Page 9 of Trapped By the Exiled Bastard

He shook his head in disgust. “I intend tae keep ye until I’m sure me brothers and I are safe,” he hissed back. “I’ll never be such a monster as tae force an unwillin’ woman, but believe as ye please. Whatever ye think of me, whatever happens next, I will nae let another MacKenzie die. Nae under me watch while I could have done somethin’ about it. An’ certainly nae because of someone like ye.”

With that, he turned his back and stormed out of the cabin, slamming the door behind him with unnecessary force.

Elin wanted to shout after him, but the insult or plea or whatever it had been died in her throat. It didn’t matter, did it? No matter what she said, he was right—she was his to do with as he pleased.

Eamon would find her. She had to believe that. But her stomach clenched as she wondered whether Eamon would even look for her. He had to, didn’t he? If nothing else, Keir and his friends had stolen his horse. At least that would be important enough for him to track them down.

She stopped, horrified by the injustice of her own thoughts. Of course Eamon would come for her. She was being unfair to think of him any less. She tried to comfort herself with memories of their time together, of the sweet promises he’d whispered time and again in her ear, and of the way it felt to be in his arms—not secure, exactly, but wanted.

Yes, Eamon would come. He had to. She just had to wait for him.

And yet, despite those assurances that she told herself over and over again, Elin had never felt so cold.

Or so alone.

4

Keir’s cold anger did not allow him to talk to Elin again for the rest of the night—or, at least, that was part of the reason.

It was the reason that he was clinging to, the excuse to avoid her that kept him going and left him able to avoid examining the growing pull he felt in her presence. What was it about her that was drawing him in? He didn’t know, and more importantly, he didn’t want to know. Truly, he wished he could just let her go now, simply so that he never had to see her again.

A dark thought lingered in the back of his mind that, had the Broken Blades really deserved the fullness of their reputation, he could be rid of her for good. But even as furious as he was, the thought of a world robbed of that kind of spirit felt like a world not worth fighting for. That, of course, only served to make him even angrier.

“She’s bonny, that lass ye’ve brought.”

He looked up to see the last person he wanted to see approaching him—Briana, his apparent new sister-in-law, stood in front of him. She looked as pretty as she had when he’d last seen her, but something about her had changed. She’d shed the Cameron name, and with it the Cameron look had fallen away from her, leaving something wilder, more full of life. Still, his reflexes caused him to rear back, having to fight with his own innate distrust before he was able to speak.

“Aye,” he grunted.

Briana paused. “May I sit?” she asked after a moment.

He grunted again but patted the space on the ledge beside him. “It’s yer camp as much as mine, so I hear.”

Her lips twitched into a smile at that. She perched beside him and said, “Is this yer way of biddin’ us congratulations?”

Keir snorted.

They sat in silence for a moment before Briana spoke again. “How are yer injuries?” she asked. “Ye seem fairly well, considerin’ how bad it looked. Ye lost a lot of blood.”

“I’m alive. We’ve faced worse.” Keir spoke the words almost by rote. He couldn’t meet her gaze, instead staring at the ground in front of him. “I’m sure Theon has told ye all about some of our wilder misadventures.”

“Aye, that he has, and more,” Briana replied. They were silent again for a moment before she asked, “Why did ye bring her here?”

His jaw clenched. Anger rippled through him—at her for asking, at Elin for her accusations, and most furiously at himself. “I told Theon—”

“I’m nae talkin’ about what happened. I’m talkin’ about what happened before. How did it come that a lass that she recognized ye after all these years in the shadows? Ye never struck me as the type tae be distracted by a lovely face or a full figure,” Briana pressed in that annoyingly forward way of hers that Theon seemed to find so delightful. “Surely—”

“Hush,” Keir warned through gritted teeth. Yes, Elin was beautiful, but that was nothing to do with the way she kept dancing through his mind, or the way that her words, which would have been glancing blows from anyone else, had cut him so deeply “Just… hush.”

Briana paused, then shook her head. “As ye like. But remember how ye reacted when Theon brought me here, before ye kent how I was? Ye saw a woman bound and frightened and ye attacked yer own blood for me honor. Now the same thing has happened again, but ye’ve left the lass a prisoner in the darkness.”

Keir balled his hands into fists, still unable to look at her.

The last thing he needed was Briana of all people pointing out his hypocrisy, or whatever it was she was doing.

Yet he couldn’t stop thinking of how Elin had looked when he walked into his cabin earlier to find her bound and blindfolded. Lost. Vulnerable. So impossibly afraid. He had caused that. Was it any wonder she had insulted him? He bristled again thinking of her insults, but guilt settled in his stomach as he thought of her alone now, so far from everything she’d known just because she’d had the misfortune of meeting him by chance. He wondered what his brothers were saying about him right now at the campfire.

“I could have abandoned her in the woods and left her tae find her way home or die tryin’, would ye have preferred that?” he growled.