Blood pounded in Ella’s ears with the harsh sound of her breath through the hole cut into her leather mask. Sweat trickled between her bound breasts, and the interior of the mask stuck to her skin.

Several more leaps over the summer-dense bramble and Ella glanced back over her shoulder. She nearly gagged, her stomach twisting into a knot. Cain Sinclair crashed through the trees behind her. Holy Mother Mary in Heaven. He was going to catch her. The thought sent prickles along her skin, her chin growing numb with them, and she turned forward.

For several heartbeats, Ella focused entirely on finding the swiftest route through the tangle around her and Gilla. From the sounds behind her, Cain Sinclair’s strategy was to leap over and crash through everything. Taking a straight-line route toward his prey, as if his horse was unbreakable.

What would he do if he caught them? Slaughter Gilla? Nay, the Sinclairs were known for honoring horses over people. But he would carry Ella back to Girnigoe Castle to torture her for killing his father, unless he skewered her out here in the dense forest.

She leaned forward, sliding her hands down Gilla’s withers to squeeze the mare’s strong neck. “Health and long life to you,” she called above the rush of wind and then pushed upright in the saddle, searching ahead.

“Please,” she whispered, her gaze desperate for a suitable limb. A thick oak stood off to the right, and with a press of Ella’s legs, Gilla veered toward it. Ella dropped the reins and tucked her legs to raise into a crouch on the horse’s broad back, her body taking the rolling gait of her stride as her fingers anchored her to the saddle. The limb loomed close. With her bow and quiver over one shoulder, she jumped, leaping to grab the branch. Even with her muscles contracted to stop her arms from being torn from her sockets, the tug on her shoulders burned as she caught herself, her leather gloves grasping the rough bark.

“Run home,” Ella yelled and gritted her teeth as she strained to lift herself, throwing a leg over to straddle the tree limb. Thank God she’d given up skirts when she’d won the chiefdom.

Reaching to hug the tree trunk, Ella lodged her boots underneath her to stand and hoisted herself onto a higher branch. A thinner bough stuck out level with her chest, and she leaned against it.

“Arabella Sutherland! Ye are mine!” The warrior’s deep voice hit her with such force that she clutched the thin bough to stop herself from teetering. She threw her leather-clad leg over the thin limb, pulling herself farther up the tree. A whispered cracking sound made her grab around the tree’s thick trunk.

“I belong to no one,” she yelled back. The man’s words were so like her father’s.

“Ye killed my father,” the Sinclair yelled.