Unwanted (21 page)

Roderick and Connor looked at him uneasily.
 

“It
doesna
seem like her to leave the babe unattended,” Roderick murmured.
 

“Aye,” Lindsay agreed.
 
“Evelyn said that a half hour past she sent a maid up with wood for a fire, but Jamie insisted on carrying the wood for the girl.
 
We should ask him if she was in the room then.”

Jamie.
 
Finn remembered the burly Highlanders’ contemptuous treatment of
Rhona
.
 
The dagger he’d held to her throat.

His gaze collided with Connor’s.
 

“Nay,” the Laird insisted.
 
“Not Jamie.
 
He’s been with us for decades.
 
I would have known.”

“But have you been looking or listening for espionage?” Finn demanded.
 

The Laird clenched his jaw.
 
“Nay.
 
Things have been quiet here, and I have to be intending to use my ability for it to work.”

Finn leapt forward, rushing around Lindsay, sprinting across the courtyard and eating up the distance to the chamber he’d shared with
Rhona
.
 
He could hear the echo of his brothers’ boots as they followed him through the keep.
 
The door almost swung off its hinges as he burst inside, needlessly calling her name.
 

No fire crackled in the hearth, but a rough load of wood rested on the stones, waiting to be used.
 

A scent permeated the room that shrank the size of Finn’s heart by half.
 

Blood.
 
Rhona’s
blood.
 

He tore through the room like a man possessed, looking for signs of a struggle or a stain that would tell him how hurt she was.
 
He came up with nothing.

“Jamie has been in here.” Connor’s nostrils flared.
 

Rage crashed through Finn with the speed and power of a war hammer.
 
He bellowed, hoping to release some of it before it consumed him.
 

His Berserker rattled about inside of him, calling for vengeance, for the kind of death that broke the sheath of one’s soul so entirely, no one could recognize the remains.
 

Wordlessly, Connor and Roderick fell into step behind him as he stalked out the chamber door.
 
He knew where Jamie had taken her.
 

They were going to war.

***

“My part is done.”
 
Rhona
heard Jamie through the haze of pain thrumming through her temples and throbbing in her ears.
 
It sounded like the ebb and flow of the ocean, but she couldn’t be sure through the rough bandage surrounding her head.
 
“Now
ye’ll
rid our clan of the Berserker usurpers and instate me as Laird, like ye promised.”

The sound of a boreal chuckle shivered up her spine and
Rhona
squeezed her eyes shut.
 

“Your first mistake was thinking we’d leave any of the clan that sheltered the Berserkers alive for you to rule.
 
Who knows how many bastards are spread amongst you fertile Highlanders who breed like rats?”
 

A spear of panic bolted through her.
 
If she’d thought Finn’s voice was cold, she now understood it to be a summer beam of sunlight compared to the absolute chill in the Nordic accent of the man threatening Jamie.

She didn’t want to hear what Jamie’s second mistake was.

Apart from the pain in her head,
Rhona’s
shoulders ached.
 
Her arms, bound at the wrists, stretched behind her around a wide wooden pillar.
 
While she’d been unconscious, she’d leaned into her bonds, putting undue pressure on her arms.
 
They trembled now, whether from terror or weakness she couldn’t be sure.
 

“We have no quarrel with
yer
kind,” Jamie protested frantically.
 
“You promised to return the clan back to a true
MacLachlan
, not some Nordic line that weaved in with a weak-willed chieftain’s daughter.”

“Your second mistake was
believing
we’d let a traitor like you live.”
 
The speaker obviously decided to ignore Jamie’s pleas.

“Your clan has been blessed up until now to share the sacred blood of the Berserker, impure as it is.
 
But now the blessing has run its course, and we’re here to cleanse the Highlands.”

Jamie made a sound of such desperation that
Rhona
couldn’t help but open her eyes and lift her head to look at him.
 

“This is the kindness we pay you for your service to us.
 
You won’t have to watch us slaughter your clan.”

The man who held Jamie by the throat with one hand was distinguished by his uncommonly red hair and beard.
 
Streaked with silver, they both grew to his chest in thick strings, hiding his visage but for a pair of vacant eyes the color of sapphires.

When he crushed Jamie’s windpipe with a paltry squeeze,
Rhona
whimpered as her kidnapper collapsed to the floor, dead.
 

She regretted her sound when the villain moved in a blur of grey robes until he towered over her.

Fear dispelled some of her disorientation and she recognized the briny smell of the coast and the crash of the sea.
 
She was tied to the mast of a boat, surrounded by maybe five and twenty men dressed after the fashion Finn had been when he’d sought her out.
 
Different colored tunics splashed the unnatural silver mist with vibrant hues.
 
The obvious leader’s grey robes stood out in contrast.

Rhona
tasted the sea on her tongue when her mouth opened to allow deeper terrified breaths.
 
But the floor beneath her didn’t sway with the roll of the waves.
 
They must be wedged onto the golden sand, though she couldn’t see over the edge of the boat for the thick fog.

She was now a captive of the temple Berserkers, and a dread certainty washed over her.
 
These monsters would show her no kindness.
 
Not even the variety they’d bestowed upon the traitor, Jamie.

“So, Jamie spoke the truth.
 
Fionngall
the bastard isn’t dead.”
 
He bent at the waist, taking a deep inhale.
 
“You reek of him.”

“He is my
mate
,”
Rhona
declared, her anger for the man she was bound to overrode her self-preservation.
 
“And he is no longer a bastard, but a MacLauchlan.”

Rhona
got the impression that she’d stunned every single one of the enormous men surrounding her.
 
They shifted and looked to their leader.
 

“Lies!” he hissed.
 
“The fact that he fucked you doesn’t make him your mate, regardless of what he told you to lure you into his bed.”

“He kissed me.”
 
Rhona
defended.
 
“His Berserker accepted me and now he and his mated brothers are more powerful than all of you.”
 
Trying to throw veracity into her threat,
Rhona
narrowed her eyes at the leader.
 
Magnus his name was?
 
“Even
you.
”

“Mated?”
 
A young dark-haired man in skins the color of barley grains before harvest stepped from the faction of silent, fearsome warriors.
 
“You said the Goddess forbade us to mate before the elders did.
 
That only the purest bloodlines would be blessed with mates.”

“He lied to you,”
Rhona
accused, hoping beyond all that some discord would buy her time.

“Be silent, whore!”
 
Magnus drew a long, jagged knife and pressed it against her belly.
 
“Do not stir my men with your poisonous tongue.”

“Magnus doesn’t speak for the Goddess.
 
He never did.”

Finn!
 
Rhona’s
soul leapt with hope as the man who held her heart materialized from the mist like a fabled
Fae
warrior and stepped down from the rail of the longboat.
 
Roderick and Connor flanked him, weapons in hand, like two gigantic dark demons guarding her avenging angel.
 

Though execution burned on the features of the Scotsmen, the chill in Finn’s eyes rivaled that of Magnus’s.
 
Utterly stark and nigh on dead.
 
He stood taller, larger than any man present and his impossibly strong body was revealed by the deep colors of the MacLauchlan tartan.

Rhona
tried to meet his eyes, but he barely flicked a glance her direction before scanning his former kin, his dull green gaze landing on Magnus.
 

“Fucking Celtic women.”
 
Magnus’s breath hit her face like an icy blast.
 
“The bane of my very existence.
 
What sort of magic do you possess between your
legs that continually draws
my brethren away from the control of the temple?”

The knifepoint nipped at soft flesh of her belly and
Rhona
gasped, more frightened at what the sight of her blood would do if the blade broke her skin than of being stabbed.

Magnus sighed and focused his chilling eyes on Finn, the dagger staying right where it was.
 

“Do you think she’ll live through this?
 
No matter which way it goes?”
 
His beard parted in a smile.
 
“Do you think you can reach me before I
gut
her?”

“Do you think I care?”
 
At Finn’s monotonous words,
Rhona’s
head snapped as though he’d physically slapped her.
 
What was he saying?
 

“She’s your
mate
,” Magnus sneered.

“She’s a local whore who my Berserker happened to want.”
 
Finn waved in her direction as though doing so might erase her from the ship.
 
“Mating with her granted me untold power and a foothold among my brothers who have accepted me into their clan.
 
It was worth the risk of her life.”

A roaring began to build in
Rhona’s
ears.
 
He had to be bluffing.
 
What about what they’d shared the last few nights, or their bond with Iain?
 
She couldn’t have imagined the sincerity of his feelings.
 
The depth of his tenderness.
 

Could she?

Needles of uncertainty pricked her skin as she searched his implacable granite face for any sign of emotion and found nothing but ice.
 
Then she turned her desperate gaze on his brothers.
 

They both refused to look at her.
 

“But you came for her.” Magnus’s voice rose in time with his apprehension.

“I came to subdue a threat,” Finn’s hands twitched at his sides beside his weapons that were lashed over the MacLauchlan tartan.
 
“She has outlived her usefulness to me as I’ll retain my powers after her death and be beholden to no one.”

Rhona’s
insides curled upon themselves, shriveling into parched husks of sorrow.
 
Though her mind told her Finn’s painful words were disingenuous, a dark part of her doubted not only him, but her own discernment.
 
Perhaps she’d been so desperate and lonely that she’d attributed emotion to him where there’d been none.
 
A tear slipped down her cheek.
 
What if he’d used her completely and cast her aside?