Her Wild Hero

There was something dead upwind of him, near the stream about three hundred yards away. A fish of some kind. The odor was unmistakable.

Farther away—maybe a mile—a jungle cat was eating a small rodent. Declan could close his eyes and almost point to exactly where the creature—a jaguar or ocelot—was munching its late-night sack.

The more he tried, the more scents he was able to detect. His mind categorized them without much thought, but then one scent reached his nose and immediately pushed every other one out. Kendra. He looked down at the ground, and it was like he could see every step she’d taken as she moved across the slope the shelter was on. He was able to separate the stench of the hybrid’s blood from the perfume that was her own special mix of pheromones so easily he almost started laughing.

And he knew for a fact that she’d been moving on her own. There weren’t any hybrid tracks overlapping hers.

Declan stood there, unable to believe it. He had shifted further and more completely than he ever had in his life. And the answer to how he’d done it was simple. The one thing he had never let happen had happened because he’d been more terrified of losing Kendra than losing himself.

He was sprinting across the ground before he knew his feet were moving, and he was running faster than he ever had. Yet, as fast as he was moving, he had no problem following the scent trail. He knew he could have closed his eyes and the trail would have still been just as clear for him.

He slowed when he reached the place near the stream where Kendra stopped and fired her weapon. The acrid smell of burnt smokeless powder was clear and obvious. His head tracked to the left, finding the three spent 5.56 mm casings. She had stopped and turned back upstream before firing.

That was when he picked up the smell of the hybrids overlaying Kendra’s tracks. He couldn’t stop the growl that emanated from his throat. Damn it all to hell. There had been four hybrids upstream of the shelter. Kendra had run down here, then fired at them, not to kill, but to get them to follow her.

She had done it to draw them away from him, just like he’d thought.

Declan ran even faster. Kendra had risked everything for him.

He found every place she stopped to shoot at the hybrids, luring them farther and farther away from him. And with every short stop, his fear grew. She hadn’t even been trying to escape. She’d been sacrificing herself to save him. Tears burned his eyes, threatening to blind him, and he blinked hard.

Then he found the place where the chase had ended. He clearly saw and smelled the tracks of the two hybrids moving around in front of her, the other two herding her from behind. The scent of blood assaulted his nose and his heart lurched. But then he realized it wasn’t hers. It had the brackish stench of blood that could only belong to a hybrid. She’d hit one of the bastards. Not severely though. There were only a few drops on the ground. But she’d gotten one. The image brought a smile to his face, and he felt the unfamiliar tug and pull as a mouth suddenly full of fangs longer than he was used to turned upward.

His nose led him to the rock on the ground, and he picked it up. Her beautiful, feminine scent cloaked the stone. But there was a trace of hybrid odor on it. Like the rock had hit the creature just long enough to leave a hint, but not enough to cover Kendra’s scent.

The rock slipped from his suddenly nerveless fingers, fresh fear gripping him. This must have been the place where the hybrids attacked and killed her. His heart began to tear open, but then stopped when he realized there wasn’t any blood—or anything else—on the ground to indicate that the hybrids had killed her.

Declan spun around, his nose not used to doing work this fine but quickly learning how.

Outside of this one spot, Kendra’s scent diminished. It wasn’t gone, but it was much fainter. He scanned the ground, searching for her tracks, but couldn’t find any. Four sets of hybrid tracks headed away from the area, though. But one set was deeper than they’d been when they’d come into the clearing. Why? Then it hit him. The hybrid had been carrying Kendra.

He followed the tracks, his head digesting what his senses were telling him. It didn’t make sense. The hybrids had attempted to subdue him with that damn needle, presumably to capture him, but they’d never seemed interested in taking Kendra alive. Back at the stream, it had appeared as if they were trying to kill her as quickly as possible.

Why take her now?

He considered and discarded several possibilities, until coming to the only one that was left. The hybrids thought he was dead and had decided they needed Kendra instead.