Page 53 of Blood & Claw

She’d noticed the bruises on his face. The cuts that came with every change. Sooner or later, she’d demand to know what the matter with him was.

You’ll have to tell her.

The thought made his chest clench.

No. Not yet. He couldn’t risk that. Not until Kayla was found. Not until the tattooist fixed what had been done to him.

Leaning forward in the saddle, he urged Rùn into a gallop.

They’d only been on the road a short while when Darach breathed in a familiar scent, carried on a sharp breeze.

Smoke.

He pulled Rùn up short.

Behind him, Ailsa’s arms loosened from his waist at once, as if she was glad of the excuse not to touch him. “What is it?”

He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he scanned the road ahead before his gaze traveled east to a hill. A faint grey ribbon drifted into the pale sky above it. “A camp.”

Nudging Rùn off the road, he angled the stallion up a slope between gorse and stone until the ground flattened. There, he drew his horse up and swung down from the saddle.

“Watch your back,” he told Ailsa as he moved off.

A moment later, he heard a ‘thud’ as her boots hit earth.

The clearing smelled of ash and damp earth. A ring of stones held the remains of a smoldering fire. Walking across to it, Darach crouched and stirred the ashes with a twig.

The embers still glowed.

“They didn’t put it out?”

He glanced over his shoulder to see that Ailsa now approached. Her face was wan and strained in the morning light. Her gaze veiled as she glanced nervously around. “No,” he replied. “Whoever camped here left in a hurry.”

His belly tightened then, his exhaustion sloughing away. This had to be the group they were following. Their quarry was still ahead, but not by much.

He straightened up and began moving through the clearing. A broken strap lay in the dirt beside a discarded ale skin. More signs that they’d moved on fast.

Ailsa followed him, although he noted that whenever he halted, she hung back.

She didn’t trust him, not after he’d vanished into the night and left her alone beside the fire.

Fair enough.

He wouldn’t trust him either.

Pushing aside an unwelcome pang of self-recrimination, Darach hunkered down near the edge of the camp, inspecting tracks. The ground was churned here. Boot prints were everywhere.

Ailsa stopped next to him. “Kayla?”

“Aye.” Darach peered closer, spying heel gouges and drag marks. One of the men had gone down hard.

And there—dark streaks in the dirt.

Blood.

Ailsa murmured an oath.

Darach’s gaze narrowed as he appraised the marks with a practiced eye. Not a pool. No heavy splatter. “Don’t worry, it wasn’t fatal,” he said finally. “If they’d killed her, there’d be more blood than this.”