Sibyl Blackthorne isn't afraid of anything - except maybe being sold into marriage to a man she doesn't love. A man she's never even met. A man who, by reputation, is one of Scotland's cruelest lairds in over a century.

But what choice does she have, with her father dead and her uncle now married to his brother's widow, putting him in charge of not only the Blackthorne fortune, but Sibyl's future as well?

Then her betrothed turns out to actually be far worse than his reputation, so headstrong Sibyl decides life as a peasant, or even death, would be preferable to a future with such a despicable man, and makes plans to run away.

On an organized hunt for wolves - or, as the Scots call them, wulvers - Sibyl escapes her fiancé's clutches, only to find she's run into something far more untamed and dangerous in the middle of the woods.

When a big, brawny, long-haired man, who only speaks to her in Gaelic and calls himself Raife, simply picks her up and carries her off with him into the Scottish wild, Sibyl knows she's in trouble.