Sold to the Highland Beast – Bonus Prologue
Five years earlier
The late afternoon sun slanted through the pines, striping the muddy road with gold and shadow. Peadar rode beside Tristan, his shoulders aching from morning training, his thoughts already drifting toward supper and sleep.
Ahead of him, his father, Dougal MacGregor rode with his mother, their horses close, their heads bent together in quiet conversation. Eilidh MacGregor laughed at something he said—soft and warm, the sound that had shaped Peadar’s childhood. His father reached over and adjusted her cloak, shielding her from the evening chill.
They looked… content.
Behind them rode four MacGregor guards, relaxed but alert. They were deep on MacGregor land, less than an hour from home. This road had carried their clan for generations.
Tristan rode at his side, close enough that their stirrups brushed. They’d been inseparable since childhood—brothers forged by scraped knees and shared punishments.
“Yer da’s planning another cattle raid,” Tristan said conversationally. “Against the Camerons, I heard.”
“The Camerons are allies,” Peadar scoffed. “Why would—”
The arrow came from nowhere.
One moment his father sat tall in the saddle. The next, a black-fletched shaft punched through his back with a wet, horrifying sound and burst from his chest.
His father made a small, startled noise—more confusion than pain—and toppled forward, sliding bonelessly from his horse into the mud.
“DA!”
“DOWN!” one of the guards shouted. But it was too late.
Arrows rained from the trees.
A guard pitched sideways with a shaft buried in his throat, blood spraying across the road. Another took two arrows to the chest and fell without a sound. Horses screamed. Men shouted. The quiet road became slaughter in a heartbeat.
Eilidh screamed.
The sound snapped him fully awake.
“Maither!” He kicked his horse forward—but armed men were already emerging from the trees, disciplined, relentless. They wore mixed colors, cloaks hastily altered.
Someone struck Peadar from the side. He felt himself fall, the world tilting violently as he hit the ground. Pain exploded behind his eyes. Mud filled his mouth.
Get up. Get up.
He pushed to his hands and knees, vision swimming. Through the blur, he saw his father lying face down in the road, blood soaking into the earth beneath him.
Dead.
His mother was dragged from her horse.
She fought—God, she fought—but trained men overwhelmed her easily. One struck her hard enough to knock her to her knees.
“NAY!” Peadar surged forward—
A sword slammed under his chin, lifting his face. Steel kissed his throat.
“Stay down, boy,” a voice said calmly. “Unless ye want tae die with him.”
Peadar froze.
Then the men parted.
A rider dismounted and walked forward with unhurried confidence, boots sinking into blood-slicked mud. His armor was finer than the others’. His bearing unmistakable.
Torcull Drummond.
Recognition hit Peadar like a second blade.
Drummond stopped beside his father’s body and nudged it with his boot, expression unreadable.
“So,” he said mildly. “MacGregor chose his side.”
Eilidh spat blood at his feet. “Ye murdering bastard.”
Drummond backhanded her.
The crack echoed across the road. Peadar jerked forward instinctively, but the sword at his throat pressed harder, and warm blood trickled down his neck. The man holding it smiled.
“Careful, boy. Wouldnae want tae make this worse.”
Drummond crouched before Eilidh, his expression almost gentle. He smiled faintly. “He supported Matheson. Openly. Spoke against me claim. Encouraged others tae dae the same.” He tilted his head, studying her like a scholar studying a text. “Did he think I wouldnae hear? That I wouldnae care?”
He stood slowly, his gaze sweeping the carnage—the bodies, the blood, the terrified horses.
“I’m correcting that.”
He pinned Peadar with a deadly glare.
“Every clan needs reminding, now and again,” Drummond said evenly, “of what happens when they use resistance.”
He gestured to one of his men. A simple, economical movement.
The soldier drew his sword and drove it into Eilidh’s stomach.
She made a sound—choked, wet—and blood spilled from her lips.
Peadar surged forward despite the blade at his throat, vision red, blood roaring in his ears.
“Dinnae ye touch her!”
Drummond lifted his sword—not hurried, not angry. Judging.
“Kill him,” he said calmly. “The boy’s old enough tae be dangerous.”
The man holding the sword drew back his arm—
“Nay!”
Tristan moved without thinking.
He threw himself between Peadar and the descending blade, arms wide, his body shielding Peadar’s chest.
The sword came down anyway.
It struck Tristan across the shoulder and upper back, cutting through leather and flesh in a brutal, tearing arc. Tristan cried out as he was thrown aside, hitting the ground hard, blood pouring freely.
“Tristan!”
Peadar fought like a madman then—thrashing, snarling, blind with fury—but too many hands held him down. He could only watch as Tristan lay gasping, teeth clenched, one arm useless at his side.
Drummond looked down at Tristan with mild surprise. Then interest.
“Hm,” he murmured. “Loyal.”
He turned away from them, already bored.
“Kill the general,” he said instead.
Peadar’s head snapped up.
“Nay!”
Tristan’s father—his da, Peadar’s father’s most trusted general, the man who’d taught both boys to hold a sword—was dragged forward by two soldiers. He was bleeding from a gash on his temple, but he stood straight, spine unbent, eyes fixed on Drummond with open contempt.
“Ye’ll pay fer this,” the general said hoarsely. “Nae today. Nae tomorrow. But ye’ll pay.”
Drummond smiled at him.
“Oh, bullocks now. Bold words coming from a dead man.”
He drew his sword himself this time in one clean stroke.
The general’s head jerked back. His knees folded. He collapsed into the mud without a sound.
Something inside Peadar screamed and tore apart at Tristan’s guttural scream.
Drummond wiped his blade on the dead man’s cloak and sheathed it. He gestured lazily to his men.
“Leave the boys,” he said. “They’ll remember tae nae cross me.”
His gaze slid to Peadar, cold and deliberate.
“Tell every clan what ye saw today. Tell them what happens tae men who back me rivals. Tae faithers who raise sons with ideas.”
Then he mounted his horse.
The men melted back into the trees as quickly as they’d come, leaving blood, bodies, and broken breathing behind.
Peadar crawled to Tristan’s side, hands shaking as he pressed down on the wound, trying to stop the bleeding, choking on his own sobs.
“Stay wi’ me,” he begged. “Please—please—”
Tristan’s eyes fluttered open. He tried to grin and failed.
“Couldnae… let him,” he rasped. “Take ye.”
Peadar bowed his head over him, tears burning hot and useless.
Nearby, his father lay dead in the road.
And a few feet away, Tristan’s father lay butchered in the mud, executed not for strategy—but for message.
That was the lesson Drummond wanted taught.
And Peadar learned it.
Perfectly.