Page 129 of Outlaw Ever After

Her blood rushed angrily in her ears as the bar across the stable door splintered and crashed open. Because of Kendrew!

Surrounded yet again, Caleb dragged on the reins to whirl Faunus around, who protested and tossed his head.

No good!

Swords drawn. A score of men surrounded him! Faunus hopped on his hind legs, stomping, as his feathery mane wavered. Yet Caleb was wrenched from the saddle despite how his muscles bulged in protest, gripping the saddle like a lifeline. He flicked loose his other rib slitter as he tumbled and lodged it true, backed up, parrying, his arms nicked and a cut to his cheek seeping blood and rolling down his lip and beard.

A guardsman grabbed him.

He twisted free. Slashed the man.

But was replaced. Again and again, until so swarmed he was inundated. His bollock dagger was confiscated and flung aside. His back sheath was unstrapped as he torqued and grunted in their grip. His dirk and sgain dubh were commandeered.

“Go inside, songbird!” he thundered, as he was piled upon, shouting and roaring.

…

She wouldn’t foking listen!

Caleb wasn’t going to walk away unscathed. He could already tell. He hated her screams. Hated her fear. Hated that…this might be the final thing she saw before he joined his sire through the veil to languish in purgatory, for MacGregor would be sure to make a mockery of his corpse as he had with his sire’s.

He torqued in their grip.

Peigi screamed and begged deaf ears, clenching Thomas to her like the perfect maw she would become.

To his seed.

It gave him a sliver of peace, to ken the fruition of what he felt for her might endure—

“Donegal! I beg ye listen!” she screamed. He could see flashes of her grabbing her brother’s first in command’s livery.

A body knocked into her, throwing her—and his unborn—off balance.

A roar unleashed from Caleb’s throat. “Nay hurt my woman!”

He tore a limb free and kicked an assailant away, but a knee to his gut and his neck restrained him again.

Jossy and Peigi’s sisters were dragging her away now. But she was screaming, reaching for him, crying for him, his real name on her lips. He loved her for it. Jesu, he wished he could have given her the world. Hated she was about to watch his execution.

So Highland fierce when she had to be but Christ he wished she’d turn away, go inside, protect her heart from MacGregor brandishing his blade above him now.

MacGregor glanced back at her, smirking, then at him again at his feet. He spat on his face.

“Yer woman, eh? Why, I have it on account that she’s naybody’s woman until she handfasts the winner on the morrow. And with ye out of the running, I suppose that will be…” MacGregor made a show of thinking. “Me .”

Caleb’s molars ground.

“Ye thought ye could outsmart us all these years?” MacGregor seethed victoriously, looming low in his face and voice dropping as Caleb’s arms were strangled into submission. “Nay worry, Caleb Comyn. Yer babe will nay be long for this world, either—”

His mind hazed with fury as the dagger began to ascend—

He kicked and bent in the unyielding power of so many guardsmen as a disruption caused several guards to glance over their shoulders. Their distraction was what he needed to twist an arm free. Slip a nearby sgian dubh from a guard’s boot. Bring that dagger down on a nearby toe, thus gaining a window through which to twist free as his victim stepped off balance.

The ground felt like thunder rumbled within it. He had to get to his songbird. Had to protect her.

“Peigi !” bellowed an ear-splitting command as he shoved to his feet, heaving for air.

Seamus Grant and a team of reinforcements were charging into the yard…