Unwilling (8 page)

Chapter
Fifteen

Only five men held the chains to
the iron clasped about his throat.  Five.  Connor scoffed at their underestimation
of his lethality as he allowed shackles to be clamped about his wrists.  He
tugged on the left one with a flex of his arm, dragging ragged chains through
both hands of one of his captors.  The skin of the man’s palms broke and he had
to turn from Connor in order to hide the wells of blood. 

Connor bared his teeth in a sneer. 
Bloody idiot should be wearing leather gauntlets.  Obviously, he’d slaughtered
the most elite of the MacKay warriors at the river Tay, and Angus was left with
this sorry lot.  He almost felt sorry for the bastard. 

But the villain didn’t deserve a
moment’s pity.

The sharp sting of a cane broke on Connor’s
bare back, and he swallowed a curse.  It would welt and bruise, but wouldn’t
draw blood.  Angus was more clever and maniacal than his father had been.

“Get the fuck out of here before he
sees ye bleed,” Angus ordered to the injured man as he strode into the tiered,
empty stables of Dun Keep.  His dirty grey eyes narrowed in his severe, thin
face as he watched them spread Connor’s arms wide and chain him to the thick loft
beams.  Folded pads of linen were shoved between the manacles and his flesh, to
prevent them from cutting him.  Not as a courtesy, but as a precaution.

Connor snarled at Angus, but didn’t
lunge at the man.  For behind him, a heavy warrior held a dirk to the neck of a
trembling girl who could have seen fewer than seven summers.  If her blood was
spilled, Connor would berserk, and would not only rip Angus’s limbs from their
sockets and beat him to death with them, he would systematically massacre the
forty or so innocent highlanders huddled in the corner of the stable.

One of which was Rory MacKay. 

Sometimes the berserker was a
blessing; other times, like this, a curse.  He’d failed his charge to Rory. 
Distracted by the needs of his heart, he’d procrastinated coming after Angus
and endangered these people.  He should have known, should have foreseen that Angus
would have no problem using his own divided clan to achieve his ambitious ends. 

He wanted to apologize to Rory, who
stood in front of the unarmed cluster, as though he could single-handedly
protect them.  Held at sword point by a score of soldiers, the crowd, comprised
of mostly women, children, and the elderly, couldn’t tear their eyes from the
child held hostage in front of Connor.  Sometimes, they’d glance at him in
fear, crossing themselves against his pagan evil.  Sometimes they looked to
Rory for hope, or to Angus for mercy.  But most of their collective notice
remained on the frightened hostage as silent tears streaked her wee cherubic
face.  Her hair was a mass of glossed ebony, just like Lindsay’s.  If their
love ever produced a sweet lass, he imagined she’d look something like this angel. 

Connor closed his eyes against a
yawning ache in his chest.  He’d never spoken to her of love.  He should have
before he left.  He should have told her what he’d begun to want.  To look
forward to. 

To feel.

He couldn’t take his eyes off the
child.  

“Do ye know why yer not dead yet?”
Angus leaned in close, secure in his false assumption that he’d leashed a
berserker. 

Connor didn’t dignify his question
with a response, but promised a slow and torturous death with his glare. 

Angus’s lips parted in a nasty
rendition of a smile, revealing a mouth full of crooked, unkempt teeth.  He was
leaner than his father had been, built with wiry strength and thinning copper
hair.  “Because I’m using ye to set a trap for yer brother.  Not unlike my own
brother used ye to set a trap for me.”  He motioned to Rory, who looked ashamed
but furious. 

“Let them go, Angus.  They’re yer
people.  Ye are their Laird.”  Rory pointed to his brother.  “This is between
us.”

“They supported yer mutiny,” Angus
hissed. 

“They challenged yer tyranny,” Rory
fumed.  “But why punish the lassies and the wee ones?  This is no way to—”  

A cane crack to the back of the
head dropped Rory in an unconscious heap of armor and limbs.  Angus sneered at
his brother’s limp body and turned back to Connor.  “After I dispense with you
and Roderick, I’m marching my men north to Straithlachlan to rape his new wife
and raze yer castle to the ground.  Then I’ll take back what ye stole from me.”

Now secured to the beams, Connor
tested his iron shackles.  They held fast.  “Why?” he demanded.  “Why attack my
people?” 

“Because yer brother murdered my
father.  Because you slaughtered my men and captured my Ross bride, who was my
only connection to the monarchy.  Yer crimes must be answered for!”

“What about
your
crimes,
Angus MacKay?” he spat.  “The blood of yer people cry out for vengeance.  Yer
father was a traitor.  He’d have been burned by the Ross had he survived the
battle.  Roderick did him a favor by relieving him of his head.” 

Anger turned the man’s grey eyes
silver before he reached up and kneed Connor in the gut, again careful not to
spill any blood. 

Connor laughed, if somewhat
breathlessly.  “Ye’ll never lay yer hands on Lindsay Ross you filthy fuck. 
I’ll have yer head first.” 

Knowledge flared in Angus’s eyes
and a slow smile spread across his cruel face.  “Soft on her, are ye?  Perhaps
you’ve already claimed her as a spoil of yer victory against my men.”  He
leaned a little farther forward, lowering his voice to a murmur.  “Let yer last
thought be of me between her legs, night after night, erasing yer memory from
her mind.  Whatever she suffered at yer hands, she’ll suffer three-fold at
mine.  Mayhap I’ll have to raise a berserker bastard as my own.”  He barked out
a laugh as Connor lunged at him, only to be pulled short by his iron shackles. 
“Aye, can ye imagine that?”  Angus turned and petted the little girl on her
dark head before reaching for a thick cane.  Her reedy whimper left a gaping
hole in Connor’s heart. 

A sharp pain tore through his arm,
as Angus brought the cane down on the bend in his elbow.  “Avoid his kidneys,”
he ordered his men.  “I doona want him pissing any blood.”

Connor kept his eyes fixed on the
terrified gaze of the child as Angus and his men began to beat him in earnest. 
“Look away, wee one,” he gasped.  “Doona watch.”

Unable to turn her head, she
squeezed her eyes shut and Connor was able to relax a bit.  No stranger to
beatings, he gritted his teeth and tried to formulate a plan. 

***

Night fell.  Hours passed.  Panting
and bruised, Connor had begun to despair of finding any scenario that wouldn’t
end with these innocent people dying along with the MacKay soldiers.  He
couldn’t live with that stain on his soul and he knew Lindsay would never be
able to look upon him without seeing a monster.  Their delicate, blooming bond
would be severed and he would be crushed under the weight of his sins.  He
studied the little girl again, who’d cried herself to exhaustion and now lay
limp in her captor’s hold. 

There
had
to be another way.

As he shifted most of his weight on
one knee, as the other was likely broken, a terrifying tingle of awareness coursed
up his spine. 

Lindsay. 

She was close. 

“This little bird is demanding an
audience with ye, Laird.”  A fat, dirty man with soot in his graying beard held
Lindsay’s arms in a brutal grip as he led her to stand beside the mean bench
that Angus had converted into a table. 

“
No,
” Connor breathed.  At
the sight of her, his soul reached out, dragging his body to lean against his
chains with all his strength.  “Lindsay.  No.”  His voice sounded dark and low,
even to his own ears, laced with a desperation that had never been a part of
him until now. 

She didn’t even glance at him. 

The Laird of the MacKay clan didn’t
look up from the quail he was tearing apart with his fingers and shoving into
his mouth. 

“Throw her in the corner with the
others,” he commanded. 

“But, sir, she claims to be—”

“I am Lindsay Ross, daughter to the
former greatest Regent of Scotland and niece to the man who currently holds the
title.  I
demand
, in the name of that great station, that you release every
one of these people at once.”  Her eyes flicked to the small girl who’d stirred
at the commotion of her entry and was again threatened with the edge of a
blade.

Connor remembered a similar threat
she’d meted out to him when they’d first met.  He loved the sound of her
haughty, superior tone.  He loved the strength of courage that held her posture
ramrod straight.  He loved the violet retribution blazing in her eyes.  He
loved… her. 

A fear, dark and bitterly frigid,
washed the pain from his body, dousing him in bleak, numb impotence.  He knew
at once, in the darkest recesses of himself, that he would die for her, kill
for her, slay everyone in this room and be denied the glory of her company,
just so she could live on unharmed.  Part of him was ashamed.  Part of him thirsted
for blood.

After a stunned moment, Angus
stood, wiping the grease from his thin, cruel mouth with his shirtsleeve. 
Possession gleamed in his eyes as he scanned her from the top of her shimmering
raven hair, to her generous mouth, to the curves displayed by her velvet purple
dress.  She’d donned the color of royalty.  

Clever lass. 

She didn’t shrink from the
lascivious perusal, but gave as well as she got, making it perfectly clear that
she remained unimpressed.    

“How bold of ye, lady Ross, to make
such demands.”  Angus towered over her, crowding her with his body. 

Connor let out a low warning growl.

“Release them, eh? Even yer
berserker captor?”  Angus tracked her every response very carefully.

Faltering for the first time since
she’d entered, her gaze fluttered to Connor and her poise slipped for the
slightest instant before she jutted out on obstinate jaw.  “I said
everyone
.” 

With a snort, Angus paced back
behind her, breathing into her ear.  “And what would I receive in return for
meeting your conditions?” 

“Safety from the wrath of my clan,
from the arm of the king.”

“Ye’ll have to do better than that,
my dear.  The berserkers have sealed their fates, but if ye want to save these
people—” He swiped with is hand to the frightened occupants of the room. 
“Ye’ll have to honor our betrothal contract.” 

“Don’t ye dare!”  Fury coursing
through him, Connor forgot his injuries and lunged toward Angus.  The beams
groaned and protested beneath his struggles, but the shackles held fast.

Lindsay shot him a quelling look,
but a telling blush crept up her chest and colored her cheeks.  “I’ve already
been deflowered by Laird MacLauchlan.  Our betrothal contract is then
considered void, as I am no longer in possession of my virtue.  Surely you’d
want someone else.”

Angus smiled and wrapped his oily
fingers around her shoulders.  “You know nothing of my desires.”

“Take yer fucking hands from her,” Connor
raged.  “Mark me, Angus, I will bathe in your entrails.”

The little girl let out a soft cry
as her arm was wrenched painfully behind her.  Lindsay reached forward as
though to stop it, but was held captive by Angus’s hands on her shoulders. 

“Calm yerself, MacLauchlan, we
doona want any unpleasantness to befall the lassies.”  Angus turned a wide-eyed
Lindsay to face him.  “As I’ve already explained before ye appeared, I doona
mind if ye bless our clan with a berserker.  Be he bastard or no, he’d become
mine by law, and he’d fight for my clan.”

“He’d always be a MacLauchlan,”
Lindsay spat.  “They would come to claim him.” 

“They could try,” he shrugged.  “But
I canna say I mind that your channel has already been shaped, my dear.  I only
care that I’ll be the one fill the void from now on.”  Angus lowered his head
and dragged his tongue across Lindsay’s neck. 

Connor snarled as his gaze tracked
the shudder of revulsion that trailed down Lindsay’s spine.  He was going to
force the man to eat his own heart
after
he peeled the skin from his
body.

With a visible swallow, Lindsay
forced out a laugh.  “I highly doubt that, my Laird, it would rather be like a
twig trying to fill a tunnel shaped by a timber log.” 

Angus’s head snapped up.  “Mouthy
bitch!”  He back-handed her with such force she lost her balance and fell to
the ground. 

Connor’s ferocious roar caused his
own ears to ring. 

Lindsay looked up at him, a
triumphant glimmer shining in her eyes.  Her lip had cracked beneath the blow.

The tiny drop of blood was all
Connor would need.

Chapter
Sixteen

The berserker emerged.  His
demon-black eyes swept the room as muscles rippled beneath muscles, pushing the
veins pulsing with blood and power to the surface of his skin. 

Mouth open in a terrifying roar,
the sharpened teeth gleamed in the torchlight, causing some of the women to cry
out in horror.  His answering cry silenced them all as he stepped forward and
pulled on his bonds.  The woadish tattoos on his chest furrowed and the cords
of his shoulders and arms strained against the beams.  A reference to Sampson
came to mind as Lindsay watched the entire structure of the stable shift. 

The wood gave a sharp crack as a
warning before the entire loft collapsed, burying at least three of Angus’s men
beneath the wood, heavy oak casks, and bales of straw that weighed as much as a
man. 

Unleashed, Connor wasted no time
further terrorizing his prey.  He had blood yet to spill. Hurling the chain
that hung limply from his shackle at one soldier, it hit the man with the speed
of a whip and crushed his face.  He circled the warrior on the adjacent side in
a blur of movement and stilled just enough for them to see the heavy chain
wrapped about the man’s throat.  The berserker decapitated him with a mighty
tug.  

His eyes fixed on the soldier who
held the little girl between him, Angus, and where she’d fallen.  Lindsay
realized she had to do something or the sweet child would die. 

Leaping from her spot on the floor,
Lindsay snatched the little girl from the slack-limbed man the instant before
Connor ran his own knife through his voice box.  The girl wrapped her tiny,
trembling body around Lindsay’s and burrowed her face into her neck.  To spare
the child from having to witness any more of the absolute destruction, Lindsay
turned to face the carnage and walked backwards toward the large stable doors. 
The panicking MacKays pressed as close to the walls as possible, but Lindsay
knew that once Connor had finished his slaughter of the soldiers, he’d turn his
voracious blood lust on the women and children. 

The door she’d entered was now
blocked by debris, leaving the wide livestock entrance the only means of
escape. 

“Run,” she commanded over her
shoulder.  “Open those doors and flee.”

“Aye, my lady!”  A chubby older
woman, and what appeared to be her stout daughter, ran to the crossbeam of the
stable door and struggled to lift it from the hitch.  It took several of them a
desperate try before they hefted it free.  The sound of their struggles were
drowned out by the death moans of massacred men. 

Lindsay kept her eyes on what
Connor was doing, watching her tender lover of the previous night exact
punishments so violent she could barely reconcile it.

It seemed as though he was saving
Angus for last.

The door only opened a crack before
heaving a loud protest and catching on the stone.  The collapse of the loft had
compromised the entire structure, which had been of simple craftsmanship to
begin with.  The adults began to thrust the children through the man-sized
opening one at a time.  The older woman attempted to pull the child from
Lindsay’s grip, but the girl wouldn’t let go. 

“I know her people, lady, I’ll see
her home.”  The apple-cheeked woman put a gentle hand on her arm, though her
eyes tracked the progress of the berserker, but her movements remained brusque
and efficient.  One didn’t get to be her age in the highlands without seeing a
life’s share of bloodshed.

Unlatching the child’s arms from
her neck, Lindsay kissed her.  “Run, little one,” she urged, as the other woman
shoved her through the door into the waiting arms of her daughter. 

The cacophony of bloodletting began
to wane until one terrified masculine plea remained.   Lindsay turned to see
Connor slowly advancing on a retreating Angus.  He’d picked up a heavy, broken
beam from the floor, implausibly holding it with one hand.  He crushed the
tyrant’s legs first with a one-handed blow, ripping a high-pitched scream from
the villain’s throat. 

Lindsay had to admit that her own
heart thrilled to the sound.  When evil bled, it was difficult for even the
softest heart to mourn.  The second blow crushed Angus’s chest in, and the
third flattened his head with a sickening crunch.

Finished with his warrior kills,
Connor turned his attention to the last few of the women filing out behind her. 
With a hiss he charged them, angling to leap around Lindsay and crush them into
the walls. 

Lindsay backed closer to them, throwing
her hands wide.  “Connor, no!” she cried.  “Let them leave.”  He pulled up
short, snarling.  Though, when he looked down at her, his black eyes went to
her lips and they softened.  At least, she would call it that.  Grunting, he
lifted a finger to wipe at the tiny trail of blood that had leaked from her
wound.  He made a soft sound of regret.

“I’m all right,” she crooned.
“Let’s—”

A moan sounded from behind him, and
Connor’s head whipped around.

Rory had stirred and struggled to
push himself from the earthen floor.  With a massive effort, he achieved a
sitting position and held his head with another beleaguered groan. 

The berserker leapt for him at the
very same instant that Lindsay lunged for the chain that still hung from the
shackle about his neck.  She dug in her feet and tugged, desperate to save the
new Laird of this decimated clan.  Her feeble strength wasn’t enough, and her
feet made shallow trails across the packed earth. 

“Connor, stop!” she cried to no
avail.  “Connor I… I accept you!”

He froze.     

“I accept you as my mate.  You hear
me?”  His shoulders rolled and a force of some kind seemed to ripple through
his great body.  “Now… don’t kill anyone else or I shall …” how did one punish
a berserker?  “Be very cross with you if you do,” she threatened.  There, that
should strike terror into his heart.  She rolled her eyes at her own
ineptitude. 

Suddenly, an elated sensation stole
her breath, and though her soul soared, it seemed to bind to his with links
stronger than the iron chains she clutched.  It was as though they’d been
weaved into the ether with the fibers of the strongest silk, unable to be rent
apart by any force imaginable. 

It was fate.  It was choice.  And
he was hers.

For a moment, no one breathed, then
he turned to her, his green eyes shining with incredulity and, for the first
time since she’d met him, aching vulnerability. 

“Tell me you meant it,” he
breathed.  “Tell me you accepted
me
, Lindsay, not just to save those
people.”

Lindsay looked at Connor and truly
saw the man within him for the first time.  His eyes, raw with unchecked
emotion, glimmered with affect she’d never seen before.  Hope.  Trust…  Love. 
It
was
love, fledgling but pure that pulsed between them and she was
humbled by the gentle, unstoppable force of it. 

“I accepted you the moment I
accepted you into my body,” she admitted.  “I just lacked the courage to say it
until now.”

He lunged for her, pulling her
against his body and searing her soul with a kiss.  She didn’t even notice the
pressure on her cut as their mouths fused.  He devoured her with a frantic
desperation until she placed her hands on the sides of his face and softened
the kiss before pulling back.        

“You’re going to have to stop
getting blood on all my fine dresses,” she teased.  “At least, this one’s
borrowed.”

He let out something between a
groan and a laugh.  “I love ye, Lindsay Ross.  Having ye as my wife and my mate
will complete my life.  My very existence will belong to ye.  My body, my soul,
my magic and my beast will—”

Lindsay put her finger over his
lips, lifting an eyebrow at him.  “I may be your mate, but it’s not certain
I’ll be your wife, Connor MacLauchlan,” she quipped. 

“Why?” he asked, nibbling on the
tip of her finger.  Her body warmed to the movement of his lips.

“Because.” She extricated herself
from his grip and took hold of the chain about his neck. Tugging him toward the
door, she threw a saucy look over her shoulder. 

“Ye still haven’t asked.”