Page 39 of Outlaw Ever After

Time lulled. Quiet descended.

A knife clattered to the rushes, but the muscle held firm around her like an oak twining her in his branches—

Hands wrenched her from the warm embrace.

“Nay!” She flinched.

Seamus’s hand dropped immediately, the sharp edge of his anger contorting his face with regret.

“Sister ,” he breathed, scouring his face. “Ye were nearly slashed.”

But when she dared to look up, Alexander’s glare was trained on her brother who’d just yanked her free. Face battered, nose bleeding and staining his beard red, his eye was swelling into a nasty pulp. Her fingers crept over her mouth.

Then she noticed his shoulder. Blood oozed through the slash in his doublet.

She stepped around Seamus, splaying apart the tear. When she’d jumped between them, Seamus’s knife had been about…to strike her .

“Ye protected me,” she breathed. He’d taken the stab without a thought.

“I promised I always would”—he gritted out, heaving for breath, when seemingly remembering Seamus in audience—“protect those in need.”

She shook her head, winded. “Promises are broken.”

Alexander’s eyes dipped to her empty finger. “Indeed they are.”

“Nay speak a word to her,” Seamus growled.

Not deigning to acknowledge her brother, he gritted, “Are ye hurt?”

“I said, nay a word—”

“Seamus,” she whispered, this time with mounting anger that he wouldn’t stop.

She searched Alexander’s face as his gaze roved over her skin, her neck, searching for injury as if he weren’t a prime example of injury himself.

He exhaled roughly and raked his hand through his hair, ripping strands of strawberry-blond from their knot. “Christ, lass…”

“My lady ,” growled Seamus, composing himself. “Nay lass . She’s nay one of the tavern wenches ye seek along the high road.”

“Seamus ,” Peigi breathed a rebuke, not wanting to think about the past three months when Alexander might have found solace elsewhere while she’d—

Nay, she was stronger now.

A tick jumped in Alexander’s jaw as he bit something back. Hard work for a man who’d once spouted whatever jest popped into his mind and catapulted it off his tongue.

His eyes fell to her hand. It dropped from her stomach where it had migrated.

“My lady ,” Alexander seethed with a faux smile, blood trickling off his swollen lip and rolling down his beard. “A brother who wouldst take me head. Reminds me of a song.”

She sucked in at his jab.

He shrugged straight his doublet as if he hadn’t just gutted her. He dusted his epauls with the backs of his battered fingers like a haughty prince full of flourish, even if she noticed that for the first time, his smile didn’t meet his emerald pools, when once upon a time in their idyllic greenwood, his eyes had been soft and smitten on her.

“Is this the man?” Seamus breathed in her ear. “Kendrew says he saw him this summ—”

“Ye must stop,” she begged on a thread of air, as Sir Kendrew MacGregor stepped up behind her.

She didn’t want to think on how Alexander had promised her the world. How he’d once gazed at her with reverence. How convincing it had seemed. How he still looked so achingly handsome—