Chapter 1: The Forest Discovery
The air in the forest clearing was thick, cool, and tasted of moss and wet stone. Ailsa’s palms were flat against the rock, the green velvet of it slick and living under her skin. Her cheek was pressed to that cool, damp surface, her fiery hair tangled in the ferns that curled over the edge. Every driven push of Callum’s hips rocked her whole world, sent sparks through the dark behind her closed eyelids.
His large hand was clamped over her mouth, his fingers smelling of leather and iron. It wasn’t to quiet her; the nearest soul was miles away at the keep. It was a part of it, this thing between them. The control. The complete, devastating surrender. She moaned against his palm, the sound vibrating back into her own skull.
“Mine,” he growled into the nape of her neck, his beard rough against her skin. His other arm was a band of steel around her waist, holding her up, holding her tight. “Say it.”
She couldn’t speak. She nodded wildly into his hand, her body coiling tight. He was laird. He was her brother-by-marriage. He was, for three months now, the only heat in the cold void Torin had left behind. The grief had been a physical thing, a stone in her chest. Callum had been the only one whose own rage at the loss matched hers. That shared fury had first sparked in the stable loft, a frantic, tear-streaked collision. It had since settled into this—a consuming fire she stepped into willingly, addictively, to burn away the memory of her husband’s smile.
A twig snapped.
Not the soft pop of a deer’s step. This was a sharp, deliberate crack, like a bone.
Callum froze, buried deep inside her. His hand slid from her mouth to her shoulder, gripping hard. He turned his head, his body a shield.
Ailsa opened her eyes, looking past the rock, into the tapestry of shadow and silver-lit green.
He stood at the edge of the clearing, where the path from the lower glen emerged. Mist wreathed his boots. For a heartbeat, her mind refused the shape of him. It was a trick of the half-light, a memory made flesh by her guilt. Torin was dead. His body was ash on a windswept field near the border.
But the scar across his jaw was real. The set of his shoulders, the way his dark hair fell across his forehead—it was him. His face was not the face she remembered. The softness she loved was gone, carved away by hard months. What was left was a glacial calm, more terrifying than any shout. His eyes, fixed on them, were hollow. His right hand rested on the hilt of his sword, half-drawn.
The world went silent. No birdsong, no rustle of leaves. Just the three of them and the awful, humid air.
Callum slowly, deliberately, pulled himself from her. He stepped back, his movements tight with the readiness for a fight, but he made no move to cover himself. He faced his brother, a chieftain confronted. Ailsa scrambled, yanking her skirts down with trembling hands, the rough wool suddenly feeling like a shroud.
“Torin.” Callum’s voice was gravel, but steady.
Torin didn’t look at him. His eyes were nailed to Ailsa. “Ailsa.” Her name was a flat statement, devoid of all the warmth it had ever held.
She opened her mouth. Nothing came out. I thought you were dead was true, but it sounded like a feeble excuse now, coated in the sweat of her betrayal. I was lonely was a deeper truth, but it tasted like weakness. She said nothing.
“You’re alive,” Callum said, stating the obvious, filling the terrible silence. “The scouts found blood. Your pin.”
“Aye,” Torin said, finally shifting his gaze to his brother. The blue of his eyes was like winter ice over a deep loch. “Delayed. Not dead.” A muscle twitched in his jaw. “It seems I was… missed.”
The last word hung in the air, a poisoned dart.
“You were mourned,” Callum said, his own jaw tight. “We burned rites for you.”
“I see how deeply you mourned.” Torin’s eyes flicked back to Ailsa, taking in her dishevelment, the flush on her chest, the way she couldn’t meet his eyes. “Comforting my widow. A laird’s duty, I suppose.”
“Torin, please—” Ailsa found her voice, a thin, broken thing.
“Please what?” he interrupted, the first crack in his calm showing as a slight flare of his nostrils. “Explain? I understand what I’m seeing well enough.” He took a single step forward. The mist seemed to part for him. “My brother. My wife. Bent over a rock in our grandfather’s wood.”
Callum moved then, putting himself more squarely between Torin and Ailsa. “Do not speak to her like that. The fault is not hers alone.”
“Oh, I know whose fault it is,” Torin said, his hand still on his sword. “I’ve known for years, brother. The way you watched her. The compliments that lasted too long. I called it pride. I was a fool.”
The two men stared at each other, a lifetime of kinship unraveling in the space between breaths. The clearing was no longer sacred. It was a courtroom.
Torin’s gaze swept over Ailsa again, and something in it broke further, shifting from rage to a devastation so complete it made her breath catch. “Did you love him?” he asked her, the question stark and simple.
She shook her head, tears finally spilling over. “No. I love you. I mourned you.”
“You have a poor way of showing it,” he whispered.
Then he did the thing she least expected. He took his hand from his sword. He let it hang empty at his side. The fight drained from his posture, leaving only a profound weariness. He looked from his wife to his laird, his brother, the man who had stolen his place in her bed.
“So,” Torin said, the word barely audible. “What now? Do we duel here? Shall I kill my laird and brother for a woman who clearly prefers him? Or do I walk back to the keep and pretend I saw nothing, and live in this sick silence for the rest of my days?”
Callum stood very still. The possessive set of his shoulders softened, just a fraction. This was not an enemy to be fought. This was Torin, returned from the grave. “No duel,” Callum said, his voice low. “No pretense.”
“Then what?” Torin’s question was a challenge, flung at both of them.
Ailsa looked at her husband’s shattered pride, then at Callum’s fierce, unyielding possession. The fire he’d ignited in her was still banked in her belly, a traitorous glow. The love she had for Torin was a deep, scarred root in her heart. They were both real. They both tore her in two.
She had no answer. The forest held its breath, waiting for one of them to decide what came next.