Warriors shouted across the walls while arrows darkened the sky overhead. Beneath the cliffside and castle, the sea loch crashed against the shore, flinging white spray high enough to mist the lower stones and rowboats of the English.
The prisoner’s lie had done precisely what it had been meant to do.
Too many Scottish warriors remained stationed inland. Too many defenses were still being reorganized when the ships appeared through the mist. The English had struck Dunvegan where she stood weakest, with the shore exposed and the noon meal half-prepared behind the walls.
Rage burned through Lachlan’s chest.
“Hold the gate!” he roared.
His men answered at once, shields locking together as English soldiers forced their way up the narrow rocky beach. Arrows fell from the walls in dark, swift arcs, sinking into the English. Men screamed. Blades rang. Boots slipped on wet stone and blood.
Lachlan dove into the fray. His sword cut through the first Englishman who broke past the shield line. He caught the next blow on his blade, turned it aside, and slammed his injured shoulder into the man’s chest hard enough to send him staggering back into those behind him.
Pain flared along his shoulder, his leg twisting painfully reminding him that less than a moon cycle ago he’d been laid out, nearly dead.
He ignored it.
But Isabel’s face rose in his mind with brutal clarity. The feel of her wrist beneath his fingers. The fear in her eyes when he had ordered her inside. The love she had finally given him without armor, without pride standing between them.
He would keep the battle at bay. Not one of the bloody traitors would reach her, he swore it.
Then he saw him. The bloody bastard Kerr.
The man walked through the commotion as though the field belonged to him, tartan snapping in the wind, sword drawn, English soldiers parting around him. A Scot amongst English steel.
A traitor wearing his own blood like a disguise.
Lachlan’s grip tightened around his sword as he bellowed, “Kerr!”
Kerr turned with a slow smile. “MacLeod. I wondered how long it would take ye.”
“Ye brought the English to my lands.”
“Only enough of them to make a point.”
“Ye betrayed Scotland, your own blood.”
Kerr laughed, as though honor itself amused him. “Scotland is ruled by weak men pretending loyalty is strength.”
Lachlan advanced a step. Kerr’s gaze flicked past him, climbing to the walls, searching. Searching for Isabel no doubt.
Murder surged through Lachlan’s blood, hot and immediate. “She is beyond your reach.”
“For now.” Kerr’s smile thinned. “Imagine my surprise when I learned where the lady had fled. She should have remained at Inverlochy.”
“Would she have made an easier target for ye there?”
Bitterness carved deep grooves into Kerr’s face. “Why should Comyn gain the Bruce’s favor?” he spat. “Why should lesser men be rewarded while others are denied what they deserve?”
Lachlan understood then. Ambition. Resentment. A bruised man’s pride dressed up as politics. Kerr had sold Scottish lives because another man had been promised Isabel. Had killed his own countrymen for such a foolish plot.
“I intended to take the lady for myself,” Kerr said.
The words moved through Lachlan like a blade beneath the ribs. Kerr would die before he laid a hand on her.
“Ye will never touch her,” Lachlan growled, the Wolf rising in his throat.
Kerr’s lips curled into the semblance of a smile. “We shall see.”
