Page 77 of Wanted By the Wicked Highlander

Alba’s mouth opened, then closed.

The letter.

All of it rearranging itself in her head into a shape she had not let herself see until this exact moment.

“He let me believe he was walkin’ in unprepared,” she said slowly, something hot and furious rising behind the fear now. “He let me watch them drag him to his knees and say nothin’.”

“Because if ye’d ken the truth, ye’d have fought harder to stay, and then Kerr would have ken somethin’ wasnae right the moment ye stopped fightin’ so hard to leave,” Hamish said, releasing her arms at last now that she’d stopped trying to run. “Ye played yer part better for believin’ it, lass. So did he.”

A horn sounded, low and long, somewhere off along the Ridge, and every man on the hillside came up onto his feet at once, a slow ripple of movement spreading through the dark like something waking.

“That’s the signal,” Fergus said. “Kerr’s men will be lookin’ to the trees any moment now.”

Hamish had already turned to the horse he’d led out with them, hauling a blade free from where it hung against the saddle, and he held it out to her without a word of explanation, hilt first.

“Now stay behind us,” he said.

Alba’s hand closed around the hilt before he’d finished the sentence, the weight of it settling familiar and right against her palm for the first time since Kerr’s men had stripped her of everything at the road.

“I am still Lady MacLaren.” She swung up into the saddle before either man could argue, ignoring the mud-slick stirrup, ignoring the ache in her wrists where the rope had worn through skin. Her eyes found the faint orange glow through the trees, the place where Sebastian still knelt in the mud, believing she was already safely away. “And I am nae leavin’ him there.”

Fergus opened his mouth—to argue, she was certain, some careful reasoning about a lady’s place being well behind the line of battle—and then seemed to think better of it, something almost like approval flickering across his rain-streaked face instead.

“MacGregor’s going to have his hands full with this one,” he muttered before wheeling his own mount around to face the hill.

“He kent that the day he came to take her Castle,” Hamish said, swinging up beside them both, already reaching for the reins of his own horse. “Didnae stop him.”

The horn sounded again, closer this time, and along the ridgeline, the first ranks of men started moving down through the trees in near silence, steel faintly glinting with each step.

Alba tightened her grip on the sword, rain cold against her neck, and kept her eyes on the fire glowing through the dark trees ahead.

“Then let’s go get him.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

The command tent reeked of wet canvas, tallow smoke, and the sour smell of old ale. Sebastian spent nearly an hour cataloging every detail because counting kept his mind from doing anything reckless.

Three lanterns, one flickering low near the entrance flap. A camp table scattered with maps weighed down at the corners by stones. A smaller table holding a jug and two cups, only one of which has been used. Two guards stand just outside, close enough that their shadows shift on the canvas whenever they move.

Kerr had dismissed the rest, confident enough in his victory that he no longer thought he required an army in the room with him.

That confidence was the first mistake, and Sebastian intended to make it his last.

The rope at his wrists had been tied by someone competent, looped twice and knotted hard enough to bite, but competent was not the same as thorough. Whoever had bound him had checked the knot once and never came back to check it again, certain a man on his knees in the mud an hour earlier had nothing left in him worth watching closely.

Kerr paced in front of him now, hands loose at his sides, boots leaving wet prints across the tent’s dirt floor, savoring the moment the way another man might savor a good meal after a long fast.

“Ye just gave up,” he said, stopping in front of the chair, tilting his head to study Sebastian’s face like he expected to find something new written there. “For her.” He laughed, soft and delighted, shaking his head slowly. “The Beast of Blackthorn, on his knees in the mud, sword in the muck, for a lass.”

Sebastian said nothing. Rain hissed steadily against the canvas overhead, and somewhere beneath that sound, he counted his own pulse, slow and even.

Kerr crouched in front of him, elbows braced on his knees, close enough that Sebastian could see the exact shade of satisfaction behind his eyes. “I only wish yer father were here to watch me end ye. Yer brother too. Whole rotten line of MacGregors, gone in one night.” He tilted his head further, considering. “Would’ve been tidier that way. All of ye, at once.”

“Ye burned women and children for revenge.” Sebastian’s voice came out flat, unhurried, each word set down like a stone. “Ye’vespent twenty years tellin’ yerself that makes ye somethin’ other than what ye are.”

Kerr’s eyes blazed instantly, all the soft amusement burning off at once, his hand twitching toward the knife at his own belt before he caught himself. “They took everythin’ from me!”

“Yer wife dyin’ was a tragedy.” Sebastian held his gaze and did not blink, did not soften a single word of it, even as the guards’ shadows shifted outside the canvas. “It was war. It was an accident. Ye ken that better than any man alive. Me father would never set fire to a defenseless camp; it was the wind that turned that night, and every man who survived it kens the truth of it. Ye’ve spent two decades pretending otherwise because the truth gave ye nothin’ left to hate.”