather belt around his waist, which seemed to serve not as a means to hold up those pants, which perched deliciously low on his lean hips, but only to keep the weapon attached to him. The scabbard was leather as well, but the hilt of the sword it kept was metal, dull and carved, the detail lost as well to the crusted dirt.

"Do ye have a name, woman?" he barked then, his voice recovered enough be imposing.

"I do," she answered mechanically, foolishly.

He talked slow, but his accent was not easy to understand, even as he was heard clearly, his deep voice slicing through her fear, low and almost soothing for the commanding presence of his tone. Almost soothing, but not quite, as this situation still hovered somewhere between fantastic and alarming.

He might have barked again for a proper reply, that she give her name, except that he was now staring at her as if she were the one uncovered from a hole in the ground, bare-chested, and wearing a sword around her hip. His dark gaze raked her from head to toe in such a fashion as to make Kayla glance down at her jeans and sweater and sneakers. She plucked self-consciously at the oversized sweater, which, like her jeans, was covered in almost as much grime as all of him was.

When he'd looked his fill—and his scowl only intensified—he brought his gaze to hers. Kayla swallowed and looked at him. His expression morphed from confusion to suspicion.

"Who are ye?"

"Kayla. Kayla Forbes." And then words just started tumbling out her, as often happened when she was nervous—and she'd never been this nervous. "I was helping with the search party—looking for Eloise Cahill?—and I don't know what happened, but I seem to have gotten separated from the rest of the party. I was lost and I stumbled over"—she pointed to the freshly dug hole—"over that. I don't know what... I mean, I didn't see...you, so I'm not sure what made me start digging. Oh, my God, what happened to you?"

He didn't appear as a man who might ever be caught slack-jawed—he gave off solid and heavy alpha vibes: always in control, surprised by nothing, able to manage any situation—but he was now.

But then he seemed to dismiss her babbling, setting his big hands onto those trim hips to consider the hole in the earth, from where he'd come.

Kayla supposed she'd do a lot of frowning as well, if she were in his shoes, but this guy so far had only that one expression. He turned it onto her again.

"What is the day?"

"Um, May the twenty-third."

"Nae."

"Um, yay," she maintained. "It is. Should we get you to a hospital?"

"I received a missive on the third day after Whitsunday, in the fifth year after the English invasion."

"Missive?" Whitsunday? Invasion?

"To come to Gairlochy."

"Gairlochy?"

He glanced around, ignoring her parroting. "But this is no' that place."

"Wait," Kayla said. "Are you saying you were summoned here? And...like, ambushed?"

He responded to this with another frown, this one quizzical.

"Were you surprised by an attack?" she clarified.

"Aye, from the witches."

Okay, buddy. We definitely need to get you to a hospital.

He must have sensed her disbelief, that he rather growled at her, "'Twas three of them. A mortal can no' hope to best only one, but three, a man has no chance."

Skeptically, Kayla asked, "And um, what did the witches do to you?" One day, she thought, I'll meet a hot guy who doesn't have serious issues.

Now he gave her a look that suggested her question was ignorant. "They cast the sleep spell onto me. But it could no' have been today," he said, pointing to the grave from which he'd escaped. "It must have been some time ago, to have been overtaken by the earth."

More to be polite, and pretend an interest in his babbling, Kayla asked, "When did they put you to sleep?"

"On this day."

She couldn't have said what prompted her to ask for further details, but that something was off about him, something was just not... right. "Um, what year?"

"I've said, we are in the fifth year since those mongrel English began the war with us."

She laughed nervously, trying to decide which English invasion he might be referring to. To her recollection, the English made a regular habit of it, in every century between the 13th and the 17th—but not since the latter. "Okay, but we're anywhere from four to eight hundred years away from that."

"What say you?" He narrowed his eyes at her.

"It's two-thousand and twenty-one." She cleared her throat while he stared at her as if she'd spouted nonsense. "In the year of our Lord," she added, hoping that lent credibility to the truth as she knew it.