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  Inches away. Her breath caught. Only then did she realize what she had done. Her hands were clutching his arms and her body was pressed against his. Intimately. Chest to chest and hip to hip. She could feel every hard inch of his chest and legs. She could feel something else as well. Something that made her mouth go dry, her heart drop, and her stomach flip all at the same time.

  Oh, my.

  The shock of it startled her. It was as if every nerve-ending in her body had been struck by a lightning bolt of awareness. She opened her mouth to gasp, but the sound strangled in her throat when their eyes met.

  Heaven help her! Despite the rain and the cold, her body filled with heat.

  If she hadn’t felt the proof of his desire, she could see it now in his eyes. He wanted her, and the force of it seemed to be radiating under her fingertips, making her tremble with unfamiliar sensations. Her heart seemed to be racing too fast, her breath to be short and uneven, and her limbs too heavy.

  She couldn’t seem to move. She was caught up in something she didn’t understand but couldn’t resist. Didn’t want to resist.

  The Hunter is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A Ballantine Books eBook Edition

  Copyright © 2013 by Monica McCarty

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  BALLANTINE and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-54392-9

  Cover design: Lynn Andreozzi

  Cover illustration: Franco Accornero

  www.ballantinebooks.com

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  The Highland Guard

  Foreword

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Dedication

  Other Books by This Author

  THE HIGHLAND GUARD

  Tor “Chief” MacLeod: Team Leader and Expert Swordsman

  Erik “Hawk” MacSorley: Seafarer and Swimmer

  Lachlan “Viper” MacRuairi: Stealth, Infiltration, and Extraction

  Arthur “Ranger” Campbell: Scouting and Reconnaissance

  Gregor “Arrow” MacGregor: Marksman and Archer

  Magnus “Saint” MacKay: Survivalist and Weapon Forging

  Kenneth “Ice” Sutherland: Explosives and Versatility

  Eoin “Striker” MacLean: Strategist in “Pirate” Warfare

  Ewen “Hunter” Lamont: Tracker and Hunter of Men

  Robert “Raider” Boyd: Physical Strength and Hand-to-Hand Combat

  Alex “Dragon” Seton: Dirk and Close Combat

  Also:

  Helen “Angel” MacKay (née Sutherland): Healer

  FOREWORD

  The year of our lord thirteen hundred and ten. Four years ago, Robert the Bruce’s bid for the Scottish throne seemed doomed to failure, when he was forced to flee his kingdom an outlaw. But with the help of his secret band of elite warriors known as the Highland Guard, Bruce has waged a miraculous resurgence, defeating the countrymen who stood against him to retake his kingdom north of the Tay.

  With the Borders and most of Scotland’s major strongholds still occupied by English garrisons, however, the war is only half won. The biggest challenge to the Bruce’s fledgling kingship—the might of the greatest army in Christendom—is yet to come.

  After a brief respite from warfare, the truce with England comes to an end when Edward II marches on the rebel Scots. From his headquarters in the heather, Bruce launches his new “pirate” warfare, harrying the English with surprise attacks and skirmishes but refusing to meet them in an open field, eventually sending King Edward and his men scurrying back to the Borders for the winter. Delaying, not deciding, the final battle to come.

  But there is no peace for treachery. And this time, it will be not the warriors of the Highland Guard who come to his aid, but another powerful ally that has been by the Bruce’s side from the first: the church. The support of men such as William Lamberton, the Bishop of St. Andrews, has proven invaluable, with his network of spies and “couriers of the cloth” providing much needed intelligence—intelligence that just may end up saving the Bruce’s life.

  Prologue

  Dundonald Castle, Ayrshire, Scotland, late June 1297

  Fynlay Lamont was drunk again. Ewen Lamont sat in the back corner of the Great Hall of Dundonald Castle with the other young warriors and tried to ignore his father. But every raucous burst of laughter and belligerent boast that filtered back from Fynlay’s table near the front of the hall made Ewen want to slide deeper and deeper into his bench.

  “That’s your father?” one of the Earl of Menteith’s squires asked. “No wonder you don’t talk much. He does enough for both of you.”

  The other young warriors around him laughed. Ewen wanted to bury his head in shame, but he forced himself to smile at the jest and act as if it didn’t bother him. He was a man now—nearly seven and ten—not a boy. He couldn’t run away the way he’d done as a child every time his father drank too much or did something outrageous.

  But his father’s lack of control—his lack of discipline—was going to ruin everything. As it was, this meeting was like a bed of dry leaves next to a fire just waiting for a spark to ignite.

  Though the great lords gathered in secret here today were kinsmen, all descendants of Walter Stewart, the 3rd High Steward of Scotland, they didn’t always see eye-to-eye. They had come to see whether they could put aside those differences long enough to fight the English rather than each other. Adding Wild Fynlay to the already volatile mix of men in the room was like holding up a blacksmith’s bellows to fan the flames with hot air—lots of hot air.

  But like Ewen, Fynlay Lamont of Ardlamont was Sir James Stewart’s man, and as one of Stewart’s chief battle commanders, his father had a right to be here. If there was one thing Wild Fynlay knew how to do it was fight. It was keeping the fighting contained to the battlefield that was the problem.

  Wild Fynlay’s epitaph had been well earned. He was quick to fight, quick to argue, and quick to take offense. Rules, law—nothing could bind him. He did what he wanted, when and where he wanted. He’d seen Ewen’s mother thirty years ago at a local fair, decided he wanted her, and had taken her. It didn’t matter that she was betrothed to his cousin and chief, Malcolm Lamont. It didn’t matter if those choices nearly cost him—and their clan—everything.

  His father hadn’t changed at all in the year since Ewen had seen him last—except for the missing finger. While Ewen had been in the Borders in the service of Sir James Stewart, the 5th Steward of Scotland, his father had gotten so drunk, he’d bet one