Chapter 1
The horror was burned into her mind, she couldn’t escape it even in her dreams. Her father, a Lord—or Laird as they called them in Scotland—was on her doorstep in London. In the dream, she couldn’t so much as lift her legs as he spoke. “Ye’re coming with me. Back home,” he said gruffly.
“Home?” she echoed. “This… This is my home.”
Laird McTavish took steps forward and her body screamed at her to run, but her feet wouldn’t move under his intense gaze. “Ye’re of my blood, Hannah. Ye belong with me.”
Fury rose in her chest. “You’ve never claimed me. I don’t believe your intentions could possibly be pure. You just want to use me. I know it.” It had been the words she should have said all those months ago. She should have called him out, demanded answers.
But back then, much like in her dream, the ghost of her mother stepped in.
In reality, it had been her memory and the love she said she held for her father that had made Hannah pliable to his will.
But there, in her dream where her feet couldn’t so much as lift from the hardwood floor, her mother stood next to Lord McTavish, curling into his side.
“Please, Hannah, give him a chance. He’s gruff but… he’s a good man.”
She looked back to the man with disdain—disdain that only grew at how much they looked alike.
He had straight blonde hair just as she did, only his was just to his shoulders and pushed back from his face in a disheveled way.
Those blue eyes that were the same pale shade as her very own.
They even had the same dimple on their chin.
Hannah despised the fact that she looked like the man who broke her mother’s heart and hid away until it was convenient for him.
“I don’t wish to go,” she had faintly argued, at war with herself and the ghost of her mother.
“Ye havenae a choice,” he huffed. “Without yer maither, ye’re mine to look after.”
And then he was dragging her by the wrist out of the London townhouse that she had always called home.
She wanted to scream, to fight, her body within the dream tried but couldn’t find the muscles needed to move her mouth.
And then, she was shoved into a carriage and the vessel was speeding down the cobblestone roads, jostling her side to side.
And she had to watch as her mother’s ghost stayed curled into her father’s side, whispering, “He’s a good man, just give him a chance. ”
The carriage thrashed to the side out of nowhere.
Her mother’s ghost wore a look of pure horror and shock.
And her father, the man who had finally claimed Hannah as his daughter after all those years, clutched her mother to his side, holding her head to protect her from the crash.
Instead of her, the daughter that was alive and in need of saving.
The men in black cloaks opened the carriage door, yanking them out. Her father yelled, fighting the men, swearing and demanding them to leave. But arms were on her and she was reaching for the man that she never knew, but had wanted to get to know.
“I’m sorry, Hannah,” her father had said. “I love yer maither. I always have. If I could do it again—”
His words were clipped by one of the cloaked men bashing him over the head with the hilt of a sword.
Hannah screamed for her father for the first and only time in her life.
The man who had loved his woman and his daughter, but had duties to his homeland and couldn’t leave with her mother, and her mother had wanted to go home to England.
Where had it gone wrong?
Who made the wrong choice that led to all this devastation?
Hannah didn’t know. But she knew she should have never stepped foot inside that carriage that day. She should have never allowed her father to take her away from London, from her mother’s home, from her great aunt Eliza. She should have fought tooth and nail to stop from going.
Hannah clawed at the arms taking her away, reaching desperately for a father that had been out of reach her entire life, and now would be forever.
And then the dream stretched and altered the landscape, making her painfully aware of just how far she was from the safety of England.
A place that had never quite felt like home to her, but would always be worlds better than captivity.
And just like always, it ended with Alan Black coming into her cell as she was still bound and gagged from her kidnapping. “Hello, little bride,” he purred with a sick grin on his face. The intention was already clear: she was to be his bride, by any force necessary.
Hannah jolted awake from her dream. The same dream it seemed she had every night since arriving at the Black Keep’s dungeon.
Even though it had been countless times she’s had that very dream, it never failed to make her wake with cold sweat and trembling hands.
The look on her mother’s face, the desperation in her father’s voice, the revolting smirk on her captor’s face.
She squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath.
It felt so long ago—in the cold, dark dungeon, time had no meaning.
Had it been a month? A year? Hannah couldn’t tell.
There was a lot of commotion outside of her cell and she paused, listening closely.
There had been quite a lot of noise the last couple of days, but nothing had ever quite reached the dungeon; only muffled screams and painful thuds.
Fear thumped in her chest and anger slid through her veins, bracing herself for Laird Black to come take out his frustrations on whatever transpired above.
Laird Black, just thinking the name made her seethe.
He had been handsome with kind ocean eyes that made her think for a fleeting moment that he was there to save her.
But then he had spoken, telling her to obey and she would become his perfect Lady.
How when she refused him, he struck her.
Leaving behind the crescent shaped scar on her cheek where his ring had painfully snagged her skin.
It had only been the beginning of his cruelty. Of his torment.
The commotion outside of the cell grew quiet and then there were footsteps in front of her door.
Hannah remained on the ground, glaring up at the wooden door, ready to fight.
Laird Alan Black could keep her there, could break her body, but she would never give him her spirit.
She would never give him herself, just the hollow carcass he had left her with. And the door opened—
A man with dark blue eyes the color of twilight, stared at her with surprise and then softness.
But there was no mistaking the resemblance he had to the Laird.
The same rugged nose, the same black locks though this man’s were longer, and the same thick, serious brow.
But this man had a well-groomed beard kept short on his face, and he looked to be at least a few years younger than the Laird. And the softness in his eyes…
There was no mistaking. The Laird could never look at her like that. Like she was a person at all, instead of an object to keep and mold into an obedient plaything.
Her heart pattered with an emotion that had been foreign to her since the carriage had been attacked: hope.
Was this a new hell, or could it be her freedom?