Pathfinder's Way (55 page)

Perhaps, if she had truly believed that
Fallon’s death would have been the better option for the Lowlands,
she might have taken this easy way. But the cork was out. The
Trateri wouldn’t stop coming, even with Fallon gone. She’d rather
he shape what this land could be than allow others to pervert
it.

Shea headed along the ridge, careful to keep
her silhouette small to limit the potential of someone seeing her.
At the first opportunity, she slid down the hill, moving as quietly
as she could as she made her way back to camp.

Night was coming fast now. The sun had sunk
behind the mountains, leaving only dim shadows behind.

Shea snuck past the two men they had left on
lookout. She hadn’t been gone long and hoped they hadn’t noticed
her absence. It was a faint hope, but she didn’t want to start this
off with a confrontation between herself and Fallon. She needed him
to believe her and the chances of that happening dwindled if he was
already furious.

She had just stepped into camp when a dark
form hurtled at her from the side, tackling her and sending her
face down into the dirt. Rough hands yanked her arms behind her
back, tying them with a rope.

The man dragged her to her feet and marched
her to a trio engaged in an intense conversation. Fallon was one of
those men. He looked furious.

Perhaps it had been foolish to think he might
dismiss her disappearance and attribute it to the call of nature.
She had a feeling the next few minutes were going to be rough.

Eamon’s advice from their first mission
echoed through her mind. She really hoped this wouldn’t be the
scenario he’d warned her against. She needed these men to trust
her.

“Fallon,” Caden said. “Your little mouse has
returned.”

The men broke off their conversation to fix
her with varying degrees of threatening stares. None looked
particularly relieved to see her. If anything they seemed even
angrier.

“Hello,” Shea said weakly.

Fallon stepped forward, looming over her. He
brushed her hair away from her face and then rubbed his thumb
lightly at a spot of dirt on her cheek.

Dropping his hand, he said calmly, “Where
have you been?”

“I thought I’d take a walk.”

It was the truth. Such as it was.

“A walk.”

“Yes, a walk.”

“And why did you feel you needed to take a
walk?” his voice never once varied from its eerie calm.

Shea felt more anxiety from that calm tone
than she would have if he’d just started yelling.

“Well.” She stopped. How could she put this
in a way that would make her actions seem perfectly reasonable? “I
was angry.”

“You were angry?” The first sign of emotion
began to show on his face.

“Oh boy,” Caden said softly.

Shea wasn’t encouraged when he jerked his
head at the other two who turned and walked away, leaving Shea
facing Fallon with Caden at her back.

“Yes. You upset me when you bodily moved me
from where I intended to sleep.” Remembering the events sent a
thread of that same anger through her body. She might have decided
she didn’t want him dead, but that didn’t mean she’d forgotten all
the insults he’d piled on over the past few days.

“I see.”

He did?

Without warning, he grabbed the front of her
shirt and jerked her up to his face, leaving her balancing on
tiptoes as he snarled down at her.

“Do you have any idea what I would do to you
if you were any other person?” He shook her. “Any other man in my
army would be up on charges for abandoning a post.” Another shake.
“The penalty for that is death. Death, you daft woman. You drive me
mad. I could have you beaten bloody and then quartered.”

“Yes, yes. I get it,” Shea said
sarcastically. She even rolled her eyes for emphasis. All of her
good intentions flew the coop in the face of his fury. “You’re the
big, scary warlord, and I’ve embarrassed you in front of all your
men. Shame on me. Should I apologize My Lord High and Mighty?”

All of a sudden the anger drained from his
face, leaving behind a man oozing lethality with every move he
made, as he gently drew one finger down the column of her throat.
“Is that all you think you’ve done, my fire? Embarrass me?” he
chuckled, his voice sinfully low. “If you had been my Tolroi,
maybe. As my aide, you’ve disobeyed me, flaunted our laws and
abandoned your duty. That contains entirely different
repercussions. Now what am I going to do with you?”

Shea swallowed hard, feeling his hand
encircle the base of her throat, his thumb moving up and down the
side of her neck in a caress that sent shivers rushing down her
back.

“If I were you, I would be thanking me for
coming back, especially when you hear what I have to say. I could
have left. Headed for home, but I came back. To you. That should
grant me some mercy.”

His eyes sharpened with interest, though he
didn’t move his hand, just kept up that maddening caress.

Receiving a slight nod to continue, Shea
said, “There’s an ambush coming. I’m not sure where or how many men
lie in wait, but I know there are men posed to strike.”

Fallon’s caress stopped and Caden moved
around front, watching her carefully.

“Continue,” Fallon said.

“I overheard two men talking out there about
looking for someone. I think they were looking for you, and I don’t
think they planned to be very friendly when they finally caught up
to you. They were planning an ambush.”

“Did you know them or see what they were
wearing?” Caden asked.

Shea shook her head. “No, I heard them coming
and hid since they were coming from the opposite direction of
camp.”

The two men shared a look, but neither seemed
surprised. As if they were expecting an attack.

Shea thought back to Darius’s concern over
Fallon leaving with only a hundred men, seeing it in a different
light. Had he known even then?

If so, why? As bait, maybe? A way to draw out
the traitors hiding in Fallon’s ranks?

This whole excursion could be one giant trap.
A counter ambush that took care of Fallon’s opposition in one fell
swoop.

Shea looked around the clearing with new
eyes, seeing things she had missed before. There was none of the
ease the men would typically have at the end of a day. Instead of
playing cards or bones, men polished swords and fixed what little
armor they wore. There was an alertness about them that said they
were prepared for an attack at any moment.

Shea had thought nothing of it earlier,
attributing it to behavior befitting an elite group of warriors.
The best in the army if camp fire gossip was to be believed. Now,
she saw it as something else entirely.

“You knew about the attack,” Shea said, a
little dazed at the astounding risk he was taking.

“We hoped our enemies would take advantage of
our situation,” Fallon told her.

“We never thought it would come this soon,”
Caden groused. “We’re barely a day out from the main encampment.
Considering slow poke’s pace today, we didn’t make it nearly as far
as we would have normally.”

“Hey!” Shea exclaimed. “You gave me a pony
that was half as tall as your mounts.”

Caden scoffed and turned back to Fallon. “We
can send scouts to pinpoint their position. It might give us an
idea of where and when they are planning to attack. Might even tell
us who is behind everything.”

“Their leader is a woman from the sound of
it,” Shea chimed in, tired of being on the periphery of the
conversation.

“What do you mean? I thought you didn’t see
them. You couldn’t have seen if they were wearing clan covers if
you didn’t lay eyes on them.” Caden sounded suspicious.

“I didn’t say I saw them. However, they kept
talking about a lady. Said Fallon was an oath breaker who led her
on and broke her heart.”

“Indra,” Fallon spat out.

“I told you that woman wouldn’t take your
refusal of her bed lightly.” Caden groused.

“I never made her promises or indicated she
would rule beside me as Telroi.”

“Aye. I know it, and we know she’s not in
this alone. There has to be at least one other feeding her
information and helping her plan,” Caden said.

When they both looked at Shea, she shrugged.
“Don’t look at me. That’s pretty much the extent of what I heard
out there. Anything else and you’ll have to figure it out on your
own.”

“You’ve been very helpful,” Fallon
observed.

Caden cleared his throat hiding what sounded
suspiciously like a chuckle. “I’ll see to the men while you tame
your mouse.”

With Caden’s departure, Fallon focused solely
on Shea, pinning her under an intense gaze that saw through her
every defense straight to the person hiding inside.

It was a heady feeling, imagining he knew her
every secret, her every desire. For someone whom loneliness was
practically a state of being, it made her feel wanted, cherished
even.

“You have a choice to make,” Fallon said,
stepping close and bending his head towards her. “You either become
my Tolroi or you leave, tonight. Where you go, I don’t care as long
as you’re gone from here.”

Shea’s breath stuttered and she blinked. Then
blinked again. She’d expected him to yell. Castigate her for taking
off alone. Maybe, if she was lucky, thank her for the intelligence
she had happened across. Offering to let her go back to the
Highlands was not even on the list. It was nowhere near the list
and in fact would be the very last thing she ever thought to hear
from his mouth.

“You’d do that. You’d let me go back to the
Highlands?”

“Yes,” he confirmed.

No thoughts showed on his face, no hint as to
his feelings. He was every inch the untouchable warlord in that
moment.

He reached behind her and undid the rope
binding her hands.

Shea couldn’t help the feeling of
uncertainty. As recently as that afternoon, she would have taken
the second option without a moment’s doubt. Her inner struggle on
the ridge had thrown all of that off center. She had decided to
come back, to give this life a chance, to see if it held what she’d
been searching for since the moment she could walk.

Now he was telling her she had a choice.

It was easy to stay when there was no choice.
It was even easy when a person’s life hung in the balance.

But this choice would be different. She would
have to choose it willingly. Eyes opened and accepting of any
consequences that might come.

She had warned Fallon. He and his men
wouldn’t be surprised by any ambush. Eamon and the others’ lives
were no longer in the balance. She could walk away free and clear
and never suffer a crises of conscience.

“What if I stayed as a scout?”

“No. You’d have to be my Tolroi.”

Shea wanted to stomp her foot like a three
year old. She settled for a grimace. “You’re being absurd. Let me
stay as a scout, and I’ll consider becoming your Tolroi.”

“You already know my answer to that.”

“Why? Why is this so important to you?”

He moved then, grabbing the front of her
shirt and pulling her up to his face before wrapping one arm around
her back to support her. “Because you have already made your choice
whether you’re willing to admit it or not. Because when you were
gone I knew fear such as I have not known since I was a boy
watching my father die, and my mother take her own life rather than
face dishonor, not because I thought you had run to my enemies but
because you were out there somewhere on your own, perhaps hurt or
scared or in pain, and I wasn’t there to help you. But mostly,
because you are mine, and I crave the same commitment from
you.”

He snarled such sweet words in such an angry
voice, as if he wasn’t thrilled with these reasons but accepted
them none the less.

The most profound words Shea had ever heard,
the kind that etched themselves deep into the soul. She knew if she
lived a hundred years she would remember them.

Slowly, inch by slow inch, she slid out of
his arms until she was fully supporting her own weight. He
straightened and stared impassively down at her. An outsider
looking in would never have suspected the depth of emotion he’d
just given her seconds ago.

Arching one eyebrow, he told her, “You should
also know, should you choose to return to your Highlands, that once
I have dealt with the traitors in my midst, I will march my army
into the heart of those lands and not stop until I have you
again.”

After a stunned moment, Shea threw her head
back and laughed. “You are a warlord.”

The laughter faded and her gaze was soft as
it landed on him. A small smile played on her lips.

Her choice was an easy one. It had been made
a long time ago. Perhaps as long ago as that day she had looked up
at the platform and seen a pair of whiskey colored eyes staring
back at her.

It wasn’t in her nature to give everything so
easily, however.

“I’m staying,” she informed him before
turning her back and making her way over to her blankets.

“As my Tolroi,” he bellowed after her.

“We’ll see,” she called back.

A grin overtook her face as she headed for
their sleeping area. Cocky bastard.

That was the last moment of levity that
night. After that, the men were busy with preparations. Everyone
knew an attack was imminent, but not where it would come from or
what odds they faced. Caden dispatched scouts following a
conversation with Fallon. Shea tried to volunteer to show them
where she had encountered the enemy, but Fallon said no and once
the warlord decided something nobody was willing to argue.

After that, there was nothing to do but
wait.

Fallon joined Shea where she had bedded down
for the night, scooping her up and pulling her with him under his
blankets.

“My Tolroi sleeps with me,” he informed
her.