Her Wild Hero

“I thought about it,” he said. “But then at the dinner table that night, while I sat there eating everything in sight, I listened to my mom explain how shocked she was that one of the other professors at the college had worn white after Labor Day. She literally went on about it for thirty minutes.”


His mother would really have a problem with Kendra’s clothing choices. She wore whatever she felt like, whenever she felt like it, including white in the middle of winter. “What about after she finished going on about that?”

“I figured that if my mom got worked up about something as stupid as that, she’d probably pass out if she discovered her youngest son was a monster. And what if other people found out what I was? How would my parents deal with it? The longer I sat there, the surer I was that they wouldn’t handle it well.”

“So you never told them.”

He shook his head. “Six months later, I went off to college, so it wasn’t all that hard to keep hiding it from them.”

She sighed. “So, what do they think you do for a living?”

“They think I work for the USDA, tracking various conservation programs. Let’s just say they’re not exactly thrilled with my career choices. Which is why my mom and I don’t talk much anymore.”

Wow was the only word that came to mind. She couldn’t imagine going through the changes a shifter did that first time and not having someone to confide in. “What about your dad? Or your brothers and sisters?”

“We still talk occasionally, but we’re not as close as we used to be,” he admitted.

Well, that sucked. Her parents might not know what she did for a living, but at least they were still proud of her. It sounded as if Declan’s family had turned their backs on him because he hadn’t followed the career path they’d wanted him to. God, she wanted to smack every one of them.

Since she couldn’t do that, she placed her hand on his thigh and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Well, your family might not like your career choices, but if you didn’t work for the DCO, I probably wouldn’t be alive right now. So, thank you.”

Before she could stop herself, Kendra leaned over and brushed his cheek with her lips. The kiss was nothing more than a peck, and yet it sent a little quiver through her. Declan stared at her, surprise in his blue eyes. Had he felt it, too?

“You’re…um…you’re welcome.” He cleared his throat. “We should get going.”

She nodded, and just that fast, the thought that she and Declan had experienced a cosmic connection disappeared, replaced by more practical matters. Like getting out of this jungle in one piece.

***

He and Kendra were forced to hide to avoid groups of hybrids three more times in the space of an hour. The first two times, they’d hidden in more palms. This third time, they’d been fortunate enough to find a huge cluster of shrubs and brambles growing along the side of a stream. It was thick enough to hide them from sight and the gurgling water helped cover any sound they might make.

Stopping to hide every fifteen minutes made it seem like they weren’t getting any closer to freedom, but it was better than having to fight their way through numerous hybrids. And there were a hell of a lot more roaming around today than there’d been last night. No human soldiers, though. That was a damn scary thought. Had the hybrids killed their own soldiers, or just turned them into monsters like them?

Declan moved slightly, careful not to rustle the shrubs around him and Kendra too much. If there were enough hybrids to both maintain a perimeter and scout the area, that meant there could be as many as a hundred of them out there. To say this had the potential to end badly was an understatement.

But one look at Kendra was enough to make him say to hell with that shit. She was depending on him to get them out of this, and that’s exactly what he was going to do.

She was sitting cross-legged beside him, more strands of hair coming loose from her ponytail, a smudge of dirt on her cheek. Take away the cammies and the M4, and put her in a tank top and cutoffs, and she’d look like the quintessential girl next door. And for years, that’s how he’d thought of her. But there was so much more to her that he’d never given her credit for.

It wasn’t only the courage she’d shown facing the hybrids, though that was damn impressive. What amazed him the most was how mentally tough she’d been. She’d seen things in the last few days that would make the strongest person curl into a ball and give up, but she kept shaking it off and pushing forward.