Page 52 of Highlander’s Protector

Strands of wet hair were plastered to his face. His eyes were closed. He was pale.

He was not breathing.

She put her ear to his chest. Fear sliced through her stomach when she didn’t hear any heartbeat.

“Damn ye!” she cried and hit him with all her might in the chest. He had to spit out water that filled his lungs. Nothing.

She turned him to his side and started hitting him with her fist against his chest.

Nothing.

“David!” She kept hitting and hitting. “Dinna leave me. Breathe, goddamn ye! Breathe!”

Slam. Slam. Slam.

Nothing.

CHAPTER 21

Pain burst through David’s chest, and he coughed out a stream of water…or maybe vomited. A desperate, gut-wrenching need for air gripped him, and he gasped, sucking oxygen into his burning throat.

It hurt to breathe. He kept coughing and gasping…coughing and gasping.

And retching again.

Through blurry vision, he saw a lead-gray sky and Anna’s face, wet and worried.

“David, ’tis all right… I’m here… Ye’re alive…”

He was alive?

Last thing he remembered was the fall into the river, the weight pulling him down, holding him under the rushing water. The terror, the helplessness, the absolute agony of being bound with no ability to free himself. The dirty, dark-green river water, the bubbles floating up all around him.

The panic, all-consuming.

The anger. At them. At the world. At himself.

The pain of holding the air and wanting to breathe and not being able to.

Then a vision of Anna swimming to him like a mermaid. The sight of her had warmed him, even if he knew it was likely a fantasy in his dying mind, a manifestation of his desire to see her one last time. And he couldn’t hold it off anymore. The agonizing, burning sensation of sucking water into his lungs.

He hugged her, marveling at the freedom of his hands. She must have cut his bonds. He was shaking violently, his chest still on fire with pain.

“’Tis all right,” she murmured into his ear soothingly. “Ye’re safe. They’re gone.”

“I thought this would be my death,” he said, his throat hurting and his voice rasping.

She pulled back and cupped his face. He could see her better now. Her long, dark eyelashes were glued together with water, her eyes bloodshot from searching for him underwater, but still beautiful, dark and glistening.

“My mermaid,” he whispered. “You brought me back to life. You risked your life once again for me.”

She smiled, her teeth white against reddened lips. “Ye would have done the same for me.”

Somewhere in the distance, thunder rolled. He looked up at the dark sky. On the horizon, a black storm cloud was rolling in. He waited, letting his body breathe and adjust. Letting himself feel alive again. The scent of river water was in his nostrils and he was cold. Cold was good. Pain meant he was still alive.

“God, it’s so good to breathe,” he said.

She nodded. “Aye, ’tis. But we must go. It will rain soon, and we better find a shelter and warm ye. Ye didna die from drowning, but ye may still die from fever. Can ye stand?”