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Someone had fed these babies well, had combed the girl’s hair back from her face not long ago, had wrapped them both against the cold with more care than a person fleeing in haste would have bothered to spare.

This wasn’t abandonment born of desperation. This was deliberate. Someone had chosen this spot, this risk.

Freya couldn’t decide which was worse: that a person capable of such tenderness could also be capable of walking away, or that someone else had taken the babies from gentler hands and left them here instead.

She turned her head towards the entrance to the tent. In the distance, she could hear Evander and Callum’s raised voices, but they were far enough that she couldn’t make out what either of them was saying.

Evander had denied the babies belonged to him, but they were clearly related to him. He had mentioned having a brother. Were they his niece and nephew? It would certainly make sense, because they looked just enough like him.

But that raised the question of how they had gotten here, and more importantly, why.

“We will figure this out, I promise ye,” she told the babies, who stared up at her with wide eyes.

She had held many babies in her life, from Kaden and Emily’s children to Skye and Dougal’s newborn son, so she was no stranger to it. But these were unexpected circumstances.

Time passed by too slowly for her liking. The longer Evander was out there speaking with Callum, the more she feared something was wrong.

13

The man waiting past the treeline wore MacArthur colors.

It took Evander a moment longer than it should have to place him, because the last time he’d seen that face, it had belonged to a boy trailing after his older brother with a wooden practice sword too big for his hands, and now it belonged to a man with grey threading his beard and lines around eyes that had clearly seen too much ever since.

“Ye,” he said, giving him the best neutral look he could muster.

It was a shock to see him again, and yet here he was, for some reason. Evander knew it couldn’t be good. Why else would he be standing here right now, wearing the same colors of the family he had once been a part of?

It had been some time since they last saw each other. After Evander had left home—no, had been banished from home—he had expected to never see any of them again.

He took a moment to remember his name, then it came to him at once.

Jack.

How he had changed. How both of them had changed in the past few years.

“Aye, me Laird.” Jack’s mouth twisted faintly on the title.

Evander understood at once that it was not meant for him, not truly. It was a word chosen out of habit and necessity rather than respect earned.

The disgust on Jack’s face was obvious to anyone who happened to walk by. Evander was no stranger to that expression, but he brushed it off. He wore it as a badge of honor at this point, letting his reputation grow by how other people perceived him.

Wasn’t that how it always went, anyway?

Callum stood a pace off with his hand curled loosely on the hilt of his sword, unimpressed, clearly having formed an opinion of Jack before Evander had arrived.

“I heard ye were around here with…” Jack cast a condescending look at Callum. “… yer people. So we came looking. Some of me men met ye before I did. They didnae come back.”

“Why have ye come looking for me?”

Jack cleared his throat, visibly steeling himself for whatever he’d rehearsed on the long ride over, the words coming out stiff and formal, like something learned rather than felt. “We meant to ask ye to assume yer position, me Laird. But after killing our…”

The words made no sense. Evander blinked slowly, trying to process them, but he was caught up in the fact that Jack was implying that his father was dead.

“What of me faither?”

Jack’s face fell. “Ye daenae ken?”

“Ken what?” Evander was barely able to stop himself from growling in frustration. “Speak plainly.”