Her Wild Hero

by Paige Tyler

  She had to engage him a little, though, unless she wanted him ripping off her fingers in the next few minutes.

  “Hiding is actually easier to do when you’re smaller,” she said.

  His mouth twisted in what he probably thought was a smile, but it only made him look more menacing than he already did. “I suppose it is. But that doesn’t explain how the big man you were with is so good at it.”

  She’d walked right into that one. “What big man?”

  The smile disappeared, replaced by a menacing scowl. He set the glass down on the table with a thud. “Don’t play dumb. I can smell him all over you. The big man like us, the one who’s part animal.”

  It wasn’t hard to figure out what he meant when he said he could smell Declan on her, and she felt heat suffuse her face. But it was the rest of what he’d said that really threw her for a loop. Marcus didn’t realize there was a difference between hybrids and shifters?

  “Where is he?” When she didn’t answer, Marcus growled and slammed his hand down hard on the table. “Tell me where he is. Now!”

  As if stunned by his own outburst, the hybrid ran his hand over his flattop and took a deep breath.

  “I apologize,” he said, all trace of anger gone from his voice. “I just want to talk to him.”

  She let out a snort. “Right. You and your men have been trying to kill us for a week, and you expect me to believe that you just want to talk? I don’t think you and he would have a hell of a lot to talk about.”

  Kendra knew she should tread lightly, but this guy was too much. He’d kill Declan in a second if he had the chance, just like he was going to murder her.

  Fresh flames kindled in the hybrid’s eyes, and she braced herself, expecting him to launch himself across the table at her. Instead, he wrapped his clawed fingers around the glass in front of him, carefully lifted it to his mouth, and took a slow slip. He worked the rim of the glass around his fangs better than she’d thought he would, and by the time he was finished savoring the drink, his eyes had lightened again. This guy’s mercurial mood swings made Tanner’s seem mild in comparison.

  He placed the glass down on the table. “You’d be surprised how much we’d have to talk about. Like how he does it.”

  Kendra frowned. “How he does what?”

  Marcus’s eyes narrowed, trying to figure out if she was being snide or simply stupid. “How he turns it on and off.”

  She had no idea what Mahsood or anyone else had said to entice Marcus so he would voluntarily let them inject him with an experimental drug. Probably that he’d come out the other side like some kind of Superman. But now he was stuck in this monster form with no way out. A small part of her almost felt sorry for him. But all she had to think about was the casual ease with which he’d ripped out one of his own men’s throats simply because the guys had talked too much. The hybrid process might have given Marcus claws and fangs, but he’d made himself into a monster all on his own.

  “It doesn’t work that way,” Kendra explained. “You’re not like him. He wouldn’t be able to teach you anything.”

  His lip curled back in a snarl. “Forgive me for doubting you, but I’d rather hear that from him. I’m going to ask you one more time. Where is he?”

  “If you were so interested in talking to him, maybe you shouldn’t have sent all those things of yours after us,” she shot back, the words out before she had time to think. “Six of them attacked us below the rapids in that river near where your men found me. They killed him.”

  Marcus surged to his feet so fast that the chair he’d been sitting in flew across the room and smashed into the wall. “You’re lying!”

  Kendra jumped. She wondered for a split second if hybrids had the ability to smell when someone was lying. But she immediately dismissed that notion. Hybrids seemed to share only the most basic traits with their shifter cousins.

  “You’re right. I’m lying.” She wasn’t sure why she got to her feet. Marcus was way too big for her to ever be able to look him in the eye. But that didn’t stop her from putting her hands on the table and shouting at him anyway. “Because it makes complete sense for me to run around the jungle by myself instead of staying with the man who was keeping me alive out there!”

  “If he’s dead, then where’s the body?” Marcus demanded.

  “I don’t know. He fell in the river and got carried away. Go look for him somewhere downstream.”

  Saying the words hurt her as much as they had the first time, but she was desperate to sell the fact that Declan was beyond their reach. She only hoped Declan was awake and gone by now. She needed to give him every extra minute she could.

  The hybrid’s eyes flared so brightly they seemed to light up the room more than the sun that was starting to peek in the windows. His claws dug into the conference table, and she thought he was going to tear right through it to get to her. She backed away, not caring if he could smell her fear.

  “I guess I have no further use for you then,” he said, the words a low, rumbling whisper.

  Oh crap. She’d pushed too hard and blown the only chance she had to get away. This hulking killer was going to end this right here and now.

  “Ruiz! Madsen!” he shouted.

  The door jerked open behind her, and the two hybrids who had escorted her there strode into the room.

  “Take her to the lab and give her the serum.” Marcus’s hellish gaze seared into her. “It’ll be interesting to see what a woman looks like after going through the transformation process.”

  Kendra’s blood turned to ice. She tried to run, but the two hybrids grabbed her arms and picked her up like she was a rag doll. She kicked and dragged her feet, but they ignored her struggles as they carried her across the camp.

  Crap. She’d imagined Marcus doing some pretty horrific stuff to her, but she never thought he’d turn her into a hybrid. This was worse than anything she’d imagined.

  Chapter 13

  “What the hell is the problem now?” Tate demanded.

  Angelo ground his teeth as the DCO operative squared off against Ivy and Clayne. He knew Tate was scared shitless about Declan and Kendra, but so was everyone else. On top of that, they were all exhausted, thanks to pushing hard through the night. If anyone should be given a break, it was Ivy and Clayne. For whatever reason, Declan and Kendra’s trail had gotten harder and harder to follow throughout the night. Ivy and Clayne had practically been crawling through the jungle on their hands and knees for the past four hours. They looked like a couple of zombies.

  “We’ve lost Declan’s trail again,” Clayne said.

  “How the hell is that possible?” Tate frowned. “We’ve been following it the whole night.”

  Clayne barely muffled a growl. “We’ve been following Kendra’s, not his. If you’d been paying attention, you would have remembered me saying Declan’s scent got all muddy and disappeared way back at that shelter we searched.”

  Angelo could understand why Tate might have missed that detail. The scene they’d found at the shelter had been confusing and scary as hell. First, there was the shredded uniform top covered in Declan’s blood. Kendra’s uniform top had been right beside it, covered in hybrid blood. And then, if those two things hadn’t been bad enough, there was that patch of torn-up trees no one could explain. It looked as if a small bomb had exploded. By the time Ivy had announced they couldn’t find Declan’s trail anymore, hardly anyone had been paying attention.

  It hadn’t helped that neither Clayne nor Ivy had been able to explain what they meant when they said that Declan’s scent had gotten muddy.

  “Declan’s scent just disappears right here in the middle of this mess,” Ivy’d told them.

  “So, now you’ve lost Kendra’s scent, too?” Tate asked. “What happened, did her trail get all muddy, too?”

  Clayne’s eyes glowed gold in the early morning light.

  Angelo stifled a groan. Shit. If Tate didn’t shut the hell up soon, Clayne was going to clock him.

&n
bsp; “No, it didn’t get muddy,” Clayne growled. “She was picked up by a hybrid and carried out of here.”

  “Then why the hell don’t you just follow the fucking hybrid?” Tate shouted.

  “Which one?” Ivy’s eyes glinted green. She looked like she was angry enough to take a swing at Tate herself. “There’ve been at least half a dozen hybrids stomping through here in the last few hours, all moving in different directions. Which one do you suggest we follow?”

  Tate’s eye’s narrowed. “How about the one that captured Kendra? Because I’m pretty sure that wherever she is, Declan won’t be far away.”

  Angelo wasn’t sure about that, but he wasn’t going to be the one to point it out. Unfortunately, it looked like Clayne had chosen that particular moment to embrace the concept of tough love. Angelo shoved his M4 into Derek’s hand. On the other side of Ivy, Landon handed his weapon to Tanner. But before he and Landon could get between Tate and the two shifters, Carter interrupted.

  “Guys. Hold up. I think I found Kendra.”

  Angelo jerked around to see Carter pointing at something in the distance. But instead of Kendra, he caught sight of a petite woman with long, brown hair and the biggest, most expressive eyes he’d ever seen standing about a hundred feet away. All he could do was stare back. She was freaking supermodel material.

  “That’s not Kendra,” Ivy said.

  “I’m guessing she’s not a hybrid?” Landon whispered to his wife.

  As if she heard them, the woman smiled. Angelo heard Carter groan behind him. He couldn’t blame the guy. The woman had one hell of a gorgeous smile. But what was a woman who looked like her doing out here?

  “I don’t think so,” Ivy said softly. “But she’s wearing something that mostly masks her scent.”

  “Just because she’s not a hybrid doesn’t mean she isn’t dangerous,” Clayne said, not even bothering to keep his voice low.

  The woman’s smile broadened and she lifted her hand to make that universal follow me gesture with her finger. Then she turned and gracefully half ran, half leaped a few steps before stopping to look over her shoulder at them with those enormous eyes of hers and crooked her finger again.

  “That answers the question about what she is,” Clayne said. “She’s a shifter, for sure. And I think she wants us to follow her.”

  Under other circumstances, Angelo would have willingly followed her anywhere. She might be gorgeous, but they were in enemy territory. “What if it’s a trick?”

  “We’re only going to find out if we follow her,” Clayne said.

  The woman gave them another smile, then bounded off again. This time, she took a half-dozen leaps, traveling a good seventy-five feet in a blink of an eye.

  “Follow her? I don’t think we’re going to be able to keep up,” Landon said.

  “I can,” Clayne said, and took off at a sprint.

  Ivy glanced at Landon. “I’ll keep Clayne in sight. You keep me in sight. I’ll make sure not to lose you.”

  Angelo still wasn’t sure chasing the freaking hottest-looking woman he’d ever seen outside of his best friend’s wife through the jungle on a whim was a good idea. But Ivy didn’t give them a chance to talk it over. One second she was there; the next they were all running after her.

  Keeping everyone together at the same time, they maintained a defensive posture, and trying to stay with the much faster shifters was tough. With Carter’s cracked ribs and all their other injuries, they simply couldn’t move that fast. And the woman they were chasing was flat-out scary fast. Within a few minutes, it was damn near impossible for the others to keep a visual on Ivy.

  Beside Angelo, Landon swore and ran faster.

  “You two go,” Tanner shouted. “Get ahead of us and keep an eye on Ivy. I’ll make sure we catch up with you.”

  Angelo hated splitting up the group, but Tanner was right. He took off with Landon without hesitation. Within sixty seconds, they made up enough ground that they could at least see Ivy and Clayne and the mystery woman they were following. Though Angelo got the feeling she could have left them in her dust if she wanted to. He’d seen several of the DCO’s shifters in action, but he’d never seen any of them run like her. Hell, she wasn’t even running most of the time. She was bounding and bouncing like a frigging gazelle. It was like she was playing with Clayne. Every time he got within twenty feet of her, she kicked into another gear and extended her lead. He could hear Clayne’s growls of frustration from where he was.

  Up ahead, the woman disappeared from view. Angelo’s stomach knotted as Clayne followed her over the slight rise, Ivy right behind him. If someone was planning to ambush them, this was the place to do it.

  He and Landon had been doing this kind of shit together for so long that they didn’t even have to tell each other to pick up speed; they both just instinctively did it. But when Angelo topped the hill a few minutes later, he skidded to a stop, which kept him from tumbling headlong down the sharp, rocky slope on the other side. A few feet to the right, Ivy and Clayne were crouched down behind several large boulders. The wolf shifter motioned for them to get down, too.

  Without a word, he and Landon dropped and found cover while still moving carefully toward the two shifters.

  “Where the hell is that human superball we were chasing?” Landon asked, breathing hard.

  Clayne pointed to the right without taking his eyes off whatever he was looking at below, at the bottom of the slope.

  Angelo looked in the direction Clayne had motioned, and gulped. Shit. There was nothing over there but jagged rocks and scrub trees covering the edge of a cliff that skirted the ridgeline above the valley. Below that was a steep drop of at least a hundred feet. The only path the woman could have taken from here would have required her to jump from rock to rock in order to reach the top of the cliff, where it merged once again with the jungle. There was no way she could have traversed that path in the mere seconds she had between disappearing from sight and him and Landon getting here. It was suicidal.

  “She pointed us toward the bottom of the valley, then skipped away across those rocks like a frigging mountain goat,” Clayne growled. “I didn’t bother to follow.”

  “No shit,” Angelo muttered.

  Ivy laughed. “I think Clayne is just pissed that a woman he probably outweighs by a hundred and fifty pounds outran him.”

  Clayne ignored the jab. “Yeah, well it looks like it was a good idea to follow the human superball.”

  Angelo guessed so. Below him, shrouded in trees and mist, were a collection of buildings surrounded by a patchwork collection of chain-link and low-stacked rock fencing. Even from here, Angelo could see hybrids. And right below the rocks where they were currently hiding, there was a goat trail that wandered through the trees toward the bottom of the valley. Whoever the woman was, she’d not only led them to the hybrid camp, but she’d also parked them right in front of the path that led up to the front door.

  The sound of boots on rocks alerted Angelo that Tanner and the others had finally caught up. Ivy darted off to bring them in quietly, leaving Angelo with Clayne and Landon to recon the hybrid camp.

  The compound was comprised of about a dozen buildings, with very little fortifications of any kind beyond those stacked rock walls. If they could get to those walls without being seen, they could use them for cover as they took out the hybrids one by one. Of course, if the hybrids saw them at any point, this was going to turn into a nasty house-to-house battle. With just the number of hybrids Angelo could already see below, that didn’t seem like something they wanted to do.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Angelo caught sight of Ivy leading the guys over the ridgeline. Tate sprinted over the moment he saw them.

  “Any sign of Declan or Kendra?” he asked as he fought to slow his breathing.

  “Nothing yet,” Landon told him. “But that shifter led us here for a reason. If we’re careful, we’ll be able to work ourselves into a good position to see what’s going on down there. Once we fi
gure out where Declan and Kendra are, we’ll pull back and come up with a plan to get them.”

  Tate’s mouth tightened, but he nodded. “Okay. Man, you have no idea how hard it is for me to say this, but direct assaults and hostage rescue aren’t what my team is trained to handle. So I’m going to trust you to make this happen, Landon. I know I’ve been bitching at you since you hit the ground, but I’m counting on you to get Declan and Kendra out of there alive.”

  “If they’re still alive, we’ll get them out,” Landon promised.

  “They’re alive,” Tate said firmly.

  Angelo hoped so.

  Landon waited for Ivy and the rest of the guys to gather around, then started laying out the team assignments and how each of them would approach the compound. He hadn’t gotten more than ten words out of his mouth when the sound of automatic weapons filled the valley. A split second later, a loud roar echoed in the jungle.

  “What the hell was that?” Carter asked.

  Tate grinned. “Declan.”

  “Are you sure?” Landon asked. “I’ve never heard him roar that loud before.”

  Tate craned his neck, trying to see down into the valley. “Me either. But I know his roar anywhere. And there’s only one thing I can think of that’d piss him off enough to make that kind of noise.”

  “Kendra’s in trouble,” Ivy said.

  “Yup.” Tate looked at Landon. “What now?”

  Landon sighed. “So much for a plan.”

  Angelo couldn’t help smiling. His former captain hated planning on the fly, but nobody did it better.

  “We keep it simple,” Landon said. “Angelo, you have Tanner, Butler, Carter, Derek, and Ivy with you. Get your team to that rock wall on the left side of the compound and hit them hard and fast. Make it noisy, too. I want you to draw everyone in that compound over to where you are. I’ll come in with Tate, Brent, Gavin, and Clayne from your right. I’ll delay until you’re fully engaged, then come in and hit them from behind while they’re focused on you. If we’re lucky, we’ll pick up Declan and Kendra as we’re moving through the compound. Watch your sectors of fire along your right flank—that’s where we’ll be coming from. ID your targets. We don’t know if there are any other friendlies in there besides Declan and Kendra. Radio silence until contact.” He looked around. “Any questions?”