"He’s the Hawk, ye daft prick. I’m nae turnin' me back so ye can go fill yer belly."
The bickering escalated, their voices rising in a petty, jagged rhythm that grated against Enya’s raw nerves. She kept her gaze fixed on the guards, her pulse hammering against her eardrums like a war drum.
Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw it—a sudden, fluid shift in Harald’s posture.
The change was instantaneous. One moment he was a captive; the next, he was a predator.
The transition was so sharp, so absolute, that the air in the room seemed to vanish, sucked out by the sheer gravity of his presence. Enya watched, her breath hitching in a throat that felt suddenly too tight, as Harald erupted.
It was the frighteningly beautiful unfurling of a force of nature.
He rose from the hay with a grace that shouldn't have been possible for a man of his size. The ropes fell away from his wrists, frayed and useless, looking like nothing more than discarded snakeskin.
She felt a jolt of pure, electric awe shoot through her entire body. He was majestic—terrible and magnificent—and he was across the floor before the guards had even finished their latest insult.
It was a blur of lethal, focused intent that made her heart soar even as it trembled.
He reached the first man before he could even reach for his dirk. Harald’s hand slammed into the guard’s throat with a sickening thud. The man didn't even have time to gasp before Harald spun him, using the guard’s own weight to slam the second man against the iron-banded door.
The violence was fast, brutal, and utterly unforgiving.
Enya stared, her mouth slightly agape.
He looked terrifying in the best way possible—a storm of iron and muscle, moving with a singular, lethal intent. A rush of something fierce and hot flooded her veins.
That is me husband.That is the man who would burn the world fer me.
In two strides, he was back at her side. He didn't waste time with words. He knelt, his fingers steady as he worked the knots at her wrists.
"Can ye run?" he whispered, his voice a low vibration that seemed to steady the floor beneath her.
"I can fly if I have tae," she snapped back, though her hands were shaking. She looked up at him, her eyes searching his for a second, seeing the raw, unshielded fire there.
He pulled her to her feet and made sure she had space to move toward the door, his body already half-turned to face the remaining guards who were beginning to stir.
For a heartbeat, the air felt like freedom. The door was unbarred from the inside, the night air tasted of salt and pine?—
"Going somewhere, little sister?"
The voice was a drench of ice water, turning the frantic heat in Enya’s veins to jagged slush.
Before Harald could even finish the arc of his turn, the door exploded inward. Finley entered in a blur of manic, desperate speed that bypassed Harald’s outstretched fingers.
Enya didn’t have time to scream before a cold hand tangled deep in her hair.
The world tilted violently. Her scalp flared with a blinding, white-hot agony as her head was yanked back, snapping her neck toward the rotted rafters until the tendons screamed. Her breath hitched, trapped in a throat that had suddenly become a target.
Then came the steel. The edge was a thin, freezing line of reality against the pulse-point of her neck.
She felt the vibration of Finley’s frantic, shallow breathing against the back of her skull. It made her skin prickle even as she stared, paralyzed, at Harald.
"Back!" Finley shrieked, the sound vibrating through the blade and into her bones.
Enya’s eyes locked onto Harald’s. She saw the moment his world collapsed.
"Back, or I’ll open her up right here!" Finley’s voice cracked with a high-pitched, jagged edge.
The standoff froze the room into a tableau of horror. Harald stopped mid-motion, his hand still outstretched toward her. The transition was agonizing to witness.
