April 16, 2023

If you got a notification that I'd uploaded a new chapter for Neither Diamonds Sunbursts or Marble Halls and the link took you to this old chapter, I apologize. This isn't the new chapter. But it's only a click away—click over to Chapter 13! That's the *real* new chapter, uploaded and ready for you to read! :-)

For those of you who are wondering, the explanation for this is: I went back and split Chapter 8 into two separate chapters. The first half of it stayed as Ch. 8; the second half became Chapter 9. That change pushed forward all the chapters already published after Chapter 8. (ie: Ch. 9 got pushed forward to become Ch. 10, 10 became 11, 11 became 12, and the new chapter became Ch. 13.) This unfortunately means that all your lovely reviews for those chapters don't match up numerically anymore, which makes me sad, but hopefully this alteration will make what was Ch. 8 more readable. It was simply massive. I think for most readers, chapters that length are nearly unmanageable, or at minimum, wearying. Breaking it into two chapters should help! Thanks, everyone, for understanding, and sorry for any confusion. Please feel free to head on over to the new Chapter 13; hope to see you there. :-)

— Chapter 12 —

A Battlefield of Love and Bullets

Fifteen minutes prior to Sam and Nathan collapsing . . .

SOIL FLEW UP in chunks under pounding hoofs, spraying through the air as the two men pulled their steeds to a halt some distance from the house, carefully staying out of sight from any angle of the orphanage property.

Their boots hit the ground, reins were looped over low-hanging tree branches, and within seconds they were creeping along the treeline that ran along the road, Nathan stopping only to rip his red serge off faster than Sam would have thought possible.

An unmistakable sound cracked through the air, followed by another, then another. Their eyes met in grim alarm as they broke into crouching sprints.

Gunshots.

Unmistakably coming from the orphanage property.

One name coursed red-hot through Sam's veins—Lillian—the fire of it threatening to consume him; only the knowledge that he needed to stay in control saved him from its tumult.

Chuck Stewart was on the front porch, firing around the side of the house, when he reeled back, clapping a hand to his temple. A streak of blood appeared where a bullet had seared him.

A fraction of an inch more, he would have been a dead man.

From the cover of the thick treeline, Sam bit back a harsh exclamation. Too close. Far too close. Where were the shots coming from? Where was Lillian?!

"Do you see them?" His voice was a breath above a whisper, and raw.

Beside him, Nathan's eyes snapped from one end of the property and back again.

"No, but judging from the sound of those guns and the trajectory of that bullet"—he nodded at wounded Chuck on the porch—"they've got at least one man in the woods." His eyes climbed the heights of the pines. "Maybe even up in the tree."

Sam's nod was brief. His ears had heard the same. An unsettling quiet had fallen but his eyes were searching the tall, dense thicket of trees that surrounded the house.

His eyes met Nathan's, flicked to the porch. Nathan's dark head nodded. They needed to get to the house. Communicate with Chuck. Doing so meant crossing the open area between where they were tucked into the treeline along the road, and the porch, where Chuck, who had now spotted them, was waiting.

Sam gestured subtly, indicating their plan. Chuck shot them a nod in response, then pointed one emphatic finger straight down before leveling his hand flat, horizontal to the ground.

Keep down.

They moved forward in tandem, staying low, laying down a blistering cover of firepower in the direction of the shot that had struck Chuck. Return shots whistled by their rapidly moving figures. Nathan inhaled harshly as one split the air dangerously close to his head.

They reached the porch and crouched lower still, keeping their heads below the level of the floorboards—floorboards whose surface all three had varnished just the day before.

Chuck, who had been keeping himself tightly contained in a corner of the porch away from the windows—windows whose curtains were drawn closed, Sam's narrowed eyes observed—dropped to his belly, crawling across the porch till he reached them.

Sam reached up, gripped the other man's shoulder. "Lillian?" he demanded, his breath a harsh whisper.

Chuck's eyes were flat and bleak. "I don't know, Sam."

A sick twist pulled at Sam's insides. "What you mean?" He forced oxygen into his lungs. "Haven't you seen her?"

"No." Self-recrimination shone dully in the veterinarian's eyes.

"What happened? Where are the attackers; how many are there?"

"It happened fast." Chuck's look included them both in his recounting. His face, looking down on them from the porch, was set. "They came from the back, through the woods. I never heard them. They entered the back door of the house just as fast and silent. I was out in the front here and . . . " His jaw visibly constricted. "They've got the front door barricaded with furniture. The curtains have been drawn so I can't get a look inside. There's at least three shooters in the woods—another one or two of them in the house. I can't hear the children or Eleanor anymore, but I have occasionally heard Lillian trying to talk to these men." He hesitated. "She sounds . . . scared."

A primal growl ripped through Sam's chest. His gut roared at him to charge into the house, guns blazing, save Lillian.

If anything happened to her . . .

He forced a wave of ice down his thundering veins. It took immense effort to regulate his shallow breathing. His hand shook ever so slightly. He curled it into a fist, willed the tremble to stop.

"Easy." Nathan's hand buttressed his arm in brief assurance. "Easy, Sam."

He breathed out through his nose. "I'm good."

"We'll get her." The Mountie nodded sharply, a silent promise. "We'll get them all."

I told her I wouldn't let anything happen to her. The recrimination burned like a brand in his gut. For a second he was weak, opening wide and letting the guilt tear him apart, flaying through muscle and bone. Then he locked it up, wrestling it deep into the layers of his being and burying it beneath resolve—a resolve that burned like cold steel as it ran along his tendons and veins, bursting through his musculature like bundles of fireworks.

"We've got no vantage point or way to get eyes on the situation from here." Anger battled with cold logic in his voice. They were all grim. "I don't like this quiet. If we can get to the cottage, it would offer another angle on the house and a better view of the woods."

There was a tiny flick of Nathan's head. "I'm going with you. Chuck, can you lay down some cover fire? It'll buy us a few seconds of time before they realize it's a diversion. By then, hopefully we'll be at the cottage."

"On it."

"Count of three." The two men positioned themselves as Chuck slid back to his corner of the porch. "One . . . two . . . three."

Fast and hard, they launched themselves forward, zigzagging across the lawn as Chuck's barrage pounded out behind them.

Return fire was instantaneous.

Their footsteps thudded into the grassy soil of the side yard, their breathing tight and quiet. Sam twisted his head to get a hard look at the house, seeing that the curtains were also drawn on this side of the building. There would be no visual into the interior from here.

They were two steps out from shelter of the cottage when the men in the woods realized what was happening. A fresh volley of firepower cracking by them. They slid against the nearest exterior wall of the building, slipping around to the rear where they were hidden from the assailants' eyes.

Two pairs of blue eyes met. Terse whispers slivered through the air.

"We've got two known locations." Sam's finger leveled in a concise motion at the spots. "There's two locations, two of us, but no time to—"

"—take their locations one by one," Nathan finished, a corner of his mouth pulling down.

Silent overhead, the black wings of the raven stretched wide as he swooped down on them, pushing in so close Sam felt the rush of air from its wings brush his face. A low growl of stymied revulsion rumbled through his chest. Next to him, he could hear Nathan mutter at the closeness of the encounter. As the bird soared out of sight over the cottage roof, the whoosh of its wings eerie, a visual pledge about the fate of the creature passed between them.

"Nathan, I have a plan about these men," Sam pivoted back, whisper taut. The sun-warmed planks of wood pressed into his back as he leaned against the cottage wall. "If we—"

"Where aaaaaaare you, Sam?" An unknown voice leeringly broke out; taunting them across the property as Sam's blood ran cold. "Ohhh, Sammy . . . come out and plaaaaaaayyyy!"

Another voice joined in. "We're not interested in any of these other people runnin' around. Give yourself up, and we won't harm a hair on anyone else's head! But if you don't come out, we won't hesitate to, oh, say, slit the throat of this lovely lady."

A boulder slammed into his solar plexus as a desperate cry broke out. "SAM, NO! Don't listen to them! DON'T DO IT!"

Lillian!

There was a rushing sound in his ears.

His head spun, spine twisting, painful and sharp, as he peered around the far side corner of the cottage towards the back of the house.

There.

Lillian. On her knees. Hunting knife to her throat.

Red mist bathed his vision.

Lillian's eyes were desperate. But not for herself. Her emotion sliced straight through the air to him—an arrow to its bulls-eye.

"Sam! What is it?" Nathan's face was all fierce angles.

"One man visible. Masked. Has Lillian on her knees by the back corner of the house. Knife to her throat." There was a tearing sensation across his chest, crushing his ribs in a vice-grip.

And then his head went blessedly ice-cold.

Nathan's sucked-in breath was grim. "We can use these tall grasses as camouflage, sneak through them," he gestured to the area between the cottage and the wood-line, "and pick these men off—"

"No. He could slit her throat in the time that takes." Sam never blinked, never hesitated. "I won't take that chance with her life, Nathan. I can't." There was a glint of profound understanding in the other man's eyes. "I'll go out as the diversion, buy us some time, prevent them from"—his jaw worked; it felt like someone stepped on his lungs—"hurting her."

"While I circle round and take them out. The man who's got her goes first." They were in grim synchronization.

"I'll go around the front side of the cottage. When I'm out, you start from this side." Sam tossed his gunbelt down, slid his pistol into the waistband at the small of his back and tented his shirt over it. "Remember that man up in the tree. Be careful, Nathan."

"You too. Ready?"

"God be with us, yes. Let's go."

Sam stepped out from behind the back wall of the cottage. With footsteps that hit with unyielding portent, walked toward where Lillian was pressed to her knees, a strange melting fire in her gaze he'd never seen before as she watched him come for her. Her body seemed to wobble at the sight of him giving himself up for her, as if some integral structure collapsed within her.

I'm coming, Lillian. I'm coming. I will keep my promise to you. And his eyes promised death to the man whose hand held the gleaming blade of silver against her throat.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the tall grasses banking the cottage move almost invisibly as Nathan began to snake through them. And out of the corner of his other eye, he saw a flash of unmistakable scarlet at the front of the house.

Kinslow!

—oOo—

THE KNIFE AT Lillian's throat was warm from her skin, the steel's edge pressing, still hovering a hair's breadth from biting into the soft yielding of her flesh.

Terror, like she'd never felt in her life, strangled her lungs.

Not for herself.

For the man who had stepped out from behind the back wall of the orphanage cottage and was even now moving toward them.

She had screamed for him not to do this, not to sacrifice himself for her, but the hard look in his eyes—burning like cobalt rocks set afire—testified that no one on God's green earth could have stopped him.

Sam, no, no, no, no, NO! Not worth the risk!

But she had to kneel there and watch him come, hands raised, holster conspicuously missing, a kind of ease about him that would fool most people from the coiled fury, the danger lurking just below the surface if you didn't know where to look.

She knew.

The tendon running like a steel band along his exposed forearm flexed with tension.

The deceptively relaxed appearance of his raised hands; in reality, rigid and still.

The vertical vein straining against the confines of flesh along his jaw.

Sunlight poured over them as Sam came to a slow halt six feet from her. Its rays made the grass look greener, Sam's bronzed skin nearly golden, and his hair into a thousand shimmering shades of sun-washed sand along an ocean shore.

His eyes flicked between her and the knife-wielding bandit, still burning with that foreign cold fire.

"Alright, I'm here." The vocabulary in his deceptive drawl was one easy, but she couldn't remember a time when she'd ever heard Sam's voice this arctic. "What is it you want exactly?"

Lillian didn't move her head. Didn't dare.

With her eyes she tried to signal to him, inconspicuously desperate, that another armed criminal hid just inside the back doorway, out of sight from where they were.

"Mighty fine of you to ask, friend," sneered the man behind her, breath hot and foul in her ear. "'Cuz I just so happen to have an answer for ya!"

"Wonderful," Sam purred like a giant mountain cat, his eyes chips of blue ice against the tan of his rugged face.

He prowled a quarter-pace closer to them, a menacing cast creeping across his shoulders, a lethal snarl oozed into his terrifyingly soft voice. "Because if you harm so much as a hair on her head, I'll rip you limb from limb."

Then a cold, slow, soft whisper, like he was sharing a secret. "And that's a promise, friend."

He was glacial, caged ferocity and Lillian couldn't take her eyes off him. Her breath came fast in her throat.

He would do that for her.

Her lungs constricted.

He would do that for her.

The man at her back had stiffened. Then he rallied. "Care about her that much, do ya?" His laugh was unpleasant. "And what about you, pretty?" His grimy bandana, pulled over his lower face like a mask, rubbed against her cheek as he pressed closer. "How do you look upon your man friend here? How upset would you be if something were to . . . happen . . . to him?"

Seething, flaring, choking fury erupted like lava spewing from a volcano.

"I'll kill you." The promise burst out, her vision blowing white-hot, words once unthinkable to her issuing from her mouth without second thought. A world without Sam suddenly became an unthinkable notion. Her eyes clung to his and Sam's irises slid from ice to embers at her words.

"Now, now, girlie, settle down." Her captor chortled nastily. "We haven't done anything to him. Yet."

Lillian gagged, her muscles straining to hold her back as she fought the impulse to turn and sink her teeth into him.

Sam's eyes were fierce and ablaze now in the aftermath of her seethed words; hot with caution and something else she never thought she'd see in him.

Fear.

For her.

A chill shimmied through her.

Had Sam picked up on her silently attempted message earlier about the other man inside? With Eleanor and the children—

A violent commotion sounded from her left, fast approaching. Out of the corner of her skittish eyes, she caught sight of a large shape lumbering straight towards them, head low, belly swaying, ground reverberating under an immense weight.

Virginia! Their cow? How—?!

But then none of that mattered.

Her captor jerked with surprise at the animal lumbering straight for them and Lillian felt a sting at her throat as the blade sliced into her skin, so soft beneath its razor-edge; felt the release of her blood spill forth in small trails of warmth down her neck . . .

. . . and before her, saw Sam's eyes explode in broken savagery as the guardrails around his control finally snapped at the sight of her blood.

"LILLIAN!"

A roar of primal rage and fear ripped from him in a cry of her name that froze the marrow of her bones. He lunged for them, his face feral, a vow of extinction in his eyes as he blazed toward her captor.

Multiple bodies rushed from behind her. Her captor tossed her aside like a rag doll, joining his gang members swarming Sam. They ganged up on him, rushed, trying to tackle him en masse. He kept his feet, dancing out of the way, fending them off.

Sam looked like an awakened storm, his eyes somehow finding hers in the midst of the melee. Hers gripped back, willing him to stay upright.

He landed ferocious blows, felled two men, ripped another's mask off, was feinting with her knife-wielding assailant, and seemed on the verge of subduing the attack when Virginia became unfrozen from where she had come to an abrupt halt, gathered her bulk under her and charged in a beeline—straight at the struggling men.

Lillian opened her lips to scream a warning, but her words choked off, mouth filling with dust as Virginia thundered past, kicking up clouds under her hooves. Frantic, coughing, she spat dust from her mouth, helplessly watching in horror as the cow plowed dead-on into the fiercely sparring pair.

"W-watch out!" At last the words rasped out.

Too late.

Through the haze of dust, she had a confused impression of kicking bovine legs and flying hooves. Sam's body seemed to jolt, his opponent still standing. A wicked series of silvery flashes arced dizzily through the air.

From the overgrown grasses beside the cottage, Nathan Grant surged out in a deadly charge, gun blazing. The cow tore off towards the front of the house, lowing loudly in her distress and confusion.

The dust began to lift and there was Sam, a terrible sway racking his figure as he struggled to stay upright. Through gaping slits in his ruined shirt, the three slashing wounds freshly carved into his chest were brutal and visible.

Blood dripped raggedly, his shirtfront a crimson mess.

His mouth parted, eyes finding her for a frozen moment before he crumpled in front of her eyes, his lips unmistakably forming her name. Lillian. She screamed his back, eyes huge and heart laid bare with horrified, rippling shock as she struggled to her feet.

Every look, every gentleness, every touch, every hope—from the moment he had arrived at her front step—exploded before her vision, adding unspeakable desolation to her shattered cry.

"SAAMMM!"

It was a sound unfit for a human throat. One that contained enough rage and anguish to rattle every vertebra within earshot.

Lillian slipped on an ejected shell casing, falling to her hands and knees. She pulled herself along the ground, chunks of soil and grass tearing loose under her frantic hands as she clawed her way to him across the separating distance.

A hail of bullets whined through the air above her. Return fire seemed to come from the front of the house.

Lillian never flinched. She barely heard the barrage. Every inch of her shaking being was focused on the man whose body she had just reached.

She dragged herself against Sam's prone figure as if to barricade it with her own, a weeping shaking her. Brokenly, she whispered his name over and over again—"Sam! SAM!"—her trembling hands frantic as she pressed them to his torso in a vain attempt to staunch the flow of blood. "PLEASE, no . . . no, no, no, NO, don't do this! Sam, STAY WITH ME! SAM!"

Blood flowed from his body—slicking the grass beneath him, forming tiny pools. It felt as though breath left her own, leaving her a body that refused movement or function if the hope of his existence was snuffed out. The spark of his presence had ignited her hours and breaths since he strolled up the lane and into her life, firing into it colors and a warmth she never knew could exist.

Beyond him, through a numbing veil of growing horror, she could make out the outline of Nathan Grant's fallen body.

—oOo—

Blood.

There was so much blood everywhere.

It seeped through the fingers she so desperately clamped together over the ragged wounds on Sam's chest, as if by keeping them together she could keep him together.

She couldn't see through the blood, couldn't tell how deep the slashes went. She couldn't hear over the ringing in her ears and the whine and crack of bullets.

Was his chest moving?

A bullet whizzed by, shaking her from her paralyzation. She ducked her head, trying to cover more of Sam's exposed body with her own, breath coming in short, ragged pants. Her ear pressed against his upper chest and, stifled, faint, she could have sworn the sound of life still beat.

"SAM, please. Please!" Tears burned and words tumbled in nameless, ravaged pleading. "Don't die—don't DIE! Please, God, don't take him. SOMEBODY HELP ME!"

Sam's bloody body stirred. Just a quiver under her at first. Then, as if a cord had yanked through them, both fallen men were unbelievably moving as she gasped for air, for belief—"S-Sam?!"—and the edges of reality began to blur around her.

No, this can't be, he can't be—he—it—

But it was—he was.

A pistol appeared in his hand as if from thin air, firing fiercely even as his torso curled up sharply into her, the movement flipping her under him. His body formed a curve around her and he rolled them over and over again toward the looming shelter his cottage offered.

In between rolls, when the green of grass parted for flashes of sunlight, she caught dizzying glimpses of Nathan scooting backwards in the grass on his belly, one arm barely in use, the other still firing with strategic precision.

Reality narrowed to bullets and dizzying rolls within Sam's hard arms, his blood warm as it melted into her skin, passing through the delicate lawn fabric of her blouse like it was no more substantial than mist. It was his harsh breathing in her ear, his arm jostling her with every shot he fired, and her dazed wondering, head spinning, how could he shoot rolling over and over as they were and how could he be alive?!

But he was and she didn't care how.

She wanted him safe and whole. Wanted this nightmare to end. Needed to tell him it wasn't his fault. She had seen the look in his eyes when the knife bit into her throat.

He's alive, he's alive, he's alive. Awareness filtered through—she was still crying his name, the sound near a keen. Between harsh breaths, he shushed her, her name no more than a ragged whisper against her hair.

The rolling stopped. Dizzy, her head tried to right itself. Her mouth hung open, gasping shallowly for air as Sam began to crawl, wounded abdomen flat to the ground, one arm latched around her chest and under her arms as he half-dragged her around to the back of his cottage. She collapsed flat beside him, dimly hearing bullets thunk into the front and side walls of the sheltering structure.

She reached for him, but he was already reaching for her. His hands were fierce, unsteady, framing her face, eyes burning as they tore from her bloodied throat to her eyes, and she was just lost, boneless and murmuring incoherently as she sagged into his hands.

"Lillian. Lillian . . . " Hair disheveled, eyes bleak, pained, urgent, he kept her from collapsing.

"Sam, how can you be—you're alive, I thought, I thought you—"

—were dead.

He shook his head roughly, reading her mind.

"Are you hit anywhere?" His eyes were sweeping her as one of his hands pressed flat against her stomach, searching for wounds through her bloodied blouse.

"It's not mine, it's your blood—oh, Sam, I—"

His fingertips skimmed her throat, shook. "I'm sorry, so sorry, Lillian. I promised I wouldn't let anything happen to you."

It was broken gravel coming from his throat.

She caught his face as fiercely as he had hers. "You didn't. I'm fine. Nothing happened to me."

Something terrible and rough seared through his eyes. "Your throat says otherwise."

Her palms tightened on his cheeks, feeling the bare scrape of afternoon stubble. "The knife barely broke the surface."

She had felt the blade slicing her skin but could tell it had skimmed only the surface of her throat.

Against the bloody column of her neck, his fingers stilled, then fell away, but in his eyes the flames of self-blame burned.

Her heart lurched. "You didn't do this. You SAVED me."

Overhead, the black expanse of the raven scooped through the air, its shadow passing over them. A cold chill swept through her. Sam looked up at the creature, face hardening.

"I have to go," he whispered tautly, briefly glancing toward the sounds of battle, an urgency roughening his voice as he snagged his discarded gunbelt from the ground, strapping it on with an ease that sent a shiver through her.

No. NO!

From around the corner, alongside the side wall of the cottage, she could hear Nathan firing from the position he'd scooted himself into, and she whimpered silently, everything in her crying out to keep Sam from rejoining the fray. She could see the way he cradled one arm gingerly across his scored chest. But his other arm wrapped around her and he pulled her up against the base of his cottage, easing her into a half-laying position.

Her hands, raw and dirt-encrusted from clawing her way across rock and grass to reach him, caught at his frayed shirtfront as he started to turn away, rotating him back to her. She pulled knife-torn fabric apart, exposing his wounds.

Sam's hands trapped hers, gentle but forceful as he stilled them inside his—but, too late; she had seen glimpses of cut flesh, of bloody gashes. Her horrified eyes clung to their joined hands before flying up to his face. Tense lines revealed his pain, cutting inroads beside his mouth.

"Lillian, I must go—now."

"No, Sam, please don't! You're wounded badly!" Panicky, her voice shrilled. She cringed, powerless to control it.

She thought of him in that dreadful sway before he collapsed in front of her, toppling in a way she never thought she would see. Her voice began to shake. She pleaded with him, a fresh surge of tears trembling at her lashes. Hot, seething emotions in her chest strangled her. "Please don't—Sam, please!"

Her fingers clutched at him with a sense of desperation, seeking handhold, trying to keep him in place, safe, with her. An edge of hysteria killed her voice.

His hands shifted, a blur of motion.

They anchored her in a hold that was half-fierce, half-gentling. His fingers caught in the thick hair at the base of her skull, tilting her head back on the stem of her neck until she was staring straight into his down-turned face.

His hands unlatched their fistfuls of hair, repetitively brushing over the tumbled strands in an unconscious, soothing gesture, but his voice was rough as it fell on her.

"Look at me, Lillian." Fiercely, his hands dragged down the length of her hair one last time. She stared, lips trembling with the effort. "I'll be back."

In the next heartbeat, he set her from him, pressing her low to the ground and dragging over a large branch to lay atop her as a disguise. "Stay here and no matter what you see or hear, don't come out until I come back for you. Promise me, Lillian."

She managed to nod through the cauldron of tears searing her eyes, drops of fire and water she could hardly contain, and bit back the protest burning in her throat.

With one last look that shook her already shaken bones, he turned from her, and before she could formulate so much as a prayer, he'd dropped flat to the ground and disappeared around the far corner rejoining Nathan, still steadily firing off rounds. There was a slight pause as if the two men were conferring, then the sound of a second gun—Sam—joined Nathan's.

All she could do was tremble and pray.

A yowl of fury and pain tore above the gun battle. Unmistakably the sound of a man in mortal agony.

Lillian quaked, curling into herself, hands pressed over ears. A limb of the camouflaging tree branch dug into her side, but she barely noticed, her only care the awareness that the sound of agony had not come from the spot that concealed Sam and Nathan.

"Stay down!" Nathan's voice.

Sam's joined his in a layered staccato of shouts. "Don't move, don't you reach for your—NO! DON'T!"

There were two distinctive shots, one atop the other, and all hell seemed to break loose.

There was shouting; raw, angry, male.

Sam's voice, quieter, words lost in the sheer cacophony, then even that was lost in the rush of hoofbeats charging up to the orphanage from town.

Looking out between the branch's obscuring limbs, she could see a small group of men flying onto the property on horseback, guns aimed and firing. Joe Moody was in the lead, a look on his mild face that she had never seen before, Mr. Hanson from the furniture store right behind him, and on their heels, Mr. Hoskiss and several more townsmen.

Joe jerked in the saddle, a splotch of crimson blossoming on his shoulder. She clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from crying out. Helpless tears streamed from her eyes. One of the other men tumbled from his saddle, lying frightfully still as he hit the ground.

Lillian's other hand fell nerveless to the earth. Under her limp palm she felt the sudden, rough protrusions of a pine cone. Her fingers closed about it in a grip that scored her palm.

"Watch out!" a familiar voice cried. Was that Gabriel?! Constable Kinslow? He was there?

A confusing jumble of voices rang out.

"They're retreating to the woods!" Nathan?

"Flank them! Hoskiss, you two, with me!" A growl of steel that was unmistakably Sam.

"Gabe, get the front of the property blocked off! Henson! On me!" Definitely Nathan.

"I can help! I can still shoot." Joe!?

There was the sound of bodies in action, growing slightly fainter. Shouting. Jumbled noise.

Hooves hit the ground. Someone had horses in motion.

Shots rang out from multiple firearms.

A scream of fury bellowed forth, distant, but followed by another on its heels. "We'll be back for you, Sammy! We have long memories."

Then louder, clearer, hoofbeats pounding closer. "This ain't over! You'll pay for this, Tremblay! We're gonna get ya! And you won't see us coming, you or that pretty redhead of yours!"

Lillian heard the threat.

Every word.

Ice sharded through her lungs. Terror clamped icy fingers over her heart.

She lurched at the brutal, taunting words, breathing labored, her body jerking in unison with the scattered gunshots that cracked and boomed through the air in the aftermath.

Hoofbeats pounded away in the wake of the ugly threats, but instants later, a second round of horses thundered after them at a hard gallop, men calling to each other over the noise.

Then they were gone.

Eerie quiet drifted over the property. In her hand, the pine cone she clutched in a death-grip finally cracked under the pressure, the sound abnormally loud in the silence.

Her breathing became panicky, tight and pulling at her ribs. Where was Sam?! If he wasn't hurt or collapsed, why couldn't she hear him?! What if he'd—

Footsteps approached through the grass, swift and light-footed as a cat. She froze, trying to make herself as small as possible under the concealing bough of leaves and branches. And then a voice reached her even before the footsteps turned the corner of the cottage.

"Lillian." The strained voce was a soft rasp. "It's me."

And there he was, the wolf of the orphanage, her wolf, finally before her eyes again, crouching down in front of her, his front a mess of blood.

SAM!

An incoherent sob of syllables vaguely resembling his name strangled past her lips. Not waiting for him to uncover her, she pushed and tore the branch off, uncaring as it scraped skin and snagged clothing, throwing it aside as she reached for him.

Tottering on wobbly knees, her whole body went weak with relief and collapsed against him. He made a faint sound as she collided with his chest, a groan deep in his throat as his torso bowed away in a flex of pain.

"Sorry! I'm so sorry," she gasped frantically, trying to pull back. But powerful arms were holding her up; a hand soothing across her hair in a ghost of a touch. Unbound, having long since fallen from its confining pins, it washed loosely over her shoulders, splaying down her back in a tangle of auburn.

"You're alright, Lillian, it's alright." Over and over the reassurance came, then at length, "None of us were seriously wounded."

"You are—you're hurt—you need a doctor!" The words tripped over themselves. But her mind was clear as glass. Sam needed medical attention. Now.

"I will. It's not as bad as it looks."

But the pale tinge under his tan didn't escape her.

His hands cupped her elbows. He peered down into her eyes, an urgency taking hold of the lines of his figure. "Eleanor? The children? Where are they? Are they . . . "

"Safe," she whispered, fearful to touch him even in reassurance, afraid to be the cause of more pain. "In the basement."

The potent relief that washed over him was like a physical wave. His shoulders sloped under the covering of his shirt, head lowering for a split second.

"Thank you, Lord," he breathed. Then he was standing, pulling her up with him, an arm wrapped around her waist as he helped her take steps. "Lillian, prepare yourself. There are wounded out here, and a fatality."

The warning came just in time.

A dead body lay on the ground, not twenty paces away. With a bullet wound to the head that had Sam turning her away, quietly angling himself till his figure blocked her view of the fatally-wounded gangster, who, minutes before, had actively been trying to kill him.

Under the shelter of his arm, she tilted closer, silently grateful. He glanced down at her responsively and their eyes tangled in a slowed-down look that seemed to thicken languorously in the space between heartbeats.

"Sam! Watch out!" A warning shout in Nathan Grant's voice rang out, zapping the moment.

Lillian jerked her eyes from Sam's to see a flutter of black menace above, in a sky-fall of sinister silence almost upon them.

She screamed hoarsely, turning her face into Sam's shoulder as his grasp tightened painfully at her shoulders. With feline reflexes, he spun them out of the way, narrowly avoiding the scrape of beak and claws against flesh.

The raven pulled up with a human-like scream of frustrated anger. With barely a pause, it dove again, swooping down on them, talons outstretched, malevolent eyes honed in, obsidian gleams above his beak.

Lillian's cry was not one of fear this time. It was rage. Rage that overcame any fear in a surge of vigilante protectiveness as she lurched forward, throwing her arms out like a shield in front of Sam, warding the creature off with her bare hands.

A guttural growl escaped Sam's throat. He yanked her back, one arm pulling her protectively flush against his side.

His free hand moved so fast it was but a blur in her side-vision.

Two shots rang out simultaneously.

The raven, wings collapsing, plummeted mid-flight, like a marionette whose strings were cut mid-act; a dark form dropping from the sky like lead. It crashed to the ground, an oddly limp jolt of feathers. The body lay there, an oily black smudge of brokenness against the bloodied, bullet-strewn grass.

In the hands of Sam and Nathan, their firearms were level and steady, still pointed unerringly at the downed creature whose dark presence their bullets had shuttered inside death's embrace.

—oOo—

A/N: Yay! It's finally up! I'm so contrite that it took so long, folks. This chapter was a struggle for me; I desperately wanted to get it written to alleviate concerns left by the cliffhanger ending of the last chapter, but it only came in spurts, giving me bits-n-pieces where I needed chunks. I'm as relieved as you guys that this chapter *finally* got written, LOL—and I hope you found it worth the wait.

Please know that this story and its readers are never far from my mind, even when I'm unable to devote time to it like I yearn to, and please feel free to drop a line in a review; your thoughts and words mean the world to me!

Your every word to me is read; I hear everything you're saying in the comments. About the WHC Christmas special: I feel everything you are feeling and sharing (both publicly and privately) with me. To use reviewer Patricia Wickholm's words: "Broken-hearted hug all around, Team Sam (and just Sam) fans..."

Ditto.

In fanfiction, we can create our own particular happy endings. It's not the same, no, but it is a help. Please be assured those are what I will be serving up in this story; happy endings — for everyone.

I feel a sense of satisfaction and relief that the evil aura'd raven is no longer! :shudder: I'm thankful for Sam and Nathan being crack shots! Also, I'm so glad that new character "Astrid" seems to be a hit with readers. :) I loved writing her and can't wait to get back to her. Until next time, XOXO.