Her Wild Hero

“How could you know?” His mouth curved into a wry smile. “I don’t talk about it much…for obvious reasons.”


For one crazy second, he thought she was going to hug him, but she only took his hand in hers and gave it a squeeze. “No one should have to deal with that. I don’t think I would have handled it nearly as well.”

Declan looked down at her hand wrapped around his. It felt nice. “I didn’t handle it all that well.” He scanned the area around them for sounds of trouble, then got her moving again. “I drove straight back to MIT, dropped out, and ran away from the world. My parents thought I was insane when I moved out to Oregon and became a forest ranger.”

Kendra gave him a sidelong glance. “Why did you move out to Oregon and become a forest ranger? With your engineering background, I thought you’d find something technical.”

He shrugged as he kept moving. “I didn’t consider myself fit to be around people. I figured if I was going to be an animal, I might as well find a job that allowed me to live with them. And keep me away from humans as much as possible.”

Kendra moved around in front of him and put her hand on his chest. “You’re still human.”

“There are times when I’m not so sure of that.”

Before he realized what she was doing, Kendra went up on her toes and kissed him on the cheek. She stepped back and smiled at him. “I’m sure.”

Then she was walking ahead of him, leaving him unsure about what the hell had just happened. He wasn’t unsure about the effect the little kiss had on him, though. His cheek tingled from the touch of her lips, his heart was thudding, and from the way his vision had tightened all of a sudden, he knew his eyes had shifted. Damn, how was it possible for one little kiss to completely discombobulate him? It wasn’t fair. His head was frigging spinning as he followed her.

Why the hell had he spilled his whole life story to Kendra? He’d never told a soul about what had happened between him and Marissa.

Kendra glanced over her shoulder at him. “This is probably a silly question, but do you still love Marissa?”

“She was a big part of my life…first love and all that,” he admitted. “But no, I’m not in love with her anymore.”

That was the first time he’d said those words out loud—it felt good. He was still thinking about that when the sounds of crunching leaves and branches pulled him back to the present. Shit. He grabbed Kendra and held his finger to his lips, then urged her away from the approaching hybrids, pulling her behind a pile of boulders that weren’t much taller than he was. He breathed a sigh of relief as the sound of boots crossing rock and soil receded steadily, then finally disappeared in the distance.

“Dammit, I wish we could come up with a better way of dealing with these things than hiding every thirty minutes,” he growled.

Kendra leaned against one of the rocks, a smile curving her all-too-kissable lips.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

“Nothing. I just had this crazy image of Clayne hiding behind this pile of rocks while two hybrids walked by. Something tells me he’d opt for shooting them—or something equally violent.”

She laughed, as if the picture in her head was the funniest damn thing she’d ever imagined.

Declan didn’t laugh. He sure as hell didn’t find the comparison funny. It might be juvenile as hell, but he hated when she compared him to Clayne. He was nothing like the other shifter. Which explained why Kendra had never been attracted to him.

He clenched his jaw so tight, he thought his teeth were going to shatter. He’d been looking for something to get Kendra out of his head, and bringing up Clayne had done the trick.

Declan fought the urge to stand up and start moving again, anything to get his mind on another subject. But he couldn’t do that with the hybrids so close. Instead, he had to sit there and stew in the knowledge that Kendra was obsessed with the damn wolf shifter. Unbidden, his mind went to the one place he’d always refused to let it go: wondering how many times Kendra had slept with Clayne. God, he hated thinking about the two of them together. It literally made him see red to picture her with Clayne—or any man.

But as they hid behind the rocks, that’s the only thing he could think about.

***