Page 62 of Wanted By the Wicked Highlander

Brian beamed, his dark eyes shining with total, uncritical devotion.

Above them, a shadow fell across the fire. Alba looked up, her breath hitching.

Sebastian stood there. He had walked across the Hall without her even noticing, his towering frame casting a long, protective silhouette over her and the boy. He looked down at them, his dark eyes unreadable.

“The wind has passed,” Sebastian said, his gravelly voice low and quiet against the ambient chatter of the Hall. He looked at Margaret, offering a brief, respectful nod, before his gaze dropped back to Alba’s upturned face. “The road through the Dragon’s Tail will be clear by sunrise, Lady MacLaren. Yer escort will be ready whenever ye are.”

The administrative title felt like a slap of ice water.

Lady MacLaren.

Alba stood up slowly, her hand naturally falling to rest on Brian’s shoulder as she drew herself up to her full height. She looked into Sebastian’s dark, shadowed eyes, searching for the Beast, searching for the arrogant invader; yet, she found no trace of either.

“Thank ye, Laird MacGregor,” Alba said, her voice smooth, perfect, and entirely hollow. “I will be ready.”

Beside her, Margaret stayed entirely silent, but her hand found Alba’s wrist behind the folds of her cloak, giving her a sharp, fiercely supportive squeeze. The farewell had begun, and the morning was coming entirely too fast.

* * *

Across the Hall, Hamish leaned his shoulder against the timber post beside Sebastian, his gaze fixed on the bright hearth where Alba was currently laughing with her cousin. The roaringfirelight caught the soft, rare curve of her mouth, a sight so sharp and striking it felt like a physical blow against Sebastian’s chest.

“We’re losin’ her,” Hamish said, his voice dropping below the frantic scrape of the fiddles.

Sebastian’s grip tightened slightly around his clay cup. He did not look away from her. He could not.

“She was never ours to begin with,” Sebastian replied.

But the admission did nothing to ease the cold, hollow weight settling in his gut. Ever since Margaret MacKenzie had ridden through the castle gates with her baggage carts and her protective outriders, a different kind of darkness had been brewing in the corners of his mind.

Sebastian shifted his weight, his eyes darkening as he finally shared the thoughts that had been burdening his mind, eating away at his focus ever since Margaret had shown up to take Alba away.

“Kerr wouldnae dare strike MacKenzie land,” Sebastian murmured.

Hamish’s expression darkened slightly, the easy, ale-warmed mirth vanishing from his weathered face in an instant. He adjusted his heavy leather belt, his eyes darting toward the nearest guards to ensure they were out of earshot. “I ken what ye think, me Laird. But he lost our trail weeks ago. He wouldnae.”

“Wouldnae he?” Sebastian finally looked his commander fully in the eye, his towering frame cutting off the light from the nearest torch, casting Hamish into shadow. “If he hasnae lost our trail, Hamish, he would strike MacKenzie first comin’ south.”

“Aye,” Hamish conceded, his voice dropping even lower, his brow furrowing into a hard, defensive line. “Only if Kerr believes ye’d run there for protection. Only if he thinks the MacGregors are lookin’ to hide behind a larger clan’s skirts. Otherwise, he wouldnae dare strike Fergus MacKenzie. Nae with Alasdair MacRae at his side. That’s a hornet’s nest nay man in his right mind would kick.”

Sebastian’s stomach tightened uncomfortably, a cold, oily coil of dread winding around his ribs. Because suddenly, in the quiet spaces between them, the thought no longer seemed impossible. It now felt entirely probable.

Malcolm Kerr was not a rational man. Sebastian had spent three years tracking the monster across the Northern Wastes, watching him burn entire villages to the ground merely to prove a point about his own reach. Kerr did not calculate risks like a seasoned warlord; he moved on spite, bloodlust, and a terrifyingly single-minded obsession with erasing the MacGregor name from the face of the earth.

“He’d strike first and ask questions later,” Sebastian said, his voice a low, gravelly rasp. “He wouldnae stop to think rationally. If he sees MacKenzie outriders movin’ along the border, if he thinks there is even a breath of a whisper that I am sendin’ what matters to me into Fergus’s keepin;, he willnae hesitate.”

Hamish’s gaze shifted meaningfully toward Alba again. She had knelt down by the stool, her green mantle pooling in the rushes as she listened to Brian.

“Do ye think they are in danger?” Hamish asked bluntly.

“I think men do dangerous things when obsession gets involved,” Sebastian said.

His eyes traveled back across the crowded Hall, navigating through the sea of drinking men and spinning dancers until they anchored on her once more.

The sight was almost too beautiful to bear. Alba smiled softly down at Brian, her thumb gently brushing a stray lock of dark hair from the boy’s forehead. Brian was practically bursting with pride, his small chest puffed out as he showed Margaret a badly carved wooden horse, the one Sebastian had spent three hours hacking out of a block of pine two nights ago, ignoring the state of his own ledgers to hear the boy cheer.

Alba was turning the little wooden toy over in her slender hands. She was completely unaware of the shadow looming over her northern border. She was completely unaware that her very association with him, the mere fact that he had forced his way into her life and held her in that dark corridor, might have painted a target on her back that no amount of MacKenzie iron could entirely protect her from.

The heat of the Great Hall suddenly felt suffocating. The smell of the roasted meat, the heavy peat smoke, the roaring laughterof his own men, it all pressed inward on him until his lungs refused to expand. Sebastian could not breathe properly inside the crowded room.