Page 38 of Outlaw Ever After

And then, Seamus’s deep rumble. “Detain him for questioning.”

Fok no. It was Seamus, this time, who would be detained, and humiliated for his debt in front of all these guests. He smirked. He reached for his summons bearing the seal of the Lord High Treasurer—

“The cretin goes for his weapons!” shouted MacGregor.

What?

Grant guards swarmed around him.

He ripped free an arm. They grappled with him again . But the Reaper never went down without taking his adversaries with him!

Chapter Twelve

“Stop!” Peigi cried as ladies screamed and hurried for cover.

The man who’d forsaken her thrashed for freedom as her brother’s guardsmen converged upon him.

“Stop !” She gripped Aileana and Elizabeth as they shielded their babes, as men bellowed and Alexander freed a boot and sent a guard reeling backward, though her cry was drowned in the chaos.

He threw a guard off his back like the fabled Tyr battling the Fenir in her mither’s Irish tales. Thrashed away another guard, noosed his scythe in his freed fist beneath the iron head to yank from its sheath—

Seamus leapt into the fray now, replacing whom he’d dispatched.

“No!” Peigi screamed.

Fists rained down on Alexander as he upended a table with his torquing body, sending the feast crashing to the rushes. His sheath was ripped off his back.

“Damnation he’s strong!” huffed a sentry.

“Take him away!” boomed Seamus.

“Nay !” Alexander’s call shook the rafters. “I looked for ye Margrrmf …” A hand clamped over his mouth, muffling his protests.

My, still so tall, his ginger-blond beard still braided like the worst sort of rogue.

And then she saw a lyre, banging upon his thigh, the instrument smashing against his side, strings pinging loose.

It meant he had found it where it had lain forgotten in a greenwood, when she’d collapsed into Seamus’s arms that fateful night. Did it mean he had come for her?

“Seamus !” She hefted up her skirts, dashing down the dais, into the melee.

Dishes scattered as Alexander broke free again.

Seamus couldn’t hear her amid the screams and thuds of fists connecting with skin and yet like a god, Alexander seemed impervious to the pain.

She pattered over the rushes littered with toppled feast that the wolfhound now foraged through to eat.

“Ye’ll be subdued, man, or ye’ll feel my wrath!” Seamus lifted his knife.

Alexander twisted free yet again . But this time, a rib slitter flicked free of his wrist guards, gleaming in his fingers.

Horror! She lunged between them as Seamus’s blade struck down—

An arm curled her head into a wall of muscle. Shielded her with warmth and the sharp tang of patchouli and heather and summer promises, broken forever. Clenched her suffocatingly.

The bundle of muscle she was encapsulated within grunted beneath an impact, lurched, tensed hard, exhaled a harsh wheeze of pain.

“I beg ye stop !” she screamed, as every nightmare, every reave she’d ever endured, flashed to life in her mind.