A Bride Worth Billions by Tiffany Morgan

to me and never had to hunt it, and in most cases I didn’t have to even cook it. All I needed to do was stick it in a microwave or in the oven and wait. If my clothes ripped, I would throw out the garment instead of trying to repair it and simply go and buy a new one. If I got sick, all I would need to do was visit a doctor and he would fix whatever ailed me. I never had to worry about dying from diseases like mumps or measles or chicken pox, or even the common cold.
     
    But in 12th century Scotland, all of these things weren’t just a concern, these things were a matter of life and death, and even though in my old life I studied and worried over these ancient techniques and ways of life because I was concerned about the grade I was receiving on a test, but I never truly understood the effort it took to simply remain alive on a day-to-day basis. But this was my life in the first year of our search for the transponder, and it was hellish.
     
    Shaun basically had to teach me to do everything, and I had to come up with convincing lies on why I couldn’t even do the most basic things like thread the eye of a needle or start a fire with rock and flint. Also, my body was not conditioned to withstand the constant weather shifts of Scotland. The first winter basically lasted for six months, and while it never snowed in the areas we searched, but we were under a near-constant freezing drizzle that chilled you to the bone and left you shivering and feverish night after night. And even when the spring came and the days were warmer and blooming, you could still expect at least one hour of rain a day. But the most frightening moment was the day Shaun was injured and the long weeks following his recovery.
     
    I wish I could tell you that Shaun’s injury happened in battle defending my honor. But that didn’t happen. He was injured because he was trying to milk a goat, and one of the male billies rammed him and left a deep puncture on the left-hand side of his stomach. At first, he tried to laugh the wound off and make light of the fact that he’d been attacked by a goat. But after several days, he could barely walk and he had a high fever. The wound had become infected and he was in severe need of rest and shelter. Thankfully we had set up camp in a shallow cave, so at the very least we had shelter and place he could rest. But what he truly needed was antibiotic to kill the infection; an antibiotic I had an abundance of hidden in my pack.
     
    Despite the fact it had been a year since I had lost my transponder, I still clung to the hope that we would one day find it and I could return home. I also still held to the belief that I shouldn’t corrupt the past with future science. I still felt that I needed to let nature take its course. But night-after-night as I sat with Shaun’s fevered head in my lap, wiping the sweat from his brow and forcing him to drink water, I came to the realization that chances were that I would never be returning to my own time and that this lovely, humble man was the only thing I had in this new world, and if he dies, I would be completely lost and alone.
     
    So I did the unthinkable and I started giving him antibiotic and small amounts of pain reliever so that he could sleep and hopefully recover. The antibiotic worked almost immediately and his fever broke, and the pain reliever allowed him some much-needed rest. But he still needed weeks to recover afterward. During those weeks as I cared for him, at first feeding him by hand, dressing and redressing his wounds, I realized that I’d never cared for anyone as much as I did for Shaun. In my own time, I always felt I never had enough time to pursue a relationship of any sort. I was too busy with my education and then I was too busy with my job. And yes, there was sex. Meaningless encounters with utterly forgettable men who only satisfied my most base needs. But there never was any love.
     
    It was entirely different with Shaun. This was a man I