Read Online Broken Highlander's Blood Oath by Missy Strom - Free Book Online

to have witnessed his big brother doing this with only a wee lass' help, he thought as he gave the command.
    “ Hausser! ”
    Analise remained nearby, and she stood with her hands stretched outward as if she could balance the feat taking place in front of her by her sheer will alone. She seemed frozen in time as she watched Xavier rising up onto his forelegs with a smooth jerk, lifting his heavy weight and Donan’s combined. Donan stretched up over Xavier’s neck with his arms outstretched to straighten his body, as he was jostled right, then left, then—
    Analise squealed as she saw her hide bow tie tightening, then lose the battle and unravel. “Oh no, Donan! No!”
    Donan couldn't feel that the strap wasn't holding, but suddenly the inevitability of a fall he couldn't stop sent his body tumbling to the left, and it kept going. Analise’s cry warned him and luckily the buckle rings on his side loosened when the pressure came from the inside and not the outside. It freed his leg or else he’d have been hanging off Xavier’s side with a broken leg.
    As it was, he fell free and hit the compact dirt of the crofter hut’s floor with a muffled thud, landing on his left side and shoulder. He felt that, the bracing swift pain of contact, but he'd taken many falls in the past five years and he rolled onto his back.
    Jesu, he'd nearly done it, Donan thought, and then he began to laugh.
    Analise’s eyes were squeezed tight in horror and shock as tears painfully forced their way out. Donan was dead or dying! She was certain and the thought of it broke her fragile heart as a deep rumbling sound started on the other side of Xavier. Was Donan in a fit? Was he dying in some horrible twitching fit, she wondered with terror. She was afraid to look, yet if he was alive and dying slowly, she needed to hold him.
    Shaking, Analise peeked around Xavier’s tail. She couldn't see Donan’s face, but his broad shoulders were twitching. Oh no! Suddenly she felt strange, a freakishness that she'd felt many times before and abruptly her mind went starry. She began humming a tune she could barely hear in the distance. It was her papa, out in the sunflowers, and if she ran fast enough this time mayhap she would see him!
    It dawned on Donan slowly through his mirth that Analise had not moved to his side. This thought sobered him as he pushed upright calling her name.
    “The wee lass skipped out toward the stream, you great laughing goat.”
    Donan turned his dark head to see Shancy standing straight with his hands perched on his lean hips. He should have known Shancy wouldn't leave, but— “Skipping?”
    “Aye, brother, skipping in those pretty purple skirts. She’s a fey vision that one.”
    Donan swallowed back the hot flash of jealousy that suddenly gripped him. It was just his brother making a fair assessment, he told himself, and wasn’t that what was needed in the end was for Shancy to wed Analise, because he was the stronger man. Donan grimaced.
    “Fetch her back now!” Donan ordered a bit gruffly. “And be gentle. She is delicate.”
    Donan’s scowl belayed his tender words as Shancy smirked with a jaunty tilt of his tawny head. “Aye, brother, I’ll fetch the colleen. It is foolish for all of us to linger with Lord Armand about.”
    However a long time later, Shancy still hadn't found the golden-haired colleen. She'd vanished and he didn't look forward to telling Donan this. His brother might find enough good nature to laugh because he’d fell off his horse attempting to get up on him. It was to Donan’s credit that he'd learned to overcome adversity that way. But losing Lady Analise? Och now, that was a very different thing entirely.
    “What do you mean you cannot find her?” Donan was roaring in a fair imitation of a cornered tiger they’d seen near Jerusalem as Shancy helped him up onto Xavier using the same trick Donan had tried earlier.
    “Just what I said, you deaf goat!” Shancy shoved Donan’s leg in place