Page 2 of Wanted By the Wicked Highlander

“Listen to me.” Sebastian’s voice cut through the wind, coming out harder and steadier than he actually felt. Exhausted heads lifted through the billowing smoke. “Clan MacGregor still stands.”

Some soot-stained faces shifted with something close to desperate relief. Others stayed completely hollow. Sebastian understood both.

“We lost our lands,” he said, his voice echoing off the burning stone. “We lost our homes.” He let the grim reality sit in the cold air for one breath. Just one. “But we didnae lose each other.”

“Kerr will never stop!” a voice shouted from somewhere deep in the huddled crowd. A man’s voice rose ragged and sharp, filled with fear and fury.

The mention of the name sent rage moving through Sebastian’s chest like a hot blade. He held it tight inside his ribs. He let the anger sharpen rather than spill.

“Then let him come,” he said, the words falling cold as iron. “While I breathe a single breath, me sole purpose is to protect this Clan.”

The Great Hall’s center beam cracked and groaned behind him, collapsing into the embers. A woman somewhere to his left was praying in a low, rhythmic murmur. On his shoulder, Brian’s small fingers tightened slightly against Sebastian’s neck.

He looked across his people one last time. Really looked into every exhausted, terrified, ash-covered face.

Duncan had been the one meticulously built for this. Duncan had known their names, their children’s names, which men needed firmness, which needed kindness, and which needed to be heard.

Sebastian had always been the blunt sword. The lethal threat. The terrifying thing that walked miles ahead of his brother into every dark place so Duncan never had to touch the filth of war.

“Before winter comes,” Sebastian said, his dark blue eyes locking onto his people, “I will find us walls again. I will find us food again.” He shifted Brian’s light weight against his chest. “And I swear to ye on me brother’s blood, Clan MacGregor will rise from this fire.”

The heavy silence that followed was not entirely hopeless. That was the only thing he could say for it.

Hamish appeared at his shoulder the moment Sebastian stepped down from the cart wheel.

They were already moving, already thinking ahead to the pitch-black South Road, the biting cold, and how many miles stood between his vulnerable people and anything resembling safety. The older warrior said nothing for a long moment. He just walked stride for stride beside him through the swirling ash and the dark while the remnants of the Clan began to move behind them, setting a slow, agonizing shuffle of the utterly exhausted.

“Ye’ll need land,” Hamish said finally.

His voice was quiet, dropping beneath the whistling wind. It was the way he always said the heavy things that needed saying.

“Aye.”

“Before the first frost strikes the glens.”

“I ken.”

Brian lifted his small head then. It was the very first time he had pulled away since the fire started. His face was heavily streaked with black soot and dried tears, his eyes red-rimmed and intensely serious. He looked at Sebastian’s hard profile for a long, quiet moment.

“Are we going to be all right?” he asked. His small voice was barely a whisper against the wind.

Sebastian met the boy’s anxious gaze. Duncan’s exact eyes stared back at him. Same shape. Same piercing blue color. Same quiet steadiness behind them, even in the middle of ruin.

He did not lie to him. He could not.

“Aye,” he said, his voice dropping into a rough, absolute vow. “We are.”

Brian held his gaze a moment longer, measuring the lines of his uncle’s face. Then, apparently satisfied, he tucked his face back against the curve of Sebastian’s neck and said nothing more.

Sebastian walked on through the biting dark, the creeping cold, and the thick smell of woodsmoke clinging to the damp wool of everything they owned.

Behind him, out of the ashes of Blackthorn, what remained of Clan MacGregor followed him into the night.

Chapter Two

The storm came in from the north without apology.

Alba felt the change before she saw it, a sharp shift in the atmospheric pressure that pressed cold and purposeful against her cheeks as she urged her mare higher along the narrow mountain pass.