Wanted By the Wicked Highlander (The Highland Marriage Pact #3)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

The world burned around Sebastian MacGregor.

Flames devoured what had once been homes, swallowing pine wood and dry winter thatch while clansmen cried out over collapsing roofs, and terrified horses screamed against their tethers.

The stench of roasting livestock and melting tallow choked the air.

The blistering heat pressed against his face like a solid fist. He was already moving toward the blazing Great Hall, his boots churning through mud, when Hamish caught him by the rough wool of his tunic and slammed him hard against a splintered timber cart.

“They’re still inside!” Sebastian roared, struggling violently against the older man’s iron grip, his muscles straining beneath his leather jerkin. “Duncan’s inside!”

Hamish’s weathered face contorted. Smoke and raw grief etched deep lines across his skin. “He’s gone.” His voice cracked on the last word, jagged, and he did not try to hide it. “And if ye charge in there, yer nephew loses ye too.”

Another large part of the roof collapsed inward. A brilliant shower of golden sparks burst upward into the dark Highland sky like a grotesque celebration.

Around them, hollow-eyed women pressed crying children against their bodies and wept silently.

Old warriors stood with their broadswords still drawn, knuckles white, with nowhere left to swing them.

The destruction was total and absolute. Everything Duncan had spent fifteen long years building was gone in a single, merciless hour.

Sebastian went still.

His chest heaved against the constriction of his chest-plate.

His fists remained clenched at his sides until his fingernails dug into his palms. The predatory roar of the fire filled the space where his brother’s booming voice once was, and he stood rooted in the ash and let it burn through him because there was nothing else to do.

His nephew had not made a sound since the first torch touched the Gate.

Sebastian became aware of him slowly. The small, trembling weight pressed against his left shoulder, two thin arms locked around his neck with a desperate, white-knuckled grip that had not loosened once.

Brian’s tear-streaked face was buried deep against his collarbone, hidden entirely from the leaping flames, the blinding smoke, and whatever else a six-year-old child should never witness.

Sebastian could not remember the exact second Duncan had shoved the child into his arms. He only remembered that his brother’s hands had been slick with blood when he did, and that he had turned back toward the burning threshold without looking at Sebastian again.

‘Find him a home. Find him a mother. Find him a future. Swear it, brother.’

And like the arrogant fool he was, Sebastian had laughed then, a short, hard sound, and answered, ‘I am yer sword arm, not a nursemaid for bairns.’

Duncan had gripped his shoulder once. Just once, his fingers sinking deep.

‘Swear it.’

Sebastian pressed one rough, calloused hand flat against the boy’s small back. He could feel Brian’s tiny ribs expanding with each shaky, terrified breath.

Still breathin’. Still here.

He adjusted the child higher against his broad chest and turned away from the burning Hall for the last time.

He did not look back.

Hamish was beside him a moment later, speaking in a low, gravelly, urgent murmur about the South Road, about finding shelter before dawn, and about the widow MacNeil, whose small farm might take in the weakest of them for a single night.

Sebastian heard the distant shape of the words but none of their meaning. His mind had already bypassed grief, moving ahead to cold, hard military calculations.

Head count. Rations. Clean water. How many horses remained? How many of those horses were lame? How far could a broken clan of two hundred starving people walk before winter ice made the mountain passes completely impassable?

He stepped up onto the broken iron rim of a cart wheel and turned toward what was left of Clan MacGregor.

The frantic noise subsided. Slowly, then all at once, two hundred pairs of eyes turned toward him.

Farmers. Widows. Old, scarred men who fought and bled beside his father.

Toddlers were standing alone in the snow because there was no one left to hold them.

Their faces were smeared black with ash and lit by a harsh, flickering orange glow from the fire consuming what little still remained.

They were waiting. Every single one of them was waiting.

God help them all.

Because Duncan was dead. Which meant that by ancient Highland law, the brutal warrior they were looking at had now become their Laird.

“Listen to me.” Sebastian’s voice cut through the wind, coming out harder and steadier than he actually felt. Exhausted heads lifted through the billowing smoke. “Clan MacGregor still stands.”

Some soot-stained faces shifted with something close to desperate relief. Others stayed completely hollow. Sebastian understood both.

“We lost our lands,” he said, his voice echoing off the burning stone. “We lost our homes.” He let the grim reality sit in the cold air for one breath. Just one. “But we didnae lose each other.”

“Kerr will never stop!” a voice shouted from somewhere deep in the huddled crowd. A man’s voice rose ragged and sharp, filled with fear and fury.

The mention of the name sent rage moving through Sebastian’s chest like a hot blade. He held it tight inside his ribs. He let the anger sharpen rather than spill.

“Then let him come,” he said, the words falling cold as iron. “While I breathe a single breath, me sole purpose is to protect this Clan.”

The Great Hall’s center beam cracked and groaned behind him, collapsing into the embers. A woman somewhere to his left was praying in a low, rhythmic murmur. On his shoulder, Brian’s small fingers tightened slightly against Sebastian’s neck.

He looked across his people one last time. Really looked into every exhausted, terrified, ash-covered face.

Duncan had been the one meticulously built for this. Duncan had known their names, their children’s names, which men needed firmness, which needed kindness, and which needed to be heard.

Sebastian had always been the blunt sword. The lethal threat. The terrifying thing that walked miles ahead of his brother into every dark place so Duncan never had to touch the filth of war.

“Before winter comes,” Sebastian said, his dark blue eyes locking onto his people, “I will find us walls again. I will find us food again.” He shifted Brian’s light weight against his chest. “And I swear to ye on me brother’s blood, Clan MacGregor will rise from this fire.”

The heavy silence that followed was not entirely hopeless. That was the only thing he could say for it.

Hamish appeared at his shoulder the moment Sebastian stepped down from the cart wheel.

They were already moving, already thinking ahead to the pitch-black South Road, the biting cold, and how many miles stood between his vulnerable people and anything resembling safety.

The older warrior said nothing for a long moment.

He just walked stride for stride beside him through the swirling ash and the dark while the remnants of the Clan began to move behind them, setting a slow, agonizing shuffle of the utterly exhausted.

“Ye’ll need land,” Hamish said finally.

His voice was quiet, dropping beneath the whistling wind. It was the way he always said the heavy things that needed saying.

“Aye.”

“Before the first frost strikes the glens.”

“I ken.”

Brian lifted his small head then. It was the very first time he had pulled away since the fire started. His face was heavily streaked with black soot and dried tears, his eyes red-rimmed and intensely serious. He looked at Sebastian’s hard profile for a long, quiet moment.

“Are we going to be all right?” he asked. His small voice was barely a whisper against the wind.

Sebastian met the boy’s anxious gaze. Duncan’s exact eyes stared back at him. Same shape. Same piercing blue color. Same quiet steadiness behind them, even in the middle of ruin.

He did not lie to him. He could not.

“Aye,” he said, his voice dropping into a rough, absolute vow. “We are.”

Brian held his gaze a moment longer, measuring the lines of his uncle’s face. Then, apparently satisfied, he tucked his face back against the curve of Sebastian’s neck and said nothing more.

Sebastian walked on through the biting dark, the creeping cold, and the thick smell of woodsmoke clinging to the damp wool of everything they owned.

Behind him, out of the ashes of Blackthorn, what remained of Clan MacGregor followed him into the night.