Page 44 of Wanted By the Wicked Highlander

She did not flinch. She did not move her chair back.

“Alba.” He stopped a mere two feet from her, close enough that she had to tip her chin back to maintain his gaze. “I daenae play games.”

Her horn cup came down on the table with a sharp, definitive click. She was on her feet in the same motion, the heavy wood of her chair scraping hard against the stone flags.

For one suspended second, they stood at the same height, close enough that he could see the amber candlelight dancing in the dark of her eyes. A sudden flush had climbed into her cheeks, and it was not entirely born of anger.

“I do nae either,” she whispered. Her voice was low, fiercely controlled. “Ye took me home, Sebastian. Ye walked in here with drawn swords, ultimatums, and a deadline, and ye honestly expect me people to forget me existence and redirect themselves to ye in a fortnight?” Her eyes flashed hard, dangerous. “Forgive me for findin’ that expectation somewhat unreasonable.”

His name in her voice. It moved through his veins the same way it had in the dark corridor. That involuntary physical response, the way his entire attention sharpened and narrowed all at once to the specific frequency of her. He had not managed to build a single defense against it in ten days. He was beginning to doubt he ever would.

Damn her!

He exhaled once, slow and deliberate, and placed one large hand flat on the oak table beside her. He was not blocking her escape. He was simply present, his massive weight leaning in, closing the space between them to something that required both of them to be agonizingly aware of it.

“They trust ye,” he said.

It came out entirely differently than he had intended. There was something raw in it that he had not planned to put there and could not take back.

Alba blinked.

It was a small shift that moved through her expression. A brief, unguarded softening at the very edges, visible for half a second before she caught it and ruthlessly pressed it back down behind her composure. But he had been studying her face for days, and he caught it.

“Aye,” she said, her voice dropping lower than before. “They do.”

The fire settled in the hearth with a low, soft collapse of glowing embers. The candlelight between them threw warm, unsteady shadows across her face, across the single dark curl that had come loose from her braid to fall against the line of her jaw.

Sebastian looked at her.

The fury was still vibrantly present in the line of her shoulders and the sharp set of her mouth. Her hands were flat on the table now, braced, her knuckles carrying a faint white pressure. Beautiful, furious, and entirely immovable.

He was going to say the next thing because it desperately needed saying, and because no version of this conversation ended well if he did not.

“I need ye for Brian,” he said, his voice dropping, stripped of its harsh edges. “I need ye to help run this Castle. Nae because the contract requires a wife. Because he needs what ye give him, and I daenae have it to give him meself.” He held her gaze, forcing her to look at him. “And because this Holdin’ runs when ye’re in it, and it doesnae when ye’re nae. I have been practical enough to stop pretendin’ otherwise.”

He let the truth of that sit heavily between them.

“And ye need a home,” he continued, pushing further. “Nae a cousin’s spare room. Nae refuge. Yer home.”

Alba’s eyes instantly cooled.

“Me cousin,” she said precisely, her tone clipping each word, “would give me far more than refuge. She would give me safety, and dignity, and a roof that was offered rather than taken by force.”

“And yer people?” He kept his voice completely flat. “The ones who look to ye first. The ones ye just sent away with a single nod because they trust yer nod above me word. Ye’d leave them all behind rather than accept a practical arrangement that keeps them, and ye, and this entire Clan intact through the winter?”

Her jaw tightened so hard he saw the muscle jump beneath her pale skin.

“Surrenderin’ to ye,” she said, her voice dropping to something low, dark, and scorching, “is what ye call a simple arrangement?”

He knew he should stop.

She was looking at him with that mouth, that beautiful fury, and those cheeks flushed dark in the fading candlelight. The wordsurrenderingwas still hanging heavily in the air between them. He had not slept properly in days; the unsigned letter toMargaret MacKenzie sat on the study desk, and tomorrow was Sunday.

“Didnae seem to bother ye,” he said, his voice dropping to a low, rough murmur that scraped against the quiet of the Hall, “surrenderin’ to me that night.”

The silence that followed was deafening.

Alba stopped breathing. He watched it happen—the complete, frozen stillness as her chest paused for a full, agonizing second. Then her eyes, which had been locked on his, shifted. The fury was still there, but beneath it was something rawer than rage—something far more dangerous to both of them.