Page 153 of The Defiant Curse

Apparently, he had come for her.

Tentatively, she watched him get off of the horse, and as he stood there, she held her breath.

She wasn’t sure how this would go.

Before all of this, she would have known, but now…not so much.

It looked as if time would tell.

While he was riding, he lost track of time. Hamlet, the good boy, just wandered around, leading him on the horse tour of the grounds.

He had some grass as a snack, ate a few flowers he found, and even located some apples on a wild tree in the woods.

And the whole time, Ethan was calm.

For some reason, all of his worries melted away, and this place was like a drug.

From the winds whispering over the fields, to the trees blowing all up and down the trail, he hadn’t felt any stress.

Maybe it was because his wife was here.

Maybe because it was Scotland, but either way, the second he got on this horse, his body stopped running and allowed him to just…breathe.

Here, nothing chased him.

Nothing.

At.

All.

In that moment, he realized that he’d been in a constant state of stress before coming here, and this was needed to help ground him.

Yes, he had a lot on his mind, like what to do about being Shaman or an FBI employee, but it didn’t seem as important.

There was something far more vital to his survival.

Finding Elizabeth.

What he knew was she was out shopping, and at some point, she’d come back.

If she told him to leave, he would.

Only, he wasn’t going home.

Instead, he’d go down to the village, get a hotel room, and still be around if she needed him.

Because he needed her to need him.

Far too long, he’d relied on her, and now, he was ready to carry her for as long as she needed him to. This had been a wakeup call as to how complacent he’d been as a partner to her.

And she deserved more.

Elizabeth deserved better.

As the horse carried them into the mist, he trusted that Hamlet knew where he was going and that they wouldn’t fall off a cliff.

The barn was in this direction, so it was just a matter of time before he moseyed back to the place that he’d ‘stolen’ him from, right?