Page 100 of The Highlander
When they finally parted, he spoke again. “You have done well in your life, Minnie. I have watched you, every day. You lived our love.”
“But our Duncan—” she began.
“Duncan is well,” Ronan said with an easy smile. “A fine man, with his father’s good looks. He will lead the MacKerrick clan with honor. You did what you felt you must, and it was right.You have done well,” he repeated. “Young Corinne, Haith, Simone, Evelyn—you guided them all to love,withlove. And now it is our turn, my woman. My beautiful, beautiful Minerva. How I have missed you.”
Out of the shadows of the wood limped a sickly, piteous wolf, gray as ash and lurching like a skeleton. Its matted fur was missing in great patches, its teeth gone now, its eyes milky and blind. It snarled and whined and its tongue lolled out of its mouth sickly.
“Cain,” Minerva called lovingly, and held out her arm. Ronan mirrored her stance. “Cain, my beloved.”
The wolf stepped between the two figures and collapsed, at last at the end of his impossibly long journey. In a blink his corporeal form disintegrated into dust and was blown away on a gust of sweet night air.
And then a strong, massive beast sprang up in its place, jumping and yipping, his thick fur fragrant with freedom and youth.
Minerva and Ronan laughed as the wolf bounded away to bark and howl and circle around them, and their joy fell like rain on the endless Caledonian forest surrounding them.
Minerva and Ronan kissed for an eternity.
