Page 160 of Auctioned to the Cruel Highlander
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.
CHAPTER 11
Ciaran carriedher into her chambers, his arms steady around her. Ava, on the other hand, was still trying to come back to herself.
The world behind the door almost seemed foreign. She could hear the noise and the sound of boots moving fast through passageways. She could even hear the distant voices, but it all felt immensely distant.
Inside the room, the air felt completely different.
Ciaran set her carefully on the edge of the bed. Only then did she fully feel the heat still trapped in her body, the tremors that had not yet worked themselves out of her hands, and the sick, slow echo of terror that kept returning in waves.
And worse, there was something else.
Him.
She could smell the blood and sweat on his skin. She could also feel how steadily he moved despite the wound in his shoulder.
The fact that it was Ciaran standing before her, not Isobel, or a maid, or some older woman clucking kindly over her nerves, made the entire thing even more absurd.
“Are ye all right?”
She could not speak because of the overwhelming despair still draped around her. All she could do was nod.
