“I’d have done ye a service, putting that creature out of her misery,” he muttered. “Force a confrontation with the Aitkens, and then finally, this would all be over with?—”
“And you thinkyouget to make that call, aye?” Kiernan demanded, flippant. “You thinkye’rethe one who rules this clan?”
“I think I knew yer father well enough tae know?—”
“My father would never have stood for a traitor like you in his midst,” Kiernan replied, cutting him off before he could say another word. His tone was almost eerily calm, a stillness settling around them, like the very forest itself was waiting to see what he might do.
“A traitor?” Archibald replied, a note of amusement to his voice. “You’d call me a traitor without so much as putting me to trial, would ye?”
“I dinnae need to go to the effort,” Kiernan replied. “You’ve admitted it yerself. You tried to take her from me. And the penalty for that kind of treason…”
He pressed his blade a little harder against his neck.
“Is death.”
“Then kill me,” Archibald challenged him. “If you so dare. Kill me, if you think she is worth such?—”
“Such what?” Kiernan asked him, silencing him all of a sudden. “If she’s worth such what, Archibald?”
“Such betrayal of yer own flesh and blood.”
A small smile creased Kiernan’s face, and he dropped down, pushing his head close to Archibald’s for a moment.
“I choose the flesh and blood I welcome into my clan,” he told him. “Ye were lucky my father accepted you fer so long. But now? Now, I formally rescind his invite. Ye’re nae welcome in this clan anymore, no traitor is. And ye said it yerself, the price for treason…”
Archibald parted his lips to protest.
Before he could even finish what he was saying, Kiernan drew his sword back, and swung it against Archibald’s neck. Mary gasped and drew her gaze away just in time to avoid the sight of his beheading, but she could still hear the dull, wet thud of the sword slicing through his neck, and then the sound of his head hitting the ground.
When she dared to open her eyes again, Kiernan was striding towards her, his sword cast aside, his face spattered with blood. For a moment, she did not know what he intended, drawing in so close to her, but then, he grasped her around the waist, and pulled her against him, so tight it was as though he never wanted to let her go.
“I’m sorry, Mary,” he breathed in her ear, his voice shaking. “If I’d thought fer a moment that he would—that he might try to?—”
She clasped her hands around him, squeezing him close to her, breathing in the scent of him. For all that she had been confused about what he wanted from her, whether he truly desired her or not, he had made himself clear, once and for all, with what he had done tonight. He had killed the man who had tried to take her from him, the metallic scent of his blood still on Kiernan’s skin, and she knew he would have killed a hundred more if it meant he could hold her in his arms, as he did now.
“Let’s get you back to the Keep,” he murmured against her neck, his voice full of warmth that she wasn’t sure she had ever heard from him before. But she knew, in that moment, that he would never deny her that warmth again. The walls between them had finally crumbled, and the man she had been waiting for him to be had finally shown his face.
As she breathed in the warm scent of him, she promised herself that she would never let him go, not as long as she lived.
18
As Kiernan rounded the corner that would bring them on to the path to the Keep, he pressed his face against Mary’s hair one more time, inhaling deeply. He needed to convince himself that she was really there, no matter how impossible it seemed.
He thought he had lost her. He thought that she had slipped through his fingers, and that he would never get her back. When he had realized she was gone, it had fallen into place for him, how much he wanted her to stay, how badly he needed for her to be by his side. No matter what he had tried to tell himself, about using a marriage to her to get close to the Aitkens, the truth was that Archie was right about one thing; he wanted her as his wife, not as his pawn, as a piece he could move around the board to make use of whenever he needed her. As a partner. An equal.
Seeing her bound to that tree, mere moments away from being slain by Archibald, an anger had risen inside of him that he had not felt since his days fighting for his father’s cause. He would have done anything it took to snuff out Archibald in that instant. No matter what they might have shared, how he might have trusted his old friend in the past, he would not have let him live, not after what he had done.
As they finally arrived back at the Keep just as the sun began to rise, he vowed that he would never let anyone get close to her like that again—not without his say-so. He had insisted on carrying her home on his horse, his arms on either side of her as he gripped the reins, and she had leaned against him, seemingly relieved to be able to let go of some of the fear and tension that had consumed her in her flight from the Keep.
When they arrived back, Amelia was waiting by the door. The moment she saw her sister, she burst into tears.
“Oh, Mary!” she exclaimed, and Mary leapt from the horse to throw herself into her sister’s arms. The two of them embraced warmly, as only siblings could, and he caught Arran’s eye from where the other man—his brother-in-law, he supposed—was sitting atop his horse. Arran nodded slightly, a moment of silent respect passing between the men. Whatever had happened before they had met, they had worked together to find Mary and to bring peace to Amelia, and neither of them would ever forget what they had done for one another.
Arran moved to his wife’s side, and put his arm around her protectively. When the two women finally pulled apart, Kiernan took Mary’s hand and squeezed it tight. He didn’t want to be away from her, not even for a moment, but at the same time, there were matters in his Keep he needed to attend to.
“I’ll be fine,” she promised him softly, as though she could sense what was on his mind. “I need to rest. You can take care of whatever you need to. I’ll be waiting in my chambers for you.”
Those words softened something in his mind, and he nodded with relief, dropping a kiss on her cheek before Amelia began fussing over her again.
