Pride and terror struck Kaelan at the same time.
“Bria!” he roared and started toward her.
Three men blocked his path. Three men who died regretting the decision.
Kaelan drove forward, steel continuing to flash and blood spraying. Nothing mattered except reaching his wife.
He continued fighting to get to his wife. Then he spotted Braden again. He had reached Bria. The warrior who held her handed her over to him, his hand closing firmly around her arm. He sent Kaelan a grin, then dragged her off into the depths of the forest.
Kaelan heard Bria scream as he took down two more men.
“Let me go!”
His wife fought as hard as he did and she suffered the same awful ache that came when they were apart.
Kaelan’s fury turned darker and with one swing he cut the warrior down who charged at him, desperate to kill every man preventing him from getting to his wife.
“Kaelan!”
Fiora shot from the trees, her face pale.
“They are taking her to the shoreline! A boat waits.”
The last thread of control snapped.
Kaelan’s eyes flashed gold and he ran.
Bria stumbledas Braden dragged her over the last rise, then her heart sank.
The shoreline stretched before her, further up than where she walked the water’s edge in Willowmere.
The rocky outcroppings, the strip of pale sand, and a cluster of weathered pines all things found along the shoreline she had walked on warm days, searching for shells and collecting smooth stones and bits of sea glass.
It had been a safe place for her, but now seeing the boat waiting just beyond the water’s edge, fear gripped her. If they got her aboard, Kaelan would never reach her in time. He would be lost to her forever, or he would die trying to reach her. She could not let that happen.
Grabbing firm hold of his arm, she dug her heels into the sand.
Braden cursed and jerked her forward. “Stop fighting.”
It came then fast and clear, shocking her. “Ogga is dead. Dreth killed her.”
“She lied to him. She deserved what she got,” Braden said without an ounce of remorse. “Dreth knew there was more to your capture than she said. It was easy to trace your steps and see where you went and learn exactly how beneficial a Wise woman could be to Tharne.”
She cast a quick glance toward the boat. Dreth waited beside it, his grin announcing his victory. And suddenly everything fell together.
“Dreth is using you like he used Ogga. You will meet the same fate as her.”
“She lied,” Braden said as if that explained her death.
“And you are no longer beneficial to him.”
Braden laughed harshly. “You know nothing.”
That was where he was wrong. She had seen it when she touched him, Dreth forcing Ogga to tell him everything, leaving it easy for him to follow her and Kaelan. But how had word reached the Hunters so fast? How had a troop been ready to ride almost immediately?
There could be only one explanation. Someone in Caerith was helping Drogath.
Braden jerked her forward.
