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“We can’t leave her like that,” Dane mutters.

“The lads will finish it,” Saint tells him. “They want to show their respect.”

Dane’s eyes glaze over. “She shouldn’t be down there on her fucking own.”

The last word breaks beneath the wind.

He stands over the grave with his chest rising beneath his open coat, staring at the disturbed earth covering Ma’s coffin.

When I run my hand down his arm, he pulls away before my fingers find his.

“Don’t fucking touch me, Sera.”

My hand drops between us, fingers curling into my palm until my nails bite. Dane has never pulled away from me before. I swallow the instinct to reach for him again when he chucks the shovel onto the dirt, pulls out a pack of cigarettes, and lights one.

After he inhales in a lungful of smoke, he bends to grab a whiskey bottle half-hidden in the coarse grass where he left it before the service and takes a long drink, his head tipped back, his throat working again and again.

“It was bad enough knowing Saint was fucking a Harrington…and now you’re marrying one.”

He turns his back on Ma’s grave. “When Rafe finds out, he’ll go fucking ballistic.”

With the bottle in one hand and the cigarette clamped in his teeth, he throws me a glare before marching off.

“I’ll go after him.” I lift the collar on my collar and back up.

“Don’t bother. Let him cool off.” Saint takes my shovel and hands it to one of the workers.

“He needs to talk about it.”

His hand settles on my shoulder and squeezes. “Give him an hour.”

Saint walks toward Keira while Shay waves the stable hands forward to finish filling the grave.

Fionn heads in my direction as soon as Saint reaches Keira. His stride is measured, giving no sign of the bullet that cut him up two days ago.

I quicken my pace, though Fionn reaches me first and pulls me into a one-armed hug. I close my eyes against his chest.

His heartbeat runs too fast beneath my ear, and when the wind tears across the heath again, his arm locks tighter around me.

He pulls back a fraction and slides his other hand around the back of my neck, our foreheads pressing. “We’re going back now. You’re freezing.”

“You’re the one who needs to keep warm.”

He takes my hand in his and turns it over, inspecting the rubbed skin beneath my fingers.

His thumb moves to my engagement ring. Mud has worked beneath the stone and into the narrow edge of the band. He wipes it away and settles the ring straight against the base of my finger.

I curl my fingers around his thumb before he can take his hand away. He offers me a slight smile before he takes my other hand and inspects that one too.

Men move around us with shovels and wheelbarrows as they finish filling Ma’s grave, but Fionn doesn’t let go.

Even here, in the middle of Tallon territory, men alter their path around him.

“You can soak in the tub when we get home,” he says. “I’ll run you a hot bath before bed.”

Up close, I can see the strain carved around his eyes and the faint sheen across his skin despite the cold.

“Fionn.”