Page 33

She pulled away first.

It cost her something to do it, more than she liked to admit, more than she’d have believed possible an hour ago when he was still just the Wolf, still just a stranger with a ring, but she managed it.

She stepped back with her hand pressed flat against her collarbone, as if she could hold her heart in by force.

The music hadn’t stopped. That was the strange thing. The world had gone narrow and quiet around the two of them, and yet the fiddle was still going.

Somewhere behind her, someone was still laughing at some joke she hadn’t heard, as though nothing at all had happened, as though she hadn’t just been thoroughly, devastatingly kissed by her own husband in front of his clan.

All she could think about was kissing him again.

She brushed her fingers over her lips. They were swollen and slightly damp.

Evander was staring down at her, a hungry look in his eyes. It should have scared her. Were she back with Skye and Dougal, she would’ve been in a better state of mind.

They were about to close the distance between them again. She could feel it happening the way one feels weather coming, a pressure building before the first drop fell. But then someone cleared his throat, loudly and without the slightest apology for the interruption.

“Speak,” Evander growled, not turning, “before I throw ye on the ground for interruptin’ me and me wife.”

A shiver ran down her spine, and her cheeks burned, as if she were some blushing maiden.

Freya wanted to scoff at the idea. She was no blushing maiden. No laird had ever reduced her to such a state.

“Me Laird.” It was one of the younger guards. Tam, she thought. Her mind was still hazy with firelight and Evander’s kiss, and she couldn’t have sworn to the name if pressed. “Yer presence is needed. Now.”

Something in the way he said now cut through her daze.

Evander was already moving, and she found herself following without deciding to, her skirts gathered in one fist, half-jogging through the trampled grass to keep pace with him, her heart still not settled from the kiss and now hammering for an entirely different reason.

Callum stood at the edge of the firelight with his sword half-drawn and an expression she had not seen on him before—no grin, no easy teasing, just a quiet that made her stomach drop before she even saw what he was looking at. Behind him, the dark pressed close, the fires only reaching so far before the night swallowed the rest of the world.

“What in the—” Evander stopped short.

Freya couldn’t believe what she was seeing. It was two babies. She blinked and rubbed her eyes.

For a moment, she thought they were Evander’s. The babies resembled him in a way. Same nose and jaw, but the eyes, hair, and noses were completely different.

Two bundles laid ahead, wrapped in wool gone dark with damp, small enough that for one terrible heartbeat, Freya thought they might already be past helping.

“Who would leave two bairns alone out here?” Evander’s voice had gone rough.

He was already crouched, already reaching, gathering one small shrieking bundle into arms that looked entirely too large and too dangerous for the task. However, his hands were unexpectedly careful.

Watching his big, scarred hands hold the babe so gently made her heart ache.

Freya had never thought to associate the word careful with him. Everything about him screamed the opposite of careful, but he was looking at the babies as if they would turn to dust before him.

It was quite something to see.

It made her wonder what else she hadn’t guessed about him, what other quiet things he kept folded away beneath the armor and the reputation, waiting for a moment small enough to need them.

She had married a man she’d thought she understood, with hard hands, harder history, and no patience for softness. But here he was, crouched in the mud, gentling his voice for a stranger’s crying child, and she felt something in her chest shift sideways, unsteady, like ground giving way beneath a foot she’d thought was planted firmly.

She didn’t remember deciding to move. She was on her knees in the wet grass with the second bundle in her arms before her mind caught up.

The baby—a girl, she realized, dark-lashed and furious even at this size—stared up at her with an expression of profound betrayal, as though Freya herself had orchestrated her abandonment in this exact spot on this exact night.

“Who would do this?” Freya whispered to the baby, to the night, to no one who could answer her. “Why would someone leave two bairns here?”