She started to move forward now that the car was safe, but Cearnach seized her arm and glanced down at her, wearing a fearsome expression. “Wait.”
The single word was both a command and a plea. He wished to protect her above all else.
She nodded, acknowledging that he knew the Highlanders and their tactics better than she did. Ian got into the car with Duncan and they drove in through the gates.
Guthrie said to Cearnach, “We finally broke into the man’s computer at the keep that Elaine owns.”
Expectantly, Cearnach and Elaine looked at him, waiting to hear what he’d learned.
Guthrie frowned. “Nothing. He’s lived centuries like us undoubtedly. Yet there was nothing in the keep or on his computer to say a thing about him. As if the place was a model home. Clothes in the drawers, and necessities in other drawers, food in the kitchen. Nothing personal. Not one thing. No financial statements, bills, nothing.”
“Which means?” Cearnach asked.
“He knew we’d investigate the place. Maybe that Elaine would, and he didn’t want her to know anything about him.”
Without warning, wolves snarled and growled in the woods, and then attacked.
Cearnach shoved Elaine behind him as a pack of at least a couple of dozen wolves raced out of the woods flanking the drive to the castle. In the inner bailey, Ian and Duncan threw open the doors to the car and hopped out. Some of the wolves went after Ian and Duncan, none getting too close to the men’s swords, while the six MacNeill wolves were fighting with those of the McKinleys’. Another dozen or more McKinley wolves ran through the gate, targeting the rest of the men in the inner bailey.
Damnation! Cearnach couldn’t protect Elaine like this. “Run to the kennels,” Cearnach shouted. “Lock yourself in.”
The kennels were much closer than the keep, if she could just reach them in time.
Guthrie and Cearnach swung their swords at two of the wolves while the others were fighting her cousins in wolf form.
Something more than wanting the treasure had stirred them to fight. Did they think Calla was staying at the castle? Was Baird going to war for her? Was the treasure worth a lot more than they had imagined, and Kilpatrick would do anything to get hold of it?
Elaine barely made it into the kennel, slamming the door behind her, as a wolf crashed into it, unable to turn away fast enough.
Cearnach pivoted to fight a wolf, glad Elaine was inside the kennel. Yet he still wished she was safely inside the keep and that he’d insisted that she stay there in the first place, even if it hurt her fiercely independent pride.
Chapter 25
The dogs in the kennel were barking so loudly that Elaine could hardly hear anything else as she slammed the kennel door, her heart pounding furiously as she quickly locked herself in.
For the briefest instant, she thought maybe Cearnach had been right. She should have stayed in the keep until they knew for sure everything was safe.
She shook her head. She couldn’t have done it. If she had to do it all over again, though, she’d have armed herself with one of Cearnach’s swords. She knew how to use one.
Secure the back door, she thought, but before she could turn to race that way and lock it, a man said in a harsh voice, “Hello, dear sweet Elaine, my mate, my darling.” Though his voice was roughened with age, it couldn’t be anyone other than Kelly Rafferty. “’Tis a treasure you were seeking, lass, when you returned to Scotland. ’Tis a treasure you have found.”
The blood drained from her face, her head becoming so light that she could barely stand. Kelly Rafferty. Him.
She turned around, afraid to see him, and saw the brute, older. He had the same leering expression as he devoured her with his green eyes. His long red hair hung around his shoulders and he was naked.
“You,” she said, gasping out the word and wondering if he was like Flynn, a ghostly visage, not real. She had to admit he looked damn real.
“Who hit you?” he said darkly, his gaze focusing on her bruised cheek as if he wanted to kill the bastard himself. He was the only one allowed to beat on her.
She reached up to touch her bruised face but stilled her hand.
He couldn’t be real. She couldn’t be mated to two wolves. She wanted to die. She probably would be dead as soon as Kelly knew she’d taken Cearnach as her mate. No, he’d want to keep her, abuse her, ensure she knew she was his property forever.
“I am the treasure you are seeking,” he said again as he moved toward her, and she realized that he must have slipped around the back of the kennels as a wolf while everyone else was a distraction. “You are mine.”
No, no, no. She hadn’t been his for centuries.
“You’re dead,” she said, her voice a whisper.
She couldn’t seem to catch her breath, to react. She’d feared and hated this man for the year they’d been together. She’d wanted to escape him, free herself from her bond to him. Every time he’d struck her, she’d wanted to fight back and kill him.
She’d known beyond a doubt, with all the passing years, that he was dead.
He had to be dead.
He smiled, the look so sinister that she knew he’d take a belt to her again, break her jaw, beat her until she barely lived. She wouldn’t let him this time. She wouldn’t let him beat her ever again.
“Why come for me now?” She backed toward the locked door, her legs wobbly from the shock of seeing him, her thoughts in turmoil as she tried to recall anything that would have clued her in that he had always been alive.
“I killed the last of my crew that had left me for dead,” he said, standing still, not drawing any closer now.
“No, no,” she said, recalling the words of one of his men who had come for her. “Your crew said that your quartermaster murdered you because you cheated him. After he killed you, they left him for dead because of what he’d done to you. He’d betrayed you. Not them.”
A sinister light glowed in his eyes. “My quartermaster? So they thought to make you feel they were justified in killing Terrance? He’d punished them for infractions on the ship, and the men wanted him dead also. They quickly turned on both of us, knowing that if one lived, the survivor would make them pay for their traitorous deeds. Which I did anyway. I never cheated my quartermaster out of his fair share of the treasure. He was worth his weight in gold to me.”
Despite his apparent fondness for Terrance, Rafferty was a cold-blooded murderer, a pirate, a thief, a demon. So were his men. Cutthroats, every last one of them.
The only good she’d seen in Rafferty was that he’d loved his father, as much as he could love anyone. The drunken, whoring man had drowned himself accidentally after going on a drinking binge while Rafferty was away at sea. It was the only time she’d ever seen Kelly’s eyes moisten with tears. Yet he’d quickly hidden his feelings behind a mask of indifference, swearing that his father’s love of whisky had been his undoing.
“I hired men to watch you for years. Ever wonder why all those beta wolves who’d expressed an interest in you suddenly just… vanished?” he said, breaking into her thoughts, his tone cold and imperious.
Her stomach fell. He was crazed with vengeance and willing to murder.
“You… killed my suitors,” she whispered, barely able to get the words out. “You were dead,” she said again. “Your men told me so. You never returned to dispute their claim.”
Innocent. The men who had courted her had been innocent of any crime. She’d never suspected they’d been murdered. Just disappeared from her life. She’d always believed they had chickened out, been afraid to take up with an alpha.