He shook her, hard, and ordered again, “Stop. Now. Before you get hurt.”
The cold order filled her with utter despair, and she quietened, hanging limply from his arms as a hot tear tracked down her cheek.
Several other men had surrounded them, watching with interest as he spoke again. “Can I put you down?”
She nodded, numb, and he lowered her back onto her feet, still gripping her wrist.
“Drop the knife.”
She opened her hand and let the knife fall. He kicked it away to the other men before releasing her wrist.
She felt him stiffen behind her and glanced down. He’d seen the deep purple fingerprints bruising the pale skin of the wrist he’d just released. And, by the grim looks, so had everyone else.
She pulled her arm away and wrapped it around her belly. But he wasn’t done. She’d opened her collar to wash her face in the stream and had left it hanging, enjoying the comfort of fewer buttons. Oh, how she regretted that now. He pulled her jerkin to one side, not roughly, but firmly, exposing her neck down to her collarbone. And she knew what they all would see, the mottled green and blues, thumbprint-shaped bruises.
She felt a flood of shame. And then anger. And a deep abiding hatred for these men that made her feel that way.
Her braid had come loose in the fight, and she let her head hang, covering her tears of pain and rage behind a fall of hair as she frantically laced her jerkin.
“Nim?”
For the first time, she recognized that voice. Older, deeper, but definitelyhis. Gods. Of all the people to find her. As if her own treacherous thoughts had summoned him. How could the gods hate her so much that he was the one to hunt her down?
She wanted to fall to the ground and disappear beneath the leaves.
But she wasn’t a coward. She turned, lifted her chin, and looked him in the eye. Tristan. Wearing the black uniform and sword of the cavalry divisions.
His face matched his voice. It was harder, with frown lines where once he’d smiled. Green eyes deeper, colder, and more cynical. Unshaved. A jagged scar under his left eye. His dark hair was too long, curling slightly as it touched his collar. Emerald and pewter scales on his arms that she should have recognized.
Just as handsome; more, maybe, than he had been. Her teenage crush, grown-up and devastating. And the bastard who had abandoned her brother. Who had tracked her down like an animal.
She took a step forward and let her hand fly with a hard slap to that rough cheek.
Chapter Six
Tristan knewwhat she was going to do a second before she even lifted her hand. And, in the same second, he also knew that he would let her. He stood still and took it.
The deep disgust he’d felt at himself when he saw how his big, calloused hands had pressed into the existing bruises on her delicate wrists had almost overwhelmed him, and he had no intention of making the same mistake again.
But more than that, a small voice inside him whispered that he deserved her scorn. Hunting down an injured woman. What would Morgan have thought of that?
Morgan’s own daughter. Fuck, the man was probably cursing him from the grave.
He shook his head slightly but made no move to cover the bright red handprint as he stared down at her. There were a hundred things he should ask, but he couldn’t think of any of them.
She stared back, her face tearstained and defiant. It was him that looked away, unable to bear her withering gaze. Or the unsettling flicker of interest from his beast.
He took a step back, needing distance, and shouted orders. “Hawks, rations. Jos, Garet, lookout, please.”
The two Mabin soldiers flew off while the rest of the men rapidly dug a firepit and began setting out bread and eggs.
Mathos brought Nim her cloak and satchel and handed them over with a wink and a dramatic flourish that was so overdone, Tristan could swear he saw her almost smile.
It certainly did not make him want to smile. His beast turned in his belly, irritated, and he grunted a stern, “That’s enough!” to Mathos, and then sighed when Nim went back to her blank-faced withdrawal, arms clasped around her belly.
He led her to a pile of rocks, and she sank down, huddled over her satchel.
He sat down next to her, elbows balanced on his knees as he tilted his head to watch her. She was even more beautiful than he’d imagined. Dark hair tumbled around her graceful shoulders. Soft curves and creamy skin that he had the strangest compulsion to touch. Big eyes such a deep blue, with tiny flecks of silver, that they reminded him of a lapis lazuli he’d seen once, long ago.
