Page 32 of Auctioned to the Cruel Highlander
Jack’s body jolted, and the breath rushed out of him in an ugly squeal.For a heartbeat, he remained standing, his eyes wide with disbelief, as though a man who had survived too long had finally met the one ending he had not prepared for.
Then he fell.
Ciaran looked down at him once, his chest heaving and his shoulder burning.
It was done.
He turned at once and caught the wider field back into hand. Two of Jack’s men were already down. Another was trying to make a run for the trees. Hector had one pinned in close combat near the lower path.
Ciaran’s voice cut across the grounds like a blade. “Kill or take the rest. I want none of them loose.”
The men around him moved at once.
Good. Let this be finished. Let nay one ever think of doing this again.
Then he turned to Ava and began to walk toward her.
She had not moved far. Shock held her in place more firmly than fear now. Her hands hung midair, as if she had forgotten what they were meant to do. Her eyes fixed on the blood at his shoulder and then on the stain on her dress.
“Ye’re bleeding,” she said.
He stopped walking when he got close enough.
“Ye’re bleeding,” she said again.
There was something almost childlike about the repetition, not because she was weak, but because terror had driven her mind to the one fact it could bear to hold. She was saying it almost as if it were the one thing about all of this she simply couldn’t believe.
“Ye’re bleeding.”
“’Tis nothing,” he responded.
A lie, but a useful one.
She looked as though the world might tilt under her if left standing much longer. He had seen enough shock to know whena body remained upright only out of stubbornness and surprise. So he moved even closer to her.
“Relax, do ye hear me? It’ll be all right.”
Before she could respond, he bent and lifted her.
Ava made a small, startled sound and clutched him at once, one hand bracing against his uninjured shoulder, the other curling uselessly in the folds of his plaid.
He felt a tremor run through her at the contact. He also felt how slight she was in his arms compared to the force with which she had altered the shape of his life in just a few days.
It was hard to believe that such a small woman could cause such big trouble.
“Ye will be fine,” he assured her again, before he started toward the castle.
The path back seemed both too long and blessedly clear. Around them, the last of the chaos was being restored to order. The ceremony, however, still lay blood-stained and broken.
As Ava breathed against him, he realized that for the first time since his youth, a wedding had not ended with him feeling helpless.
To steady her, and perhaps because he needed to lighten the moment, he lowered his head to her, a smile on his face. “I told ye it was bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding.”
For one second, she only stared at him, as if the words had come from some stranger. Then, an incredulous laugh burst out of her. It was the first true release of breath for either of them since the attack had started.
“Ye are one strange man, Ciaran Nairn,” Ava whispered against his chest.
Ciaran only nodded in response.
