Page 62 of Here in Your Arms
“Oh, shit,” she said. “Tiernan, you’re bleeding. You’ve been shot—Oh, God, it looks awful,” she whined, words tumbling fastand anxious. “Does it hurt terribly? It does. It must. Tiernan, you havetwoholes in you—front and back.”
“Rose,” he snapped at the same time, voice low but sharp. “I saidrun.” Despite the fact that she hadn’t run, despite the searing pain in his shoulder, a wave of pure relief rolled over him. She was safe.
She wasn’t listening to him. “Can you lift your arm? We need to stop the bleeding—where are your men? Oh, my God, are they dead?”
And Tiernan wasn’t listening to her. “Ye dinna heed me,” he scolded severely, sheathing his sword finally. “Ye run, Rose. When I say run, ye run, dammit.”
“What if they’re trapped under those rocks? Tiernan, we need to—”
He circled his fingers around her arm, yanking her toward him, effectively silencing her. “Cease. We need to find the destrier first.” More men could be waiting beyond the tree line, more arrows could already be trained on them, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. And he was growing weaker by the minute.
Exhaling sharply, he forced himself to move. His grip on her arm was firm, but not unkind. “Come,” he muttered, his voice rough with the effort it took to stay upright. “We need to move.”
Chapter Fourteen
The forest was so much less scary when one wasn’t being pursued by murderous thieves—and when walking side by side with a man like Tiernan MacRae.
The woodland loomed around them, its ancient trees towering high. Gnarled branches, swayed by a strong wind, cast restless shadows over the uneven ground. Every sound seemed amplified in the heavy quiet—the distant rustling of unseen creatures, the crunch of their feet against the soft, leaf-littered earth, the occasional ragged inhale from the man beside her.
Rose walked blindly, keeping pace with Tiernan, her mind still trying to comprehend what she’d just witnessed.
She couldn’t stop seeing it, the fight. The way Tiernan had moved—so fast, so brutal, so completely in control. There had been no hesitation, no wasted movement. Every strike had been purposeful, every blow calculated. And yet, for all that skill, there had been nothing graceful about it. He had fought like a man who had done this a thousand times before, like someone who did not just survive violence but lived in it, thrived in it.
She’d watched as his sword cut through flesh, as men collapsed beneath the force of his strikes, as the glint of steel disappeared into the bodies of his enemies and came back red. She had seen the moment life left them, the moment their eyes had gone blank, and their bodies had crumpled to the earth.
Rose’s stomach churned, her fingers twitching at her sides. This wasn’t like reading about history in books. It wasn’t like watching a battle unfold inside a theatre, where the violence was contained, made unreal by the barrier of a flat screen and larger than life actors.
She had never seen a man killed before. Not once. And now she had seen three die by Tiernan’s hand in less thanfive minutes. She exhaled, slow and measured, trying to steady herself. But the memory of it pressed against her skull. The brutal violence of it was hardly something she would ever forget.
Tiernan's voice broke through her thoughts, startling her. “Ye’re quiet, lass,” he remarked, his tone low. "Were ye harmed? Are ye well?"
The absurdity of it nearly stopped her in her tracks. She turned her head sharply, her gaze catching. "Am I well?" A short, disbelieving laugh escaped her. "You’re the one with an arrow sticking out of your shoulder, and you’re asking if I’m okay?"
His expression didn’t change, but she saw the gleam of something in his sharp blue eyes. "Aye," he said simply.
She let out another shaky breath, this one closer to a scoff. "I’m fine.”
They continued on through the underbrush, Rose watching the dimming light filter through the trees. After a few minutes, she glanced at his shoulder again. The bleeding had slowed, but not stopped. His face was pale, taut with pain. But he kept moving forward like the wound was nothing more than an inconvenience.
“How far to Dunmara?” she asked.
He grunted. “Naught but an hour, if we’d a horse.”
She glanced behind them. “Is that what we’re doing? Looking for your horse?” She’d noticed they seemed to be backtracking, walking through the woods to the scene of the first murders and the rockslide.
“Aye,” he said shortly. “If nae my steed, there might be a stray.”
Rose kept her eyes peeled, but the woods were empty. No pounding hooves. No sounds but wind and leaves.
After several minutes, Tiernan slowed, then stopped. His eyes swept the forest ahead, narrowing.
“We’re close to the path,” he muttered. “Too close.”
She looked at him, waiting for him to explain what that meant.
He turned sharply. “If there are more of them waiting, that’s where they’ll be. Eventually, they’ll come this way, searching for their dead friends.”
Rose swallowed thickly, shrinking a bit into the MacIntyre breacan.
