Rose couldn’t fight the beast who held her still on his lap in his saddle despite her strongest efforts. He secured her with one long, beefy arm, and kept her quiet with the other hand over her mouth. She grew exhausted quickly and slumped over. When her captor eased his grip over her mouth, she tried to bite his fingers off.
“Dinna make me kill ye, wench,” the beast whispered deeply into her ear. His breath was hot and sour and made Rose gag.
When he cupped one of her breasts in his palm, she began screaming again. No one had ever touched her so. She wished she had a knife—
“Save some fight fer later,” he growled against her lobe.
She begged and prayed to God to send Tristan to her. Did they kill him? No! This couldn’t be how it all ended. She hadn’t been spared from the pestilence just to die at the hands of some filthy miscreant. She had no weapons, but she had teeth, and fingernails, and feet to kick.
She calmed her heart and tried to think clearly. She didn’t have too long to think before they stopped deep in the woods.
The beast pushed her out of the saddle. The others laughed when she fell to the ground. There were twelve of them in all. The beast came around to her and yanked her up by her hair. He dragged her to a nearby tree and caught the roll of rope one of his friends tossed him.
So, this wasn’t the first time they had taken a woman.
“You are pitiful!” she screamed at them. “Tristan, help!”
The beast tied her to the tree, facing the trunk and laughed at her rantings.
When she was secured, he yanked up her skirts and began pulling at his breeches.
They heard a sound in the trees. Something, guttural, unnatural. The beast stopped. His friends looked around.
“Tristan!” she screamed again.
One of the men hurried forward to the beastly leader. “She calls on Tristan. Do ye think she means the Tristan?”
The beast tugged on her hair. “Who do ye call, wrench? Is it Tristan MacPherson?”
“Aye!” she screamed at him. “’Tis him, and he is going to kill all of you.”
“Ye better untie her, Simion. If she belongs to Tristan MacPherson, ye dinna want to be touchin’ her.”
“Hell!” the beast, Simion lamented. “Archie, did ye kill him?”
“Aye! I dinna know! I hit him hard enough to kill another man, but ye know what they say about MacPherson. Nothin’ kills the bastard!”
“’Tis true,” Rose interjected over her shoulder, feeling less terrified than she did a few moments before. They knew of Tristan! They were afraid of him! “Even the deadly pestilence will not go near him.”
“Edward, go back and make sure he is dead.”
A man to her right snorted. “I’m not goin’ back there, Sim. Ye go back.”
Something dropped out of one of the trees and landed on its haunches in front of Rose. She opened her mouth to scream but realized it was Tristan and not some giant, black raven with murder in its eyes.
He’d been in the trees! She didn’t know whether to gasp or shout huzzah! His movements were lightning fast. In an instant, he produced a dagger, swiped it across the rope binding her wrists to the tree, and then flung it at a man on her left.
No! There were twelve of them. Eleven. Could he—ten. His long claymore sliced and plunged, arching in the air and catching the light from the sun. Two more men screamed before Tristan chased them down and hacked at their backs with an axe he produced from inside his long coat.
Rose watched in awe and horror as Tristan caught a man by the back of the head and smashed his face into a tree once, twice, again and again until only broken bones and blood remained.
He killed without mercy. That’s what he had told her, but seeing it was another thing altogether. He looked savage, furious, letting nothing stand in his way—smashing through jabs and blows from the men as if their swords were made of feathers.
It seemed as if he were playing with the rest of them. Mostly with Simion, for he killed every man before the beast, letting him watch what he did to his men, letting him imagine what he was going to do to him. One man tried to run. Tristan yanked a dagger from the throat of his earlier victim and hurled it at the runner, stopping him when the blade cut through the back of his neck.
He turned to Simion when it was just the three of them left.
“Ye put yer hands on her,” Tristan growled at him, coming toward him with his bloody sword in one hand and an axe in the other.
“I didna know she was yers!” Simion screamed. “Do ye think I would have—”
Tristan plunged his sword through Simion’s belly and swung his axe across Simion’s neck at the same time. When the beast’s legs gave out under him, Tristan put the sole of his boot on Simion’s chest and kicked him off his blade.
He turned, amidst twelve fallen bodies and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.
Rose would have been terrified of him if she didn’t know him. She wanted to run to him, fall into his arms. He’d saved her again, this time from being raped by all the men. He’d come for her. She knew he would. He cared for her whether he would admit it or not. She was…as Simion had said, his.
He looked at her and seemed to become human again as he dropped his bloody weapons into the grass and relief replaced the anger in his gaze.
She couldn’t hold back another instant. She ran to him and he caught her in his arms.
“Are ye hurt? Are ye hurt?” he begged to know.
She shook her head and
