Page 4 of Wanted By the Wicked Highlander

Behind her, she heard it pass through her men in a single, low exhale.

The Beast of Blackthorn.

She had heard the stories. Every clan in the Highlands had heard them. A warrior so relentless in battle that men had begun checking the shadows before they slept. The kind of reputation that spread because enough people had seen the blood it was built on.

Alba kept her face exactly where it was, a mask of calm despite the sudden ice in her stomach.

“Yer name precedes ye, warrior.”

“I am nae a warrior anymore.” His dark gaze swept briefly toward the misty valley, something moving across his expression too quickly to catch. When it returned to her, it was steady again. Decided. “I am the Laird of Clan MacGregor.” His broadsword lifted slowly, not threatening, simply present between them. “And I am lookin’ for a new home for me people.”

Her pulse slammed once, hard, beneath her ribs.

“Then keep ridin’,” she said.

“I cannae.” His blue eyes did not move from hers. “Seems yer Castle has a vacancy.”

She opened her mouth to strike this statement back with a retort.

Shouting erupted violently from somewhere down the hill behind them.

“The merchants!” one of her guards barked, spinning his mount.

Everyone turned at once. Two merchant wagons were visible below, their drivers hauling frantically on the leather reins as the horses caught sight of armed Highlanders blocking the pass ahead. The beasts made the entirely reasonable decision to go somewhere else immediately. One terrified mule swung hard sideways, dragging half the wooden cart clean into the muddy drainage ditch.

The crates stacked on top went in rapid sequence, wood cracking, rope snapping, and then a truly spectacular explosion of bright red apples cascading down the muddy hillside in every direction.

One of Sebastian’s men burst out laughing, a full, helpless sound that echoed off the stone.

It was the exact wrong moment for it.

Alba saw one of her guards decide in real time, his anger flushing red along his neck. His sword came out with a sharp “shhk”. That was all it took. Within seconds, both groups descended into utter chaos, shouting at each other, horses spinning, men slipping sideways in the apple-covered mud with far less dignity than they arrived with.

Someone went down into the muck. Someone else tripped over his boots. A merchant’s boy scrambled up the steep bank and disappeared into the pine trees, apparently deciding this scene was no longer his problem.

Alba’s mare reared, front hooves flailing, as a loose mule came barreling directly through the middle of everything, trailing half a broken harness and what appeared to be someone’s wool hat.

“Stop hittin’ each other!” she shouted furiously over the din, hauling her horse back down with both hands, her forearms straining against the leather.

It took longer than it should have. But it stopped.

The hillside settled into a panting, mud-spattered silence broken only by the rain, which had begun in earnest while nobody was paying attention. Apple-scented mud covered almost everyone.

One of the older merchants was crying quietly at the back of his tilted wagon. John O’Connor had fresh blood on his knuckles.

Sebastian MacGregor stood right in the center of this mess, breathing hard, his broadsword still gripped tightly in his large hand, rain sliding slowly down the hard planes of his face.

He was looking at her.

Not at her men. Not at the road, or the scattered apples, or the general catastrophe surrounding him. At her. With the same flat, decided calm he’d worn since the moment he stepped his horse forward and announced his name. As though the turmoil had been nothing more than an interruption, and this—her, the castle, the decision already made somewhere behind those dark eyes—was the only thing that had ever actually mattered.

Alba’s chest went cold.

She had told herself that this was negotiable. That a man who needed land would weigh the cost of taking it by force against the easier option of a trade, an alliance, or a conversation. That his reputation was a weapon he used to avoid actual conflict, not to invite it.

She looked at his face now and understood, with a horrible, dropping clarity, that she had been wrong.

He was not calculating. He had already calculated. This was not a threat designed to move her toward a better offer. There was no better offer. He had looked at her and had decided.