The Rogue’s Stolen Bride

Chapter Nine: The Thunderclap

Kaida

My father turned to the guards before the silence could settle into something unbearable.

“She is not to leave the carriage unaccompanied,” he said, in the same tone he might use to discuss livestock management. “She is not to speak to strangers on the road. You will deliver her to Lord Vance’s keep intact and on time.” He paused, and something shifted almost imperceptibly in his voice. “She is an Alpha’s daughter. She will be treated with respect.”

The guards nodded. They didn’t look at me.

It was, I thought, the most protection my father had ever offered me. Delivered on the morning he was handing me to a vampire.

That was when Maggie made her move.

She stepped forward from the spot where she had been standing quietly against the wall — so quietly that everyone in the room had apparently forgotten she existed, which was exactly what she had intended.

“I’m going with her,” she announced.

The effect was immediate. My father turned slowly to look at her with the expression of a man who had just discovered an unexpected obstacle in his path and was deciding whether to go around it or through it. The guards exchanged a glance. Even Ben looked up.

“You are a housemaid,” my father said, in the tone that ended most conversations before they properly began. “You will remain here.”

“With respect, Alpha Hawkins,” Maggie said, in a tone that contained no respect whatsoever, “I am Miss Kaida’s personal maid and companion. She will need me to attend her on the journey and to help her settle into her new—” she faltered for just a fraction of a second, “—her new home.”

“Lord Vance will provide her with servants.”

“Lord Vance’s servants are vampires,” Maggie said flatly. “Miss Kaida will need someone familiar. Someone she trusts. Someone with a heartbeat.” She folded her hands in front of her apron with the serenity of a woman who had already decided how this conversation was going to end. “I’m going with her.”

A muscle jumped in my father’s jaw. The guards were looking very carefully at the middle distance, the way people do when they are desperately trying not to be involved in something.

Ben made a small gesture with his hand. “Let her go, Father. It’s one less mouth to feed.”

My father stared at Maggie for a long moment. Maggie stared back.

“Fine,” my father said at last, as though the word cost him something. “Get in the carriage.”

Maggie turned to collect her bag, which she had already packed and placed discreetly by the door, and I caught the small private smile she aimed at the floor before her expression smoothed back into dignity.

She had never had any intention of being left behind.

I was ushered toward the door, the two guards falling into step on either side of me with the practiced ease of men who had been thoroughly briefed on how much trouble I might cause. I was almost at the threshold when Riley materialized from nowhere, inserting himself smoothly into my path with the particular talent that only older siblings and very determined people possess. One of the guards moved to intercept him.

“I’m her brother,” Riley said pleasantly. “I’m saying goodbye.”

He pulled me into a fierce hug before anyone could object, and in the moment his lips were close to my ear he whispered, low and urgent, “Don’t worry, Kai. I’ll get you out of this. I swear it.”

I hugged him back just as fiercely and said nothing, because what was there to say? I loved him desperately for meaning it. And I hated myself a little for not being able to tell him the truth — that I had already made my own plan, that I didn’t need saving, that he could stand down. But I couldn’t risk it. The fewer people who knew, the safer everyone was.

If Jace Blackwood was coming at all.

That doubt again. Cold and persistent as a stone in my shoe.

The guards moved us apart with polite but immovable firmness and I was steered through the great doors and down the stone steps into the pale morning air. I breathed it in — cold and clean and smelling of woodsmoke and horses and the distant dark green of the forest — and tried to hold onto it.

The carriage waited in the courtyard, plain and dark, the Hawkins pack insignia faded on the door. Four mounted guards were already positioned around it, sitting straight in their saddles, staring ahead at nothing. Maggie was already at the carriage door, her bag at her feet, her chin up, her expression composed.

I stopped at the bottom of the steps and turned to look back at the manor. Just once. Just for a moment.

The stone face of the building stared back at me, grey and impassive in the morning light, giving nothing away. Twenty years of my life lived inside those walls. Twenty years of hiding behind curtains and sneaking out kitchen doors and running down corridors until my lungs burned and crashing into the door of my own chamber where Maggie was always, always waiting.

The cook’s cat was sitting on the front step, washing its ear with businesslike efficiency, entirely indifferent to the drama unfolding around it.

That, more than anything, almost made me cry.

“Miss Kaida.” One of the guards gestured toward the carriage.

I got in.

Maggie settled in beside me and took my hand in both of hers and held it tight without saying a word, because there was nothing left to say. The carriage rocked as the driver climbed to his seat. The horses shifted and blew. Someone shouted an order. The wheels began to turn.

I didn’t mean to look back. I had promised myself I wouldn’t.

I looked back.

I pressed my face to the small carriage window as the manor courtyard began to slide away behind us, and I saw him. Ben. Standing in the great doorway where my father had been standing just moments before, straight and thin and angular as always, watching the carriage go.

There were tears on his face.

He wasn’t trying to hide them. He wasn’t trying to wipe them away. He just stood there and let them fall, this cold, duty bound, unbending man who had told me to try to be good and meant it as a farewell, and watched his little sister leave and did nothing, because there was nothing left to do.

“Ben,” I whispered, against the glass.

But the carriage had already turned the corner, and he was gone.

I sat back against the seat. Maggie’s hand tightened around mine.

The door had closed behind me like the sound of a thunderclap.

And now there was only the road ahead.