Page 50 of In Bed with a Highland Beast

With a cry, Alaric parried the man’s blow, pushing him back with a kick to the thigh. The other stumbled, taking a few steps backwards, his eyes bloodthirsty, flashing in the light of the torches as he glared at Alaric. He couldn’t help but wonder how many other fights this man had fought. He couldn’t help but wonder if he had experienced anything else but fights in his life.

There is only one way out o’ this.

Alaric drew a deep breath and delivered attack after attack, swinging his sword with all his might as he trapped the other man against a tree. With a well-timed blow, the man’s sword flew out of his hand, landing a few steps away on the ground witha clang, and Alaric didn’t miss the horror in his gaze when the realization that he was entirely defenseless sank in. When there was no escape for him, nowhere to run and no one to help him, Alaric delivered the final blow—not with his blade, but with the hilt of his sword, hitting the young man on the side of the head and rendering him unconscious.

With any luck, he would wake up once the fight was over with little more than a lasting headache.

With him disarmed, Alaric turned his attention back to the fight that still raged behind him, but still, he couldn’t spot Lucia among the crowd. One of the men had managed to lodge his torch among the branches of a tree, but the other seemed to have dropped it at some point in the fight, and the flames had spread over the ground in patches, burning bright. Their only hope was that the ground was damp from days of humid and unfavorable weather, making it difficult for the fire to spread far, but the flames that had already been ignited obscured Alaric’s field of vision, disorienting him and turning his task of finding Lucia into an impossible one.

“Oi!” he heard a man call, and it was no voice he recognized. “Is that nay the lassie who worked with Rory? Rory Campbell?”

Alaric followed the man’s pointing finger to finally find Lucia, just as she plunged her sword in a man’s stomach. She made for a wild figure, her clothes soaked in blood, her dark hair falling out of the ponytail in which she had hastily gathered it, strands sticking to her face with sweat. She heaved, her chest rising and falling rapidly as she stared at the man before her crumble tothe ground, and Alaric couldn’t help but recall an image of an avenging angel, as beautiful as she was terrifying.

“Och aye, that is her,” another man said. “Wonder what she’s doin’ here.”

“I heard she paid a whole pouch o’ gold tae Rory.”

Rory… Rory Campbell… why is that name familiar?

Alaric was certain he had heard it before, though he couldn’t remember where. The men’s conversation had caught his interest, though, and he approached them quietly, trying to hear them better.

“Why?” asked the other man.

“Somethin’ about helpin’ her kidnap some prince,” said the other.

“Prince?” said the man. “What prince?”

“I dinnae ken! That’s all I heard! Daes it matter? We should find out why she’s here.”

Alaric didn’t give them the chance. He was close enough by then, moving undetected, that he could strike them both down quickly, killing them with two swift, easy blows. He didn’t even watch them as they collapsed to the ground, their lives bleedingout of them. Instead, his gaze was glued to Lucia, who turned to meet it through the flames of a burning fire.

He remembered now how he knew that name. Rory Campbell was one of the men who had captured him when Lucia had found him—when she had claimed to have noticed his kidnapping and had allowed the brigands to get to him and help him escape.

Had she been lying to him this entire time? Had she been the one behind the kidnapping? Had she been plotting this all along?

Those men had no reason to lie. They had seen her, they had recognized her, and they had been surprised by her presence there. But why would Lucia have done such a thing? Why would she have orchestrated his kidnapping? Why would she have lied to him all that time?

Was she tryin’ tae trick me intae helpin’ her? Did she ken I would feel indebted tae her?

If that was the case, it had been a risky plan, but one which had clearly paid off. If that was the case, then Lucia had been lying to him and using him since the first day they had met.

From across the flames, Lucia’s gaze slid off him just as the last man standing from the group of brigands approached her. Alaric watched, frozen, as she fought him viciously, mercilessly, with the same kind of lust for blood he had seen in those brigands themselves, bile rising to the back of his throat.

This was not the woman he knew. This was not the woman he loved. He couldn’t recognize a single feature about her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Something was different about Alaric. Lucia could tell, her gut feeling that something had changed as they all headed back to the castle after dealing with the brigands and the small fires that had been ignited in the woods. What she didn’t know was what could have possibly caused such a sudden change in Alaric and his attitude.

They had hardly exchanged a single word since they left the woods. Now, back safe behind castle walls with the attack thwarted, she would have thought that Alaric would be celebrating with everyone else, even if they were all exhausted and there was still much work to be done. Instead, he was sullen, staring right ahead and never once meeting her gaze. Even as soldiers congratulated him, he merely nodded in acknowledgement and bypassed them, never once stopping until he was in his chambers.

Lucia was not far behind. Alaric made no effort to push her aside or tell her not to follow, so she didn’t keep her distance, even if a part of her felt like she should. Whatever it was that had causedthis sudden change in him, it had to be something serious. It had to be something of great magnitude, as she had never seen him like that before. Lucia couldn’t even begin to guess what it could be, though, when everything had been just fine with him just before the attack.

Was he simply concerned, she wondered? Did he blame himself for the Ravencloaks following them to Castle MacGregor? Did he blame her for it?

Once they were in his chambers, Lucia wasted no time before she heated some water from the jug on his dresser and grabbed some clean cloth. Blood coated his arms and neck, and she knew she was in no better condition, but she also knew that save for a few minor scrapes and bruises, she was unharmed. She couldn’t say the same for Alaric. She wasn’t sure how much of that blood belonged to the brigands and how much belonged to him.

With a weary sigh, Alaric sat on the edge of his bed, feet planted firmly on the stone floor. His chambers now seemed colder, though it hadn’t that long since they had left them and the fire was still burning. Something was missing, Lucia thought; something she couldn’t name but she felt it a visceral level.

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