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The sound of heavy, approaching hoofbeats interrupted the man’s reply.

Mabel whipped her head around, her heart sinking into her stomach as three massive warhorses broke through the treeline, entering the small clearing.

At the head of the small group sat Fergus Comyn.

He looked relaxed, sitting casually in his expensive leather saddle. He was dressed in thick, dark riding leathers, his wool cloak pinned securely over his shoulder. The moonlight caught the silver rings heavily adorning his fingers as he calmly held the leather reins.

“Well,” Fergus said softly, his dark eyes sweeping over Mabel’s bruised face, her torn, mud-soaked shift, and her bare, bleeding feet. “That was certainly a messy extraction. Ye are bleeding, MacNab.”

“The bitch screamed, Me Laird,” the wounded intruder grunted, limping backward away from Mabel. “A guard on the southern wall put an arrow in me.”

“Careless,” Fergus murmured, indifferent to the man’s pain. He dismounted smoothly, his polished leather boots hitting the dirt with a soft thud. He tossed the reins to one of his waiting men and walked slowly toward Mabel.

Mabel scrambled backward, her hands scraping against the rough bark of the oak tree, but there was nowhere left to run.

Fergus stopped two feet away from her. He looked down at her, the charming, courteous mask he had worn for the last five months gone. There was no polite smile. There was no false warmth in his eyes. He looked exactly like the opportunistic, ruthless predator her father had always warned her he was.

“Get up, Mabel,” Fergus ordered, his voice flat and perfectly devoid of emotion.

“Go to hell, Fergus,” Mabel spat, wiping a smear of blood from her split lip with the back of her trembling hand.

Fergus let out a dramatic sigh, unbothered by her defiance. He snapped his fingers.

The two heavily armed men dismounted immediately. They crossed the clearing in three long strides, grabbing Mabel by the arms and hauling her roughly to her feet. Mabel thrashed against their grip. She kicked, she twisted, and she threw her weight backward, but they were far too strong.

One of the men produced a thick, coarse coil of hemp rope. He grabbed her wrists, roughly wrenching them behind her back, and began tying the rope with tight, brutal efficiency.

“Get yer hands off me!” Mabel screamed, twisting her shoulders frantically. “Caelan will slaughter every single one of ye! Do ye hear me? He will burn yer keep to the ground!”

“Gag her,” Fergus commanded calmly, turning his back to check the saddle girth of his horse.

A dirty, foul-smelling rag was forced brutally into Mabel’s mouth, silencing her screams. The guard tied the cloth tightly around the back of her head, pulling her blonde hair hard in the process. They dragged her toward the horses, physically lifting her off the ground and throwing her face-down across the saddle of a spare mount.

Mabel gagged on the rag, the thick rope cutting painfully into her wrists as she struggled to push herself upright.

Fergus walked over, resting his gloved hand smoothly on the horse’s neck. He looked at her bound, helpless state with a look of mild, clinical satisfaction.

“Ye truly believed he would come for ye, did ye nae?” Fergus asked softly, reaching out to roughly grab her jaw, forcing her to look directly into his cold, black eyes. “Ye believed the great Black Laird would protect ye from me.”

Mabel glared at him, her blue eyes ablaze with absolute, burning hatred. She tried to jerk her face away, but his fingers dug painfully into her bruised skin.

“I never wanted ye, Mabel,” Fergus stated coldly, dropping any pretense. “Ye are a stubborn, arrogant, exhausting little girl. But ye carry the name of William Crawford. Once I force ye to say those vows in front of me priest, Clan MacAllister will belong to me. The northern borders will fall under me control.”

He released her jaw, wiping his gloved hand on his riding trousers as if touching her had soiled him.

“And if ye refuse to say the vows?” Fergus continued, a cruel, razor-sharp smile finally appearing on his lips. “If ye choose to be difficult? I will simply kill ye. A tragic, accidental death on the road. Without an heir, the MacAllister lands will fall into total chaos, plunging the entire northern Highlands into a massive, bloody conflict. Gregor MacNab will march on Blackthorn Keep, and I will happily step into the void to claim the pieces. Either way, ye serve me purpose.”

Mabel squeezed her eyes shut, fighting against the desperate, overwhelming panic rising in her chest. Caelan would come. He would hear the horns. He would see the broken arrow in the mud. He would track them through the forest before Fergus could even reach the borders of his own lands.

27

Caelan’s eyes snapped open in the pitch-black darkness.

He lay perfectly still on the mattress. His breathing was slow and measured, but a cold, violent spike of adrenaline had already punched straight through his chest. He did not know what had woken him. There was no sound of a struggle, no shattering glass, no heavy footsteps echoing on the stone floor of his private chamber.

But the air in the room felt fundamentally wrong. The deep, ingrained instincts that had kept him alive on the bloodiest borders in the Highlands were screaming at him to move.

He threw the furs aside, his bare feet hitting the freezing stone floor. He snatched the broadsword resting against the bedside table, his hand wrapping tightly around the worn leather hilt.