His Judas Bride

by Shehanne Moore

  And how could the Wolf expect her to master what raged through her in that second, the tidal wave of fury. As if it was her fault he had completely lost control. As if, now she advanced, the words bursting from her about Ewen only helping her up after she fell because of him landing like rain on his chest, along with her fists, because she couldn’t master anything.

  What cracked, what broke inside her in that second was beyond it.

  He dragged her from the hall, along the corridor, and back to the porcelain-strewn chamber, every place he retreated to in front of his men. Except then he stopped. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her against him so tight she could feel his heart beating through his ribs.

  “Listen. Listen to me.”

  She quivered and stifled a gasp. She wouldn’t, not if it were her last moment on earth. Not if he were there with all the devils to drag her to hell.

  “I don’t pretend to know who you really are. What drove you here. No. Listen, listen to me, Kara.”

  And yet his hands grasped the sides of her face, so even as she fisted her own, she couldn’t raise them.

  “I just can’t let you go.”

  “You have to.”

  “I want to. And that’s the truth. You came into my life. My damned, stupid, pathetic life, and I just couldn’t let it go, what I knew and why. I tried. Hell, I tried so hard but you made me go to places I could never go again. Places I know now I wasn’t ready to go to. But places I want to be in. With you. Do…do you understand?”

  He bent his head and found her mouth with his. This wasn’t happening. She wanted a man who could take care of himself and of her. She had thought it would be Lachlan. And when it wasn’t, she had become invincible.

  But she wasn’t invincible. After all, she was just flesh and blood. And if she heard these words right now, if she responded to the insistent pressure of his mouth on hers, she wouldn’t just break, she would never piece back together again. Never. Because hearing these words, feeling what rose in response in her, weren’t what this was about.

  Telling the truth, the entire truth, about the mess she had created was what this was about. Really. Truly. How clearly she saw it now. Which was why her mind emptied of everything save one thought.

  The time had come. Regardless of how hard. Regardless of what he had done. Despite the fact she was going to lose him certainly, the time had come, so losing herself here was something she could not afford to do.

  If she had placed her hands on a mountain and tried to push it, it could not have been harder than placing hers on his chest.

  “Please, God, don’t say any more.” Dragging a deep breath, she passed her tongue around her lips to moisten them, wishing they were not so parched she could barely speak. “Don’t you understand there’s something I must tell you? I’m not what you think.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  It was the place to start, wasn’t it? Although knowing and doing it were two different things she saw the instant she stepped away from him, which was why she wished for a brief moment she might not. “I never went to Edinburgh.”

  She hated that her voice sounded so croaky. But a tight constriction had formed across her throat. Because it wasn’t that she didn’t care for him, she realized with a sudden pang. It was that she did.

  “Never went?”

  Hearing crockery crunch, she held up a warning hand. He wanted the truth. She would not tell him it if he came closer. As it was she wished these damned words about wanting to be with her were ones he’d never spoken.

  She lowered her eyelashes. Then she lowered her hand. A man like him, master of this glen, prided himself on knowing everything. But he had not seen this had he, for all there must be rumors about her father, about the regime he ran. About the women in those dungeon cells.

  “No. I—uh—never left my father’s castle.”

  “You—”

  “It was all a story he put around, so no one, even if they wanted to, would ever look. So he himself would look the kind of man who could stand proudly among the other lords, a man who educated his daughter. Who could afford it. Who…”

  And yet it wasn’t so easy, was it? Of all she had ever done? To see that if she was to stand any chance of being things she wasn’t, things it somehow hadn’t troubled her to want to be before. To know that even by now what probably gleamed in his sea-green eyes, must be a dawning realization that everything they had been to each other was, or shortly would be, irrevocably tarnished. Her stomach churned. For all it was so awful, this moment was still one she would sooner keep and stay on forever, then proceed to the next.

  “Please don’t have me say any more. I know you think you can be with me. But you can’t.”

  If he had raged, sworn, thrown things about the floor as he had earlier, but the silence? She swallowed. She didn’t know what was worse. Surely, a dungeon, but not a whore? Was that what his thoughts thundering toward were, yet he tried to avoid?

  “Says what idiot’s granny?”

  Oh God, would her throat not clench like this? Her ears not hear another crunch? They could not be together and he was mad to think so.

  “Yours, for one. Thieving Irish tinkers I think were the words you used to describe us.”

  Another crunch. “Maybe they were. I don’t deny it. And maybe I am the Black Wolf. But my fame’s not just slipping. It’s plummeting when an impertinent, tinker baggage like you starts believing she can tell me what I damn well think. What I want too. You don’t tell me, Princess. I tell you. I can just about be persuaded to make an exception for the fact you’re a chief’s daughter. Do you understand?”

  Who was she kidding if she thought she could make herself believe because he handed her along that corridor, it made him bad? She could try, try believing he exploited her fear and weakness. Only it was hard when his voice, soft and low, washed over her like this. When she knew how much she’d goaded him. And why. A waste though when she still had this to say and she knew it would settle it.

  She huffed out a breath. “That’s just it. Why they queued. After all, it’s not every day you can have the chief’s daughter. You know I think I was quite a thrilling departure for them in their drab, little lives.”

  The words swiped the color from his face. Thinking she might be and hearing these words from her own lips were two different things. So now she saved him from himself. That was what you did, wasn’t it, when you cared for someone? Stopped him looking ridiculous. Didn’t put yourself first. And she did, she did care.

  “That man…”

  She swallowed. The consolation of knowing he breathed like this, glowered too, because he wanted to do something. It was no use to her here when what she must keep were her defenses about her. “If you want lists, I’m so sorry I can’t provide them. It was five years.”

  “That man…”

  “It didn’t happen all the time.”

  “Kara.”

  “I would be pretending if I didn’t learn from the other women to put some kind of stop to it. But it happened enough for you to know how ridiculous, how stupid…how utterly laughable…”

  “Ridiculous?”

  Oh God, the way his breath suddenly rushed through his nose she knew she had said the right thing.

  “Ridiculous? No, here’s what I think is ridiculous, Kara. They do all that. They do all that… No.”

  Despite knowing it wasn’t what she should do, she tried to step away. She had never expected him to respond like this, as if he did truly care for her and could not conceive of all he would face, never mind what she had come here to do, things she’d rather not think of here but must.

  He caught hold of her wrists. What scorched his eyes was different from those other times when his anger was just anger. “You listen to me, because I need to know what I did by frightening you with Ewen—”

  “Don’t flatter yourself.”

  “They rape you and God knows what else. Yet here you are—no, don’t cover your ears. Doing whatever the hell you came
to do for them. That’s what’s ridiculous. Not you and me.”

  “They have my son.”

  The words tore from her throat. She felt as if she was being racked to within an inch of her life, and yet it still cost her to hand each one over. Anger burned in her blood that what should have been so simple had come to this breaking of another barricade. And if she did not regain control of herself and the situation, she would only be left defenseless when it would hurt her most. Because whatever he said now, he would not say in another moment.

  “All right? They have him. They have Arland.”

  “You have a son?”

  Somehow, probably because he now let her, she tugged her wrists free. It was to be expected, of course. That he should gulp and freeze and look at her like this with dawning realization at the back of his eyes.

  “His name is Arland. It means—”

  “I know what it means.”

  For him too. That was what she read in that stunned expression, didn’t she? Well, worse. She didn’t just have a son. No. She had a son in a prison cell. A son who had at least been free till she had done this.

  “When I was sixteen I loved his father. I loved him very much. And they killed him. But that man you killed, killed him.” She tried turning away to pace the floor. But the things it was littered with made it as dangerous as standing anywhere near him, when she could barely see straight and her breath tore. The bed was there, and she sank down on the edge. It may not have been the cleverest place in the world to sit. Nothing was further from her mind though, and it was better than standing when her legs shook like leaves in a winter wind. She buried her face in her hands.

  “I’ve wanted to tell you. Over and over I wanted to say. Tonight. Today. When you married me. But it all got so impossible. I just couldn’t. I was too afraid.”

  “You? Princess?”

  Why did he say that? As if he had never heard such nonsense, when in fact even now, in fact now most of all, she shook in places she didn’t know existed.

  “I was never going to betray you, if that is what you think. I just wanted—I needed after you married me to tell Arland why I couldn’t, we couldn’t…” That might not be wise to say when making herself look bad was the priority. “I just needed to see him.”

  “Look.” Another huff. “If it makes you feel any better, this boy of yours—” And now, now there was yet another scrunch as he stepped closer. “If it makes you feel any better, I’d do the damn same.”

  She fidgeted uncomfortably. No, he wouldn’t. She couldn’t think of anyone who would. Certainly not the half of what she’d done.

  “Do you think I’d just let someone take all I have? If anyone had Fallon, I’d do whatever it took to get her back. I wouldn’t care. Rob. Kill. Cheat. Seduce. And I’d lie. Hell, how I’d lie. Lie so much I wouldn’t know what truth was.”

  She licked her dry lips. “But that’s what you don’t understand.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Nobody took him.”

  “Well, if nobody took him—”

  “Kertyn is minding him for me. She promised. She said she would when…when…”

  For perhaps the first time in her life words failed her.

  And now the space next to her sank as he sat down. “What?”

  “When I demanded to take her place.”

  “You demanded?”

  She braced. He had been good. He had been really good. Much, much better than she expected, telling him all she had so far anyway. This, though, would engender the long-awaited explosion. A dinner plate or ten crashing off her head. And she still had Morven to go.

  She did not know why her chest heaved. After all, the circumstances should not exist on the face of this earth in which she now shrank like this from telling the rest. Surely, when he had exhibited a level of agreeableness, of understanding she could not afford, the hope should be he was about to finally go berserk?

  Certainly she realized, edging up her gaze, that had she shot him with an arrow, he could have been no tauter. She braced harder.

  The words, even when she spoke, were like burning nails in her mouth. Why was it that now, she finished this, she didn’t know that she wanted to?

  “I don’t know what possessed me.”

  “Possessed you? You said they damn well took him.”

  “I said they have him. That’s true. But…but did they force me because they do…”

  His face tautened. When the sharp huff of breath was even better, she cursed the fact she spoke in such a strangled voice. Was it any wonder though? In fact he would never have done the same as her, because he would never have jeopardized Fallon in the first place. Never have been in this mess. She swallowed the knot in her throat.

  “You see, I saw the chance, and I took it.”

  A thought occurred. Surely, if he did believe he was a means to an end, confirmation would end this torture. She hoped so because taking what she wanted had landed her in this and horribly, what was on offer here, in the guttering candle flames—a man who hadn’t bolted, a man she only liked more with each passing, strangulated second, was not something she could take.

  “Just like I saw the chance with you that night and I took that too.”

  Any minute now he would explode. Minute? It would be any second. The affront to his male pride, to his dignity. The Black Wolf of Lochalpin used in his own bed by a…

  “All right, Princess,” he sighed. “You can stop pretending. What did they promise you?”

  Pretending? She meant it, every word. In her bones. To her soul she meant it. At least she wished she did. Her gaze edged sideways.

  “Why aren’t you angry?”

  “Because, unlike my brother, I know what two and two makes. And I know no one can take what you don’t have. Do you think we Brotherhood men camp in caves because any of us like it? Arland wasn’t even in that dungeon with you, now was he?”

  Her chest heaved. “What possible difference does it make whether he was or not? I’m just not…I’m not a nice person.”

  “Hell. Do you honestly think I’m any nicer? Hmm?”

  “M-my Ma would bring him, when she could.”

  “Kara.”

  The way he said her name was unfortunate.

  “You mother’s been dead since spring.”

  It was especially so when he didn’t just add that, he reached out a hand to tease the loose tendrils of hair back from her forehead.

  “Why won’t you just tell me the truth? It’s all I want to know. Is Arland what they promised you?”

  It was. But now she must consider how she had spent these days in the cave with him, while her son…

  “I was sixteen. I thought I had the world. Then I found out it was much bigger than that. And all I was, was smaller. They took him the day he was born. That man you killed did it. They didn’t do it to give him a nice life. They never acknowledged him. He…” Her throat stuck on the words was treated worse than a dog, except when Ma could do something, so she fought to drag in a breath. “But it…it’s worse than that.”

  He huffed, softly this time, his fingers edging over her cheek. “Worse? Not ones for doing things by quarter halves, are they, your family? And here was me thinking that I’m not nice.”

  “Oh, you are. If you did but know. Knew everything.”

  “So?”

  “Lachlan was a slave. That’s why, in my father’s eyes, his son is dispensable.”

  “Christ. Really? I thought you’d maybe just tell me he was between four and five.”

  So much for wishing he’d hurl plates. Maybe the silence was deafening, but she would not wish it broken by that. Not now, now the feel of his fingers teasing the knots and kinks in her hair, helped master the chills sweeping her body, making it hot and cold. And his proximity made her feel safe in ways she could not afford now she came to the border of this, the worst bit of what she must say.

  “All right, Princess, so it’s worse than that. Do I have to guess this is to do with
where the boy is now?” He furrowed his brow. “Wait a minute…”

  “When…when I demanded to take Kertyn’s place, my father made him take mine. He said if a McDunnagh set foot beyond the pass, he’d see to it I never saw Arland again. Kertyn…Ardene…I couldn’t let their fates be the same as mine.”

  She swallowed the aching knot. She had put more than herself in his arms, perhaps not physically at this moment, she saw with a horrible start, but she had put her heart and if he put her aside, right now, when this was so difficult anyway…

  “But it’s worse than even that. Why my father did it. In the first place, that is. Locked me up. I didn’t just disgrace him. He had plans for me. Plans he went to a lot of trouble over. Plans he was prepared to commit murder for.”

  His body tightened. His brows too. He must know. He must guess now. The absolute treachery of what had lain in his arms. And this, this would finish it.

  “To marry you.”

  “To—”

  While she knew she shouldn’t, the look on his face was such she couldn’t look. It was unpardonable of her to hope that soft plaid, hard muscle, worn tunic, would let her put her head against it like this, clasp him actually, while bits of her broke inside. But where else was there for her to go when she had long feared such bits being broken?

  “All right. All right, Princess.”

  She felt his breath soft against her hair and his heart hammer against her ear and didn’t see how it was all right. He eased her further onto the bed, gathering her up, as easily as if she were a child, his fingers still stroking her hair, his voice rumbling against it.

  She had no idea of what he said. Just that this was over. And it was over with him holding her in a way she could not fight, for all it was her desire to. If she was to choose a man, a man she could be right with, it would be him. Because what other man, who had lost as much as he had, could behave like this?

  If only there was a way somehow to make this right, then just maybe she could be with him.

  “I’ve got an idea. A way out of this.”