Page 58 of A Healer for the Wicked Highlander

Coming closer.

Freya went still, while her pulse was a frantic drumbeat in her ears. She turned her head toward the door. Her entire body tensed up in wait.

The latch shifted.

And then the door creaked open.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Michael stood in the great hall, with his hands braced against the heavy oak table. The fire roared in the hearth, but no warmth reached him. Not with the weight of the words he was about to speak.

Across from him, Marissa and Abigail sat rigidly on the wooden bench, unaware of the storm about to descend upon them. Cody stood off to the side, with his arms crossed and his shoulders squared with a tension far beyond his years.

Michael exhaled sharply. “Freya is gone.”

For a moment, time seemed to stop.

Marissa stared at him, her lips parted and her hands tightening into fists against her skirts. A single, choked breath escaped Abigail before her whole frame went rigid. Cody’s brow furrowed, his little body tensing like a bowstring drawn too tight.

“What?” Marissa’s voice was barely more than a whisper, trembling on the edge of disbelief.

Abigail’s breath hitched. “Gone?”

Michael nodded, his throat tight. “She was taken.” His voice was rough, edged with fury he barely contained. “Someone lured her out with a note, one meant to look like it came from me.”

Marissa let out a sharp, broken gasp, her hand flying to her mouth as if to hold back a scream. Beside her, Abigail shook her head. Michael could hear her unsteady breathing.

“Nay,” she whispered. “Nay… she cannae be gone…”

And then she crumpled, her body folding in on itself as the first wretched sob broke free.

Marissa clung to the edge of the table, her knuckles white. Then, as if something inside her shattered, she shot to her feet, stumbling toward Michael, her small hands grasping desperately at his tunic.

“Ye have to find her, Michael. Ye have to!”

The sheer force of her desperation struck him like a blow to the gut. Before he could think, before he could hesitate, he reached for her, pulling her in. Abigail, shaking uncontrollably, collapsed against him next.

They really daenae see me as a monster.

Michael stiffened at first, unaccustomed to the feel of them trembling against him, to the warmth of their grief pressed into his chest. He had never been a man for comfort. Never knew how to mend what had been broken.

But they were Freya’s sisters. And whether he had intended it or not, they were his now, too.

His arms tightened around them, his jaw locking as he rested his chin against Marissa’s hair. “I will find her,” he said. “I swear it.”

Across the room, Cody had not moved. He stood rigid, as his fingers curled into fists at his sides. His dark eyes locked onto Michael’s, filled not with tears, but with something deeper.

Rage. Determination. A fire that matched his own.

Michael’s grip on the two lasses tightened as he made his vow. “Nay matter what it takes, I will bring her home.”

Those were also the thoughts he had as he paced the length of the great hall. A knock on the door interrupted him, and he immediately called out his approval to enter. The moment Brodie had returned with one of the guards, saying the man had something to tell him, Michael had barely held back the urge to shake the words from his throat.

Now, as the guard stood before him, wringing his hands, Michael forced himself to stay still. To listen.

“Speak,” he ordered, his voice like a blade against stone.

The guard swallowed hard before nodding. “Me laird, I—I think I ken how Leighton escaped his cell.”