Chapter 12
Ava remained close enough to feel the warmth of his mouth on hers when the knock came. The sound cut through the room with enough force to jolt them both out of their frenzy.
For one stunned moment, neither she nor Ciaran moved. The air between them was still thick from what had just happened, from the hand on her neck, from the breathless pull of that kiss and the dangerous, impossible fact that she had not wanted it to stop.
Her pulse had not yet settled. Her thoughts had scattered. All she knew was that she stood too close to him, that her lips tingled, and that the world beyond the door had returned before she was ready to face it.
The knock came again, and even more doses of reality rushed back with humiliating speed.
Ava stepped away first, though not far enough to cool the heat in her face. Ciaran straightened at once, and the change in him was swift enough to make her ache with fresh confusion.
The man who had just kissed her with such passion had retreated behind composure again, though not fully. She could still see something sharp beneath his eyes.
“Ye may enter,” he called, clearing his throat.
The door opened, and her father entered.
The air shifted at once.
It was quite ironic because Rory Fraser was not the kind of man to fill a room with tension. If anything, he came in with more care than usual, his expression sober from the day’s events, his eyes moving first to Ava with concern before turning to Ciaran.
Yet his presence pulled the chamber back into the shape of family and duty so completely that for one brief, strange moment, Ava felt younger than she had been an hour ago.
She suddenly felt more like a daughter than a wife. More like the girl who turned to her father when the world frightened her than the woman who had just stood in her husband’s arms and kissed him back fiercely.
“How are ye faring?” Rory asked.
Ava found her voice only because his was so steady. “Better.”
It was not a lie, though it felt incomplete in ways she could not possibly explain while standing there with Ciaran’s taste still on her lips.
Rory nodded once, as if accepting both the answer and its limits. He then looked at the fresh gown she wore, the absence of blood on it, and some tension in his face eased. “I am glad of that.”
His gaze shifted to Ciaran’s shoulder next, where the wound showed plainly enough.
Ava saw the exact moment her father registered both the wound and the fact that Ciaran remained upright despite it, as if stubbornness alone could turn blood loss into inconvenience.
“I came to see how ye were faring, and I can see I had nothing to worry about in the first place,” Rory said.
Ava nodded in response. Ciaran remained just as quiet.
“I also thought now would be a good time to inform ye that I will return home.”
Ava blinked. “Really?”
Rory nodded. “Aye. I would like to make sure that all is well and speak with allies if there is a need. After today, I would rather nae assume one dead bastard solves every problem he created. If more men are wanted here, I can send them.”
The words settled heavily in the room, practical and sensible, yet Ava felt the love beneath them all the same.
Her father was not simply thinking of walls and retainers and neighboring clans to be summoned into support. He was thinking of how he had nearly lost her. He was building order against that fear before it could return and catch him when he wasn’t ready.
For one heartbeat, the offer comforted her so sharply that it hurt.
Ciaran answered on her behalf and without delay.
“It willnae be necessary.” His voice was even but thick. “Jack was the only enemy left alive. What remains of his men will be dealt with before the night is over, and there is nay one else with the will or strength to mount another attack now.”
Ava knew the words were true. She believed he believed them. Still, the firmness of his answer made the air tighten. There was pride in his words, and ownership.
This was his stronghold, his responsibility, his wound to answer, and he would not have it seem to another laird, even one as well-meaning as her father, that he needed support inside his own walls.
Ava couldn’t tell if he was being too cocky or if he just believed he was strong enough to take on anyone else.
But then, they daenae call him the Silent Death for nothing.
Rory studied him. The silence lasted only a moment, yet it stretched with the weight of several things at once.
Ava wondered what her father was thinking at that moment and felt herself caught between the two of them in a new way.
Her father was the man who had held every part of her old life together, who had offered home and safety and choice even when it would have cost him to do so.
Ciaran was the man who had taken a blade for her, carried her away from bloodshed and chaos, and kissed her with enough force to leave her shaken where she stood now.
Neither role canceled the other, and neither lessened the pull of the other. The overlap made the chamber feel too small for simple breathing.
At last, Rory gave a short nod. “As ye say.”
Nothing in his tone openly challenged the answer, yet nothing in it surrendered judgment either. He accepted Ciaran’s position as a laird might accept another laird’s word while reserving the right to continue thinking whatever he pleased.
That somehow made the whole exchange feel more intimate.
Ava stood very still, her hands folded before her because she did not trust them not to twitch.
The kiss remained alive beneath everything.
Her father’s entrance had not erased it.
Ciaran’s calm had not erased it. Even this conversation about men, strongholds, and support had only layered itself over what had passed between them instead of wiping it away.
When Rory looked back at her, warmth returned to his face at once. “I only wished ye both to ken that the offer stands.”
Ava nodded. “Thank ye, Da.”
Rory’s gaze rested on her a moment longer. “If ye wish, ye may come stay with me for a while.”
The words came out so softly that for a second, Ava almost failed to understand them.
“What?”
Rory shrugged. “If ye want. Ye ken I want nothing more than for ye to be safe. If ye think ye will be safer back home with me, he may come too.”
Ava swallowed, and everything in her went completely still.
She could tell her father wasn’t trying to command or pressure her.
He wasn’t trying to challenge Ciaran’s authority either.
He was only offering her the kind of safety she was already used to.
A place at his side. Familiar terrain. A little more time before the full weight of this new life settled around her.
The tenderness of it made her stomach twist.
She looked at him and saw no impatience on his face, no judgment, only love deep enough to open the door and leave it unguarded.
He would take her back at once if she asked it.
There was no doubt about that. No condition tied to the offer.
No demand that she prove the depth of her distress before she earned refuge.
Before she could answer, Ciaran spoke. “If that is what she wants, I willnae oppose it either. I would never let any harm come to her, but I would understand if she chose to leave.”
Her eyes went to him at once. He did not look at her as he said it, at least not at first. His tone remained even, stripped of possessiveness, stripped of any plea she might have had to answer or resist.
He wasn’t begging her to stay or offering even more reassurances to her father than he already had. He was only making her realize that she had the option to leave if she wanted.
For some reason, that mattered more than she had expected it to.
For the first time since her father had spoken, the full shape of the moment stood plainly before her. She could leave. Not in theory. Not as some fantasy she turned over in sleepless hours.
She could actually leave.
The path away existed, and it was lined with nothing but love and warmth.
She lowered her eyes for a moment and thought of home.
She could almost see the halls. She could almost hear Bruce tearing through familiar rooms with his crooked little bark and even smell the kitchens in the winter.
Her old bed. Her old routine. The comfort of going back to something she was already used to.
All she had to do was leave all of this behind.
The temptation of it was not small.
To leave now would mean rest. Breathing space. A gentler landing after blood and vows and fear and the bewildering heat of what had happened between her and Ciaran only moments before. It would mean time to gather herself in a place where she did not have to think about who she was becoming.
But that was the truth of it, was it not? Leaving would delay what she was becoming, not completely erase it.
This life had begun around her already. The wedding, even broken as it was. The attack. The kiss. The chamber she now stood in, wearing a fresh gown, while the ruined one waited to be burned. None of it could be neatly undone by returning to her father’s castle for a few soothing weeks.
More than that, a bigger part of her knew with uncomfortable clarity that what troubled her most would follow her there untouched. Especially the pull she now started to feel toward Ciaran.
She had been offered escape before, but she had not taken it. And now, with the choice laid before her again in a kinder, quieter shape, she found the answer had not changed.
Eventually, she lifted her head.
“Nay,” she said, the word calm enough to surprise even her.
Ciaran raised an eyebrow, while her father narrowed his eyes. “Nay?”
Ava nodded slowly.
Her father’s face did not harden. If anything, it softened with sorrow, as though he understood that her refusal had not come lightly.
“I trust that I shall be safe here,” she added, looking first at him and then briefly at Ciaran.
This place was now hers in a difficult and unfinished way. If she ran from it, she would only teach herself that belonging could be postponed forever.
Her father’s eyes flicked to her husband, measuring perhaps the weight of the statement and the man beside it.
“And,” she went on, “I need to get used to me new home anyway.”
Her father eyed her for a moment, then nodded. “Aye,” he said softly. “I think ye do.”
The pride in his answer was quiet, which made it cut deeper. There was sadness there too, of course. The sadness of any father seeing his daughter choose the threshold she must cross without him.
But he did not reach for persuasion. He did not turn the offer into a second test. He accepted her answer for what it was—a choice. And because he accepted it, Ava felt more strongly that it had been truly hers to make.
Rory stepped forward and took her hands in his own. His grip was warm, familiar, and steady enough to make her throat tighten.
“If ye ever need me,” he said, “ye just send word.”
“I ken.”
“At once,” he added, his voice clear.
A faint smile touched Ava’s mouth. “Aye, Da.”
He bent and kissed her brow, and for one brief moment, she let herself lean into the comfort of him as she always had.
When he straightened, his eyes had gone suspiciously bright, though whether from feeling or fury at the whole day’s violence, she could not tell. Perhaps both.
He nodded once to Ciaran, a gesture of measured respect and unfinished judgment, then made for the door.
It opened again almost immediately to admit Isobel, who must have been waiting nearby for the conversation to finish. Her gaze darted first to Ava, then to Rory, and she seemed to read enough of the room’s stillness to understand that something had been decided.
“I shall stay with her,” she declared.
Rory gave a grunt that was half approval, half relief. “See that ye do.”
Isobel came to Ava’s side, warm and immediate in her quiet way, as he made for the door. He stepped out, gave them one last look, and then left, the door clicking shut behind him.
Silence settled over the chamber for a moment, and Ava stood in the middle of it, feeling the strange growing weight of her own answer.
She had now been given a way out twice. And twice she had refused it.
That truth rested differently inside her than anything that had come before. She was no longer only the woman who had been chosen at an auction, or the bride who had nearly been killed at her own wedding, or even the wife who had been kissed into silence a few minutes ago.
She was the woman who kept choosing to remain.
And somewhere beneath the silence, beneath Isobel’s proximity and the sound of her father’s retreating footsteps, she wondered if she had just made the wrong choice.
Twice.