Of course, it had been him.
She should have noticed that he had been too quiet as of late. She should have known that he wasn’t going to stay with his tail tucked in his own lands.
She wasn’t sure exactly what she had thought he might be doing, but then again, that was the whole point, wasn’t it? She hadn’t wanted to think about him at all. Every time thoughts of him had started to surface, she had shoved them down as quickly as possible.
“The way I see it, yer supposed husband and I have some unfinished business,” Graham continued, his crooked finger trailing down her arm and over the ropes binding her in place. “Then, there’s still the matter of our marriage, which will be perfectly legal as soon as I dispatch him. I think that might be a better deal than simply securing an alliance with yer faither. The way I see it, I collect me wife and two separate clans at the same time. Three birds with one stone.”
He shrugged, then walked backward to the closest wall and clasped his hands in front of him with an arrogant shrug.
“The priest is on the way.” He fixed her with that soul-stealing glare. “Then, ye will be with yer rightful husband, the only one worthy of ye in the first place. So, just hold on there.”
With that, he turned to leave the small cabin, leaving her to face the cold and the terror all by herself.
33
The one and only time Kaden had ever wanted Maggie to be slightly bigger than she was was when he was forced to follow her through the forest.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t track the hoofprints on his own, but he was worried about leaving her behind and what might happen to her. Her tiny legs were working overtime to try and stay ahead of his horse and lead them where they needed to go.
He worried that her wee heart was going to give out. He worried that they were traveling at too slow a pace. Yet, the two times he had attempted to pick her back up so that they could move a little bit faster, she had tried to bite his hand off. Which wasn’t something he was eager to try again.
He had no choice but to move slightly ahead of her, leaving Peter behind to help her follow the trail so that they would all end up in the same place, but the worry in his gut would only allow him to stall for so long.
He rode long and hard until he came upon a small clearing, where he worried that he had lost her trail, because the tracks turned around and left once more.
He dismounted, checking the ground to see if both tracks turned around, but he did see a set of footprints and what appeared to be drag marks.
All the worry in his gut gave way to pure, unadulterated anger that somebody might have dragged Emily into the cabin up there against her will.
He wanted to rush forward and go to her. He wanted to call out to her to hear her voice and make sure that she was all right. But he knew better than to risk her safety; it was too important.
She must be in there.
He drew his dirk and started to move slowly to the cabin, only to hear a too-familiar voice behind him.
“Ye shouldnae be here,” the man trilled, sounding very smugly pleased with himself. “But boy am I glad that ye are.”
Impossible.
It couldn’t be. There was no way that this monster had Emily.
Kaden had been planning and plotting for this moment for four years, and now that it was finally here, he felt horribly off kilter.
His grip tightened on his dirk, and he turned around slowly to face the man whose voice so often plagued his nightmares.
Emily’s wrists felt like they were about to break. The skin on her arms was raw and irritated, but she didn’t think that it was bleeding. Not yet, at least.
She couldn’t stop. Every wriggle and twist was loosening her bonds. She knew that struggling as much as possible would benefit her. Her throat burned, her limbs ached, but she wasn’t going to go down without a fight.
She didn’t know how long it took, and she didn’t know how long Graham was going to be gone for, but she wouldn’t have much time. He never did like letting her out of his sight for very long.
It felt like hours had passed before she managed to work one arm free, but the pressure on her torso loosened immediately. She was able to take deeper breaths, to move just a little bit more. The first thing she did was rip the gag out of her mouth and toss it to the floor, where it landed with a plume of dust.
She struggled and pushed until she got her other arm free, her panic growing with every passing minute. She wished that she had brought a knife—just another thing that her father hadprevented her from carrying on her person anymore. It was a habit that she had meant to pick back up, but she hadn’t thought to ask Kaden for one. It had been a huge mistake, looking back on it.
It would be only too easy to stand here and curse herself for all the things she wished she had done.
One of those things was not killing Graham with an arrow through the throat while he slept.
