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to give him the definitive victory he needed to signal God’s judgment in the righteousness of his cause and force the English to accept him as king. Only a pitched battle—army meeting army—would do that, but Bruce vehemently refused to do something so risky. Why should he, when he could go on as he was until the English gave up?
    If Bruce wouldn’t end the war with a battle—and God knows Alex had tried to persuade him—it would have to be done with a truce. And Bruce wasn’t the one who needed to be convinced to parley. It was the English. The only thing Alex could do was to try to end the war from the other side, using reason, negotiation, compromise, and the influence he’d once had as a former English baron to help them see the value in peace and bring them to the bargaining table.
    It would be a difficult task—hell, a Promethean one—but God knew, it would be better than raids, hostages, and burning barns with innocents.
    When Rosalin decided she wanted to return to England, Alex had “rescued” her—as Boyd had just accused him—by escorting her. Alex didn’t know what Boyd had done to win her back, but it must have convinced her that he’d changed. For Rosalin’s sake, Alex hoped so.
    Unlike Rosalin, however, Alex hadn’t gone back.
    He told himself he was still fighting for Bruce’s place on the throne, but he knew his former brethren wouldn’t see it that way. To them he betrayed them—stabbed them in the back—and his reasons for switching sides wouldn’t matter.
    They wouldn’t care that it was the hardest decision he’d ever had to make in his life. That he’d agonized over it for months. That leaving the Guard had been like cutting off his own arm—with the damage he’d done in removing his tattoo he practically had. That it had torn him apart for weeks . . . months . . . hell, it still tore him apart.
    Now here he was facing not God’s judgment in the righteousness of his cause, but his former brethren’s.
    He was a dead man.
    Ignoring Boyd’s jibe about the knife in the back, he said, “Aye, well, I didn’t think you’d see her in time, and I doubt even someone who blackens their armor would let a little girl get run over if he could stop it.”
    He heard a sharp laugh from the man next to Boyd. “He has you there, Raider,” MacSorley said.
    But any thought that Alex might find sympathy from the always jesting and good-humored seafarer was lost when their eyes met. MacSorley’s face was a mask of betrayal every bit as hard and impenetrable as Boyd’s. They all were: MacLeod, MacSorley, Campbell, MacGregor, Boyd, Sutherland, MacKay, Lamont, MacLean, and one face he didn’t recognize beneath the helm.
    His replacement?
    The sting was surprisingly sharp. Alex could never go back. He’d known that, but seeing it staring at him in the face and condemning him was different. For seven years these men had been his brothers, and now they hated him.
    It was hard to take—no matter how good his reasons for leaving.
    MacSorley’s sarcasm was just as heavy as Boyd’s when he added, “Wearing a wyvern on a surcoat doesn’t give someone a lock on chivalry and honor—even if Sir Alex seemed to think so.”
    Wyvern, not a dragon. That hurt. At one time Alex would have liked nothing more than to hear MacSorley refer to the emblem of his arms correctly. As a young knight the jest about the “dragon” on the Seton coat of arms had driven him crazy. But eventually, it had given him his secret war name among the Guard. By calling it a wyvern now, MacSorley couldn’t have made it more clear that Dragon was no longer a part of them.
    “I never thought that,” Alex started to explain, and then stopped. He’d never been a part of them. That had always been part of the problem. Why would they understand him now when they never had before?
    It was too late for explanations. They all knew that. He would not beg for understanding or forgiveness. He’d made his decision; he would