Page 37 of A Highland Healer Captured (Scottish Daddies #3)

T he night clung heavy, the kind that pressed damp into a man’s bones and stifled thought until steel rang. Zander crouched behind the crenels of the west wall. His eyes narrowed against the wavering torchlight. Mason had been right — Marcus came in prideful and loud.

The lane magnified their noise. There were shouts, laughter too big for men about to die, the clatter of tack not cared for in months.

Zander counted silently as the first helmets broke into view.

Five, ten, fifteen… he stopped at thirty, then swore under his breath when more shadows shifted at the rear.

“Too many,” he muttered.

Mason leaned near, a grin sharp against the dark. “Never enough to fill our yard.”

Zander gave him a look, then lifted one gauntleted hand. “Let them in.”

The gate had been left open, as if the keep were asleep in a lazy, drunken Kirn stupor. Torches flared once, guttered, then dipped out again. Men stumbled through, jostling, snickering, eager for plunder. Pride had driven them into the choke point; rope and spear would break them in it.

The first dozen had no notion they were already trapped. They swaggered, blades loose in hands, boots ringing hollow. Marcus rode among them like a cock strutting his yard, head high, cloak dark against his shoulders. Zander’s teeth bared.

When the last men pressed through the lane, Zander’s hand dropped.

Rope hissed. Horses screamed as lines snapped across hocks.

Men toppled like wheat, breastplates ringing.

From the granary roof, arrows hissed, neat and fast, stitching confusion into panic.

From the hedge, Zander’s hidden band poured, knives low, spears stabbing at hamstrings, men pulled screaming to the dirt.

“Close!” Mason roared from the court. The gate narrowed with groaning timbers. Marcus’s rear guard bunched in confusion.

The yard lit in fire and steel. Zander vaulted down the stair, shield high, sword in his fist. The first man he met swung wild—Zander slammed his shield into teeth, then drove his blade under a rib without pause. He didn’t curse, didn’t waste breath. He cut.

The yard heaved with sound—shouts, hoofbeats, the crack of rope and timber, steel on steel.

And then Marcus’s voice split it all, bright as brass, “Och, Zander! Still hiding behind walls? I’ll break them again for ye!”

Zander turned toward it, fury already sharpening his strikes. He cut down two more, shoulder to shoulder with Mason for a moment before driving forward alone. Marcus had carved himself space near the well, three men braced about him, one torch flaring too big, a stage set for mockery.

“Ye left me for dead once,” Marcus called, grin flashing white. “Ye couldnae even get the head clean!”

Zander didn’t answer. He plowed forward, shield smashing, sword stabbing. The last guard fell gurgling.

Marcus stepped clear, blade flashing. “There he is! The widower! Tell me, did yer wife scream long before she quieted?”

Zander’s world narrowed to steel and voice. He pressed, cutting sharp, forcing Marcus back a pace.

“Or was it the bairn ye failed first?” Marcus sneered, darting in. His blade scraped across Zander’s mail, biting shallow. “The cough still wakes him? A shame ye couldnae bury him quick enough. He’ll follow her soon enough.”

Zander growled low, every muscle straining. The battle blurred around them—men crying out, rope snapping taut, the hiss of arrows. His vision tunneled to Marcus’s grin, his words.

“Ye talk too much,” Zander said, voice low, flat as a whetstone.

Marcus only laughed louder. “Aye, because ye listen, laird . Ye always listen. That healer ye keep at yer table—does she scream like yer wife did, or does she bite like the whorish viper she is?”

Red haze boiled up Zander’s spine. He lunged, blows heavy, shield ringing with the force of each strike. Marcus laughed still, parrying, mocking, feeding fury with every taunt.

The yard burned bright with torchlight, steel, and rage. Zander swore the man would choke on his own grin before the night ended.

Marcus pressed close, the fight a storm of sparks and breath. His blade caught Zander’s shoulder where the mail lay thin; heat spread, blood soaking quick. Pain lanced sharp and bright.

Marcus saw it, laughed, pressed harder. “There now. Ye’ll bleed out before cockcrow. I’ll take yer son to finish what I swore that night. I’ll rebuild Strathcairn with his bones. And I’ll keep the healer—och, aye, I’ll keep her—until she breaks.”

Zander’s vision went red. His teeth ground so hard his jaw ached. He shoved Marcus back with his shield, breath coming hard.

“I’ll put yer head on a spike,” he said, voice soft and steady. “In the very spot ye fall.”

Marcus’s grin stretched wider, mad. “Do it, then, laird . If ye can finish a stroke this time.”

Zander didn’t hesitate. He feinted high, cut low, and his blade sheared through leather and flesh along Marcus’s wrist. The man howled, grip faltering. Zander slammed his shield into the wound, forcing him to stagger.

Steel rang again, sharp and fast. Marcus slashed with his off-hand, wild, nicking Zander’s cheek. Stars burst in his sight. He pressed in regardless, rage anchoring his limbs.

The fight turned brutal. No finesse, no rhythm—just two men locked in hate, each strike meant to end. Zander’s sword found Marcus’s shoulder, biting deep. Blood spattered, hot and thick. Marcus reeled, spitting crimson, but still he laughed.

“Ye’ll lose again. Yer a clumsy excuse for a laird. Ye always lose.”

Zander drove his pommel into Marcus’s jaw. The crack snapped loud. Marcus staggered.

Zander took his head.

The blade chewed through stubborn bone, not clean, not pretty. The second stroke finished what the first started. Marcus toppled, body crumpling in the dirt, head rolling into torchlight, mouth frozen in that hateful grin.

Silence pulsed for a heartbeat. Then the yard’s din crashed back—men shouting, some in triumph, some in fear, rope hissing taut, hooves striking stone.

Zander bent, seized Marcus’s hair, and lifted the head high. His men roared, their enemy faltered. Mason’s voice bellowed, “Press ‘em! Close the gate!”

The rout broke quick. Marcus’s men scattered, tripping over bodies, some caught in rope, others skewered by spear or cut down as they fled. Zander didn’t watch them run. He strode to the courtyard’s iron spike—an old relic left from crueler days.

He set the head down with his own hands, forcing it onto the iron until it took. Blood ran dark, dripping down the shaft. The grin still twisted the dead mouth, but now it was his jest no longer.

Zander stepped back, chest heaving, face slick with sweat and blood. His shoulder burned, ribs ached, but he lifted his voice until it broke the night wide open.

“Nay one touches it!” he roared, words scraping raw. “Nay one—nae even when the carrion have had their fill! He will rot at the doorstep of Strathcairn!”

The cry split the yard like thunder. His men bowed heads, some crossing themselves, others spitting for luck. Marcus’s remaining fighters dropped weapons, courage shattered.

Zander stood a moment longer, the taste of iron thick on his tongue, the fury in him still hot as forge-fire. Then he turned, eyes lifting to the solar window where a faint light burned. Skylar would be with the boy, keeping count of every breath.

And Zander swore in the silence that followed, Nay man would ever again set foot in this keep with intent to harm what is mine. Nae while I draw breath.

The great hall reeked of smoke, sweat, and blood.

Skylar’s hands would not still, even though her arms had begun to shake hours ago. She pressed cloth to wounds, tied linen around gashes, poured vinegar where men howled and begged her not to. A woman’s hands, not a soldier’s, but they worked faster than the soldiers’ blades had.

“Hold him,” she snapped to a lad of no more than twelve.

“Keep him steady.” She leaned over the man with the arrow still lodged in his thigh.

“Breathe, lad, breathe. Ye’ll nae bleed out if ye just breathe.

” She snapped the shaft, slid it free, and shoved a poultice hard against the wound.

His scream rattled her bones, but his eyes didn’t roll back.

Good. Still alive.

The hall was lined with the fallen—most alive, some not. She refused to count the still ones. Not when the living needed her hands, her voice.

Her mind raced even while her hands moved. Grayson. Katie. Zander. Each name pounded in her head like a drum.

“Water,” she called, and a bucket sloshed into her reach. She dunked her cloth, wrung it out, pressed it against a man’s chest where a cut gaped. She tied, tightened, checked the pulse. It thudded. She moved on.

She moved from pallet to pallet, binding wounds, washing blood, pouring draughts into trembling hands. Skylar took note of the murmur of men too worn to keep their thoughts behind their teeth. Trying to hear anything that would give her a sign that Zander was still alive.

“… put his head on the spike…” one whispered hoarsely, awe in his tone.

“Aye,” another rasped, half-reverent, half-fearful. “Said nay one’s to touch it…nae even when the carrion have their fill. Like the old days. Like his father before him.”

“ Our laird . Savage when roused. That’s the Strathcairn way.”

The words rippled low through the wounded, whispers in every corner of the hall. The brutal end. The wild laird. The monster who’d kept his clan alive by showing no mercy. The same man she had once feared when his shadow had filled her path on the road.

Her hands stilled on the bandage she was tying. The image rose in her mind unbidden. Zander, sword red, eyes black as pitch, his rage made flesh. A man who had spiked a head in his own yard for all to see.

But instead of dread, she felt her chest swell. He had not done it to terrify the weak, but to warn the wicked. Justice, brutal and clean, had been served in full.

Her pulse hammered with urgency. She needed to see him. To look into his face and know the man who had once been only her captor, feared and hated, had become something else entirely. Hers.

Skylar forced her fingers steady, tying the last knot, and rose to her feet. The whispers followed her as she crossed the hall, her skirts brushing the rushes, her heart straining forward.

She would find him. She would stand before him and see the truth of what he was—not a monster, but the shield between his people and the dark.

Where was he?

She wiped her bloody hands on her skirts and strode out into the yard. The fires had dimmed, but the ground was littered with the night’s truth: bodies, weapons, torches guttering out. The spike at the courtyard’s heart bore its grisly prize. She swallowed hard and kept moving.

“Laird’s down there!” someone shouted.

Skylar’s feet carried her before she thought. Down the slope of the yard, past the well, where a knot of men parted quickly at her approach. And there?—

Zander Harrison. The merciless. The brute.

The Unforgiving. The Laird. The Father. The Man.

Sat slumped against the wall, one hand pressed to his shoulder, blood seeping dark through his fingers.

His chest rose and fell shallow, each breath a growl torn from somewhere deep.

His eyes were open, though, burning, fixed on her the moment she broke through the ring of men.

“Skylar,” he said, rough, hoarse.

Her throat tightened. “Saints, look at ye.”

She dropped to her knees, hands already pulling her satchel open, searching for linen, vinegar, needle. “Let me see it.”

“Nay,” he rasped, and before she could argue, his bloody hand shot up and caught her jaw. His grip was firm, hot, unyielding.

Then his mouth was on hers.

It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t measured. It was hungry, desperate, a man with fire still roaring in his veins and only one place to put it.

She gasped into it, the taste of blood and smoke sharp against her tongue.

His lips pressed hard, as if he were giving thanks, as if the words he couldn’t force through his teeth had to come another way.

Her hands fisted in his mail, pulled tight, even as her healer’s mind screamed at her to push him back, to see to the wound before it worsened. But her heart—her heart burned.

When he broke away, breath ragged, his eyes softened just for a heartbeat. “He’s gone. Forever. Nay one will ever harm ye. Nae while I draw breath.”

“Zander—”

He didn’t let her finish. His head tipped back against the wall, eyelids dropping, shoulders sagging heavy. His hand slid from her cheek, leaving warmth and blood in its wake.

“Zander!” Skylar’s voice cut sharp, panic lacing through it. She pressed both hands to his shoulder, felt the hot rush of blood seeping between her fingers. Saints above, he was losing too much.

“Help me!” she barked at the men frozen around them. “Get me cloth, bandages, now! And clear space. He’ll nae be in the dirt like some dog.”

They scattered at her fury. Skylar bent low, pressed her forehead to his briefly, as if the nearness might hold him tethered.

“Ye’ll hold, Zander,” she whispered fiercely.

“To the small library! Nae the great hall!” she commanded, catching Mason’s weary eyes as they came into the dark keep. One nod was all she left him with. A node that conveyed: I’ve got him now.

Mason returned the gesture and turned back to the men in the hall.

“Ye’ll live because I’ve nae finished with ye yet,” she said as the men lowered him onto the table. Her hands shook as she worked, but she did not falter.

We’ve just gotten started, Zander— live!

She felt the men exit the room. It was just the two of them alone.

“Live, damnit!”

Skylar pressed and bandaged and stitched quickly and efficiently, her breath shallow, her hands slick with his blood. Each heartbeat beneath her fingers was both a curse and a prayer. The gash at his side seeped stubbornly, hot against her palm, but she would not let it win.

Live! For Grayson. For Strathcairn… For me…

She clenched her jaw, needle biting through flesh, thread pulling tight. His chest hitched beneath her hand, a ragged breath forcing its way out, and she nearly wept with relief.

“Stay with me,” she hissed, half-command, half-plea. “I daenae care if ye hate me in the morn, but ye’ll wake to tell me so.”

The firelight flickered over his pale face, every shadow carving him into something too still, too final. Skylar’s pulse thundered in her ears. She forced herself to work faster, sharper, her healer’s training fighting her own terror.

“Daenae dare let go,” she muttered, knotting off the stitch, her hands shaking even as she pressed down again to stem the flow. “If ye do, I’ll follow ye just to drag ye back, ye bull headed brute!”

Her voice cracked but her hands did not falter. Every press, every wrap of linen, was a vow hammered into his flesh: live, live, live.