Page 3 of A Healer for the Ruthless Highlander
Her face was smeared with mud, her hair damp and dark, running across her face like streaks of ink.
She would not stop until she was free, even if it meant risking her life. Even that would be better than being ruled by men who thought they could just snatch women from their homes –or the forests.
“Who are ye? What do ye want from me?”
CHAPTER 2
“Who are ye?What do ye want from me? Where are ye takin’ me?” Leana demanded.
Just because she had stopped screaming didn’t mean she wasn’t fighting; she was just doing it differently.
She looked around, hoping that a crooked tree trunk or a particularly colorful rock would guide her through the forest when the time came to escape.
She also questioned her attackers, looking for a flaw in their armor or some sign of weakness. But the two men, as spare in their words as they were brusque in their actions, were merely herding her like a sheep.
Leana began to feel uneasy. She didn’t know where or to whom they were leading her, but the situation did not look good. Her heart was pounding with fear.
“Where are ye takin’ me?” she asked again, but she only received a grunt in response.
Obviously, they were determined not to give her any clue as to their intentions. But if they thought Leana Beaton was a gentle lamb, they were very, very wrong.
She waited as they climbed a slope, and as soon as the soggy ground made the man in front of her stumble, she pushed him forward, causing him to fall face-first into the mud.
There was her opportunity—it was time to flee.
The second man screamed, but Leana ran into the forest. She was fast, and they had made the mistake of not tying her feet, only her hands.
Her disadvantage was that she didn’t know this forest half as well as her captors did, and that meant she was caught again a few minutes later when she found herself face down on a steep slope.
“Ye’re as slippery as a rabbit,” one of the men said in a thick accent that suggested he was probably a hunter or a merchant who often spent time away from villages and towns.
“And I’m as deadly as a wolf! Let me go, or I’ll make ye sorry,” she snapped.
Neither man listened to her. They just gagged her, and this time they took the precaution of carrying her over one shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
Her new position, with her dark hair falling to the ground, only made her more upset. She was scared, of course, but her anger was far greater. She kept struggling and kicking at the man, who grunted and groaned at her insistence.
Eventually, she decided to calm down—not because she was afraid of upsetting them enough to be attacked, but because she needed to conserve her energy.
She needed to come up with a plan if she was going to escape.
However, her captors did not give her much time to analyze the situation. A short while later, they came to a crossroads.
The path, not as well-used as the main roads connecting the villages, looked like the kind of road used by hunters. The man who had been carrying her over his shoulder finally released her—although a bit roughly—dropping her on the muddy ground, and her teeth chattered at the impact.
She was unhurt, but her ego was clearly bruised. Her hair was all over her eyes, her face was smeared with mud, and the anger reflected so perfectly in her orbs could have set someone on fire.
Instinct made her want to fight again, but then she looked up, searching through the rain and thicket for the reason they had stopped. Only to find a man standing in front of her.
But this was no ordinary man.
For a moment, Leana thought that he was no mere mortal, but rather a god incarnate. And then, ironically, she thought of her captors as little renegades of the forest, perhaps captured to carry out some strange command of their master.
For the dark-haired knight with the mysterious aura could not be just a man. It was as if the King of the Underworld was standing before her.
“Is this the lass?” he asked in a deep voice reminiscent of thunder and crumbling rocks.
“Aye, me Laird,” the two men replied, almost simultaneously.
