Epilogue
Night was just beginning to fall when they found the cave.
It was far from perfect, it was a little damp, not terribly large, and Blake especially had to bend at the waist to stop his head from scraping the top, but they were all too exhausted and too cautious of traveling in the night to complain.
It had been a long, long day. They had learned things, seen things, and done things.
Blake and Arran gathered wood and built a small fire, shooing Edward away when he tried to help. After a long evening spent dodging MacBrae patrols as they fled MacFarlane Keep, Edward’s days of captivity were clearly starting to catch up with him.
“Are ye truly all right?” Katrina asked, fussing over the chafed skin where the ropes had bitten into his wrists. She longed for her healer’s kit as though she was missing a limb.
“I’m fine,” he soothed. “Dinnae fash. A bit of rest and I’ll be right as rain.”
She grimaced. There wasn’t enough room in this cave for all of them to stretch out comfortably. Hell, there might not even be room for one of them to stretch out comfortably. He wouldn’t be getting good rest tonight, unfortunately.
“Get that frown off your face,” he teased, reaching up to press the furrow between her brows. “We’re all alive. Is that nae enough?”
“It is for now,” she said, smoothing his hair over his brow until he scowled and smacked her irritably away. “Now, stop that. I’m nae a bairn. Goodness, Katrina.”
He huffed, and it was so like he had been as a child—impatient and perpetually irritated with his younger sister when she tried to tag along—that she laughed as a wave of fondness overtook her.
Blake and Arran came back, then, and Kenna settled herself against her husband’s side. Katrina didn’t think about what she was doing until after she had done the same at Blake’s side and she caught all three of the other inhabitants of the cave looking at her.
Arran amused, Kenna knowing, Edward faintly appalled but tolerant.
“Right,” Blake said, either unaware of or uncaring of the looks they were getting.
Knowing him, Katrina suspected the latter.
“Brodie will be leading MacFarlane now. Suffice to say, he willnae rest until he has all of our heads on pikes. And MacBrae—” Kenna’s shoulders hunched in a little at her father’s name, and Arran rubbed her shoulder soothingly— “will throw his might behind that vendetta. We need a plan. It will be war now.”
“Ye dinnae need to sound so excited about it,” Edward muttered, which earned him that terrifying Bloodhound grin.
“I think it is time for me to announce to the world that I’ve come back,” Arran said, refusing to engage with the other two men and their banter.
“I think we need to make the rest of the Highlands ken the truth, that they cannae hide from this. It is time that we gather our allies… and identify our enemies.”
“MacBrae heads that list of enemies,” Kenna said, her voice low but full of iron. “Trust me when I say that there is no evil my father willnae commit when it comes to securing his power.”
Katrina nodded, reaching out to squeeze her friend’s hand briefly. She knew that Kenna had suffered desperately in the marriage that her father had sold her into. Even worse, though, Laird MacBrae had known it and he had done nothing to defend his eldest child.
“MacFarlane isnae far behind,” Blake said, his bitterness rather more palpable.
“Well…” Arran said. “I dinnae ken about that.”
Blake’s head turned smoothly, like a hawk sighting its prey.
“What do ye mean?” he asked. “Brodie wishes us dead.”
“Aye,” Arran conceded. “But Brodie isnae the old laird’s first son, now is he?”
From the way a hush fell over the cave, interrupted only by the crackle of the fire, nobody else had thought of that.
“Ye cannae mean—” Blake began. “I am nae fit to be laird. I’m the-goddamn it, Lennox, I’m the Bloodhound.”
“Ye are,” Arran agreed again. “But ye can choose, Blake. Ye can decide to be like your father, complicit in wrongdoing. Ye can be controlled by cowardice and fear. By greed. But ye can also choose another way.”
Katrina watched as the words took a hold of Blake, the way they wrapped him up. His eyes were storms as he thought over the implications of this.
Then he squared his shoulders and Katrina smiled because she knew that he had made his decision.
“I’m nae a coward,” he said. As though it was as simple as that.
It wouldn’t be easy. It wouldn’t be simple. It would be hard and brutal and bloody. People would die. There would be pain.
But just then, huddled in that tiny cave, bedraggled and weary, they all felt hope.
“I’m going back to MacAllan,” Edward said. “I will make certain that Father sees things clearly. I will make sure that he doesnae let himself be swayed by cowardice again.”
Katrina sucked in a breath of alarm. “Are ye certain?” she asked her brother. “Is that safe? Now that we ken that Father didnae fight against MacBrae…” She hated to ask it. “Can we trust him?”
Edward heaved a heavy breath, like he understood what it had cost her to pose the question.
“I dinnae ken,” he admitted. “But I have to make it right. That is our clan. And I willnae let it be caught up in evil due to inaction. We have already seen how that goes.”
Katrina was terrified for her brother, but she understood. She hated it, but she understood.
“Promise me ye will be safe,” she said, though she knew it was impossible.
“Of course, wee sister,” he said, a teasing lilt to his smile.
Arran nodded decisively, and Katrina could see the leader that he was born to be.
“Verra well,” he said. “Tonight, we rest. And tomorrow, we start to fight.”
Katrina woke in the gray light just before dawn.
They were all piled into the cave, curled around the embers of the dying fire, huddled to make the most of the scant warmth it threw off.
Blake had insisted on sleeping the closest to the exit, one hand on the hilt of his sword the entire night.
But he had kept the other arm wrapped tightly around Katrina, and she’d never felt as safe as she had on the cold, hard floor of this damp, wretched space.
Safety was not quite enough to keep her arm from falling asleep, however, and that was the sensation that woke her before the sun kissed the horizon.
As soon as she sat up, Blake was awake, with no hint of his previous sleepiness in his eyes.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, clearly prepared to fight anyone who dared to trouble her.
She couldn’t hold back her smile; she didn’t want to.
Who would ever have thought that the instinctual violence of the MacFarlane Bloodhound would become so dear to her? That the threat implicit in his strength and his brutality would be the greatest form of safety she’d ever experienced?
“Nothing is wrong,” she said, sitting up, careful not to disturb the rest of the group, who were still getting their much-needed rest. She shook out her numb arm. “My shoulder just doesnae like our choice of mattresses, I’m afraid.”
Blake spared a scowl for the hard ground as if he might fight the earth itself to defend her. She ducked her head against her smile.
Blake MacFarlane was a hard man. He was hardened by circumstance and nature, by the things he could control and the many things that he could not.
But there was a softness inside him, too. One that was just for her.
“Come along,” she urged before he could begin pummeling the rocks in her honor. “Would ye take a walk with me?”
Katrina was no stranger to nighttime ramblings, and her feet were certain even on this unfamiliar terrain.
Her eyes checked for any useful herbs on pure habit as she padded softly through the tall grass, Blake entirely silent at her side.
He could move so quietly for such a strong, large man. He was a hunter—her hunter.
The pitch-dark skies of night were fading into the blue-black of the predawn when they reached a dark lake, its waves gently lapping at the shore.
Katrina looked out over the water, and Blake came up behind her, his hands steady on her waist, his body blocking any hint of the morning chill that dared to trespass upon her.
For a little while, they just stood there together, enjoying the peace that they had been denied these past days.
Then, Katrina turned in Blake’s arms, pressing her palms against his chest. He looked noble and handsome and fierce, and when he looked down at her he smiled, and, God, he was so beautiful that it made her heart swell impossibly in her chest.
“Marry me,” she said.
His gaze was as intense as it had ever been when his eyes snapped down to hers.
“What?” he rasped.
Maybe that reaction should have made her feel nervous, but Katrina found that she had never felt less nervous in her life. She felt so certain. This was the right path. This was her path. It was dangerous and frightening and full of obstacles that she could not yet imagine.
“Marry me,” she said again, a rising tide of joy overtaking her. He was so hard to surprise, but he was surprised now, and she was charmed down to her bones. She could spend the rest of her life trying to surprise him. She hoped that she got the chance.
“Blake,” she said, reaching up to press one of her palms to his cheek.
“If we are handfast here today, if we pledge ourselves to one another right here and now, then we can never be separated again. I will be yours, and ye will be mine. Nobody will be able to question that I belong with ye. Nobody will ever try to take ye from me again.”
He gaped at her. She’d struck him entirely speechless.
“And I love ye,” she added, the words simple and true and everything. “Surely ye must ken that by now. I love ye, Blake MacFarlane.”
He seized her mouth in a kiss, a consuming, probing kiss that filled her up, body and soul.
Then, just as swiftly as he’d begun the kiss, he ended it.
“I love ye, Katrina,” he gasped. “Of course I do. I dinnae deserve ye, but I will do everything I can to earn your love. I willnae let ye down. I swear it.”