Page 46 of Blood & Claw

Silence followed.

For a few moments, Ailsa merely watched Dale’s expression. He hadn’t moved from his crouching position, hadn’t even acknowledged her. His gaze was still riveted upon his attacker’s face. And slowly, as each heartbeat passed, his features relaxed.

Only then did Ailsa approach. Even so, she still held onto her knife. The attacker might be dead, yet danger still crackled in the air. Her bodyguard wasn’t himself.

“I told you to run.” Dale’s voice was rough, strained, yet he still didn’t look her way.

“I couldn’t,” she admitted. Reaching his side, she gazed down at the dead man’s face. “Do you recognize him?”

Her legs felt oddly weak now. The strange clarity was gone, and in its place came a cold, creeping horror. The memory of that pulse beating in the man’s throat still lingered.

“No.”

Ailsa dropped to a crouch beside him. “Do you think he’s one of the men we’re hunting?”

“Could be.”

“I don’t remember his face from the ale-hall.”

Dale glanced her way. “Did you get a good look at them?”

“No, but—”

“So, how can you be so sure?”

Ailsa compressed her lips. The truth was, she wasn’t. It had been shadowy in that ale-hall. “It just seems … strange,” she replied after a pause. “If they’re ahead, why send someone back to deal with us?” She glanced around, eyes straining to catch shadows in the darkness. “Of course, if you hadn’t killed him, we could have questioned him.”

Dale snorted. “He didn’t look like the talkative sort.”

She scowled. “Well, we’ll never know now, will we?”

He swiveled to face her fully then, his jaw flexing. “It was reckless not to run … what would you have done if he’d bested me?”

She pulled a face, not wanting to tell him the truth—that there had been a part of her that had hungered for his attacker to turn on her. “I could see he wouldn’t.”

Her bodyguard cocked an eyebrow. “Is that a veiled compliment I hear?”

“No.” She sheathed her blade in her boot once more. Gods, the man was cocky. “It’s merely an observation.”

He favored her with a long look that made her hackles rise before relieving the man of his impressive fighting dagger and rising to his feet. “I’ll get rid of the body.”

Ailsa nodded, casting a glance around them. Something about the attack still bothered her. “He didn’t pay me any attention,” she pointed out. “It was you he wanted to kill.”

“Only because he saw me as a bigger threat,” Dale replied, grabbing the man under the armpits and dragging him back toward the curtain of willow branches. “Fear not … you were next on his list.”

Ailsa scowled at that.

Alone for the moment, she sank back down at the fireside. She then scanned the surrounding darkness again. Her ears strained, searching for the crunch of approaching footsteps. Her pulse quickened once more.

How was she going to sleep tonight? Her concerns about Kayla and the attack aside, she now had her own, more personal, worries to contend with. Her breathing grew shallow then, sweat dampening her palms.

You’ve never been right.

Ailsa swallowed. Was that the truth? Did Kayla think there was something wrong with her, yet had never said? Maybe there was something her mentor had kept from her.

Pushing aside her worries, Ailsa reached for more firewood. She fed a branch to the hungry flames, waiting for Dale to return from dealing with the corpse.

When he did, his features were strained, his shoulders rounded.