Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
“She’s been gone too long.”
Ragnar didn’t raise his voice. He never needed to. The two warriors standing guard outside the Mother Superior’s chamber straightened immediately, hand moving to their sword hilts.
“How long?” Freyr asked from beside him.
“Longer than she asked fer.” Ragnar’s jaw tightened as he stared down the empty corridor where Isolda MacGregor had disappeared.
“Ye think she ran?” Feyr’s tone held an edge of vindication. “Highland bride barely off her horse and already fleein’. This marriage will be different from the others.”
“She has cause.” Ragnar was already moving, his boots echoing against the stone floor as he strode toward the outer passage. “Would’ve been disappointed if she hadnae.”
Freyr snorted. “Most men would be fumin’ if their bride bolted, but ye’re admirin’ her fer it?”
“I admire anyone with enough sense tae fight when they’re cornered.”
“And when we find her?”
“We take her home.” Ragnar pushed through a heavy door that led to the outer courtyard, rain immediately lashing his face. “Gently, if she’ll allow it.”
The storm had worsened since they’d arrived—wind howling between buildings with enough force to make the wooden shutters rattle. Rain fell in sheets that reduced visibility to mere yards while lightning split the sky before thunder rumbled so loudly that Ragnar could feel it in his chest.
Perfect weather fer runnin’. And fer huntin’.
He scanned the courtyard with practiced efficiency, noting every detail that mattered and discarding those that didn’t.
The herb garden’s gate swung on its hinges with each gust of wind.
Muddy tracks led toward it, already half-washed away by the downpour but still visible if you knew what to look for.
“There.” He pointed.
Freyr squinted through the rain streaming down his face. “Could be anyone—”
“It was her, nay one else would go out in this weather.” Ragnar was already crossing the courtyard. He’d spent years tracking raiders across Uist’s black cliffs and treacherous bogs, learning to read stories in bent grass and disturbed stone. One Highland lass in a storm would not evade him.
Even if part of him—the part of him he kept locked away where it couldn’t weaken him—admired her for trying.
They reached the gate, and Ragnar crouched, his knees sinking into the wet earth. He noticed the sharp, medicinal scent of crushed herbs and saw small boot prints—measured steps, evenly spaced.
“She’s nae flailin’ about like most Highland lasses would,” Freyr observed. “She kens how tae run.”
“Brithers probably taught her.” Ragnar straightened, water streaming down his face.
The image of her earlier in Mother Superior’s chamber rose unbidden—slender, exhausted, defiant even in defeat.
And those gray-green eyes that refused to look away, even when he could see the fear that lived behind them. “Makes her unpredictable.”
“Unpredictable?” Freyr’s scarred eyebrow lifted. “She’s a wee slip of a thing!”
“Aye. One who lied tae me face without flinchin’, ran intae a storm rather than come with me, and is clever enough tae avoid the cliffs.” Ragnar started walking again, following the fading impressions. “That makes her dangerous, Freyr. Tae herself, mostly.”
The road beyond the nunnery walls curved inland, disappearing into darkness and trees. Ragnar’s eyes tracked every shadow, every slight movement. The rain turned everything into shades of black and gray—mud, stone, sky all bleeding together.
Somewhere ahead, his bride was running from a fate she hadn’t chosen.
Ragnar knew that feeling better than he cared to admit.
She’d stayed on the road initially—sensible, given how treacherous the footing would be anywhere else—but he could see where she’d stumbled once about fifty yards out, caught herself against a tree trunk to keep from falling.
He touched the bark. Fresh scrapes in the wood, still weeping sap.
A trace of blood mixed with mud where her palms had scraped.
“She’s tired.” He said quietly. His hand curled into a fist against the tree trunk. “Helvíti. I pushed her too hard. Should have waited.”
“Ye’re just followin’ orders given by—”
“Aye, well, the king’s nae the one standin’ in the muck.” Ragnar’s voice remained even, but something dark and foreign had settled in his gut. “And if she gets herself killed runnin’ from me, his orders willnae matter.”
They moved faster now, boots pounding through mud that tried to suck them down with every step.
The storm provided cover for Isolda, but it also meant she couldn’t see what might be waiting for her in the darkness.
Bandits who’d see a lone woman as opportunity rather than person.
Animals driven from their dens by the flooding.
Or worse—men who’d been expecting exactly this. Men Ragnar had been waiting for since the moment he’d read the Pact decree with his name on it.
“Where are the others?” Freyr asked, scanning the darkness ahead.
“Preparin’ the birlinn.” Ragnar’s jaw tightened. “If someone’s watchin’ the nunnery, we cannae risk bein’ trapped on land.”
Then, a scream cut through the storm like a blade.
Ragnar’s blood went cold, then hot. He was running before the sound faded, his sword already in his hand, though he didn’t remember drawing it, boots pounding in the mud. Freyr’s footsteps followed close behind him.
The road curved ahead through the trees. Lightning flashed—brief, white, merciless—and in that heartbeat of illumination he saw them.
Four men surrounding a kneeling figure in the mud.
Isolda.
One had her by the hair, head yanked back at an angle that had to hurt. Another pinned her arms behind her. The third crouched before her, speaking words Ragnar couldn’t hear over the storm.
But he saw their cloaks—dark green, the particular cut of their leather armor, the way they positioned themselves like trained soldiers rather than common bandits. He recognized those colors. Had seen them six months past at the border between Uist and the mainland.
Douglas colors.
The fury that swept through him was sharp as winter’s wind off the lochs.
Ragnar didn’t shout a warning. Warriors who announced themselves died young.
He closed the distance in four strides, boots splashing through ankle-deep water. Ragnar’s blade punched through the gap between the first man’s ribs, angled upward toward the heart. The steel scraped bone and the man’s breath left him in a wet gasp.
The others turned, fumbling for weapons, eyes going wide as they registered what was happening.
Too slow.
“Get back tae the horses!” The man who’d been crouching before Isolda stumbled away from her, his earlier confidence replaced by something closer to panic. “Go! Now!”
“But there’s only two of ‘em!” The other man raised his sword to engage, going for bravado despite the fear Ragnar could smell on him. “We can—”
His words cut off as Freyr engaged him, their blades meeting in a flurry of strikes.
The ground was treacherous—mud sucking at their boots with every step, rain making grips slippery.
But Freyr had trained in worse conditions.
He pivoted on his heel, letting his opponent’s momentum carry him forward into empty space, then drove his blade through the exposed gap in the man’s leather armor.
The man made a wet, surprised sound and collapsed.
The third man had drawn a dirk now, circling warily. His eyes darted between Ragnar and the bodies cooling in the mud.
The man was cautious now that he’d seen the others fall. “Ye’re the Stag,” he said, trying to steady himself. “The laird said—”
Ragnar didn’t let him finish. Didn’t care what anyone had said or promised or planned.
He knocked the dirk aside with his sword and drove his fist into the man’s throat.
Cartilage crunched beneath his knuckles and the man fell to the ground, clawing at his windpipe, making sounds that weren’t quite human anymore.
The fourth man—the one who’d been speaking to Isolda—was already running, crashing through the trees with the desperate speed of someone who’d finally understood how thoroughly they’d misjudged their opposition.
Smart man.
Ragnar let him go, to return to Douglas Graham and tell him exactly what happened when he dared touch what belonged to Ragnar Ketilsson.
Silence fell, broken only by pattering rain and Ragnar’s own breathing—deep and measured despite the violence, despite the rage still simmering beneath his skin like coals waiting for a gust of wind.
But beneath all that was something sharper and more immediate: Isolda’s breathing, fast and shallow and edged with the kind of fear that came after the danger had passed and the body finally understood what almost transpired.
He turned around and the sight before him made his throat tighten.
Isolda was kneeling in the mud where they’d forced her down, staring at him with eyes gone wide and dark. Her hair hung in tangled wisps around a face pale as death. Her dress was torn, filthy with mud. She looked both terrified and furious somehow.
Ragnar sheathed his sword and crossed to her, his boots squelching through mud and worse things. He dropped to one knee beside her, close enough that his thigh pressed against her sodden skirt. Close enough to feel the tremors running through her.
“Are ye hurt?”
She flinched at his voice but didn’t pull away.
“Lass.” He kept his voice low. “Are ye hurt?”
“I…” her breath hitched. “I dinnae ken… I dinnae think—”
His hands found her shoulders, gently. The wet wool of her cloak was cold beneath his palms, but under that, he could feel warmth. Life. Her pulse hammering like a trapped bird’s wings. He had to check her for injuries, but his hands felt suddenly too large, too rough.
Made fer killin’. Nae fer… this.
His hands moved carefully, checking her arms for breaks, her shoulders for dislocations. Dark bruises were already blooming on her throat where someone had grabbed her—finger-shaped marks that made something violent and possessive twist behind his ribs.
Whoever did that is dead now.
It didn’t feel like enough.
“Yer hands.”
She held them toward him wordlessly, and he turned them over. Mud caked under her nails. Bloody scrapes ran along her palms. Bruises splotched on her wrists.
The sight of those marks on her perfect, pale skin threatened the careful control he’d spent years building, brick by brick.
“Can ye stand?”
She nodded, but when she tried to get up, her legs buckled beneath her like a newborn foal’s. Ragnar caught her before she could fall, his arm sliding around her waist, pulling her against his chest.
“Easy now. Stille.” The Norse slipped out—an old habit from childhood, his mother’s voice in his ear when he’d wake from night terrors. “I have ye. Ye’re safe.”
“Safe? Ye just killed four men before me eyes.
“Aye.”
For a moment she just stood there encircled in his arms, her forehead pressed against his chest, her breath coming in ragged gasps.
Ragnar stood very still, one arm around her waist keeping her upright, the other coming up almost of its own accord to rest against the back of her head. She barely reached his shoulder, this slip of a woman who’d tried to outrun all of them.
She pulled back just enough to look up at him, rain streaming down her face, her eyes blazing even through the fear and exhaustion. “Why did ye come fer me?”
“Because ye’re mine.” He said, keeping his voice flat. “By royal decree. By the Pact. And I protect what’s mine.”
Something flickered in her eyes—anger, maybe? But she didn’t pull away from where his arm still held her, didn’t try to run, even though the road stretched dark and empty behind her.
“Even if what’s yers daesnae want tae be?”
“Aye, lítil úlfr.”
“What daes that mean?”
“Little wolf.” His mouth curved slightly. “Seems fittin’ fer a lass who bites her attackers.”
They stared at each other, rain streaming down between them, the storm swallowing all sound except their breathing.
Then, Freyr’s voice shattered the moment. “Ragnar. We need tae move.”
He glanced at Freyr, who’d appeared from the trees leading two horses, their coats dark and streaming in the rain. “How far tae the cove?”
“Half an hour if we ride hard,” Freyr said, his eyes flicking to the bodies scattered across the muddy road, then to Isolda with suspicion. “Maybe less.”
Ragnar nodded, then looked back at Isolda. “We’re leavin’. Now. The ship’s waitin’.”
She stared at him like he’d lost his mind. “Ye cannae possibly—”
“Aye. I can.”
“After ye just—” her eyes darted to the bodies, then away. “Those men were tryin’ tae kill me and—”
“They werenae.”
She blinked at him. “What?”
He moved toward the horse. “If they’d wanted ye dead, ye’d be so.”
Her arms wrapped around herself. “Then… what did they want?”
“What d’ye think they wanted?” He kept his tone flat.
She was quiet for a moment, her mind working. “If they’d taken me…” her face went pale. “The King would think ye’d failed tae protect me. The other clans would think—”
“That the Norsemen cannae keep Scotland’s daughter’s safe.” Freyr’s voice was hard. “That the Pact’s a sham. That peace isnae possible.”
“And then?” Isolda’s voice was barely above a whisper.
Ragnar met her eyes. “Then the raids start. The killin’. The burnin’. Everythin’ the King’s tyrin’ tae prevent with these unions becomes our new reality.”
“So, I’m—” she swallowed. “I’m a weapon? Against peace.”
He held out his hand. “Which is why we’re leavin’. Now.”
“And what happens if ye get yerself killed before we’re wed?”
The question surprised him. Most women would have thought of their own safety first.
“Erik Thorsen. Magnus Haraldson. Ivar Gunnarson. Harald Alvsson.” He named them deliberately. “The four other pact jarls. They’d keep ye safe.”
“Ye trust them?”
“With me life.” He held out his hand, palm up. “And yers.”
She stared at his outstretched hand. At his face. At the bodies cooling in the mud. For a moment, he thought she might refuse, might try to run again.
Then, her hand—small and cold and scraped raw—slipped into his. She didn’t look away when she did it. Didn’t lower her eyes or defer. Just met his gaze straight on.
“Let’s go.” She said quietly.
Ragnar helped her mount, then swung up behind her. As they rode toward the coast, he kept his eyes on the darkness behind and realized with cold certainty that getting her to Uist alive was going to be the easy part.