Page 74 of Wanted By the Wicked Highlander

Hamish nodded grimly, already swinging up onto a fresh horse. "And the women?"

"Margaret comes with me as far as Dunalasdair and no farther," Fergus said, already moving toward his own mount. "She'll flay me alive if I try to leave her behind entirely, and Isobel's healers are better stocked than mine. She'll be safe inside Alasdair's walls with the bairn while we finish this."

The wind caught Sebastian’s hair the moment they cleared the outer walls, the freezing mist hitting his face like a handful of gravel. The trail up toward the North Ridge was narrow, a jagged line of stone and moss that disappeared into the thick, black canopy of the pine forest above. The slate-gray light of the afternoon was already beginning to fade, drawing the shadows out between the trees like long, dark fingers.

Sebastian rode hard, his eyes fixed on the path ahead, his mind completely clear of the political calculations that had paralyzed him for the last two days. The ledgers did not matter anymore. The contracts were gone. The pride that had kept his mouth shut in the Solar was nothing but ash in his mouth.

She had ridden into the teeth of a winter storm, through a ridge crawling with scouts, because she thoughthewas walking into an ambush. She had broken his rules, ignored his warnings, and ruined his perfect, clinical strategy because her own fierce, administrative heart could not let him fight alone.

Impossible woman.

He closed his eyes for a single heartbeat, the taste of her mouth from the previous night rushing back to torment him. The sharp, sweet rain on her lips, the frantic way her fingers had dug into his hair, and the quiet, agonizing sorrow in her eyes when he had failed to give her the only answer that mattered.

He had handled her like an enemy to be conquered, and now she was paying the price for his restraint.

“Faster!” Sebastian roared over his shoulder, his voice swallowed by the howling wind as he drove his horse harder up the steep incline.

Behind him, the messenger and the remaining outriders struggled to keep pace, their horses slipping on the wet shale of the trail. The forest closed in around them, the towering pines blocking out the remaining light until the world became nothing but a tunnel of cold green and dark stone.

Sebastian’s hand dropped to the hilt of his broadsword, his fingers tracing the cold, familiar iron of the serpent engraving.

The panic that had gripped him in the courtyard was gone, replaced by a cold, calculating rage that made his pulse slow to a steady, rhythmic thrum. Malcolm Kerr thought he had found a weakness. He thought he had found a line to drag the Beast of Blackthorn into a slaughterhouse.

But as the first snow began to drift down through the branches, dusting his shoulders in white, Sebastian felt a dangerous, dark smile touch his lips. Kerr did not understand the nature of the trap he had sprung. He did not understand that by taking Alba, he had not found a way to make Sebastian break.

He had simply given him a reason to destroy everything in his path.

If I lose ye,Sebastian thought, his gaze piercing through the dark tree line toward the high, jagged peak of the Weeping Stone,there willnae be a corner of the Highlands I willnae burn to ash.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Alba sat tied beside the clearing, surrounded by Malcolm Kerr’s men while rain soaked through her cloak and fury burned inside her.

The rope had rubbed a raw line across her wrists hours ago, and she’d stopped feeling it somewhere around midnight. Rain came down in a steady gray sheet, running off the hood someone had shoved back from her face, plastering her hair flat and cold against her skull.

Around her, Kerr’s men crouched near the fire under makeshift oilcloth shelters, passing a skin of something between them.

“Ye think he’ll come alone?” one of the younger guards muttered, close enough that she could hear him over the rain. He had a thin, nervous face, and he kept glancing at the tree line like it might do something on its own.

“He’s the Beast of Blackthorn,” the older one beside him said, not bothering to lower his voice. “Man’s got a reputation for madness, nae sense. Of course, he’ll come alone.”

“And if he brings men anyway?”

“Then we cut her throat before he’s within a hundred paces, and he watches,” the older guard said and took a long pull from the skin without looking at her once.

Alba kept her face still and hated him for how easily the words came to him.

Malcolm Kerr walked a slow, unhurried path in front of the fire, hands clasped behind his back like a man inspecting his own garden. He had the look of someone who’d already won and wanted to enjoy the last few hours of waiting.

“Ye keep lookin’ at that tree line,” he said, not glancing at her. “He’s nae comin’ before dawn, lass. Even a man in love isnae fool enough to ride a night trail in this weather.”

Alba worked her jaw and said nothing. She’d learned three hours ago that answering him only gave him something new to smile about.

“Quiet women,” Kerr said, crouching in front of her now, close enough that she could smell wet wool and old blood on him, “make poor company. But I suppose ye werenae brought along for conversation.”

“Ye talk a great deal for a man hidin’ in the woods,” she said before she could stop herself.

One of the younger guards let out a short laugh before he caught himself. Kerr’s head turned toward him slowly, and the laughter died.