Page 1 of Highlander’s Vengeful Seduction

Chapter One

Ronald was dead.

There was nothing that Donal could do but watch as they buried his little brother—and even watching was proving difficult. Inside himself, he could only feel a vast void. It was the nothingness that only came when emotions were too much to bear; when a human mind reached its limits, and could only shut down to protect itself.

Donal didn’t cry. He didn’t shed a single tear. He did vomit, though, running as far away from the funeral as he could before his stomach began to revolt against him. The sight of his dead brother was unbearable.

After the funeral, all he could do was drink, coming close to joining his brother in the afterlife. It took him six months to stop drinking, and once he did, he knew he couldn’t stay in those parts for even one minute longer.

He also knew where he had to go: Castle Sween, the place where it had all begun.

In Donal’s memory, Castle Sween was a thing of wonder. He remembered the stone walls of the castle, towering over the surrounding land of Knapdale, the grand windows in the towers with a view of Loch Sween, and the seemingly endless green grass that covered the ground every summer.

Donal had been of only twenty years of age when he had last been there—six years prior, training under the General of the MacMillan clan. His father had insisted that he and his younger brother, Ronald, spend months in Castle Sween as a preparation for their future duties: Donal’s responsibilities as a laird and Ronald’s duties as his right-hand man.

For Donal, training under such a skilled man with a vast experience in battle was a gift for which he would forever be grateful. He had learned everything he knew from that man, and all that knowledge that he had gathered was what would one day make him the kind of laird that his clan, Clan Cameron, deserved.

Donal wished he could say that it had been the same for his brother, that he had become a man under the General’s supervision and guidance, but the truth was that Ronald had never made it past the age of four-and-twenty. He’d never had the chance to blossom into the man that he was supposed to become, never had the opportunity to grow up and take his place in the clan next to Donal.

Death had taken him young, creeping up on him earlier than anyone could have expected. His heart gave out, his family had told everyone. The Cameron clan was in mourning for weeks over the loss of the laird’s beloved son, the waste of his young life hanging heavy over them.

Donal had proof of the real cause of his brother’s death, though, and it wasn’t his heart; or perhaps it was, in a way. Ronald’s heart had given out because of a cruel, treacherous woman, and the sadness that engulfed him drove him to take his own life.

Donal had been the one who found Ronald, laying on the floor of his bedroom with a handkerchief clutched tightly in one hand and a small blade in the other. There had been so much blood; it had pooled around his body, spreading across the floor. The memory turned his stomach.

It was a sight that no older brother should ever have to face.

The rest was a blur in Donal’s mind from that day. He remembered picking up the handkerchief from Ronald’s hand, stained in his own blood, and reading the initials that were embroidered on the soft linen. V.M, the same initials that were signed at the bottom of a letter he found on Ronald’s desk, crumpled as though his brother had read it a million times.

Donal himself knew that letter by heart, reading it over and over, trying to make sense of what had happened to his brother, what was so dire as to drive him to take his own life.

Ronald,

I do not wish to see you again. You are a fool for thinking I could ever love a man like yourself—a foppish, weak-souled idiot. I despise you utterly and completely.

Every time you left my sight, I began to laugh, thinking about all the promises you made to me for the future.

There will be no future between us. I only pretended to love you so that you would do as I said, which only served to make me laugh more.

No woman could ever love you, Ronald. You are, and always have been, the laughingstock of the MacMillan clan. There is no future in your horizons, and no promise of anything except humiliation for both yourself and a future wife. You will never amount to anything, and thus, I could never be with you.

As it happens, I have secured another’s affections, and he has all of the traits you lack—ambition, skill, intelligence. I shall not regret affiancing myself to him and fixing myself to his star. There is no hope of regaining my affections, Ronald; kindly move on, and have it as though we never crossed paths.

Don’t write back to me. I don’t want to hear from you.

V.M.

That wretched woman was the reason for his brother’s death, and she was also almost the reason he would never finding eternal peace. His mother couldn’t bear to think that Ronald would not receive a proper burial, though, so his father had decided to keep his suicide a secret, instead telling the entire clan that he had died from a weak heart, a defect that they never knew he had.

No one had questioned it, but the image of Ronald’s wrists, slit open with that blade, had burned into Donal’s mind.

Ever since that day, Donal had committed his life to finding the woman responsible and bringing her to justice. He had all he needed; after all, he had the letter mentioning the MacMillan clan, and he had the woman’s initials.

Donal and Ronald had only ever met two women with those initials, and they were sisters. Vanora and Vika MacMillan were the daughters of the very man who had taken the two brothers under his wing, teaching them everything they needed to know; they were the daughters of the general.

There was only one thing Donal could do then, and that was to head to Castle Sween. It was up to him to discover which one of the two sisters was responsible for his brother’s heartbreak and his death, and he would make his brother proud; he would avenge him.

Had it not been for the reason behind his travel, Donal would have enjoyed it thoroughly. It was the end of August, the perfect time to travel, as the sun shone bright most days, bathing the Highlands in its warmth and light. Even the rainy days were comfortable, with gentle breezes instead of strong winds. If it were winter, Donal didn’t know if he would have had the courage to brave the journey.