Reluctant (Heroes of the Highlands) (The MacKays #3) by Kerrigan Byrne

Chapter One
    He was shadow. He was night. He was death and blood and screams.
    Grey leached out of his vision as the Berserker rage passed. He melded with the darkness and watched the flames consume what he’d destroyed. The simple homes held together by straw, earth, and pitch caught easily.
    Other shadowy figures crept from the flames carrying their plunder. They showed him deference as they melted into the night as though they’d never been.
    They would pay him tribute when they returned to the war camp. For a Berserker did not stop his killing to collect his due.
    He collected other shadows. Those created by the flames of civilization, but forced to lurk outside of its warmth. Highwaymen, street orphans, discarded soldiers, criminals, the mad and the lost. He organized them. Fed them. Strengthened them. Taught them to take what they could never have had. Showed them the substance of brotherhood was more efficient and profitable than working alone.
    The Gods only favored power. If you were not strong enough to keep what you had, you didn’t deserve it.
    The wails of those left alive, the women and the children, was a familiar and comforting melody that mingled with the roar of the approaching flames. He snarled at the blaze and its illuminating heat, drawing deeper into the night. He did better in the cold. It reminded him that warmth was an illusion and trust was a misconception.
    A score of years ago, he’d been abandoned on foreign soil by the weak and deceitful men he’d once called brothers. Though he kept his army, he relied on none. He trusted their fear of him. Had faith in their greed and their anger. But never their hearts. Never their words.
    The Highland blackguard named Murdock of Clan Munroe galloped toward him, pulling a dark, riderless stallion.
    “It is time, Laird, let us leave this place before the dawn finds it nothing but ashes.” Murdock tossed him the reins and tried to still a dancing horse made nervous by the building inferno.
    He mounted and galloped after Murdock.
    His men called him ‘ Laird. ’ The first time he’d heard the word, he hadn’t known what it meant. He’d not known their strange language. But now, he understood. They needed someone to follow. Someone to fear. Someone to blame. Structure to their day and consequence to their insolence.
    They called him ‘Laird’ because he had no name. Not anymore.
    He was shadow.

Chapter Two
    “His name is Soren and he has to die.”
    Kamdyn MacKay had yet to speak a word. She had yet to close her mouth.
    Finn MacLauchlan had addressed her queen in his short, faded Nordic accent. He had to be the largest, most fearsome looking man she’d ever seen, besides the two dark, gigantic brothers flanking him.
    All this time, Kamdyn had thought her brothers-in-law, Laird Rory and the Druid, Daroch, to be in contest for the biggest and most intimidating men she’d ever met. It wasn’t that the three Berserkers dwarfed them, per se, it was that the large and ancient warriors consumed the space in which they stood, dominated it even, with a dangerous and predatory energy.
    “The three of you are long-mated Berserkers.” The Banshee Queen reached over and gently pressed on Kamdyn’s chin, forcing her slack jaw shut. “And I hear you are now four as Laird Connor’s eldest son has reached manhood and has been blessed by Freya. How is it that four Berserker warriors, three of them approaching a century of life, cannot hunt and kill one unmated rogue?”
    A century old ? Kamdyn’s mouth dropped open again as she studied the Berserkers. Not one of them looked a day older than her brothers-in-law. The five men stood in the great hall of MacKay Castle, each appearing as though they teased the middle years of forty, though Kamdyn was certain that Laird Rory had seen his fiftieth birthday. Silver threaded through Connor and Roderick’s dark hair and even toyed at the temples of Finn’s golden locks. Lines of wisdom sprouted from the corners of